Grace with age
Fine wine, cigars, Victorian homes, frescoes, the streets of Rome, forests and redwoods, volcanic rock and mountains, the soil beneath our feet- all enjoy the beauty of age. Horses slow down to gentle trots, sea turtles float longer and closer to shore. Mountains move slightly, their icy caps melting into gushing rivers and waterfalls that have fallen since ancient times.
We look upon all this with eyes of wonder and exclaim how beautiful they are. We take photos and post about our experiences with these treasures of life. Yet, when met with humans of the same equisiteness and refinement of age, their wisdom is disregarded, their knowledge scoffed at, and their relevance no longer valued.
Is this human nature?
No, it is the extraordinary science and art of anti-aging that has made the world go mad with youth. No longer a billion-dollar industry, it has become a trillion-dollar industry, and humans are fighting the natural grace of age. Even Buddha sought to understand why one ages, and he realized there is no way to avoid it, but there is a way to explore it gracefully, love it tenderly, and dive into the wisdom of the mind and all that it has witnessed.
Listening and learning
A young kid can get away with a few things, especially when they are highly observant, pay attention, and have learned the skill of looking like they aren't paying attention at all; I was coloring or dyeing my dolls' hair with tangerines. It certainly didn't look like I was listening to anyone… or hearing any of the things the wise were sharing in the presence of is-she-too-young-to-hear-this? era.
Yes, I may have been too young to understand the complexities of everything they spoke of. Still, my mind was hungry for information and knowledge, not just the kind found in books, but the real knowledge, the human knowledge of existence, the knowledge of what I lovingly called my elders, my people. I hungered for the stories of the people I wanted to sit next to around a campfire and listen to their history of life and learning.
I did that, and I listened to them.
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Here is what I heard, and also how I learned it through the mind of yoga.
All of my favorite people in their 80s and early 90s were extremely sedentary; they sat, and sat and sat. And when they did get up, it took extreme effort; walking through the house to get a beverage or get into bed took extraordinary effort, which was often blamed on age.
I loved to move, and I learned really young that on days when I didn't move or had to be very still, the following day it was so much harder to move, so instead of trying to battle my days where I needed to be still, I moved. I walked, I danced, I swam, I stretched - a lot. I blamed that desire to move on my unripened age of being 10.
Then at 13, I got injured. I injured both my knees at the same time, and around the same time I was developing a bit of curvature in the spine known as scoliosis.
I couldn't walk more than a few feet without pain; I struggled to get something to eat or drink for myself. And I also found it very hard to get in and out of bed. This went on for a few years. And my body changed; I became very stiff and witnessed myself jokingly saying to my friends and my mom, " Don't mind me; I am just old.” I felt old, or so I told myself. The experience I was having was exactly how the seniors in my life explained feeling old, so I associated pain and stiffness with age too.
One day, I cried out to my mom.
She ran into my room.
I couldn't move.
My back seized up.
I had to crawl on all fours and climb into her minivan and lie in the back seat as she drove the 40 minutes back to Orlando to get to me the only doctor she trusted to help me. We arrived; they had to wheel me in. And when I got on the table, the only recourse they could do to ease my pain and to get me to where I could walk out of the office was a cortisone shot to the lower back.
Later, I learned that I had 2 things going on in my back: a bulging disc and scoliosis. My knees not getting better from a dance injury contributed to uneven weight distribution in my body. Plus, the sudden weight gain my tiny frame endured from being injured and unable to move was
too much for my back,
and
it gave up!
Fast forward to yoga.
I start everything I do with an open mind, and also with what I tell myself is a healthy dose of fear. I don't like to believe in everything wholeheartedly until I have analyzed it and experienced it. I'm not one to say I don't like something unless I've tried it (hot yoga is a good example of that, LOL). My mom would tell you I had to learn every detail of how something worked before I even started explaining it or exploring it more in depth in the real world. My friends tell me I have daughter-of-an-engineer syndrome, and I wear that with a badge of honor; my dad was amazing (more on him another day). I don't want to get sidelined by my dad’s awesomeness yet. LOL
Ok, back to the informative story, we could stop here…. And say the rest is history, but some of my students have no idea about my history with yoga or why I think it's wacky that teachers get trained in a weekend... so here's my version of the story.
I started yoga, very tentatively and gingerly; I was in a lot of pain. I did one session on TV with a PBS special. Calvin was by my side, smiling that I finally joined him.
So, of course, me being me, I said I have to learn more. So we went to the bookstore, and the ONLY book they had was in the self-help section, on the bottom shelf (at this time, yoga wasn’t, let's say, the word, trending, and Google wasn't a thing yet). The book was by BKS Iyengar. Light on yoga.
Now I realize he wrote this book early in his teaching career, and, from my experience teaching ballet, my teacher told me my lessons would change as I “aged” and grew “wise.” And I learned, with practice, time, and lots of yoga education, that the masters of yoga also refined their teachings with wisdom and age. :)
The ancient masters all conclude that stiffness is not a sign of aging, and neither are injuries. They are a sign of not using the body, not moving it, or moving it without alignment. So I dove deep into yoga (spending over 15,000 hours training with masters and studying yoga).
With Calvin and his engineer mindset at my side, and my intent to understand and analyze as much as he did, we discovered through movement, breathing, alignment, and focus that meditation is easily attainable. The pain in my young body finally eased, replaced by balance, strength, and mobility.
So when students come into the studio and say
“I am old,”
I look at them and say,
Maybe only in numbers, but yoga can change your biological age. This isn't anti-aging, nor is it about defying age; it is about letting go of the self-imposed limitations we place on ourselves and excuse as aging.
The way I see it, gray hair looks like tinsel and should be something to celebrate, because gray hair is earned through the experiences that provided us wisdom and insight. The wrinkles around our eyes and mouth are the historical lineage of every teardrop, cry of sorrow, every single song of laughter and joy that gently wraps around our eyelids. Our personal history lives in the body, in the sunshine on our skin, in every freckle and sun wrinkle. The body's aging is a celebration of our very existence as humans, the human race, and the enormous amount of history in the mind and body as it ages. It is something to behold and cherish!!
Staying relevant…
History of the mind is a powerful tool. Even if a person talks about things that don't seem “relevant” today, it is because they are teaching about the history of existence and the history of the world as they saw it. It's not right or wrong, just as aging isn’t good or bad.
Aging is a human thing we all will experience, and it's absolutely delightful and beautiful.
In case you are wondering, yes, since I started teaching, one of my favorite age groups to teach is the over-50 crowd, especially those pushing 80; there is so much beauty, life, and growth that happens in those years, and through yoga that growth is beautiful, glorious, and tangible. It shows in the skin, the dance of the eyes, the agility of the body.
Yoga develops the wisdom of your mind and enhances the intelligence of the body, so you realize that stiffness in the body and rigidity in the mind are a choice. Age is like fine wine with extraordinary flavor, or a glorious mountain with tremendous strength and resilience.
Celebrate the life era of grace.
We celebrate you and thank you for reading this far.
Join us for a special senior chair yoga class at Orlando Museum Of Art
Tues. Jan 26 at 9:30am
Tue. Mar. 16 at 9:30am
Or sign up for a session with Calvin or Theresa. Text or call: 407-999-7871
PS. If you are curious, we don’t use AI to write our stories; we write them from our hearts. We take our time to be thoughtful and heartfelt, and hopefully you can feel that through this page.
