Like you perhaps, I don’t spend a lot of time talking about the topic of aging. Maybe it’s scary, even a downer. Nevertheless I am giving a workshop today on the topic of “Working with the Older Yoga Student”. So, I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about aging.
Also many of my contemporaries’ parents are up there in age. They are needing to go into aged care facilities. Sadly one dear friend’s mother just passed away.
Fact No. 1) Aging, and it’s close companion, death, are a part of life. Like it or not.
One of the practices of yoga is detachment; another is non-resistance. These are good approaches to have if we don’t like thinking about aging.
Fact No. 2) There are some really interesting things to be learned about the aging process, which I’ve discovered in the process of preparing for today’s workshop. For instance, one of the risks for osteoporosis is low body weight. I thought I was being so good by keeping my body slim.
Fact No. 3) Last night at a party, I was chatting with a friend and colleague about aging and found it kind of cathartic in that way of revealing some deep fears and getting to know each other in a different way.
Yoga is a practice and also a philosophy that can help us deal all sorts of eventualities. Especially the biggest ones, the inevitabilities.