Alternative Therapy
Aging with Joy and Grace
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By Megan Nancy Buttenheim
Videos and links to experience Let Your Yoga Dance® are included throughout the article.
When my Dad turned 70, he often started to say, “Aging is not for the meek of heart.”
Decades later, I understand Dad’s words a lot better now. This year was a tough one for me and something I was not used to. I received a left anterior hip replacement in January. In May, I had hand surgery for synovitis and a whopping big ganglion cyst. Both surgeries and rehab became perfect opportunities for me to practice all the spiritual and physical work I had done over a lifetime. Suddenly, instead of teaching my students about aging gracefully, I was looking hard in the mirror, realizing I was no longer 25…or 30!
I have lived a healthy lifestyle. From 1984 through 1995, I spent eleven and a half years living, practicing, and teaching in a spiritual community, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. When it transformed into a yoga/ health business, I stayed on for another 25 years. Throughout this time, I received almost every health tool imaginable to lead a healthy, grace-filled life.
And yet with my myriad of health tools, I admit Dad was correct: “Aging is not for the meek of heart.” It’s been nine months since my hip replacement. Rehab was not a walk in the park. A few weeks post-surgery, I felt adrift and sad. I had to take it easy. I had been teaching Let Your Yoga Dance for so long. Without it, I felt I had lost meaning and purpose as well as some of my hard earned joy. Meanwhile, my body squawked (still does sometimes!) at the titanium interlopers who had rudely plunged their way into my hip socket and quad.
I am healing well and so grateful that I can once again dance, practice gentle yoga, ride my bike, walk longer distances, and bound up and down stairs and hills. This year, I have experienced the challenges of aging and healing, which was uncharted territory for me.
Videos and links to experience Let Your Yoga Dance® are included throughout the article.
When my Dad turned 70, he often started to say, “Aging is not for the meek of heart.”
Decades later, I understand Dad’s words a lot better now. This year was a tough one for me and something I was not used to. I received a left anterior hip replacement in January. In May, I had hand surgery for synovitis and a whopping big ganglion cyst. Both surgeries and rehab became perfect opportunities for me to practice all the spiritual and physical work I had done over a lifetime. Suddenly, instead of teaching my students about aging gracefully, I was looking hard in the mirror, realizing I was no longer 25…or 30!
I have lived a healthy lifestyle. From 1984 through 1995, I spent eleven and a half years living, practicing, and teaching in a spiritual community, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. When it transformed into a yoga/ health business, I stayed on for another 25 years. Throughout this time, I received almost every health tool imaginable to lead a healthy, grace-filled life.
And yet with my myriad of health tools, I admit Dad was correct: “Aging is not for the meek of heart.” It’s been nine months since my hip replacement. Rehab was not a walk in the park. A few weeks post-surgery, I felt adrift and sad. I had to take it easy. I had been teaching Let Your Yoga Dance for so long. Without it, I felt I had lost meaning and purpose as well as some of my hard earned joy. Meanwhile, my body squawked (still does sometimes!) at the titanium interlopers who had rudely plunged their way into my hip socket and quad.
I am healing well and so grateful that I can once again dance, practice gentle yoga, ride my bike, walk longer distances, and bound up and down stairs and hills. This year, I have experienced the challenges of aging and healing, which was uncharted territory for me.
Here’s what I’ve learned through my journey:
- My years with Let Your Yoga Dance, Yoga, Qigong, and Positive Psychology have been a great help.
- I posted the Japanese words KAIZEN Change, on my refrigerator. This expression is a reminder to take small steps toward the change you wish to accomplish. It tells us: “Don’t take on too much too soon.”
- As my energy has shifted and slowed down in this decade, I am looking more gently and compassionately at my process of aging in a very ageist society. I realize that with aging, we need to accept the inevitable, and then do what we can to keep moving and do our very best to stay healthy.
- Eat a healthy diet. - Practice good sleep hygiene. - Bump up Gratitude Practice. - Love fiercely and tenderly. - Serve Mother Earth in any way you can. - Be gentle with yourself and others. - Play (Have as much fun as humanly possible!).
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Megha’s Synovial Fluid Shake Out for Joint Health
Video Courtesy: Megha Nancy Buttenheim |
I’ve found meaning in the work I do. I am the founding director and Chief Joy Officer (CJO) of a transformational movement practice I created almost three decades ago called Let Your Yoga Dance LLC. I take my chief joy role very seriously. I want everyone, regardless of age or physical limitations, to get embodied and move to music. This brings joy. We have a vast amount of joy within us just waiting to be tapped. I have known for more than half my life that we are all dancers (not necessarily onstage professional dancers, but dancers nonetheless). When we move together in a safe, compassionate environment, broadening and building heartfelt positivity resonance (as positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson says), we’re given a wonderful DOSE of Joy.
