Tag Archives: women

Aging Well – Happy Birthday Tao Porchon-Lynch

Yoga teacher Tao Porchon-Lynch, who celebrated her 95th birthday last week, has just released her first yoga DVD.

I’ll sometimes ask my yoga students to guess her age. Most guess 70s or early 80s.

A Yoga Journal birthday tribute quotes her advice to those who hope to keep up their yoga practice into their 90s?: “There is no such thing as ‘age.’ Tune into the power of the eternal, and feel the beauty of life. Nothing is impossible. Yoga revitalizes us with every breath we take.”

Order her video on Amazon.com Yoga with Tao Porchon-Lynch.

And visit her website to read her biography, watch interviews, and see photos of her doing competitive ballroom dancing.

Aging Well – Barbara G.

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Aging Well – Barbara G.

Barbara G.

Barbara, one of my students, passed away a few weeks ago after a brief illness at age 88. I only knew her from exercise classes and as a gifted painter. But others told me about the rest of her amazing life.

Barbara was a veteran of WWII having served as a Sergeant in the US Marine Corps in their MAPS Division.

She was Chief technical illustrator for the Marine Technology Section of a major consulting company where among other projects she was involved in project TRIDENT for the U.S. Navy where she was responsible for all illustrations for technological reports which included antisubmarine warfare, sonar technology, and oceanography. She was also involved with illustrations for the Lunar drill used during the Apollo moon landing.

Jane Fonda on the “Third Act” of Life

On my way to a yoga class last week, I caught a few minutes of an interview with Jane Fonda on the Diane Rehm Show (from WAMU).

In the interview, they discuss Fonda’s new book, Prime Time: Love, health, sex, fitness, friendship, spirit–making the most of all of your life.

To hear the complete interview or read the transcript go to» http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-08-11/jane-fonda-prime-time

REHM: But it does seem to me that for a great many people, getting older is tough. There are illnesses. There are problems with family. There is loss of a job. There’s lack of money. People have tons of problems to get through. But you have lots of advantages. You’re healthy. You’re athletic. You’ve kept your body strong. You’ve kept your mind going and you’ve got plenty of money.

FONDA: Let me say two things about that, Diane. That is all true and yet there’s been studies done. There was one, a very large study done of 350,000 Americans from very young age to very old age and what it showed is that most people over 50 tend to be happier, less hostile, less stressed, less anxious. The scientists don’t entirely understand why, but they postulate certain things that make sense to me.

Fonda also uses a metaphor from Mary Catherine Bateson’s recent book Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom. “We have not added decades to life expectancy by simply extending old age; instead, we have opened up a new space partway through the life course, a second and different kind of adulthood that precedes old age, and as a result every stage of life is undergoing change.”

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