The mother cat emerged from her hiding place carrying a tiny heap of bones and fur that had survived all that time without food! Immediately the staff began to nurse the kitten back to health. A few days later a small miracle occurred. By the time the employees of the inn discovered what had happened, they believed that all the kittens had died. My newfound friend had been born about five weeks earlier to a young female cat who could not nurse her litter. A tiny black kitten wandered down the hallway and found his way into my room and my heart. One week in the early 1990s, I was leading a seminar at an inn in Mount Shasta, California. I find this statistic fascinating because of the work that our hearts are built to do and how well they do it.Some of my most compelling relationships have been with animals. With the exception of misused medicines and misdiagnosed conditions, the greatest killer of adults over the age of 65 is heart disease. So, weвЂ™re back to the original question: Why does the upper limit of our life span appear to hover around the 100-year mark? What it is that takes our lives? Although new studies have now shown that the cells of these organs do have the ability to regenerate themselves, it also appears that theyвЂ™re so resilient that they can last a lifetime and donвЂ™t necessarily need to! Interestingly, these special cases are the cells of the two centers that are most closely identified with the spiritual qualities that make us who we are: our brain and our heart. Until recently, scientists believed that there were two exceptions to the phenomenon of cell regeneration. In other words, weвЂ™re constantly replacing and rebuilding ourselves from the inside out! Of the estimated 50 trillion or so cells that reside within the average human, most are documented to have the ability to repair themselves and reproduce throughout our life span. Have you ever wondered why we die after only 70 or 100 years?ДЄside from the obvious trauma of such things as war, murder, accidents, and poor lifestyle choices, what is the real cause of death in humans? Why is it that the odds of continuing a healthy, vital, and meaningful life seem to work against us as we pass whatвЂ™s often considered вЂњmidlifeвЂќ and later approach the 100-year mark?ДЄmong scientists, medical professionals, and scholars alike, thereвЂ™s agreement that our bodies have a miraculous ability to sustain life. The source of such a belief may surprise you. While their stories illustrate the power that a belief can hold for one person, could that power run even deeper in a way that affects us all? Is it possible that, collectively, we share in a belief thatвЂ™s so common, and affects us on such a deep level, that it has actually established the limits of the human life span? And if so, can it be healed, and the limit changed? The answer to both of these questions is yes.

ItвЂ™s that connection that plays out in our everyday lives, just as my two friendsвЂ™ loved ones demonstrate. With the renaissance of interest in the mind/body connection that began in the late 20th century, new studies are appearing almost weekly in scientific and mainstream journals that identify a direct link between the way we think and feel in our bodies and the way we function physically. When we hear stories such as the preceding ones, we find ourselves asking, вЂњIs it simply a coincidence?вЂќ Is it a fluke that someoneвЂ™s life span just happens to conform precisely to his or her expectation or those of his or her family members? Or is it something more?

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