-Ashton, what's one thing you wish more people knew about getting older?

-Every age based stereotype is wrong and baseless, but they are especially misleading when it comes to older people.

-I agree!

Stick around, and let's hear more.

♪♪ -I'm Cathleen Toomey, host of Seniority Authority, where we get smarter about growing older.

♪♪ Today we're joined by someone who's changing the way the world thinks about aging.

Ashton Applewhite.

♪♪ Ashton, we're thrilled to have you.

You're a powerhouse in the fight against ageism.

Author, TED speaker, and co-founder of the Old School Hub.

Before we jump into this rich topic, we want to show you a story about a group that's flipping the script on aging, and we’d love your take.

-Okay guys, you ready?

-We are ready!

♪♪ -I'm Caroline and were in the dance studio at the Exeter YMCA.

♪♪ I took ballet and jazz and tap when I was young.

Dancing itself was, was my thing.

I had another instructor inspire me and encourage me to start teaching.

And I said, oh, no, I can't do that.

And then I started thinking about it.

And the more I thought about it, I thought, yeah, maybe I can do that.

♪♪ [indistinct announcement] [Caroline chuckles] [clap] -Now go left!

-Caroline is a force of nature.

She is so energetic.

She is always positive.

She has great choreography.

Her music is wonderful.

She's a lot of fun.

-I think one of the reasons that I go to this Zumba class is because it's a very vibrant, strong community of people, and I kind of rely on just the social engagement as well as the physical.

It's the movement.

It's the music, it's the people.

It's the energy.

♪♪ She makes you feel welcome, you know?

And she makes everyone, she makes a point of saying hello to people and if she sees somebody that she's never seen before, she goes over and talks to them personally and really makes you feel like a part of the group.

♪♪ -I spoke to someone yesterday who said, you know, I'm really uncoordinated and I'm, I'm too old.

♪♪ And I said, you know, it's okay, a lot of people feel that way.

I said, give it three good tries.

Come to three classes, and just see, you know, see how you feel after that.

If you, if you like it, great.

If you don't, maybe you want to try something else.

♪♪ -I think just moving in any way that works for you, it doesn't have to be like, oh, I'm the best dancer or I get this step, or I can do this class.

You know, if you just try it, I mean, the big achievement, I think, is to get somewhere and to attempt something and to challenge yourself.

♪♪ It's not about getting everything right.

It's more about the feeling of the class.

And what I found is people really just want to feel good.

People want to move.

Doesn't matter what age you are, but we're all kind of just in this together and, and the, between the music and, you know, maybe my silliness, ♪♪ other people, you know, ♪♪ you know, whooping or hollering gets people excited and it just sort of becomes this like hour of playtime.

♪♪ It's a feeling of mutual love, ♪♪ and respect and being together in a place where you can just really be yourself.

♪♪ Yeah, the fun that people have I can see it, and that's a pretty big reward for me.

♪♪ [Caroline chuckles] ♪♪ -Seniors, staying active, joyful and connected.

It's a fun example about what pushing back against ageism can look like.

Ashton, in your book This Chair Rocks, you highlight the way that we think about aging can actually affect our longevity.

Can you explain that?

-There is a growing body of fascinating research that shows that attitudes towards aging affect how our minds and bodies function at the cellular level.

And it's usually framed as people with more positive attitudes live longer, age better, and there's the data.

And the most important component of a good old age, I would have said, heading into this, I would have said it was health.

My second guess would have been wealth, you know that you can afford the supports that we all need sooner or later.

It's not.

It's having a strong social network.

And my favorite part about the video you just showed was the, and you-- You mentioned this also that it is a community.

We need that community.

And my second favorite thing was the way the instructor who’s wonderful says, move in any that works for you.

If my good old age depended on being able to line, line dance, I would be doomed.

I'm just never going to do it.

I'm not too coordinated, but I try and walk.

But it's really, really important to realize that not everyone can dance.

Not everyone can walk.

Our bodies slow down sooner or later.

And that, you know, in the US, this sort of model of active aging or successful aging really means to not age at all.

