Yoga for Seniors

For the past two years I have had the fortune to work on compiling the Annual magazine for the Active Retirement Ireland - one of Ireland's largest organisations supporting older people. I've included articles promoting the benefits of Kundalini Yoga, Meditation and the general well being that can be the reward of cultivating a daily practice.

Ageing is one of the few things we can be sure of in life - but it is something that is not widely understood. Maligned and dismissed as a time of decline and loss of vigor, growing older has been a cultural construct particular to the western civilized world. Studies, such as Trinity College Dublin's the Tilda Project Ireland's first and largest longitudinal study on ageing - have shown that how we age and our response to ageing can be greatly influenced by our own conditioning and concepts, even our inner held expectations with regard to ageing.

While "retirement" is definitely something positive when regarded within the context of a conventional working life as it has evolved in our present day societies - it raises odd issues when examined in an anthropological context ie. if we compare retirement as a phase of life with that of older adults in traditional societies or in comparison to lives where creativity, craft or relationship is key - we see that when our activities are a way of life : work is not separate.

In a world where seniority or longevity is recognised and valued, respect for elders is automatic - "old" does not mean out of fashion, yesterday's news or out of place. But ours is a world of amnesia - of eternal youth, of forgetting.

Where human values are king - those cultivated through a yoga practice for example;
the capacity for compassion, for understanding, for patience, for grace ...
where these enduring values reign within the human heart there can be no yesterday or tomorrow : rather, an individual and by extension a society's relationship is to the eternal. All makes sense when held within the infinite beauty of all that is - evolving consciousness, our shared soul journey shedding bodies life after life in our journey - within that context, pity gives way to courage - all is change.

When regarded from the view of health and wellbeing- the fact of our ageing bodies presents us with a choice : in nature all is either in a state of growth or a state of decay. The choice is ours. And so we are called to action !

In our present day world - passing away through this grey period of chaos to allow for the emerging Aquarian Age - there has been a sorry disregard for the place of the older people among us. Ageism is rife within our youth obsessed culture. And with it, a denial of the depth of the human being.
There is more to us than meets the eye - we are not our surface, we are not our story - we are something utterly precious and utterly more than any number crunching philosophy could hope to comprehend. We are divine - and those elders among us are the depth of our culture, they are the living memory that holds this crazy ship together - they embody relationship and connection, both to past and to our ancestors past, to our heritage and to our potency.

I started writing today to share with you a website I have started to promote yoga for older people - but really, what I want to say is that this issue of ageing is about all of us- we are all seniors to be - those of us today (in our thirties today) who in 2050 will be looking to our seventies : we can look forward and pray to have the grace to be continuing our daily KY practice then. With humility we can be grateful for the motion and the articulation of our joints in present time, our flexibility and our strength and we can work to maintain this inner vitality throughout our lives - to be leaders and examples for others; to exhert the pressure from within. To not live passively but rather face the challenges ahead with gusto and poise, rooted in self compassion.

Our culture offers so many quick fixes, so much is outsourced - someone else has the answer- we can turn to google! But no, the seeds of our future selves lie within us : here and now. In the stillness and the quiet of the early morning we can be with all of our story - past, present and future : in acceptance and in joy.

When are you too old to do what you have always done ?

If you are a teacher of yoga for seniors please visit www.senyo.org or contact me on snicuilibin@gmail.com or 083 8611996 so that I can add your details if you wish to join.