HOW TO AGE WELL AND SUPPORT YOUR FULL RANGE OF LIFE

“We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

Joni Mitchell

For most of us, aging is a land we never wanted to visit. I think I was in denial until one day, before I was getting ready to step into the shower, I got a glimpse of myself naked in the mirror. It was an OMG moment. What happened to my body? I have slowly watched it age, but I can’t look now. This melancholy feeling came over me. Thinking about aging is remembering stories and then realizing how much time we have left. I had just turned sixty-three. This felt like unfamiliar territory to me.

These feelings raised questions about where I am in this stream of time. What anchors me now? How have my relationships changed? What are my beliefs about aging, especially in a culture that glorifies youth? What is my purpose as an older woman? Am I aging out of my profession? Most importantly, will I be able to function as my health declines?

In my bathroom, naked and emotionally raw, I started my journey into aging. I felt I was fading out of certain parts of my life. I knew this was the beginning of a new life cycle I needed to venture into. I would have to get to my taproot, taking a slow dive below the surface to find my way back in, or as Joni Mitchell wrote and sang, “Back to the garden.”

Henri Frederic Amiel, the Swiss philosopher and poet, quoted: “To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”

If we are lucky enough to make it to our sixties, then there has to be a transition from being young to becoming old. I asked myself: what have I lost, and what do I want to get back? I realized what I lost might not be what I wanted now. Getting older is recognizing the difference. The philosophy of Qigong gave me answers and a direct pathway to journey on. The Qigong movements gave me a way to restore and rebuild my aging body. I recognized how making a slight adjustment created a massive change in how I viewed myself as an older woman.

Our paths are very straightforward for most of our lives. Typically we come out of the womb healthy, nurtured by adults who care for us the best they know how. Then, it’s off to school for at least twelve years or more. We find a way to support ourselves, find a mate, and maybe have children or pets to care for. We financially take on more responsibilities like a home, cars, and education while accumulating much. From all of this, there is a solid identity to who we are. The path is obvious, and of course, we can veer off. Then, with all that accumulation of stuff, education, children, and career, we are told, or at least our bodies tell us, that our life course has to change. A lot of the stuff now becomes a burden as we get older. Younger people are taking over your career, your children leave the nest, and your body is breaking down because you never had time to take care of it with all that work you had to do to get to this point.

Of course, this all seems necessary for growth. If we reach fifty-eight without significant illnesses, we will probably live well into our eighties. The path to life on a physical level is so clear before this age, but after the retirement age of about sixty-five, there isn’t much information on how to live those years left. My research on aging was mainly about physical health, functional status, mental/cognitive effectiveness, social support, daily life activity, and material security. This is a broad range, and all very important, but what I think is overlooked is learning how to dismantle what we built as a younger person and rebuild a new path as an older person.

As younger people, we need the stamina to build our lives, and as older people, to repair and build the energy to live our lives feeling well and whole. We all share something; we will never leave this world alive. So why fight the inevitable? If we are blessed to live to retirement age, we must decide what to do with the time given. It’s an incredible passage to walk through. Growing older takes courage, forgiveness, softening our rough edges, and an open mind. Growing old is about growing up. We can’t move forward unless we let go, dismantle, and rebuild physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Qigong has broadened my view on aging on so many levels. I will write more about aging and how Qigong can support your full range of life.