 By Kevin Brown | Bio
Recently I was speaking with a friend about
his bright four-year-old son. During the conversation, my friend noted
how he was amazed at the ability of his son to recall events and
details that had occurred many months prior. He marveled that his son
could so easily and effortlessly recall information that for most
adults would have long since been forgotten. Upon hearing his comments, I rather jokingly gave my normal response
when confronted with similar comments about smart children with great
memory. “It’s not that children have such great memory, they just have
not experienced enough of life to have the mass of information stored
in their brains that adults do!” I was clinging to[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Fearless Aging
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Doing 20 minutes a day of mild exercise (like walking, swimming or
dancing) can help counter slight memory loss and improve your fluency.
Recent research in people over 50 also suggests that the benefits of
this small amount of daily exercise can last from 12 to 18 months and
may even help those who are at risk for Alzheimers (those who exhibit
mild cognitive decline). Being active not only improves blood flow to
the brain, but it also relieves stress and enhances mood.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Health
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I was speaking with a friend recently about age in general, how we
‘remember’ our lives and the power of memories to affect our day-to-day
experience. From one perspective, I think that living in the present is
the point of living—experientially at least. When we are present, our
memories are just memories and don’t affect us either positively or
negatively. Our memories are our ‘story’, and we can relate to our past
as just that—a story. On the other hand, our moods and our memories are
very connected. While the past is the past, it can have an impact on
the present. Memory can enrich our lives and allow us to ‘relive’ happy
moments or it can displace and diminish our lives, burying us in
caskets of regret, resentment, fear and guilt.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Personal Empowerment
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We've all heard that exercise is good for the body. Now current
research is demonstrating that an active lifestyle contributes
positively to the functioning of our brains as we grow older. Waneen Spirduso's book Exercise and Its Mediating Effects on Cognition outlines
the latest perspectives from 17 internationally recognized experts on
aging, exercise, cognition and
neurobiological processes. Our sleep quality, immune system, levels
of anxiety and depression are all influenced by exercise and physical activity. These affect the physical and mental
resources we have available for cognition.
Exercise actually promotes the growth of new brain cells in the
part of the brain thought to be responsible for learning and memory.
Aerobic exercise, in particular, increases bloodflow to our brains,
which allows them to function more effectively. The good news: benefits start with as little as 20 minutes of walking a day.
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at News
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 Memory is an interesting and strange phenomenon. I think (as most of us
do) that what I remember is more or less what happened. This came home
to me a number of years ago when I was dating a woman I had dated
twenty years previously and whom I had not seen in the intervening
period. We ‘connected’ like old friends and more or less fell into the
kind of comfortable conversation that old friends do. As we began to
recall our earlier relationship (which was pretty intense and lasted
for more than a year), our stories diverged immensely. I have always prided myself on my memory. Other than occasional
journaling and this blog, I have not spent a lot of time writing down
my thoughts or experiences. Now I wish I had kept a diary just for the
interest value it might have when comparing the written record with my
recollections.[ Read More]
Written by Shae Hadden at Personal Empowerment
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By Stu WhitleyBioThis post is the fourth in a four-part series.
It
may be that memory is the Well of Wisdom: this idea is central to
Celtic mythology. In Celtic lore, the well is situated at the centre of
the Otherworld, the spiritual source, the land of the dead. Where it
gushes up, pilgrims drink from it using a skull as a vessel, thereby
creating a direct link with the dead. At the well of Llandeilo in
Dyfed, Wales, this practice continued into the twentieth century. The
skull was said to be that of St. Teilo, the ruins of whose church
loomed over the well itself.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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By Stu WhitleyBioThis is the third post in a four-part series.
What may be demonstrated as a biological truth is intuitively
understood as we grow older. We become less egocentric, more aware that
the world has many centres of the universe besides our own, and that in
some mysterious way, these centres are all linked. In the mature adult,
we recognize as poets have before us, that we are round people on a
round earth, cognizant of being interwoven in a circular web of
connection with all human beings, which is among other things to
understand interdependency, forgiveness and the nature of healing. Hugo
wrote: “We are never done with conscience. Choose your course by it…it
is bottomless, being God.” And what is conscience if not memory?
Memory, that is, linked to consequences. No one can divine the future
with any exactitude. Yet we are capable of discerning the truths that
help guide us to it; I believe that those truths are at least in part
found in our collective memory.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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By Stu WhitleyBioThis is the second post in a four-part series.
Poetry is sometimes the casualty of an age where rational clarity is
considered supreme. If the message of the poet is not apparent at the
first go, chuck the damn thing. This, of course, ignores the obvious
reality that to try and capture all that reposes within our innermost
thoughts on a particular matter may not be easily condensed and
dispensed as received wisdom. I think our ability to speak clearly on
important things is seriously exaggerated. Kant observed that there’s
no great art in being generally comprehensible if one renounces
insight. He thought that the result was a bunch of patched up
observations and half-reasoned principles, which he considered to be
the enjoyment of “shallowpates” in “everyday chitchat”. Jacques
Maritain wrote in Creative Intuition in Art & Poetry:
The law of intelligible clarity imposed by the classical tradition has…been an occasion for innumerable mediocre poems… [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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By Stu WhitleyBioI’ve been thinking lately about the poetry I write; the poetry I write for you
while joyful, is more than chirrup (I hope), with only a touch of elegy
more, it tries to plumb the mystery of apperception, and
the discernment of the uncommon qualities in the common things
that mark our quotidian ways: an arm-linked walk
a mug of hot tea at day’s end—these are the liturgies that shore
what always needs reinforcing; love cannot survive unilaterally [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Learning
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In loving memory of my mother, Ruth Selman (1920-2007), who passed away this morning at 11:20 am.
I am distracted by thoughts of dying,
My actions blown away on wasted winds of imagination and thoughts I cannot think or speak.
I celebrate tomorrow and yearn for yesterdays,
The weakness of a restless soul longing for realities unlived and lost forever in the desert of forgotten dreams.
[ Read More]
Written by Jim Selman at Fearless Aging
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