Gracefully Aging

Sep 15, 2014 | ageing, Coaching, Diversity & Inclusion, Women

Gracefully Aging Tai Chi

Maintain your Balance, Life is for Living!

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao doing tai chi

Former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
doing Tai Chi

Some of us will be “lucky” and will live a long and healthy life. How this will come to be is unclear. However, there is something about our ability to experience balance in our lives that may be a not so hidden secret. Here are some keys:

  1. Balance your diet. Eating well does not need to be expensive or a burden.
  2. Check your medications, are they in balance with one another. Some medications can take away your appetite; others, have you feeling dizzy or dehydrated.
  3. Don’t sit more than you move. Moving, walking and swimming are activities that can help to strengthen muscles and joints giving the possibility of increased flexibility. Too many seniors fall because they can’t keep their balance. When people don’t  exercise regularly the aging process is unnecessarily difficult.
  4. Exercise your brain by reading, playing chess or checkers, practicing Tai Chi, going to school and having conversations with people who are younger, older, different ethnicity or cultures other than your own.
  5. Last but not least, pay attention to yourself. If you feel out of balance than more then likely you are. No one knows you better than you. Be rigorous find out why you feel the way that you do by talking with  your family, your doctors and nurses, and friends. Often the solution to feeling better is knowing what is wrong and getting to the source.

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Above all, being active in all aspects of your life will have you enjoying your life. Ms. Ernestine Shepherd, who many of you have seen on Oprah Winfrey earlier this year or in the video, will be honored by our friend and colleague, Diana Gregory, at this years’ Annual Diana Gregory Outreach Services Foundation Senior Awards Luncheon, Sept 26 at The Ritz-Carlton, Phoenix AZ. The Foundation does great work with seniors via their mobile “Gregory’s Fresh Market” which services over six thousands seniors in and around the Phoenix AZ.