Tag Archives: health

Daring to seek new opportunities

Entrepreneur and fitness expert, Betty Perkins-Carpenter, 85, has met life’s challenges with dedication, tenacity and persistence, which are hallmarks of conscious leaders. Here, she shares three tips to help others dare to seek new opportunities.

#1 Make a new beginning
At 72, I decided to go back to school and get my Ph.D. to continue my life’s work researching balance as part of my Senior Fitness business. In addition to research, my experience working with babies, preschoolers, elite Olympic athletes and seniors, on land and in water, led me to develop the Six-Step Balance SystemTM.

#2 Take chances and have fun
I started teaching swimming lessons in my backyard pool, which was risky. My business grew from taking chances and having fun. After 55 years in business, I still love getting up in the morning and helping people lead happier, healthier and active lives.

#3 Nothing is impossible
My veterans post commander gave me nearly 300 photos of soldiers taken at the beginning of the Korean War. I wanted to find these veterans and give photos to them or their families. In sharing my story, I found people willing to help. Because of their dedication and hard work, we created the Snapshots from the Korean War Project. Photos can be viewed at koreanwar.democratandchronicle.com.

Posted on behalf of Betty Perkins-Carpenter
by
Paul G. Ward
President, 2Young2Retire, LLC

Baby boomer suicides on the increase

Increasing suicide rates among baby boomers has been widely reported in the press this week. Rather than analyzing the causes of the increase, my thoughts went to how the 2young2retire® community help those affected by suicidal thoughts and those left behind after such a tragic end.

Much of the work of 2young2retire® facilitators is in creating small communities for connection and conversation. Conversations can be about careers, health, financial matters, travel, relationships, or any other topic of interest. Members of the group can select the topic. Reflecting on the past is interesting but looking forward with purpose can stimulate positive thinking and new directions. We all face challenges in our lives but what can we do to help those in greatest need, those who think life is simply not worth living, find something positive?

Reach out to someone today. Create a conversation that matters between two people or a larger group and stimulate some positive thinking.

Happy Thanksgiving and The Cure

I always knew The Cure as an English rock band originally formed close to my home town in Southern England but now I have learned “The cure is …” a transformational movie not only for those of us too young to retire® but for all ages. This transformational film experience is about how every human body is brilliantly designed for vitality and longevity. It provides inspiration on many levels and many of the important aspects of positive aging such as health, nutrition, and spirituality. Even Napoleon Hill, author of the best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich, makes an appearance reminding us of the natural law he describes as: “What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”

Another reminder in the movie and the three accompanying shorts is about the importance of love. In the season of gratitude, love yourself and everyone. Start by sending love your own way today.

So in addition to wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving, I encourage you to find out what the cure is… Cut and paste this link into your browser: http://thecureismovie.com/?page_id=395/#!/deployment_code=16589227mdswr1

Paul G Ward, Principal, 2Young2Retire

Re-Housing Our(elder)selves

About 15 years ago, we went in search of a new home, and a new type of home.  Somehow the concept of  co-housing had floated into our head space. We were attracted to the idea of  ‘building a better society, one neighborhood at a time,’ to quote the current official cohousing slogan.  This was pre-grandchildren and the appeal of sharing a planned community with people of all ages, including small children, seemed vastly more appealing than the 55+ adult gated communities then being marketed.  So we signed up for a co-housing conference in Maryland where a new community was forming, and the following year we toured four communities, Cantine’s Island, in Saugerties, NY, award-winning  Windsong in Langley, BC, Quayside Village in North Vancouver, and Trillium Hollow in Portland, OR (a city where some of our family already lived).  Of these, only Windsong was completed and occupied at the time.  We attended open houses at all of these, and spent a night at Windsong.  We even joined two of them at the minimal membership level. People were friendly and welcoming, some were close to messianic about their chosen form of living.  Forming a co-housing community is a long and challenging process and a few ‘burning souls’ are essential to sustain the effort.

We supported the living lightly on the planet philosophy of co-housing communities of which EcoVillage in Ithaca, NY, is perhaps the best known example.  We liked the self-governance ideals, the espousal of diversity.  We were attracted to the idea of a neighborhood planned to maximize contact among the residents, a kind of  y’all come, potluck ethos very different from most suburbs, including where we live now in South Florida.

The closest we’ve come to that kind of community sensibility was our eight years in Hoboken, NJ, where everything one needed was within walking distance.   If street life didn’t bring you into contact with a neighbor or two and the possibility of a social event, stoop life — hanging out on a balmy evening on your own front steps — certainly did.  It was a small town in every sense of the word, with Manhattan right across the Hudson River.

For us, the downside of co-housing was governance by consensus.  At one of the just-forming communities we toured, I sat next to one of the members in a meeting.  An open house usually includes a pot luck and an invitation to whatever is happening so visitors can get a sense of community process.  This meeting was about landscaping and it went on and on and on, and finally broke up with no decision.  The woman looked at me very kindly and said, “If you’re serious, get used to it.”  I gather that some communities have modified this form of governance.

Today, as co-housing has evolved and grown (there are communities in 37 states and several Canadian provinces), there is more variation in community aspirations including the introduction of the concept of co-housing for elders (a word I prefer) developed by architect and co-housing in America champion, Chuck Durrett.  I’ve heard Chuck speak at an American Society on Aging session and his arguments (read here) for elders living in a community are starting to make a lot of sense to me…again.  I guess you could say it’s deja vu all over again, but with a sense of urgency that I could not have experienced in a pre-grandchilden, pre-Inconvenient Truth, Union of Concerned Scientists report world.

