Last year I met an old friend who I hadn’t seen for nearly 15 years. He recognised me but I knew he couldn’t remember my name, so I said, “You don’t remember me do you?” to which he shook his head, so I told him my name. He literally stood there for about 3-4 seconds with his mouth open and eyes wide in disbelief and just blurted out “You’ve gone back in time.”
We started to talk about how I had chosen to refine my diet; over the last few years I had cut out dairy, gluten, alcohol, sugar and caffeine. This dietary change has had such a profound and positive effect on me and my overall well-being; it had also helped me lose a lot of extra weight I had been carrying. But his only response to everything that I shared with him was “What, you don’t drink any alcohol at all?”
I found it strange that his only response was about the alcohol so I presented to him the possibility that what we eat has a direct influence on how we look and that certain foods and drink can age us prematurely.
Using the analogy of looking at our body as a car, what happens to a car if we:
- Don’t always put the right fuel in?
- Drive it too fast?
- Don’t protect it from rusting?
- Don’t keep it clean and tidy?
What happens is that the car starts to look shabby, neglected and old beyond its years.
Is it possible then, if we don’t lovingly take care of our bodies and really look at what fuel we put into it, that our bodies will go through the same process?
I feel that by putting the wrong fuel into our bodies it starts to rust from the inside. We start to look a lot older than we actually are and then things start to break down.
For instance, I used to have a constant supply of tablets for heartburn and indigestion because I was drinking too much coffee and alcohol combined with eating lots of fatty fried food and enormous amounts of sugar in the form of cakes, biscuits, chocolate, sweets and fizzy drinks. I would also feel bloated from eating foods with gluten, like bread or pasta.
Because of what I was eating I always felt lethargic; I just couldn’t be bothered to do anything except watch TV, which just compounded the issue. My thoughts were very foggy and only seemed to be about food and watching TV/DVD’s. My skin was red and blotchy and I quite often came out in spots. My bones seemed to creak when I had to get up and I was always catching a cold or having a complaint with my chest; at one point in my life I had a stint of several ear infections.
Since 2007, when I started to attend the presentations by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, I have gained a better understanding about the effects certain foods and drinks have on our bodies. I could then start to make choices that truly nurtured and supported my body.
With the changes I have made to what I eat and drink I no longer need any tablets for heartburn or indigestion, I don’t feel bloated and my energy levels have increased. My thoughts have a lot more clarity and are not just focussed on me. My skin is very clear and I haven’t had a cold or a chest complaint for years.
Looking at some old photos of myself, I now look about 10 years younger and what is more important is that I FEEL younger. The choices I have made have had a profound effect on my life and I know I will never go back to my old ways.
So, in answer to the question,
Is Time Travel Possible?
No.
But is it possible to appear to slow down the ageing process by choosing to fuel and run our bodies in a loving manner, so we will look healthier and have more vitality? YES!
It just makes sense that if something we put into our bodies can prematurely age us, then we can reverse that by not putting it into our bodies, something which I have experienced, all without a time capsule in sight!!
Inspired by the work of Universal Medicine, Serge Benhayon and his continued love, commitment and dedication to humanity.
By Tim Bowyer, London Bus Driver, UK
Further Reading:
On The Topic of Food and Diet
Farewell Dear Coffee
Before and After My Self Love Program – Forever Unfolding the Real Me
759 Comments
“The choices I have made have had a profound effect on my life” Beautiful reflection on the power of choices.
Our body is very grateful… it instantly responds to love and regenerates astoundingly when we let go everything that is not
I met a colleague recently that I hadn’t seen for a year and they had become bloated around their face and their whole body felt lethargic. when we eat and drink the foods that do not support our bodies surely the effects of this builds up in our bodies and is it possible that this adds to the possibility of getting something say like Diabetes because the body cannot cope with the excess that builds up from what we consume that the body cannot excrete fast enough hence the bloating as a sign that the body is in distressed.
Another living example of how simply listening to our bodies works miracles that are irrefutable.