Here’s the meaning of DOSE:
D = Dopamine
O = Oxytocin
S = Serotonin
E = Endorphins
Here’s the meaning of DOSE:
D = Dopamine
O = Oxytocin
S = Serotonin
E = Endorphins
Click Book Cover for Information
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My book Expanding Joy: Let Your Yoga Dance, Embodying Positive Psychology teaches how to find, choose, heal, and expand through joy while dancing yoga and moving the body. After leading classes, workshops, and trainings since 1984, I have seen direct evidence to support this. Graceful aging can happen if we help it thrive.
There are 14 movement takeaways in my book, and two are included in this article. Healing An Elder Body Research shows that for ease of well-being as we age, it is essential to be gentle with ourselves, focus on self-care, and release stress. |
One of my Let Your Yoga Dance instructor graduates, Elayne G, lives in an older body. She credits our practice for helping her get away from her walker within a few weeks post-surgery. She often reports how the practice keeps her young and brings so much joy to her own students. It has been ten years since her graduation, but we still talk regularly, and she reports on her own well-being and that of her students. One of her students is a Holocaust survivor. She has shared, “I have a lot of dark days, but when I come here, it is always a good day.”
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Conscious Breathing: Helps to Activate the Parasympathetic Nervous System
(Relaxation Response) Video Courtesy: Megha Nancy Buttenheim |
“I leave class, no matter whether it is a live class or on Zoom, feeling engaged and calm in body and mind, as well as definitely young at heart. The combination of moving through the chakras (the body’s energy centers), the eclectic music offerings, dance, yoga, and qigong, is truly inspiring. No matter the aches and pains, or heartache, I always feel younger, joyous…happier. My heart sings.” ~ Franny A., a student in her mid-70s |
Serving Special Populations
I also have evidence of healing from teaching my special populations students, those living in bodies that are challenged: people with Parkinson’s, MS, arthritis, cancer, the elderly, and people with autoimmune issues.
Back in 2007, I started teaching Let Your Yoga Dance for people with Parkinson’s. After six months with this population, I realized that by bringing the dance of yoga to chairs, I could reach even more people with special health issues. The classes benefit students with Parkinson’s, MS, arthritis and cancer. The classes also benefit the elderly – wheelchairs are always welcome.
Find out how Let Your Yoga Dance helps students with health challenges. The practice helps break the isolation of being alone with a progressive disease. People in need of extra care and their caregivers come together in a safe, gentle environment to improve flexibility, increase body awareness, learn breathing exercises, etc.
I also have evidence of healing from teaching my special populations students, those living in bodies that are challenged: people with Parkinson’s, MS, arthritis, cancer, the elderly, and people with autoimmune issues.
Back in 2007, I started teaching Let Your Yoga Dance for people with Parkinson’s. After six months with this population, I realized that by bringing the dance of yoga to chairs, I could reach even more people with special health issues. The classes benefit students with Parkinson’s, MS, arthritis and cancer. The classes also benefit the elderly – wheelchairs are always welcome.
Find out how Let Your Yoga Dance helps students with health challenges. The practice helps break the isolation of being alone with a progressive disease. People in need of extra care and their caregivers come together in a safe, gentle environment to improve flexibility, increase body awareness, learn breathing exercises, etc.
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Megha Nancy Buttenheim is founder and Chief Joy Officer of Let Your Yoga Dance®, a joy-filled power dance combining yoga, breathwork, and user-friendly dance with fabulous music from all around the world. Her 30 plus-year mission has been to bring healing through joy to the world while demonstrating that “everyone is a dancer.” With a dance and theatre background, she has spent a lifetime teaching body-based practices, including a 12-year stint at a yoga ashram-Kripalu Center.
Two FREE Gentle Yoga Classes:
MOONTIDES POWER AND GRACE Follow Let Your Yoga Dance on: YOUTUBE |
“This joy practice has moved directly into my heart and mind. I have been given permission to happily shimmy and shake in my sixties and beyond! I let my yoga dance without knowing I could! We were told to pound our pelvis and shout: ‘I love my belly, I love my butt.’ Something in me cracked open. This is play. This is connection. This is sacred. This is JOY.” ~ Alyson L., a student More about
HEALING THROUGH JOY & MOVEMENT Topic on Sanctuary's Coffee & Conversation show. |
