This post is not a result of scientific study for the subject matter. Rather, it is a combination of my observation, intuition and experience. Even when you agree with my rationale, you should not believe all of it. In addition, the flexibility referred to both physical and mental ones.
Observation:
Life goes from: Birth -> Young -> Old -> Death
Flexibility goes from extremely flexible at birth and becomes less and less so as one grows older and older. At one's death, the physical body becomes most rigid.
Intuition:
The more flexible our bodies is the further we are away from death, in general.
Reasoning:
In Chinese medicine, it talks about ”
气“
（pronounce Qi) which is a form of energy flowing through the body, which keeps the body functioning as designed. The rigidity of body creates "choke points" that impedes the natural flow of Qi and affects the organs' proper functions, resulting in various health issues, which in turn shortens one's life span.
There is also a mental component that, I believe, behaves the same way. Typically, as we grow older, our thoughts (and vision of the world) become fixed (i.e. rigid). We become more and more sedentary. The result is a slow moving and inflexible body that develops into many choke points for the Qi. We don't think any other way but to let the thought rots out our health. Now the question I want to ask everyone is "why do we think this way"? But as soon as we become mentally flexible and think, for example, I can be moving freely, strong and flexible even at this old age. Our body will always move in the direction of our thought. The result can be very exciting for whoever that wants to extend their life span. Bottom line: the mental aspect of our life goes hand-in-hand with our physical health.
Well, this is it. The language may not be perfect but I hope it gets the point across.
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