Art of Aging Sessions

Join us on the 2nd Monday of the month at Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita.
Follow links for upcoming and past sessions.
 
Local Aging Resources - Where to go to find what you need

Access to Medical & Emergency Forms
What to have in place & how to do that 

Books (and more) About Aging​

From Humberto Braga

Growing old is inevitable, and it can be scary for a lot of people. Whether you age with a neurotic sadness or a graceful vivaciousness depends entirely on your perspective about it. Just because you're getting older doesn't automatically mean you're less desirable or that life is just a slow decay until death. I've met people who are WAY more sexy and alive in their 50's & 60's than they were in their 20's. What's their secret?
It's not because of luck. It's a choice. Obviously, working out and eating healthy helps a lot, but there are 2 key things that are far more important: Playfulness & Consciousness.
Playfulness means being open to life, being enraptured by infinite possibilities, free from the mental confines of rigid patterns that calcify with age. Playfulness means staying loose and limber in your body & mind, so that your soul remains supple and radiant under any circumstance. Playfulness invigorates you to dance with the beauty, joy, and humor in all things, even if it disagrees with what the ego thinks "should be". With playfulness, we are reborn each day to endless opportunities for falling in love with life.
Consciousness is the crucial foundation of it all, which is far more than the knowledge & wisdom we typically associate with growing older. Consciousness implies an ever-expanding, ever-deepening connection with all things through our embodied perception. Because of this, it carries an unmistakable quality of sensitivity and care which lives for a greater purpose beyond the self. It bestows a magnetic charm and timeless grace which is constantly improving through lifetimes, which is what truly matters.
Without nurturing our playfulness and consciousness, we instead desperately grasp to retain some semblance of youthful potential through a never-ending carousel of materialism: sports cars, hair-loss treatments, face creams, hair dye, botox, photo retouching, stem cell treatments, trying to "stay hip", and more. When we become fixated on the external & surface attributes, we abandon the core of our being which only compounds our suffering and creates a more toxic energy around us.
Life will always get better if YOU strive to be better within. In doing so, you will inherently attract companions who love you, and unforeseeable opportunities from benevolent forces will be made available to support you. Trust in the process. Let your years be a treasure of memories and accomplishments, not an agonizing battle of attrition. We all have a choice in how we make peace at the end of our lives. Youth is a gift, but aging is a timeless art. Make your life a masterpiece.~

Iconic Neahkahnie elder, Carol Povey, now over 100 years old.

​​I Am Not Old
 by  Samantha Reynolds
​
I am not old. She said.
I am rare.
 
I am the standing ovation
at the end of the play
 
I am the retrospective
of my life
as art

I am the hours
connected like dots
into good sense

I am the fullness
of existing

You think I am waiting to die
but I am waiting to be found

I am a treasure
I am a map
these wrinkles are imprints
of my journey
​
ask me anything.
 

---

2019 - Carol Povey and Liz Cole