Tim I spent a long time looking at the ‘after’ photo of you and yet would still have a hard time picking your age. You have a very youthful feel about you, you genuinely do. You also have a lightness about you that is not just about the weight that you have lost. And similarly in the ‘before’ photo the heaviness that is felt is not purely coming from the extra kilos that you’re carrying, it comes from a burdensome quality that you were lugging around. Bravo Tim. Hey and what a different bus driver people get met with, the new version, youthful, enthusiastic and vibrant as opposed to the old version, heavy, energetically weighed down and much more introspective.
Fantastic testament Tim to The Way of the Livingness and Serge Benhayon
What an inspiration you are Tim, showing that true health and vitality are very possible when we choose to love and care for ourselves.
This is a great analogy Tim and one that is well worth remembering; ‘Using the analogy of looking at our body as a car, what happens to a car if we: Don’t always put the right fuel in? Drive it too fast? Don’t protect it from rusting? Don’t keep it clean and tidy? What happens is that the car starts to look shabby, neglected and old beyond its years.’
‘Looking at some old photos of myself, I now look about 10 years younger and what is more important is that I FEEL younger. ‘ This is truly amazing. When I was young I had a theory that when people got older they either addressed their worries and hurts and grew into sweet, kind and lovingly wise old people; or their hurts and bigaotories ate them up so they became bitter and twisted. What’s wonderful is reading how, when we deeply care for ourselves, we show the world what is possible.
Life is all about choices and the most self-loving choice we can make is to care for our body so that it supports us in all that we ask it to do.
This is amazing Tim, what a turnaround of how you were living and caring for yourself, ‘With the changes I have made to what I eat and drink I no longer need any tablets for heartburn or indigestion, I don’t feel bloated and my energy levels have increased. My thoughts have a lot more clarity and are not just focussed on me. My skin is very clear and I haven’t had a cold or a chest complaint for years.’
Whilst time travel is not possible certinly you’ve shown and inspired so many that you can turn back time or that actually you can defy time and live a far more full and incredible life by deeply caring for yourself and the result is a non-surgical, non-botox youth and vitality.
Yes, we have a huge impact on our health and well-being by deeply caring for ourselves.
Stepping backwards in time is like stepping through a doorway into a deepening paradigm of Love and self-caring as we evolve. So a deepening paradigm is like time travel as every, yes every time we enter a door we have a chance to deepen our return to our essences! So much has ‘a profound effect on my life and I know I will never go back to my old ways.’
The ‘manual’ of life we live with is well known but it’s all written on the basis of us living in a unloving way. Change the energy that runs our body and all the rules and ‘home truths’ about what’s normal go out the window.
Ultimately we choose what we look like – if we continue to eat foods and drinks that prematurely age us then of course we will look older then our years. Eat foods to nourish and our skin and eyes will just sparkle.
Same for me at 58. I have more vitality than I did as a healthy and vital 20 year old.
It is such a simple statement that if something can prematurely age us then there could well be things that slow down the ageing process or even reverse previous ill effects and here is an example.
Our body is indeed a vehicle through which its movements are fueled by a source of energy. When we choose a quality of energy which is aligned to the natural order of our bodies, we and our bodies then naturally reflect the vitality and spunk of who we naturally are in essence.
I love coming back to this blog Tim, you show us what is possible when we commit to life and ourselves, totally inspirational!
Commitment to self, and life, is a great choice to make.
I have just turned 40 and wow do I feel more beautiful, more healthy and more sorted then ever and why? because like you Tim I started to make my life simple and block out that which is not love.
Life is glorious – it is our choice to make it so.
I reckon it is all in our perspective, of what we think normal is…I look and feel younger than I did 10 years ago, apart from a few mores lines around my face….but maybe I am normal for my age, but generally people in their 40’s have shifted into midlife, giving upness and so that becomes normal. It may look like I am going back in time, but in truth I am just normal 40 something looking after themselves, more than I used to.
Looking gorgeous Tim, but more than the looks, its the vitality that you have so clearly in the second picture that is the stop moment for me… someone who is re-engaged with life. Beautiful to see.