More reading:

Senior Cohousing: A Community Approach to Independent Living, Charles Durrett

See also: Dr. Bill Thomas’s The Greenhouse Project

Chair Yoga: Seated Postures for Everybody

When Michelle Obama does yoga as part of her recent President’s Council on Fitness initiative, you know yoga has gone mainstream.  In the 15 years I’ve been a practitioner (including the last 12 as a Kripalu Yoga-certified instructor), I’ve seen yoga grow from the culture of the ashram, dependent on the guru-disciple relationship, to a billion dollar industry of conferences, workshops, star yogis, fashion clothing, DVDs, books and the like.  Pick up a copy of Yoga Journal and the cover will likely feature a well-toned yogi in spandex performing one of the more difficult postures.  I love YJ for the useful articles and professional advice I usually find there, but I wonder how many people get turned off by those daunting covers.

“I can’t do yoga; I’m too inflexible.”  If I had a dime for everyone who says this when they discover what I do…  The reality is, people who sit in chairs most of the time (and that’s nearly everyone in the West) are likely to be inflexible, and not just in the body.  My Burmese grandmother grew up sitting on the floor, with her legs crossed yogi-style or hunkered down, with her arms wrapped around her knees.  In her eighties, she had the body of a much younger person, was up with the dawn to meditate, and active all day long.  She didn’t do frailty.

The sedentary lifestyle of our desk-bound, television-addicted population reinforces more of the same behaviors.  So the very idea of getting down on a yoga mat starts to sound more and more impossible.   But yoga has been evolving in other ways that open up its tangible benefits to more of the population, particularly older people who want to maintain good health, preserve their independence, and forestall the so-called diseases of aging.  It is no accident that some of the greatest yogi masters are robust well into their 80’s and beyond.

Last weekend, I became certified in Chair Yoga, a form that adapts many classic yoga postures to the seated position and makes the benefits of yoga available to a much larger population including older adults.  Chair Yoga, as developed by Lakshmi Voelker who has devoted most of her life and career to yoga, delivers the benefits of yoga, including flexibility, strength, improved circulation, and mental focus, to anyone able to sit in a chair, including those in wheelchairs.  In her three and a half day workshop at Discovery Yoga in St. Augustine, Florida, 23 eager students — yoga instructors, physical therapists, Reiki masters and others — learned seated variations of postures like Mountain (Tadasana), Half Moon (Ardha Chandrasana), Tree (Vrkshana) and the Warriors at varying levels of challenge.   We learned how to add 1- and 2-lb. weights to increase the fitness challenge.  And we experimented with double chair and partner-assisted postures.  We were encouraged to replace some or all of our personal practice with chair yoga to improve our skills as instructors.  The biggest surprise was not how well these postures could be adapted for the chair, but how physically challenging they are, even for the young and fit.

Even if you have a yoga practice and/or other fitness routine, there are times when mat practice is not feasible.  You can practice chair yoga at your desk at home or work, on the train/plane/bus or in a car (not while driving!)  If you are recovering from an illness or injury, chair yoga can help you resume your normal fitness activities sooner.  You can even do chair yoga while you’re watching television.  Don’t just sit there!

How to Survive Medical Care

A guy walks into the doctor’s office …

While there has been little to laugh about in the healthcare debate, it has caused a spike in jokes on late night television and the Internet.  Gallows humor, you might say.  But here’s something you should know about that is no laughing matter: getting sick (or sicker) as the result of medical treatment, aka iatrogenic illness, is on the rise.  In 2000, a presidential task force labeled medical errors a ‘national problem of epidemic proportions,’ and put the cost at $29 billion annually. The Institute of Medicine’s report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, released the same year concludes errors during hospitalization kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year.

Then there is the problem of antibiotic resistance caused by “inappropriate or improper use of antibiotics by physicians,” according to Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and diagnostic immunology at NYU Medical Center. Dr Tierno finds that of the 90 million prescriptions written for antibiotics, “50 million are absolutely unnecessary or inappropriate.”  Could be why antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA) is a major problem for hospitals.

So how can you protect yourself?  Short of taking the approach of a friend of ours who steers clear of hospitals and doctors entirely, you can do two things.  1. Make self-care and preserving your health a top priority, and 2. If you need medical care and/or are hospitalized, resist becoming “a passive, dependent, childlike person who will not question or oppose authority,” says Lawrence LeShan, Ph.D., psychologist, author and pioneer in the psychotherapy of cancer support.

Here are more tips adapted from How to Survive in a Hospital from Dr. LeShan:

Have a friend or relative who can be your advocate (or be an advocate for your hospitalized elder).  An advocate is someone who is not afraid to make a fuss and ask difficult questions.  For example:

  • Who is the physician overall in charge of the case?  Make sure that there is someone who has an overview of the patient and the symptoms.
  • What is the diagnosis, and how certain of it is the physician?
  • What is the usual course of the disease, both with and without therapy?
  • What are the side effects of the therapy?
  • What alternatives exist?

When tests are prescribed, it will be important to know how painful they will be, what side effects they will have, and most important – whether they will make a difference. Will the physician’s course of action change depending on the results of the test(s)? If not, there is no reason to proceed.

More information:

Kimberly-Clark Health Care’s website on Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) http://www.haiwatchnews.com/
American Iatrogenic Association