They’re kind of like super glue. They work great and keep just about anything together for a long time if you take care of them. But if you leave the cap off? The magic glue dries up quickly and the entire bottle dies, with no way to revive it. Only the trash lies in its future.

It’s similar with telomeres and telomerase. At the tip of our chromosomes are telomeres, little “caps” that keep cells functioning well. The longer the telomere “caps,” the healthier the cells. Telomerase? Closely related, this enzyme is associated with keeping telomeres long and healthy. If telomerase decreases, and telomeres on cells shorten with age (basically fraying), this is associated with cellular degradation and age-related diseases, including cancer.

So what’s mindfulness got to do with it? Genetics play a role in aging, as we know, and lifestyle, too. Everything from what we eat, whether we exercise, stress and sleep levels, anxiety, depression, and smoking, all of it can impact telomere length and telomerase. Focusing on activities that increase telomere length and telomerase are gradually being shown to support health, too, contributing to positive aging and longevity.

No big corporations are running out to spend money on researching how meditation or yoga might lengthen your telomeres or extend your life, so evidence is accumulating slowly, but it’s accumulating nonetheless.

Here are several things we’ve learned, with surely more to follow:

• Regular yoga practice or meditation have both been associated with longer telomeres and increased telomerase. You can choose to do one without the other, if you like. Yoga and/or meditation are associated with decreased stress and anxiety, improved mood, calmer nervous system activity, and physical strength and agility. These mindful activities benefit mood regulation, attention, and cognitive well-being as well.
• It makes sense yoga and meditation—time-honored mindfulness practices over millennia—contribute to health. Their ability to improve mood, stress, and well-being have a self-reinforcing effect. We feel better after we meditate or practice yoga, so we’re more likely to rinse and repeat, even if sporadically.
• It makes little difference what form of yoga or meditation you practice, only that you do it consistently enough for benefits to accrue. Yes, more time meditating or practicing yoga seems to have more salutary effects on telomeres and telomerase (and thus to decrease cellular aging), but you can start and tap into the “feel-good” effects of brief mindfulness meditations or yoga any time, even for a few minutes. Just start where you are.

It doesn’t matter if you’re 9 or 90. Beginning or increasing a yoga or meditation practice at any age offers benefits. You needn’t hole yourself up in a mountain cave spending hours a day meditating or expect yourself to practice yoga six times a week. In fact, for beginners, just a few minutes is better than more—novices are more likely to stick with it in shorter bursts, and sticking with it is what matters. It’s about the long game, and telomeres and telomerase play the long game, too. A little meditation or yoga feels good, so start low and go slow. And be compassionate with yourself in the process—self compassion has been found to lengthen telomeres, too.