-Absolutely.

-That's impossible.

It's expensive.

It's genderered, pits us against each other.

If all you do is walk around the block, right?

If you have to use a cane, if you need to use a walker, not only no shame, but you know, who knows how many of us will join that category and it's really important to see all those as ways, of aging well.

-I hope from your lips to everyone's ears who's listening, this is such an important message, that you have to keep moving as much as you can and Caroline's example is perfect.

She's so enthusiastic and she brings people in.

-And I think a really key point here is that we age well by adapting to change.

Not by pretending it’s never going to happen, and not by shaming or stigmatizing others or ourselves.

We're harder on ourselves when those changes come for us as they’re gonna!

-You're absolutely right and later in the show, we have a great example of that.

But let’s talk about what you just mentioned, Ashton, which is internalized ageism.

This idea that we are our own enemies, because we are mad at ourselves for aging.

Talk a little bit about how internalized ageism, shows up in everyday life, because I think that's one thing we want to be clear about, is that if we think negatively about our own aging, that can shorten our life, literally!

[unintelligible] -Affect your self esteem!

-Yeah!

-And your sense of yourself in the world.

And it's really important to recognize that the enemy, the obstacle, the barrier is the culture in which we age.

And ageism is really sort of the last ism to be, to gain, you know, recognition.

A lot of us do and say ageist things all the time, me too, no judgment, without realizing we're doing it.

but those attitudes harm us in countless ways every time.

Here's, here's a little thought experiment.

Have you ever thought I'm too old for that?

-Oh yes.

-I think it came with the video, I'm, I am definitely too uncoordinated for that class, I'm not too old for it.

I might be too lazy, for that class I might be too wise to do that thing.

But age is never the reason.

And the same when people say, I feel young, what does that really mean?

It's different on everybody.

Does it mean sexy?

Does it mean with it?

Does it mean competent?

You can feel all those things at every age, just like you can feel incompetent and unattractive I mean, I don't know about you, but when I was 13, I felt those things worse than I ever did since thank God right?

So being young is hard.

It's easy to lose sight of that in a culture where a later life often relegates us to invisibility, let's say.

Or, you know, having a hard time getting a job, having a hard time getting a date.

That's no fun.

That's real, right?

But being young is hard too, and it's all because of a society that places value negative or positive on the age we are.

The enemy is not that younger person.

The enemy is not that older person.

The enemy is an appearance obsessed culture that values us according to how many wrinkles we do or don't have and those standards are corrosive and horrible, lifelong!

-We're working against a culture as you said, with all of these things baked into it, and all of us fall into that trap of negative thinking.

In your experience, what are some practical ways we can catch ourselves when we're falling into ageist thinking, and how do we start shifting that mindset?

It's hard.

I mean, it's really learning is easier than unlearning, especially when it comes to values.

Take a stroll down the birthday card aisle, and think about some of the messages that those cards send about older bodies and old people.

They are hateful, and that is not a word I use lightly.

So one thing you could do is not, you know, not buy those cards.

Another thing you could do is the next time someone says, I'm too old for that, say, what do you mean by that?

Not in a snarky way, not in a gotcha way.

But that's a really good rejoinder to any kind of biased comment of any sort.

What do you mean?

Because, there is no, being, being young means one thing to one person and something else to someone else.

And it's never about the chronological age, right?

-Yeah.

-So challenge it, push back a little bit.

-Well, what I like about that is that if you say with true curiosity, what do you mean by that?

It helps that person unpack the fact that they are doing some-- saying something ageist.

-Yeah, hi there, young lady.

What do you mean by that?

You know?

and I used to not be so good at that.

I mean I used it snarkily you know, because when someone calls me young lady, all it does is draw attention to the fact that I'm not a young lady.

But the inference is that I should wish I were and age is an important piece of who I am.

Just like where where I live and, you know, all sorts of other aspects of, of me.

But it shouldn't be a negative or positive.

It shouldn't have a negative or positive inherent value.

-Tell us, how have you changed your own life to combat ageism?

