Category Archives: Really Useful Tools

Yo, Elder Bloggers! Here Comes Blogstream

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If you haven’t already discovered it, check out Dr. Bill Thomas’s new idea: http://changingaging.org/ A way to get your blog out to the public as part of a ‘blogstream,’  and improve the chance of going viral with a post or idea that you feel strongly about.  That’s the only reason you would blog anyway.  Most of us, Pioneer Woman — Martha Stewart on the range — notwithstanding, don’t make a living from a blog.  Even if you’re passionate about your subject, getting started as a blogger is the easy part.  Sustaining the effort at the same high caliber may not be.  Even Seth Godin who sends stuff out every day, isn’t brilliant 100 per cent of the time (but 95 per cent ain’t bad).

If you have an idea for blogging to the mature age group, I encourage you to sign up for the Changing Aging blogstream and see what other savvy older adults have to say about a wide range of subjects.  And just for good measure, here are a few of my favorite blogs in no particular order.  Why they make the cut will be self-evident: idiosyncratic (good) and with content is both informative and fun to read (even better).  Most posts are short, or if not, at least the germ of the piece is in the lead, so you know right away if it’s your cup of chai.  Enough said:

  • SquawFox Frugal fun from a young, savvy Canadian
  • Green Skeptic My friend, Scott Edward Anderson’s enlightening (pun intended) blog
  • Zen Habits Beautiful design and thoughtful prose on slowing down.
  • Six Word Memoirs Not strictly speaking a blog, but inspiring the way a blog can be.  Try writing your own Six Word biography.
  • Slow Food USA How to slow down and savor the flavor.
  • Poetry Blogs A doorway to all things poetry

Re-Housing Our(elder)selves

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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

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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!

Live Longer, Lighten Up

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With a headline like that, you’re expecting some dieting tips a la Dr. Mehmet Oz, right?  Nope.  What inspired this post were two things.

First, this morning, we took a walk along the beach and I found myself wondering who lives in these sprawling homes so precariously perched along the water as if challenging the next hurricane to take them out?  But the better question is why anyone needs that much space.  There are two double-wide homes in particular, next to each other, in competition perhaps.  I can’t help but think how much energy must go into maintaining this kind of lifestyle, not to mention the stress on the body/mind.

Second, when we returned to our relatively modest home seven miles inland, I opened up my laptop to Seth Godin’s blog and as often happens found a post that spoke to me.  It is built around an article about living more lightly from a devoted backpacker.  So, I’m looking around my desk and, yikes!  Laptop, printer/phone/fax combo, lamp, another phone, Rolodex, cup of pens, most of which I never use, stapler, holders for this and that, box of mints, post-it notes.  Then, the tangle of wires under the desk and the stack files of papers on the floor…let’s not even go there.  I’m nauseous.

One of the things you realize as you age is how little you really need to be contented.  In a warm climate, it’s even less: a pair of shorts, t-shirt and sandals and you’re dressed.  A piece of fruit, half a bagel and tea, and breakfast is done.  A good book, a good conversation, a walk in nature — what could be better?  Thoreau’s advice (Simplify!  Simplify!) rings louder in my ears these days, and I find myself less tempted by the life-is-beautiful catalogs that continue to arrive in my mailbox every week.

That said, I’m the last person to give advice on clutter, so just read the link and see if it opens up a space in your head like it did in mine — the right place to start.

How to Survive Medical Care

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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

Click Here for Expert Advice and Instructions

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There used to be a special category of collective wisdom called “common sense,” something that was usually hard-earned and came with a degree of maturity.  But that was when the world was far less complicated than it is now, before the 24/7 news cycle, before the personal computer, the Internet, and certainly long before the iPhone which can behave like one (the PC) and bring the other (the Internet) right into the palm of your hand.  I’m not nostalgic for those times by any means, but today we run the risk of information overload and the procrastination — perhaps even paralysis — that comes with it, while we sort through what is useful and valuable to us and what we can just as well do without.

That said, there is something truly seductive about a group of websites that offer advice, instructions and tips on everything from how to survive a bear attack, to how to kiss like Angelina Jolie, to the more mundane realm that includes how to create a living will or fix a dripping faucet.  Ehow and About.com have been in the how-to game for some time and more recently appeared SoYouWanna.  But for those who prefer instructions in graphic form as opposed to words, there is Howcast, a massive collection of videos that show rather than tell.

Info-lust, the cachet of knowing ‘how-to’ isn’t going away anytime soon.  But no one can tell us ‘why-to’ except our own common sense.

Getting Hip Via the Internet

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Symptoms are God’s way of telling us that we need to pay attention to our bodies.  So when Howard began to experience severe pain and weakness in his lower back, he immediately sought medical help.  He went from one specialist to another, was prescribed painkillers and physical therapy, which helped some, but the problem didn’t clear up.  Then our own general practitioner, an MD and homeopathic physician, came up with the correct diagnosis: It’s your hips. It made perfect sense: he was 72; he had been athletic most of his life, a tennis player and runner, both of which are notoriously hard on the hip joints.

The next step will be familiar to many of you: Howard turned to the Internet to research hip replacement options.  Some 122 million Americans — 56% of the population — are doing just that, according to a Center for Studying Health System Change report.  And while the so-called ‘elderly’ 65 and older trail their younger counterparts in using the Internet to seek advice on their health, this remains one of the fastest growing categories of Internet use.  Take Web MD, for example (we do!), which has a handy symptom checker that can either compel you to seek immediate medical advice if your symptoms are not worrisome enough in themselves, or calm you down enough to think clearly.  As a smart person of a certain age, you don’t need a professional to recognize that chest pain, shortness of breath and/or dizziness require emergency response.

