01 April 2002

March was another exciting (and exhausting) month for me. I spent a wonderful time in Australia giving lectures on the X Factor Diet and connecting up with my friends in the media there as well as many readers and people whom I’ve worked with in workshops before. This is always a joy for me, for as a writer, I spend most of my life in front of a computer on my own. Believe it or not, this can be an extremely lonely experience so it is always wonderful for me to make real contact with the people for whom I write.

I am now sitting in my Southern Hemisphere home on the edge of a twelve million year old extinct volcano on the Banks Peninsular in New Zealand, submerged under voluminous medical papers and piles of research that I’ve done for Age Power, the book that will be published in August and September 2002. One of the extraordinary things about my work is that I always seem to be working on a project that is profoundly relevant to my own life. This is certainly the case with Age Power, which I’ve been researching for the last eighteen months.

After the success of Ageless Aging, which was published about eighteen years ago, and on which I also did a television series in the UK, I have for some time wanted to write a brand new book on aging, from a somewhat different perspective. When I first wrote Ageless Aging and spoke about free radical damage as a major cause of degeneration in the body, it was at a time when "free radical" to most people conjured up images of political dissidents . Nowadays everyone knows about free radicals and the antioxidants – the vitamins such as A, C and E, the minerals zinc and selenium, and all of the wonderful phyto nutrients – these plant-based chemicals – which help protect the body from destructive oxidation damage.

Now with Age Power I am entering a different realm - treating the whole issue of growing older as a journey into authenticity and power. In no small part this is because I myself am much older now than when Ageless Aging was first written. It seems to me that human life is meant to be a process of continual growth and unfolding. I see no reason why at the age of 90 or 100 one should not have masses of energy, so that our creativity, our capacity for joy and celebration, and our ability simply to live fully within our own bodies, continues to unfold throughout the whole of our lives. In many ways it can increase.

One of my dearest friends, Dr Barbara Latto, who died a year or so ago at the age of 99, inspired me in letting me know that this is possible. I had lunch with Barbara about a year before she died. I asked her "What is it like to be almost 100 years old?" She replied, "I can feel that my body is more delicate, but I have never experienced so much bliss. Every day is like a new beginning. Every taste and touch, sight and smell is miraculously rich." This is to me what Age Power is about.

What I am exploring in this new book is ways that we can continue to make the experience of growing older, one of expanding joy, energy, and fulfillment. In the process of doing this, I have looked at the work of visionary scientists, leading edge clinicians, and pioneers in human development. Some of the techniques, tools and discoveries I have made which are going into the book stretch back half a century. Others are so recent that the media has yet to talk about them. If we are to live with age power, it is essential that each one of us gradually develops high levels of energy and physical strength. It is also important that we banish the fears and clear up misinformation which abound in relation to aging. Fear alone undermines immunity and diminishes emotional, physical and spiritual health. Most fears about aging are nothing but old wives’ tales. Growing older does not have to mean degeneration and loss of vitality – a downhill ride all the way. It can mean growing stronger, more richly sexual, more radiant and more aware in every area of your life. There is an age power revolution taking place in science and in consciousness. It is happening in universities and in molecular biology laboratories throughout the world, as well as in psychologists’ consulting rooms and rarefied chambers where philosophers and physicists bring to birth new paradigms in medicine and health. It is altering forever, the way we think about aging. Age Power explodes most commonly held notions about aging. In the process it lays to rest more than a few sacred cows. It does this not by some trick of thought but as a result of the most remarkable, verifiable, scientific understanding about what causes degeneration in our bodies as well as what we ourselves can do to prevent it and to reverse it. Age Power honors the recent discovery that when it comes to how old you are, it is your biological age, not your chronological age that matters. Unlike your chronological age, which cannot be altered, how old you are biologically it’s fundamentally under our own control.

The secrets of aging are indeed hidden deep with the molecular biology of our bodies and within our own consciousness. If we are to support the finest expression of our genetic inheritance and turn aging into a joyful, fulfilling process, we need to understand, in the smallest detail, what is happening to us as we age. We need to know that the most remarkable discoveries have been made in the last fifteen years about how in we can reverse the biomarkers of aging and literally rejuvenate our bodies in medically measurable ways.

I am having a wonderful time immersed in the exploration of how we go about doing this. I have been stunned by the vast implications that it is we alone who have the greatest power to influence how slowly or how rapidly our bodies degenerate. For me personally - about to embark on finishing my second novel, Selkie, which I have been working on for four years – what I have learned about aging and about what is possible in terms of regeneration and rejuvenation on a physical, mental and spiritual level, has been life changing. I hope I will be able to communicate some of that to you.

Meanwhile back to the computer. I hope April is a wonderful month for you.

Warmest wishes to you all.

Leslie