Vitality is a rarity in our society, it really is, which is a dreadful reflection of where we’re at. Vitality is a very natural state, it is how we all were before we started to mess with our energetic make up. Our pristine energetic state is glorious, it’s vibrant, it’s alive, it’s always in active expansion but we’ve bludgeoned our energetic make up to death, so much so that most of us present as fed up, worn out, fatigued and generally ‘over it’. And we, yes we, have done it to ourselves through our day to day choices. But as Tim has so beautifully demonstrated it is reversible.
Exhaustion stemming from our ill lifestyle choices is indeed endemic in our modern society and yet we keep looking for temporary solutions to keep us going like caffeien and sugar.
So so many students of The Way of The Livingness I see looking younger, more healthier and more glorious each time I see them – its amazing – they are living medicine.
It’s such a vicious cycle when we eat poorly. You feel tired, heavy and your body reacts with things like indigestion. You can’t be bothered exercising, you eat more food and drink more coffee/alcohol to make the unpleasant feelings go away. You don’t know how great you will feel until you stop and try a different diet. I was forced by my body’s reactions to give up gluten many years ago, which I thought I couldn’t live without. I started to lose weight that I hadn’t been able to shift, I felt more energised and back in life instead of existing through it. With this massive change I was more able to listen to my body and other refinements naturally happened which have further supported my health.
And Tim you just look better and better each time I see you, and always with that amazing smile of yours, what a great advert for living life in a certain way.
This is a brilliant testimony to the transformational effect of making different choices to our lives, and being aware of what we’re putting into our bodies and the fuel we’re running it on. One of the biggest choices we can make is to accept ourselves and to let go: let go of our pictures and expectations of how life should be and how we need to be in it, the things we think we need to make us feel okay, including certain types of foods and activities, other people’s responses and reactions to us, etc. Treating our bodies with deep love and care, including noticing what type of fuel we’re running it on, has a ripple effect on our relationship with ourselves, with others, and how we are in the world.
“The choices I have made have had a profound effect on my life and I know I will never go back to my old ways.” – This statement feels like one of the most powerful ones of this great transformative approach that Tim has chosen, because there are so many behaviours that we all can drop into or return to in order to numb or distract ourselves from feeling some hurt or other difficult situation, even when we thought we were past them, but to be able to build a certain level of self-love where you know in your heart you will never return to those self-destructive behaviours is truly remarkable and shows how the concepts taught by Universal Medicine assist in true long-lasting healing, not just a quick fix only to have the issue resurface later.
Epic before and after Tim – quite the model for a way of living that has plainly supported you to take a step back in time. Is it possible… absolutely yes and there is a proven way of living to help which is what Serge and his team have been promoting since 1999.
Thank you Tim Bowyer for it clearly reveals what effect we have on our body by what we consume. Let’s make some healthy choices ! Truly healthy I mean.
Its amazing how quickly we can feel good just by making simple loving choices that support our body, I have seen people’s levels of vitality sky rocket really quickly just by taking away all forms of gluten and diary.
Awesome we have people like you Tim who can inspire us to listen to that inner voice that is forever there just waiting to be heard.
Its not restricted – a few days of living well (or improving our way of living in some way) can always be felt. We get a spring in our step, life feels more positive… so why not keep going, keep developing, keep evolving?
What we think about eating becomes a policy that we believe will work and it is a bit like Russian roulette when we consider that most processed foods are simply not healthy. Then food can become an exhuming passion that keeps us from listening to our body because we are entrapped by a way of eating, which is all about fast food and convenience.
Living in a way so not to eat foods that will dull, case damp and bloat us, is simple to feel, when we are able to listen to our body.
What becomes confusing is that we have sometimes given up food before we are not actually ready to eliminate it from our diet, so we end up with the replacement items. Then it is easy to fall into critique that comes from the judgement about what we see others eating or buying at the super market and this is because we have given this or that up but energetically we are still craving for that food.
So that we have eliminated foods without the discernment of what it felt like in our body.
When we feel the effect of any-things that has been brought to our body and we discern why we feel dulled, hung-over, racy etc. then it becomes quite easy to say no to that energy because we recognise the symptoms, which means we are not easily fooled by false energies and what they put into our body. Thank you Tim, there is so much to explore, and when it comes to being accepting of who we all are, we would never ”go back to my old ways.”