-If you had told me 15 years ago that I would be fascinated by aging, I would have said, ew, why do I want to think about something sad and icky that old people do?

[chuckling] But I-- [chuckling] but I'm a generalist, I could never figure out what to be when I grew up, what to study in college, etc.

And honest to God, I mean, aging is not something old people do we are aging from the minute we are born.

Right?

It is how we move through life.

It touches on every aspect of being human, and it gets more interesting all the time and one of the wonderful things about working in ageism, I mean, first of all, there's not much competition.

So it didn't, you know, I'm good at what I do, but there weren't a lot of people fighting for the title.

[Cathleen chuckles] But, these, the new ideas, the aha moments, and I think, I mean, I'm curious, you know, you read my book or, you know, I bet there were a lot of times when you went, geez, you know, why didn't I think of that?

And that's really, really interesting.

It's interesting personally, because I started this when I was in my mid 50s when, you know, I was like, oh geez, this getting old thing is going to happen to me after all.

Now I'm 72 and you know, that's getting up there and it does, It has helped me a lot by understanding what I can control, which is an attitude and what I can't control, which is most of the rest of it.

-Awesome.

Now we're going to meet Hannelore, who has adapted her lifelong love of yoga to accommodate how her body has changed, much as we were talking about earlier, let's take a look.

-I would say you are never too old to start yoga.

It will be always a part of my life.

I can't stop.

There is a great peacefulness and warmth in my heart when I sit down on my yoga mat and practice my movement and meditate.

♪♪ I come from Germany.

You can tell, on my accent.

I discovered yoga, it was a time when I was working and studying at the university in Bochum, in Germany.

As I was learning and learning, and I was so ambitious to learn everything.

I enjoyed it.

I definitely felt very fit, very healthy, very much, flexible in all the movements of yoga.

♪♪ As I became older and older, I could sense that I didn't want to do a split anymore.

So I would become more and more gentle in my yoga practice.

♪♪ It's the acceptance to be as we are and accepting the time and the way how we feel.

When I think about the last year I had several injuries.

Rotator cuff, a broken fibula, a sprained foot, and my whole right side was injured.

I thought, oh my God, how does this work?

I can't do yoga anymore, but I can just breathe, and moving in micro movements.

[Hannelore chuckles] And that helped but it was kind of hard for me.

I realized I can still do it.

It's fine.

Only different.

So I will not be the yoga teacher for young people, I will be the yoga teacher for the older people.

[Hannelore chuckles] ♪♪ I think when somebody is aging, there's so much wisdom in this person, so much experience, and to-- with that experience and the mindfulness, you can do gentle, gentle yoga.

I always think about Mahatma Gandhi who said, ♪♪ health is the real wealth.

♪♪ And the older we become, the more mindful we have to become with our lifestyle, with the regularity of doing things, with the movement, with a diet.

Accepting ourselves as we are and knowing that we can improve our health and our well-being and our joyfulness with a good lifestyle and yoga practice, is most important.

♪♪ Namaste.

Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

-So Hannelore really exemplifies what we were talking about earlier and what you mentioned.

-We live in this very binary upwards, onwards, ever faster, bigger, better culture.

And that is not friendly to, frankly to human beings, let alone to people, you know, heading into the second half of life when things do start to slow and she is a gorgeous example of the fact that we-- two things, we age well by adapting, not by resenting or feeling betrayed by changes, right?

I mean, she said, health is the real wealth, yes, but even health is not a binary.

We don't go from mobile to immobile.

From independent-- no one's ever independent at any point in life to dependent.

And we don't go from healthy to unhealthy, right?

Lots of young people have chronic diseases and also we don't see these changes as defeat, right?

We see them as sources of power.

I mean, it's, it's as she says, it's hard.

I had brain surgery in December and I am trying to practice what I preach because my energy is not what it was, blah, blah.

It's not clear yet whether I will get back to where I was, and that's hard, that you know, if that's the new reality then I will adapt, which is harder in a way, than just plowing ahead and trying to meet the same milestones.