Howard’s story has a good outcome.  He remembered having read that tennis star, Jimmy Connors, was back on the courts after having a hip replaced.  So he Googled “Jimmy Connors’s hip” and voila! Jimmy’s New Hip, a website with all the information he needed about the Wright CONSERVE Total Hip.  Intrigued, he next researched (using the Internet again) who in our area of South Florida was working with this hip replacement system  He discovered that a young surgeon named Vincent Fowble was regularly performing this surgery at Jupiter Medical Center.  Several appointments, consultations and X-Rays later, Howard was scheduled for the first of two hip replacement surgeries that have essentially gotten him back on the tennis court. Without the Internet, this would have taken longer, and cost him time and more pain.

You may have heard that some MDs look askance at self-diagnosing and, if you were to proceed to act on that information alone, you’re running a risk of getting it wrong.  Like I tell my yoga students, while yoga offers many health benefits, it is not intended as a substitute for competent medical advice.  Ditto, the Internet.

How Might I/We?

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Sounds like a question, but actually it’s much more. These three little words suggest that there is always an answer even if it is not immediately apparent. In fact, how-might-I/we? encourages us to dig a little deeper and get beneath our preconceived notions and cultural conditioning. It’s a radical, mind-opening approach that costs nothing and can lead to big breakthroughs.

We first encountered this model at a day long session at IDEO, a Palo Alto design firm and innovation generator, courtesy of the Purpose Prize summit. Here’s a quote from IDEO’s thinking on community that gives you an idea of what they are about: We believe that the power of community is stronger than that of a single individual, organization, or brand. Beyond the physical, cognitive and emotional factors of design, we foremost consider the social factors, asking questions and evaluating answers: How might the user’s relationships influence or motivate behaviors? How might an experience be shared with others? What is the meaning of belonging, and of identity? What drives the feeling of membership or loyalty to a bigger cause or group?

A good place to apply the how-might-I/we question is to the time of life still (despite all the evidence to the contrary) known as retirement. Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that you won’t be following the beaten path of your parents’ generation into the ‘role-less role’ they took for granted. Lots of reasons why your future will follow a different model, and not having sufficient funds is just one of them. If you’ve been paying even casual attention to the longevity revolution, you sense that something big has changed.

Recently, we were at a retreat at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Sitting around a picnic table were eight individuals ages mid-40 and up. Seven of us had parents in their late 80s or 90s; one had an 86 year old mother who kept a busy volunteer schedule in her community and had no intention of slowing down. Clearly, this woman wasn’t settling for any so called age-appropriate role.

Between midlife and truly old age (whatever that is) is a phase most life-cycle experts haven’t given as much attention to as they might (and will). So if you often feel that you are up a creek, one paddle short, you are not alone. You’ll be better off imagining what you want out of the next 20 or more years. Set yourself free from preconceived notions of what you ‘should’ be doing, and be guided by the possibilities of discovering something you really love, whether for a paycheck or the fulfillment of giving back in some way. Innovate. Use IDEO’s How might we/I question when you have an important decision to make. You may be pleasantly surprised at how you answer.

Facebook: The New Rolodex?

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Once upon a time, a stuffed Rolodex was a sign of a well-connected, highly-motivated person, someone who did a lot of networking and gathering contacts on the hey-you-never-know premise. That was then. Today, we have other choices like LinkedIn which builds a professional network on the principle of six degrees of separation, that is, who you know, and who they know, ad infinitum. But it’s actually more, because there is huge incentive for members to build professional profiles, invite in associates and colleagues, get and give recommendations, and ask questions (starting a kind of forum). According to an article in Business Week (Business Tips for Late Facebook Arrivals) by venture capitalist, Richard Moran, we should stop thinking of Facebook as a place for young people to connect and share photos and hot new dance clubs, and embrace it as a very grownup tool to further our careers, businesses, and causes. Moran writes:

Your Rolodex is alive and following you. In order to close a deal recently, I was desperate to reach an executive. I called his office, sent him an e-mail, and even called his boss. Nothing happened for days. After all else failed, I checked him out on Facebook, friended him and he accepted my request although we had not met. I sent him a message, he responded, and the deal was considered. Facebook did in a matter of seconds what traditional telecommunications and e-mail couldn’t accomplish in days.

And then, of course, there is www.2young2retire.net, the aim of which is to help you meet other retirement-resistant grownups who are eager to educate themselves about the possibilities of life beyond their core career, and instinctively understand that community is what makes makes this important transition smoother, more rewarding, and fun.

It’s the Money, Honey!

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Some folks called it retirement savings. We prefer financial independence. What’s in a name? Well, which of those two terms give you a feeling of freedom, uplift and excitement about the rest of your life? Lots of ways to get that happy state, including voluntary belt-tightening when it doesn’t seem necessary, the millionaires’ secret to having and keeping wealth. Here are two mind-altering perspectives: Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominquez and Vicki Robins and Die Broke: A Radical Four-Part Financial Plan by Stephen Pollan and Mark Levine.

Getting your financial house in order is also knowing where your money is coming from, and the chances are some of it will come from Social Security which you’ve been funding with your payroll taxes. Here’s a handy new calculator courtesy of your government, that will give you a base line of what you can expect, and a heads up if you are even contemplating quitting early. OK, Social Security may not cover all your anticipated expenses — although we know of an avid biker in Texas who manages to save enough from his Social Security payments to travel to Italy every year — but a monthly income you can count on, however modest it may seem, is a nice little cushion and a good place to start.

If some of the scary coverage about Social Security makes you wonder whether it will be there for you when you need it, read this earlier post.