Yes it is definitely possible for vintage cars to look amazing 🙂
The difference in your before and after photos is incredible. I’ve always found it strange that most people know about the harming effects of certain lifestyle choices yet still choose these things and act surprised when someone else makes a different choice.
Great to come back to this blog again today and be supported in some dietary changes that I am in the process of making. Ones that I know make sense but that I have been holding onto for the comfort they bring.
We will all without doubt age, but we all have a huge role to play as part of the ageing process. When I say that I don’t mean in deciding how youthful we look, but in how vital we are so we can live our lives to the fullest.
I love the practicality of this blog and the analogy of how our car will quickly break down if we do not put the right fuel into it. It just goes to show that we take better care of our car than we do our body a lot of the time.
Amazing testimonial in photos and truly the confirmation of a photo is in the feeling of it.
What I love about the esoteric teachings presented by Serge Benhayon is that the way we live is medicine. This means that we have no one to blame when we develop conditions that alert us to the fact we are not living in a way that supports the health and vitality of our body and thus calls us to be way more responsible in terms of how we are choosing to live – the food we out into our body, the way we sleep, the quality of our thoughts, behaviours and interactions with others etc. when we truly understand that ‘life is medicine’ we can step out of the victim mode and start to restore who we truly are in a world that has long buried the reflection of this.
Simple but so true Tim, when we allow our-self to feel what certain foods do, we can turn back the clock on how we feel, by eliminating those food choices from what we eat.
“But is it possible to appear to slow down the ageing process by choosing to fuel and run our bodies in a loving manner, so we will look healthier and have more vitality? YES!”
Absolutely Tim, and the students of the livingness prove this again and again.
I wonder if as a society we all deeply cared for our bodies, what we would look like. Perhaps much of what we see in ageing is simply a consequence of not having cared for ourselves. Yes the body will age, wrinkles will form, things will slow down…but perhaps there is a grace to be had in all of this instead of much of what we see with it being a struggle and ill health.
Great photos’s Tim. I love the analogy of the car in relationship to our body and how we take care of it, inevitably bringing the same result as the car – from the care we have, or have not brought to it..
“Using the analogy of looking at our body as a car, what happens to a car if we:
Don’t always put the right fuel in?
Drive it too fast?
Don’t protect it from rusting?
Don’t keep it clean and tidy?
What happens is that the car starts to look shabby, neglected and old beyond its years”.
Aging happens slower than normal when we look at our normal (our diets, lifestyles etc) and express that it is actually abusive and we go back to what is natural to the body ( loving), what de-ages us is self-care and self-love.
This article and others like it need to be expanded, studied and put into practice if our society is going to begin to truly feel the harm of living life in disregard and the results that come from such a choice.
I loved reading your blog Tim and would love to be a passenger on your bus any day!
At some point as we get healthier and healthier we have to learn how to adjust to the increased power our car (body) has and that takes another whole level of awareness!
Living the future.. looking and feeling great. It is so worth taking care of ourselves.
Exactly Victoria the benefits far outweigh the non benefits so to speak, even if we like the retreat away from life in truth we want the care and love we just have to be willing to give this to ourselves, Whenever I get angry I don’t want to care for myself yet its then a cycle that keeps me from me.
Love the body/car analogy. It is interesting to look at the state our cars are in and the quality of care we treat them with…reflective of how we are with ourselves. In fact this applies to our homes too and everything in life.
True Victoria, in fact that would explain why it feels so great to valet your car inside and out!
No wonder he did not recognize you Tim the transformation I have witnessed in the time I have known you is extraordinary and I would not have recognized you now had I not seen you regularly over the years while you were changing.
Yes, I agree Mary-Louise- I have witnessed the same changes in Tim as reflected in the photos – totally awesome!
One of the most important relationships of our lives, which we are conditioned to overlook, is the one we have with our body. Whether we accept it, honor it or pay attention to it or not, the relationship remains, continually reminding us of the truth of our choices and if they are supporting us to live our true potential. Hence when we begin to listen and honor it, it is no surprise that our health and well-being improves out of sight.
