As many of you know, I presented for the 5th year at the Telluride Yoga Festival last weekend. For the first few years of the festival, I was excited to be a student, taking classes from some of the most coveted yoga teachers in the country. When I received an invitation to teach, I was flabbergasted! What could I possibly have to share with a community of diehard yogis? After months of questioning my abilities, I came to the conclusion that I was just going to be myself, and teach what was true in my heart. So I submitted a class description that included incorporating core work into a yoga practice. Go figure! As nervous as I was, once I started teaching I realized I was actually enjoying relaying the knowledge and insight I gained over the years as a fitness instructor, personal trainer, and yogi. I watched people take notes. I answered a ton of questions. I was genuinely excited and no longer nervous to be a part of something I once thought was too big for my teaching skills and aptitude.
This time, I was asked to do a repeat of my Yoga for Aging class, as it was well received the year prior. As we all know, the biggest population on the planet right now are the baby boomers, however it is the most underserved group of yoga practitioners in the yoga community at large. For those of you who feared the classes at the yoga festival would be too advanced, and only for the young and bendy, there is some validation in that trepidation. However, if you’ve ever been to my Friday morning Yoga Lite class, you’ll be relieved to know classes like that do exist at the fest.
The following is a recap of my class titled, “Mid-Life Non-Crisis: A Catharsis for the Aging.”
There were about 30 people in attendance. My guess is the age group ranged between 45 and 70 years. Prior yoga ability didn’t matter, I welcomed those completely new to the practice, although my hunch was most people had been practicing, even if just on and off.
I asked the group why they decided to take my class. The answers were similar, suggesting aches and pains, diminishing ability, wear and tear injuries, lack of pep on the yoga mat. One woman let me know she was recovering from a stroke, and that event instilled in her the fearful reality of her own mortality. We talked about death and someone shared what it meant for them to live a life of meaning and purpose.
In the weeks prior to the class, I dug up some statistics on aging. Aside from confirming what I already knew about the dominate number of baby boomers, I was surprised to find out that the anti-aging campaign isn’t just a patronization of this population, it is a 200-billion-dollar industry. Even more shocking, is the small amount of money spent on services such as gym memberships and yoga classes. Can you guess what most of that revenue comes from? Face lifts, plastic surgery, anti-wrinkle creams, Botox, and sexual performance enhancing pharmaceuticals.
The media paints a picture of youthfulness as a measure of success. I told the class that the best compliment one can get is when someone tells us that we haven’t aged a bit. Why? Because, if we don’t hear this, we feel as if we’ve failed on all levels. Aging is not a disease, nor is it a failure. It is one thing to take care of our health, but it’s another to pretend we’re not really getting older.
This began a conversation about change. One of the quintessential teachings of many spiritual doctrines suggests nothing is permanent, change is evident. Greek philosopher, Heraclites is remembered for saying, “The only constant is change.” To deny change is to fight with the natural order of everything, and to fight with this is to suffer. To deny the passing of time is to suffer. To turn the other cheek to the reality of getting older is to miss out on the miracle of life. To deny the beautiful process of aging is to deny the privilege of ever being born.
We proceeded with a meditation that began in corpse pose, the proverbial “death bed.” I asked the class to be present with all their aches and pains, their dislike of no longer being young and vibrant, and all the other concerns that were brought up at the beginning of the class. I asked the class to go back in time, year by year, through their young adult life, teenage life, as a toddler, and finally, a newborn. I asked them to examine what might have changed, and what remained the same. I said, “You know your body has changed, but is there something inside of you that has not?” While meditating on the sweetness of being a new born baby, I could see smiles of joy on their faces.
A concept that is presented in the book, Aging as a Spiritual Practice, by Lewis Richmond, brings to light our life’s timeline. The author talks about how we look at our lives in terms of a horizontal time line. We have our birth, the stuff that happens, and then death. Along this timeline, we have an evident past. The only evident future that is certain is our death. Looking at life and death in this way, for some, is dreadfully uncomfortable. It’s as if we’re riding a freight train straight into the brick wall of our own demise.
Richmond discussed his idea of a vertical timeline. Instead of past and future, in this vertical timeline, all we have is the present. I thought and thought about this and came up with my own concept. Based on his insight of vertical time, I assimilated it in my mind as a ‘vertical alignment’ of sorts. Instead of moving across the timeline straight for the end, we ascend along the vertically aligned timeline. In other words, we are moving up.
Where does “up” go? We talked about heaven, the afterlife, and ultimately, freedom and enlightenment. While ascending on the vertical timeline, we can’t look back, because there is no ‘back.’. When we want to look ahead, we are directed to look up. I quoted my dad as saying, “There is nowhere to go but up,” and that is how we can view aging; as ascending through life.
Before we began to move through some yoga poses and stretches, I talked about the need to reframe our practice as we age. I asked them to shift from ‘goal oriented’ to ‘experience centered.’ Rather than feeling like we have to do something a certain way because that’s what we’ve always done, or because we want to achieve something we’ve been working on, I asked them to savor the experience just as it is, in the body they have right now. “Honor yourself, practice without judgment, resist the urge to compare yourself to your young self, and don’t write a check your body can’t cash,” I said wittily.
If you’ve ever been to my Friday morning Yoga Lite class, you know just how we proceeded for the next 90-minutes. For the group, it was an oasis in a habitual mindset of competitive thinking and frustration with their aging bodies. I believe everyone exhaled the need to achieve and do, and enjoyed simply being.
As we settled into final relaxation, I asked the class to visualize their faces, grateful for every crevice and character line. We thanked our bodies for enabling us to practice yoga. Wayne Dyer once asked his classes to not look at growing older as aging, but instead embrace it as an opportunity to be ‘sage-ing.’ We imagined rising along the vertical timeline, taking a look around and enjoying the lofty view that comes with age and wisdom.
For a recap of my 50 Shades of Namaste class, please click HERE.