But sooner or later, none of us can meet them.

And, you know, I just I also love what she said about you're never too old to start yoga.

You're never too old to start anything, right?

If you wanna combat ageism, you can't start too small.

You can't start too late.

Even if you take one idea from this conversation and really think about it, it's going to change you.

When you change even a little bit, you take that change out in the world and you change the people you interact with.

You can't start too late.

You can't start too small.

-I love that because that's something that we all can do and start spreading this message wherever we go.

One thing I loved about Hannelore, which I think she doesn't make her body the enemy, she doesn't complain about the fact that this happened to me, so now I can't.

She just realized her body's changing and she's changing with it.

But she's not fighting it.

-But some of the changes are not welcome and we need to acknowledge them and we need to mourn them.

But there is strength and power and beauty in adapting.

And if you try not-- if you see these changes as betrayals, [unintelligible] or you know things that are the enemy, you will, you will wear yourself out and you will not win because you're seeing it as a win-lose proposition.

-You're absolutely right.

Are there 1 or 2 things that you recommend that everyone does to decrease ageism among their circle of friends as we're trying to start this movement to end ageism?

-I want to recommend the website that you mentioned, the old school hub: oldschool.info it has hundreds of resources to educate yourself about ageism and what to do about it, how it might affect you.

It's searchable by topic.

And everything is free because there's even a study that proves this, the more we know about aging, the less fear it holds, because the more fact-based your attitude becomes, and the less influenced by this, deeply ageist and ableist narratives, right?

about how we're supposed to be afraid it-- and the also the dominant narrative turns pages that accompany aging into problems.

Wrinkles are a problem, you should spend thousands of dollars every year on bogus cream right?

And treatments and no judgment, to anyone who does, but that's the narrative, right?

Take menopause.

Much more conversation around menopause, which is wonderful.

When I was going through it, silence.

I mean, near silence and when my mother was, forget it.

She didn't mention it to me needless to say.

That silence, is never our friend.

But now there’s a massive industry naming and pathologizing all these perimenopausal this and that, what you should do now and what you should buy and what you should read.

Because that, because that's how people make money off these transitions.

So, you know, educate yourself.

You may need to buy things.

You may need to learn things.

But think about where the messages come from, and what purpose they serve.

Do they really have our best interests at heart?

-That is a great suggestion, great recommendation, and I love it because our theme on Seniority Authority is let's get smarter about growing older.

We are all, if we are lucky, we are aging.

So let's learn more about that and, and I myself having read this multiple times.

This is a very entertaining and informative book, This Chair Rocks.

So it is not a dense tome, but it's very fact based and you will find yourself, highlighting it and post noting it as I did.

So let's end on a high note.

What's one really uplifting fact about aging that most people don't know?

-I don't know if this is uplifting, but I guess it is, sometimes I think it's the one fact I wish I could put in everyone's head.

There is no one right way to age.

We each need to figure it out in our own way, at our own speed.

You know?

A dead giveaway is when people with obviously more road behind them than ahead are still talking about older people as them.

-Yes!

-So people, loads of people in the aging services industry are- they're you know, they've been in the business for 50 years and they're still talking about those old people.

Well guess what, you're one of them.

So, you know, look, look at look at them.

Look at us.

Learn from me-- [inaudible] things that make age-- aging harder, and the things that make aging easier.

And they are different for each of us.

For the women in that room the Zumba is making them easier.

I don't think it would make it easier for me cause it's not my jam, but you know what?

Maybe I should try a Zumba class and find out.

-Well, if you had Caroline, you would really enjoy it because I have done her classes Ashton, so grateful for you to be here today for joining us and sharing your wisdom.

for joining us and sharing your wisdom.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

To learn more about Ashton's work and to keep the conversation going, visit nhpbs.org/seniorityauthority.

♪♪ Until next time, stay curious and keep thriving.

♪♪ -Major funding for the production of Seniority Authority is provided by Road Scholar.

♪♪ And by viewers like you, thank you!

♪♪ ♪♪