Who Defines Our Cultural Attitudes?

If older people stay engaged with mainstream society, experience will become a valued commodity

Making Life Experience Count

The large cities where we live are meccas of people from all over the world, yet our cultural attitude towards ageing is still dictated by a 1950s Madison Avenue advertising culture that slowly removed people over 40 from its depiction of relevant consumers. And that is still where we sit. According to our billboards, online or print ads, videos and articles, we are all perpetually somewhere between 21 and 38.

Taking Back Mass Media

The only way for people over 40 to see ourselves addressed by our own culture, is to take back the street. Keep working. Do not go and stare at a sunset somewhere - unless it's on a holiday. If you're in marketing, stay engaged in your brands and change the copy and the design to reflect your own demographic somewhere in the market, as you get older. Stay engaged at your clubs, restaurants and open spaces until you become a visible force. The more people over 40 are reflected in the mass media and included as a demographic in marketing, the more the elderly will slowly be looked upon as a group to respect. Since we are a consumer culture, each segment has to stay engaged with the marketplace just to earn a psychological place within it.

Countering Ageism

Whereas Native Canadian, Asian and many other cultures celebrate the wisdom and intelligence of their elders, in the dominant North American culture our underlying tendency is to consider non-earning members of our society as irrelevant to the marketplace - and therefore irrelevant to us. The upshot of this is that boomers control a huge portion of current spending whether they are currently earning or not. According to Mass Mutual Financial Group, senior women age 50 and older control a net worth of $19 trillion and own more that three-fourths of the nation's financial wealth. You would never know this by the representation of senior women in either our mass media or targeted messaging in our brand-oriented culture. Perhaps the brands currently serving the over-40 consumer group are quietly enjoying the financial rewards somewhere on a beach... and keeping the secret to themselves.

How Meditation Increases Productivity

Meditation and breathing techniques bring us into the present moment, helping us to manage stress

Meditation Helps Us To Manage Our Stress Levels

Mindful meditation gives us clarity, helping us to focus on the information that makes us the most productive - and leaving behind the inessential data that may be cluttering our thoughts. With so much information coming at us all day through an assortment of different media, it's worth finding a meditation technique to calm the mind and sift through what  is and isn't necessary to get on with your day and your life. By bringing us into the present moment, meditation makes us more productive.

One of the best things about meditation and breathing exercises is that you can do them on your own in a place you choose, and it doesn't require any special equipment other than comfortable clothing. Just like a clear, tidied up space after cleaning, the mind becomes more able to focus on important items with clarity after you meditate. Sifting through information is like cleaning out a garage or bin of old clothes - some of the stuff you need, and some of it you don't.

Achieving a Calm Awareness

The meditation technique I practice is something I do at the beginning of my yoga practice. Simply sit in the lotus position with your chest open and held upright and focus on slow, deep breathing while concentrating on your breath and emptying all other thoughts from your mind. While breathing in and out slowly (trying to take the same amount of time to breathe out as to breathe in), try to be aware of how different parts of your body feels as you are slowly breathing. When breathing out, the chest is kept upright and open, so that the sensation is that as you are breathing in and out your chest is expanding out to the sides and back in again.

When meditating I notice changes in my body. One thing I always notice is that after about 8 or 10 breaths, my hips start to loosen and my knees naturally fall downward toward the floor slightly while being in the lotus position. While noting these small changes mentally, I try to let go of any stressful things on my mind - just let them fly away.

The way I do my deep breathing exercises before doing yoga is similar to Mindful Meditation. But to get a real step-by-step guide to the proper way, follow these guidelines.

Mindful Meditation Increases Our Cognitive Abilities

Mindful Meditation makes you think better. Five other benefits are:

• stress relief
• increase in energy
• self-awareness
• calmness
• management of pain

Benefits of Walking to Work

Benefits of Walking to Work Go Beyond the Physical

Since the start of our day dictates the rest of it, the benefits of walking to work go far beyond the physical. What's your daily routine like between the time you wake up and time you start work? Maybe you're a night-hawk who savours every last drop of sleep and then makes a dash for it at the last minute, arriving at your full cup of coffee and a flood of emails popping onto a screen. Or maybe, like me, you are up before dawn, treasuring quiet solitude where your time is still your own before the rest of the city invades it. Either way, we all arrive at the work places where we all intersect 5 days a week, more or less at the same time, usually in silence, not always aware how far our minds are travelling from where we actually are. Perhaps muddleheadedness would be a term.

