Monthly Musings on Yoga + LIfe ANN DYER CERVANTES | DIR MYOGA
AUGUST 19, 2024
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I was a kid who always wanted to be older.
In grade school I annoyed the older neighborhood kids by insisting on tagging along. In high school, I worked hard to act older and cooler than my years. In college at 17, I got a fake ID and crushed on a older guys. As a young chanteuse I shared the bandstand with "the cats," as a young, willowy yogini I sweated through classes taught by old teachers filled with old students. I’ve always leaned into age. I couldn’t wait to be a grown-up.
I recently watched a Netflix documentary on the 78-year-old fashion designer Diane Von Furstenburg, who designed the iconic “wrap dress” of the 70s, but is famous mostly for being "fabulous." (In the doc, Oprah Winfrey gushes, “When I met Diane I thought, now that's is a real woman.”) Diane possesses a certain cosmopolitan confidence, a stylish gravitas that somehow reads grownup. In the middle of discussing her recent birthday, she shouts to the camera “People shouldn’t ask how old you are! They should ask how many years you have lived — and I feel like I’ve lived about 300!”
I love that DVF pushes back on that hackneyed phrase “age is just a number.” It's a comment I assume is intended to make us feel better about, or at least less defined by, our age — but I bristle every time I hear it. Because age is more than a number. It is years lived and all the chapters, memories, embarrassments and victories embedded in them. It is measured portions of time and presence on this earth.
I am now 66. I've done a lot living (though perhaps not as much as Her Serene Highness Princess of Furstenberg,) and I still don’t feel very grownup. Not really. I've matured some, developed more empathy through life’s heartbreaks and hardships, and my judgement has been honed on the hard edge of my share of bad decisions. But the feeling I imagined in my youth of being “grownup” has yet to arrive. That said, virtually every person over 50 I’ve ever known at some point incredulously, exasperatingly confesses “but when I look in the mirror I don’t feel my age!” And therein lies the rub. We have been led to believe that as our faces age our interiority keeps pace.
There is a video I’ve watched countless times on youtube, an interview with Joan Erikson, wife of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, in which she shares about their work on the eight stages of psychosocial development. In the video Joan is 90 years of age, a breathtakingly beautiful grown-up by all measures — self-possessed, incisive, kind, curious, and still carrying herself with the grace gained in her original vocation as a dancer. “Our work on the eight stages of life has stood the test of time...all but for one," Joan says matter-of-factly. “The last stage, Wisdom. Because we had not reached it yet ourselves.”
Joan, heading into her ninth and final stage (she added this to the list following Erik's death) goes on to explain. “The eighth stage was not necessarily right, it was … just plain wrong! Wisdom is something people may see in an older person but it’s not something that the person is feeling.” At this point I sense Joan entering yoga territory. "Wisdom is not just a matter of knowing something,” she concludes. “But having learned to be sensitive, having learned to SENSE something.”
In other words, wisdom — which we could say is the undergird of grownup-ness — is a state of being in which we have enough sensitivity to sense something...and I'm going to guess that something is ultimately the Self. The "me" we recognize from as far back as we can remember right up to this moment. And, according to the ancient yogis, the Self is eternal and unchanging. So, perhaps it stands to reason, that as we get older, and even a little wiser, we feel like the same old self. Older, but never truly a grownup.
I am fascinated by this time of life, one that so many of you share. If you are between your late 40s and late 70s, you are a forest dweller like me, according to ancient yogis. Let's own it. Learn about it. Enjoy it. I've created a fall program theme to do just that. Check it out and mark your calendars. And now, I have a few sparkles for you below. Some age related, others just timely. Stay tuned — more to come!
3. You guys often ask me where to buy yoga wear. Good On You is a terrific website that grades fashion manufacturers on sustainability and human rights so you can make more conscientious choices.
5. “People are looking for the magic pill,” says Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, the scientific director of the National Institute on Aging, “and the magic pill is already here.”
6. Chip Conley,, founder of the Modern Elder Academy, the world's first midlife wisdom school — and who you may remember in his former life as owner of the iconic SF rock hotel, The Phoenix! — urges us to see mid life as a "chrysalis" not a crisis in this 3 minute TedTalk.
7.. The little chant we do before my classes is part of a much longer, chant for well-being, and includes chanting for a country "ruled by righteous leaders!" Perhaps we should all be chanting this between now and November!
8. Vanda Scaravelli, pictured above on the left in her 50s with BKS Iyenagar and on the right in her 90s, is one of modern yoga's earliest female luminaries. She was almost 50 years of age when she was introduced to yoga by the Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and continued teaching and practicing until her death at 91 years of age.
9. For bite-sized bits of yoga and forest dweller inspiration throughout the fall, follow us on instagram and facebook where I will be regularly posting things to bring a little sparkle to your day.
What surprises you about the time of life you are in? Annoys you? Delights you? Let's start a conversation! Leave a comment below.
