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Mary Oliver
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind.
And much can never be redeemed.
Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Don't Hesitate.
Zen Caregiving Program Graduation ceremony photos
The poetics of Aging
A Grassroots Gathering
Elder Ashram, which grew out of AgeSong Institute, collaborated with leading Bay Area universities and organizations to organize a four-day get-together for people interested in exploring the beauty and depth of life at any stage and age. The conference mission is to counter the mainstream understanding of aging as decline and/or disease with a more expansive, humanistic, and creative vision and approach. Click the button below to visit the website containing the distillation of the conference.
Articles
Navigating the Transition into Caregiving
Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient
Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient
Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out - not one that hunts us down.
Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient
Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient
Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient
"It gives you a much better understanding about the entirety of their life and how to help them make a decision," says Dr. Jim Maloney, a VA surgeon who performed Bob Hall's lung transplant in 2013.
Poetics of Aging and Dementia
Storytelling Helps Hospital Staff Discover The Person Within The Patient
Poetics of Aging and Dementia
A core tenet of humanistic psychology and philosophy is the belief that human life is intrinsically significant. This meaningfulness extends to all we do and are in life.
Our Earth, Our Elders
More Encounters of the Real Kind
Poetics of Aging and Dementia
Our earth – our world and home – needs elders. It needs to know who elders are and what they do. It needs the wisdom they afford us, the teaching they can give us.
More Encounters of the Real Kind
More Encounters of the Real Kind
More Encounters of the Real Kind
Encounters of a Real Kind are exactly that: deep, life-changing meetings between human beings. A program of the Elder Ashram Gero-Wellness training for psychology and social work interns places graduate and post-graduate students in an eldercare community.
Kindness as Avenue to Awe
More Encounters of the Real Kind
More Encounters of the Real Kind
What would happen if schools focused on kindness and gratitude before achievement and academics? This is a question that Andy Smallman not only entertained, but also acted upon.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings
The Five Mindfulness Trainings
The Five Mindfulness Trainings
The Five Mindfulness Trainings represent the Buddhist vision for a global spirituality and ethic.
Site Content
Seasons of the Soul
Health, illness and frailty in old age: a phenomenological exploration
Seasons of the Soul
Nature was Hesse’s first and foremost teacher: the garden, the forest, animals. An appreciation of, a devotion to, a never-tiring observation and contemplation of natural life inspired Hesse’s writing on every page. The young boy already fled the narrow streets of Calw to explore a less structured, less regimented, much freer playground for his limitless curiosity and imagination.
Affect the Heart
Health, illness and frailty in old age: a phenomenological exploration
Seasons of the Soul
A century ago, the scientist Karl Pearson was studying cemetery headstones when he noticed something peculiar: Husbands and wives often died within a year of one another. Though not widely appreciated at the time, studies now show that stress and despair can significantly influence health, especially that of the heart.
Health, illness and frailty in old age: a phenomenological exploration
Health, illness and frailty in old age: a phenomenological exploration
Co-creating Environments: Empowering Elders and Strengthening Communities through Design
The aim of this paper is to subject the clinical classification of frailty to scrutiny through exploring, via a phenomenological lens, the lived experiences of older people who meet the objective, or clinical, criteria of frailty.
Co-creating Environments: Empowering Elders and Strengthening Communities through Design
Co-creating Environments: Empowering Elders and Strengthening Communities through Design
Co-creating Environments: Empowering Elders and Strengthening Communities through Design
Working with elders around the world has taught me that those living in grass huts in Africa with children at their feet are often happier than people in assisted-living homes with a chandelier over their heads.
My work in design consultancy and in fifteen years of running a nonprofit, Ibasho, that aims to co-create socially integrated and sustainable communities that value their elders has allowed me to learn much about how architects and designers can contribute to helping people live a good life in late life.
Diversity in Senior Living Communities
Co-creating Environments: Empowering Elders and Strengthening Communities through Design
Diversity in Senior Living Communities
As the United States overall population becomes increasingly more diverse, there is no time like the present for Life Plan Communities
to begin to identify and address both perceptions and realities of their own resident and leadership diversity mix. As best practices
evolve, there may be a growing opportunity for senior living communities to serve older Americans in their areas more inclusively, possibly achieving higher census by enriching their offerings and evolving their internal cultures.
Don't Waste Your Suffering
Co-creating Environments: Empowering Elders and Strengthening Communities through Design
Diversity in Senior Living Communities
The famous German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke said “Don’t waste your suffering.” If you took away his demons, he insisted, you also took away his angels. He wanted both. He wanted to be seen as a three-dimensional being, full and complete, with all his parts accepted unconditionally. Pain and suffering were not his enemies. Instead, they helped define him. Rilke would have looked curiously upon our modern age. Pain relievers. Opioids. Alcohol. Marijuana. These are all popular substances used to deaden pain, something needed by far too many in a world of dissociation and distraction.