Join the clear-headedness of walking

For the last two weeks I've been walking 45 minutes to work, and often walking home too. The reason I suddenly decided to try walking was that one day I found myself opening a negative conversation with a co-worker who suggested I'd jumped way out of character. I realized I was arriving at work pissed off by the 2 over-crowded bus rides I took to get there each day. So one day I decided to walk instead. Unlike the peppy ones who just arrived from the gym or who already did their daily jog before the workday, we who walk to work are the more grounded segment. We're not on an adrenalin rush, we're just calm and focused. Whether I walk or take the 2 buses to work, it takes 45 minutes each way. Now I feel my clothes loosening, my gait more lively, and my energy higher too.

How to arrive at your job calm and focused

A walk is subjective. You are behind the movie camera, creating your own vision as you walk, depending on what color, tree, house, body of water, or architecture catches your eye. There is a multitude of greenness in everyone's yards, and the lushness takes you to what's green and fresh in your own mind. If you're walking through a commercial area to get to work, the innovative enterprises and lifestyles will inspire your thoughts for the rest of the day. And if you are lucky enough to walk the boardwalk alongside a lake on your way to work, the fresh wind will sweep across the water and give you tons of oxygen. 

This is a great frame of mind to arrive at the workplace in. So park further away and walk to work, or get off a few transit stops further and walk to work. You will be glad that you did, because the benefits go beyond the physical.

7 benefits of walking

• Walking increases blood flow to the brain and calms the mind
• Walking reduces risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes
• Walking increases calorie usage and trim waistline 
• Walking makes you more flexible and coordinated
• Walking causes increased bone density
• Walking helps you to save money on gym fees
• Walking helps to improve sleep

The Benefits of Juicing

Juicing greens provide an enormous source of vitamins that our bodies need for good health

The Benefits of Juicing Start With Nutrition

Are you getting all of the nutrients you need to be healthy? With juicing you can benefit from the vitamins and minerals found in a huge amount of vegetables just in a single glass of juice. You can avoid getting sick, feel less fatigued or worn out, and learn how to control your weight without compromising your nutrition.

Our green juice consisted mainly of kale& lettuce

Our family decided to start juicing vegetables and fruits this January to strengthen our immune systems and feel healthier. This morning we each drank two full glasses of this freshly juiced green juice, containing:

• English cucumber (with the peel left on)
• raw broccoli
• romaine lettuce
• collard greens
• kale
• carrot
• organic celery

Our main inspiration to start juicing was Joe Cross, an Australian juicer who promoted the benefits of green juice diets to cure illnesses and obesity in two movies, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and "Hungry for Change". After watching these inspiring movies, we decided that starting the day with green juice was something that we wanted to try. According to juicing literature, necessary amounts of vitamin B6, beta-carotene, folic acid, selenium, vitamin E and chromium provided by Green Juice can be difficult to obtain in our regular diets. 

We were also interested in juicing the fruits and vegetables higher in vitamin C so we could continue fighting off colds for the rest of the winter. So we threw in a peeled orange, a peeled lemon, and a cut pear into our "green juice" concoction.

Juicing Pulp Provides More Dishes for More Meals

Sometimes the leftover pulp after making the juice can provide more delicious prepared dishes. By pouring a large bowlful of pulp into a soup pot, adding some tomatoes, fresh garlic, chopped onions, dill, basil, and some lima beans - and letting this vegetable stew simmer all day, another meal has suddenly been produced.

With the remaining two bowls of pulp, a great idea would be to make a vegetable loaf, sweetened with honey and cooked with some of the soy flours or rice flours still kicking around in the cupboards. This loaf can be part of a nutritious snack or lunch in the upcoming week. It's an all-natural, pure, and chemically-free way to reuse vitamin- and mineral-rich foods.

The Dangers of Visceral Fat

Is belly fat the same as visceral fat?

Is It Belly Fat or Visceral Fat?

The dangers of visceral fat are becoming known, but what isn't always known is how to tell the difference between regular fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat, which is stored between the muscles and the skin, is regular fat. That's the fat that we can grab a hold of, say around the stomach or thighs. Here is a good comparison between the two fats:

"In comparison to visceral cells, subcutaneous cells are greater in number. But the visceral cells are actually larger in size per cell. And they get to be so big that they atrophy themselves—at which point they constantly, 24/7, produce cytokines. Cytokines are a hormone with known inflammatory properties. "They promote atherosclerosis, tumor growth, aging, oxidation, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease."