“The choices I have made have had a profound effect on my life and I know I will never go back to my old ways.” This is profound compared to the success of diets. How many can say they will never go back?
Looking at your photo Tim, I’d say time travel is possible!
If our car becomes run down and shabby from our lack of care and loving attention it makes perfect sense that the same happens to our bodies. But it is very obvious that if we take more care of our car it will reflect that care in the way it looks and drives, just as our body will when we make the choice to treat it in a deeply caring and honouring way.
This is a true testimony of how making inner change can manifest when the inner change is backed up by choices that lovingly support the body.
A beautiful sharing on what it means to truly nourish ourselves from the inside and how this nourishment and love is then felt and mirrored outwardly so. Awesome thank you.
It makes absolute sense to me Tim. What doesn’t make sense is why there is such a push for all the products and lifestyle choices that are harmful to the body. The option of eating to support our body’s well-being and vitality still seem to be on the ‘unusual/less obvious’ list of approaches.
I love your photos Tim, it looks like time travel is possible when you look at them. It amazes me how incredible our bodies are and how well they respond to love and care. If we abuse our body and not look after it as well as we should it will deteriorate and age much faster, but when we make more loving choices it doesn’t take long for our body to regenerate and return to its natural state. Your blog shows us how intelligent and amazing our bodies are.
I also experience old friends telling me they are amazed how young I look.
They see the clarity because I let go of a lot of old childhood hurts by undergoing esoteric healing sessions with a focus on clearing out the childhood issues. It is amazing what we can still keep in the body as a stagnation because of past experiences and how easily we can let go off that what we kept for years within and suppressed with certain food choices.
I love that your blog shows that now is always a great time to start making great choices for your body and taking great care of your overall health. It’s never too late to start to make amazing choices and giving ourselves the care that we truly need, as your story shows the results are incredible, and go much further than the eye can see.
It can never ever be too late to return to who we truly are because we can never ever not be who we are in truth and so in actual fact we are all already who we’re going to be and so it is not something that is measured in time but something that is marked in space because we are not stepping forwards in our return, it is something that we are moving backwards to being. We are returning to a way of being, there is no forwards motion in it, forwards motion is part of the illusion that keeps us peddling in the wrong direction.
I went to an old school reunion recently and I felt disappointed by the lack of vitality I saw in my friends. Most of them I had not seen since leaving school so lots had happened in all our lives – including mine. What struck me was that they all said I hadn’t changed, it was like the ticking time clock had gone on hold.
“I feel that by putting the wrong fuel into our bodies it starts to rust from the inside. We start to look a lot older than we actually are and then things start to break down.” An invitation to be our own mechanic and fine tune our vehicle.
When we choose to live true to ourselves anything is possible.
Most societies around the world are eating foods that are not good and are harmful to them, society even endorses this kind of unhealthy behaviour it is seen as the norm to eat sugar, drink alcohol and to have caffeine yet all of these dramatically decrease our mental and physical vitality.
Loading the body up with food items that are devoid of what is truly nutritious makes us heavy, bloated and foggy; no fancy science needed here, just practical everyday experience and astute and honest observation.
Its true Tim, all people need is a reflection that is true and they can get a glimpse of a different reality.
Its a shame we fuel our bodies with the wrong fuel when we are young and the body copes and suffers and then we age and the cracks deepen and start to appear everywhere. Much easier to be self loving when we are younger.
‘I feel that by putting the wrong fuel into our bodies it starts to rust from the inside.’ This is a great analogy Tim.
Well done.
It is so true that we are super careful not to put the wrong fuel into our cars but generally pay far less attention to what we are fuelling our bodies with. You are an amazing example of how you can appear to turn back the clock when you chose to completely overhaul your diet and start to take care of every aspect of your life and this has been captured beautifully in your before and after photos.
I love your sharing Tim! What an inspiration you are , and looking at your photos I can see that it is possible to get younger when we treat our bodies lovingly.