Visceral Fat is Linked to a High-Fat Diet

Science suggests that visceral fat is linked to a high-fat diet. According to Dr. David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum, "'Visceral fat may seem to be an inert lump of lard, but it's actually highly active and constantly pumping poisons into the bloodstream.' Visceral fat is known to cause inflammation in the colon and the artery walls, and is a major cause of heart disease, diabetes and some types of cancer. Research even suggests that visceral fat affects mood by increasing production of the stress hormone, cortisol, and reducing levels of feel-good endorphins. So, along with killing you, visceral fat, it seems, can make you feel low."

Sounds scary, doesn't it?  So how can we keep our visceral fat low? By eating low-fat foods and doing regular, moderate exercise at least 30 minutes per day. Other things to be aware of are:

• portion size
• more fruits and vegetables
• more whole grains
• more lean protein
• less refined-grain pasta and breads

A few years ago I noticed that during my yearly medical checkup it became routine for my doctor to measure my waist with a seamstress tape. I wondered why she was always picking the part of my waist that stuck out the most. It turned out that to properly measure visceral fat, or the dangerous fats stored around the liver, you have to measure one inch above the belly button. I was surprised at where my measurement was in relation to the 35 inches considered normal for women.

So I've started taking regular exercise of between 30-60 minutes per day very seriously. If you are concerned with your level of visceral fat, it's not too difficult to do something to reduce it.

Classroom Discussion: Benefit or Detriment?

Taking the Discussion Outside the Classroom Keeps it Real

Does mandatory classroom discussion dumb down lecture content for students?

From research of the many over-40 classmates I've studied with during the past year, the consensus among boomers is that enforced discussion in college or university classrooms is dumbing down lecture content. At the typical college age, we were all "serious intellectuals" taking the discussion outside the classroom creatively and independently on our own, while receiving a full hour or 2-hour lecture from the prof as well. There wasn't a problem remembering the content. In most eras, students naturally discuss what they're learning in nightly gatherings outside the classroom, every era and place having its own hangouts. The dress and aspiration is also era-specific - perhaps young men in black leather bomber jackets and Lenin caps sit beside freedom-fighting women in earnest hippie dresses, all having written or with plans to write their novels or journal articles... or whatever. The main point is that outside the classroom no discussion occurs to get a better mark.

Institutionalized Discussion Curbs Creativity in Learning 

What causes a professor to institute discussion with students during a lecture that I'm paying for to learn knowledge from him or her? Does a prof condone the conformity in holding particular opinions as well, that used to be free to roam in a cafe without any institutional shaping whatsoever? Where no opinion is shaped by a need for a mark or a grade or a reference, but each idea just feverishly fascinating to learn about for its own sake? Why can't students just discuss on their own without the guidance of a prof? And leave the lecture to being a distilled, creative expression of a senior expert's interpretations and ideas on the topic we're learning about that they reference and allude to?

The Most Verbose Students Are Rewarded

At my own university course about a fascinating literary topic, I have decided to drop the course and continue studying the subject on my own. I dislike having to listen to other students for half of the lecture time at my university. It feels like a controlled, herded, prescribed group experience. Perhaps it is a conditioning for the conformity expected of everyone from the working world, where "collaboration" is now mandatory, which often means a quiet tyranny by the participants who like to talk the most. Preference isn't given to the proven participants who know the most or execute the best and most efficiently, but the ones who talk at and in the highest volumes.

I have decided I value a real college or university lecture, and don't want it dumbed-down or cut in half, to make room for currently mandatory classroom discussion. Just as I seek quieter "doers" in my professional environments who walk the walk rather than just talk the talk.

Cure Flat-Footedness With Ballet Exercises

It is possible to cure flat-footedness by building strength through ballet exercises

High Arches, Low Arches, or Flat Feet?

Since I've been walking to work for over a month now, I am very aware of having flat feet. And although I studied ballet for 16 years many years ago, I never knew that ballet is actually recommended to fix flat-footedness. Ballet exercises and stretches the foot and ankle - and to some degree, strengthens the arch. This can lessen the pain in feet when walking long distances.

Practicing Relevés Builds Foot Strength

Practicing relevés is the best way to build strength in feet. To perform a relevé, start with your weight evenly distributed between the balls of your feet and your heels. Slowly lift your heels and roll onto the balls of your feet, resisting the floor as though you are peeling each muscle away from the floor one by one. Then slowly lower your feet to the floor. Do this 10 times each day to build strength in your feet.

The Peroneus Longus Muscle Needs to Be Strengthened to Cure Flat-Footedness

The peroneus longus is the muscle responsible for maintaining the foot arch. If this muscle hasn't been used, it has to be strengthened. It is best to use the whole body to condition it in a wholistic way. One simple thing to correct is to be aware of where your weight is when you stand. If it's on your heels, try to correct this by balancing your body weight more on the balls of your feet.




Other tips for strengthening feet are:

• toe running
• toe walking: walk without touching your heels to the ground
• spread out toes of both feet and hold for 15 seconds
• point your toes and hold for 10 seconds, then release - do 5 times each day on each foot
• roll your feet inwards to stretch the muscles on the outer sides of each foot
• go barefoot as much as possible
• try pointing your toes without curling them

Even for professional future dancers, it is possible to correct flat feet. Check out these young dancers discussing their flat-footedness. Yoga Tuneup has other interesting resources on correcting flat feet.

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Brings Out the Dancer in Everyone

Dancing on the Street is Good For the Soul

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Avenue July 14, 2013

Toronto’s famous Salsa Festival on St. Clair opens up the street to Latin life, food, music and dance in a participatory way. It’s not a performance, it’s natural theatre art better than anyone could create for the stage.

Age No Barrier in Street Dancing

Looking at today’s turn-out of urbanites happily stepping up their Salsa moves with partners, people of all ages sweating it out in 32° street heat with joyful abandon, there are many, many men and women who are doing salsa and loving it. They are young, old, from every corner of the world, mixed ethnicities, good dancers and bad dancers all strutting their stuff on the Toronto summer streets. 

Anyone at all can turn their romantic sides on and try to move to salsa music. Yesterday and today St. Clair Avenue, the street in my neighborhood where I buy my groceries in Toronto, was turned into a Salsa Festival, and the music transformed our hood into a South American paradise. It was soul-healing and uplifting to watch the whole city click up its heels to such joyful music. 

Red Hot Black Bean Casserole

Red Hot Black Bean Casserole

Preparing the black bean casserole

Easy Black Bean Casserole

2 cans black beans
1 can tomatoes,
3 cloves garlic,
3 stalks celery
1/2 cup red pepper
1 onion
1 tbsp olive oil
1 c. cheddar cheese
hot paprika
cayenne pepper

Cook the celery, onion, red pepper and garlic in a frying pan in the olive oil. Add the black beans, hot paprika and cayenne pepper and let simmer. Squeeze the water out of the tomatoes and layer the tomatoes and black bean mixture, topping it with the cheddar cheese. Cover and cook at 350° for 45 minutes. Serve.

College After Age 40 is Good For Wellness

Am I Too Old For University or College?

Students who go back to college after age 25 often worry about not fitting in or being “too old”, but what about going to college after age 40? I was surprised to find how many positive and inspiring stories there are about people who get a college or university degree after age 40 or 50. Among these stories is one about a student who started her BA in International Studies at age 55, maintained a 4.0 GPA, was on the Dean’s list, and received a national scholarship after years of being excluded from jobs because she had no degree.

A huge part of studying over age 40 is learning how to recover from failure and make mental adjustments to one’s approach. I had always felt that university only rewards people who follow the rules. I preferred to learn by “doing” (than by studying), and I found that this was the largest hurdle to overcome. In the 1970s I had left my second year university Russian language and literature studies to learn the language first-hand by travelling to the Soviet Union and then living there for an extended period of time. I believed that learning a language by immersing oneself in a foreign culture was much more interesting than sitting in a classroom and learning the grammar.  But it turned out that this approach was not beneficial when it came to getting a good job.

I ended up switching my field of study to digital design. After upgrading in multimedia and web design to further my career and learning a lot about digital marketing on the job over the years, I still found that I was being screened out in the application process for the better jobs because I didn’t have a BA.  So in my 40s I returned to evening study at the University of Toronto to finish my BA.

Overcoming Failures is a Positive Benefit of Going Back to School

My first return to academia in 2005 was in an evening French course at the University of Toronto that I dropped after dismally failing the first test. Time to regroup, I thought. So I re-enrolled in a Canadian Short Story course taught by Professor Sarah Caskey, was very inspired by her encouragement, and did well in the course. Successful courses in European history and Russian language followed. Now I’m on a dual track at university, chipping away at my BA completion through evening literature courses at University of Toronto and pursuing a Digital Marketing Management Certificate in evenings through University of Toronto Continuing Studies. 