It really goes to show that we do have a hand in how we are looking and feeling in our bodies unlike many people who say that it is about genes, heavy bones etc. We do have a responsibility for everything that happens in our body.
I was at a meeting the other day and age came up in the conversation, when I told them my age most of them was shocked and said I looked a lot lot younger, I know this is because I live lightly, and live a life as best of my ability based on love. Love always is the best product to invest in.
We generally seem to find it easier to care for our cars, i.e. give it the right fuel, than it is to care for ourselves. We would never deliberately put diesel into a petrol engine but we don’t think twice about filling our body with alcohol and soft drinks. Why do we care so little about the body that we live in and that is with us 24/7?
It’s true we wouldn’t put the wrong fuel in our car as we know the harm this would cause and yet we don’t apply the same principle to food and our bodies! Yet, Tim you have proven just what happens when you do take the care to nourish yourself.
You really have transformed, it’s great to see your smile in the second picture.
Great food for thought Tim ; ) Love it! And what if we could live our future today? That instead of going back in time we are ahead of our time, in that we are living our future selves now. With every moment that we are met with, we are presented with a choice that will determine the quality in which we will live the next moment that inevitably returns to us. And so, it is that it could be that with every moment we are met with, we are presented with our future, with the added opportunity to choose the quality in which we step into our future.
I certainly felt my body telling me that drinking alcohol was ‘rusting’ the inside. It wasn’t just my body thou it was the way I felt about myself and feeling drained and exhausted. Not just from the sugar that is alcohol but from checking out of myself and waking the next morning feeling odd and like I was trying to come back to myself. Whilst I would be throwing up inside the toilet bowl. Everything we clear that it was not agreeing with my body and being.
It appears mad to me that we have a whole industry for anti ageing when the possibilities are there to change how we look and feel by our nutritional and other lifestyle changes. Perhaps we actually need in a deeply honest way to address why we are so drawn to poor health choices. In terms of understanding the ‘why’ nothing and no one has ever come close to explaining this like Serge Benhayon does in his presentations.
The amount of things we’ve created in order to solve our problems is incredible – the “clean eating” hype, the gym hype, the ant-acing hype, they’re all just bandages to our wounds, but these bandages will soon become too small to cover the hurts we’re creating ourselves.
We do have this effect on people…. And we don’t have to say anything … our bodies and the light in our eyes speak volumes for us.
I love this Chris, so TRUE.
I know many people who through lifestyle choices have gotten younger as they’ve aged. Perhaps our perception of ageing is warped especially as we fuel ourselves with things our bodies aren’t fond of.
‘I feel that by putting the wrong fuel into our bodies it starts to rust from the inside.’ I love this description of putting the wrong fuel in our bodies. A great question to ask ourselves when we are eating – will this food rust or lubricate and allow my body to flow?
It’s interesting how people clock change, real and true change in another but as soon as that change is explained they can become very weary and even concerned! A great example here is not drinking alcohol and how the choice to not do that really rocks the boat for a lot of people because it is actually saying that drinking alcohol should not be a normal thing to do to the body.
To address the foods we eat we have to first address the reason we crave those foods in the first place. Recently I have noticed that when I feel great and in total acceptance of who I am I am content within myself and therefore do not feel the need to overeat or eat foods that dull me but when I feel in contraction especially after I have been in the company of others there is a tendency to want to overeat and numb myself… the link between food and how we are feeling is certainly something to consider and worth observing.
I love reading these before and after stories where it appears that the person has stopped ageing and looking better than ever. However there are many more examples these days of the negative before and after, where time is not so kind to the person we meet 10 or 20 years later. I was reflecting today on why older people are not valued in our society and somewhat shunned. I wondered if we don’t like the reflection we see, of the way we live and the end result 70 or 80 years later.
If we don’t see food as fuel for our bodies and nothing more we will always be susceptible to the comforts and indulgence of it.
It is possible to travel out of time.
Such a fantastic analogy because we all know what happens to a car that is not looked after, it stops working. Starting to turn the way we think and realise that we are either rusting ourselves from the inside or not is an amazing opportunity to change the quality of life we are going to live. You are a prime example Tim and thanks so much for sharing.