Cookie-Cutter Approach to Education Doesn't Always Produce the Best Leaders

I still maintain that following a cookie-cutter approach to education will guarantee you a safe life and not necessarily encourage you to become a progressive, fair-minded leader who empowers others.  Some of the other hidden benefits to returning to university or college over age 40 are:

• The hopefulness and positive energy of students with their whole careers ahead of them is contageous
• What you are learning is valuable for your own well-being and knowledge as well as for improving your job prospects
• You stay current by getting in tune with a younger mindset
• You avoid the pitfalls of just putting in time at a job to pay the bills
• If you have a bad day at work, you can switch your focus to your studies and new career prospects
• Your frame of mind leans towards concepts and ideas, keeping you intellectually stimulated
• You become more open to different ways of doing things as your circle becomes broadened by people outside your usual sphere

Fresh Home-grown Basil Tops Home-made Wheatless Pizza

Home-grown basil grows beside tomatoes and petunias in thriving urban garden

Home-grown herbs and vegetables in your balcony garden

My fresh basil plant grew indoors for awhile, until I could tell it was time to put it outside. So I created a combined herb and vegetable garden in one of my long balcony planters this year, planting basil beside a tomato plant, and even planting a hanging petunia plant beside them for color. Everything grew together comfortably and each species seemed to thrive without killing off any of the other. A truly model ethos for an  urban garden!

Home-made gluten-free pizza with fresh red pepper, cheese, and fresh herbs

Home-made gluten-free pizza made with brown rice flour

Home-made gluten-free pizza, made without wheat, is made with about 2 cups of a combination of brown rice flour, potato flour, and sorghum flour; then 1 package of yeast, 1 tsp of sea salt, and 1 tsp of xantham gum - and that's pretty much it. You just add 2 eggs (or 2 egg-replacements, as I did), 1 1/2 cup warm water, 2 tbsp olive oil to the yeast, stir, and then mix it all together with the different flours and other dry products. Mix it well. Roll the dough into 2 balls, cover and let stand in a warm place for 1/2 hour to let it rise. 

Afterwards, flatten each into greased pizza pans, and cook just the pizza dough for 5 to 7 minutes. Then bring it out of the oven, spread tomato spread for pizza on the dough, cut red peppers, cheese, fresh sage and basil, and put on top. Bake the pizza for another 20 minutes. Makes two 12-inch pizzas.

The Importance of Mental and Emotional Balance

Emotional and Mental Strength Needed to Handle the Death of People Close to You

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking discusses cognitive loss after trauma

After reading the book "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, I wasn't sure whether to be glad she
had the mental acuity to reflect so deeply on the loss of her husband, or whether to feel sorry for her for being so emotionally dependent on one person during her whole life. Didion is a New Yorker Magazine essayist who documented the various levels of pain and loss she experienced after the death of her husband.

One of the themes of the book is the cognitive effects of experiencing a trauma such as the death of a loved one. Didion states that the brain simply stops functioning for a fairly long period of time while you heal from the emotional loss. Another thing she points out in the book is how death-averse we are as a culture, and that  current social norms do not condone mourning - essential as it is to overcome a close person's death. Learning to cope with the repercussions of death is something that everyone over 40 experiences sooner or later, and the greater mental & emotional balance we have in our lives, the better we will be equipped to handle it.

How To Maintain Wellness Over 40

As a boomer, I am healthier now than I was at any point between age 17 (when I left home to attend university) and my mid-40's. When I recently summed up the reasons why, I realized that they all revolved around diet, exercise, stress management, yoga/meditation/therapeutic massage, mental stimulation, emotional connectedness/satisfaction, and finances. In fact, I would even put them in that order. And here's why:

1. What we eat seems to dictate how well we feel and how well we handle things - never mind all of the other associations connected to diet.
2. Exercise also has equal weight to food when it comes to being well - and this seems to increase with age.
3. Stress, or over-stress, is a wellness-killer. It eats up all of the mileage we get from eating well and exercising, so it has to be managed and kept in check.
4. Yoga, meditation, massage, dance, tai chi, and other forms of spiritual physicality are all tools to connect the mind and body and they all increase wellness.
5. Mental stimulation is not talked about much, but it's pretty well "use it or lose it" (use it and be well, or lose it and don't). Mental stimulation is more important for wellness than we think.
6. Emotional connectedness and satisfaction with oneself and others doesn't keep us well without the other 6 factors, but it plays a key role in keeping us well-balanced.
7. Finances are talked about a lot in this part of the world as an elixer to all troubles, but you can be a wealthy, top performing, emotionally connected individual who is positively challenged by your job and interests, but if you don't take time to unwind, exercise, keep your stress in check and eat right, these unattended elements will catch up with you. That's not to say finances aren't important, they are. But over age 40 the other key points start to matter just as much when it comes to wellness.

Stay tuned to Wellness Over 40 - we'll be discussing each of the 7 elements from the personal point of view of someone who found meaning and value in all of them. We will be telling stories of fantastic people and resources for achieving and keeping your own wellness, your own way.