Ron Pevny – Transforming Your Journey of Aging

A powerful opportunity to redesign your elder years as a time of wholeness, fulfillment, meaning and impact – a season for living with joy, energy and creativity.

Be prepared to open your heart, expand your mind, liberate your soul and deepen your life’s journey – all in a supportive community.

Have you wondered how to approach your elder years in a conscious and fulfilling way?

If so, you’re in the right place.

New bodies of research show that our beliefs about aging affect our longevity, vitality and enthusiastic engagement with life. When we see our elder years primarily as a time of decline, marginalization or loneliness, that is what we’ll tend to create.

In our culture, there is an underlying message that after you reach retirement age, you don’t have a meaningful role. That perhaps the best you can hope for is to spend your days playing golf or spending time with your grandchildren… while letting younger folks step in to make their contributions to our world.

The result of this pervasive attitude? As you age, it can be easy to start to feel irrelevant… that your best days are behind you, and that whatever legacy you were meant to leave should already be in place. Many people also find their passion waning and lose sight of their bigger vision for the next stages of life.

Instead, what if you were to forge a vision for your aging journey that is far more empowering – one in which you approach your later years as a time in which to give some of your greatest gifts, savor the fruits of a lifetime of maturation in skills and serve the deepest needs of our time?

In short, what if you were to look forward to your elder years in the same way that so many people in traditional and indigenous cultures do – as a time in which youharvest the love, joy and wisdom of a lifetime and occupy a place of honor, service and meaning in your family and community?

Such a vision is more empowering, exciting and motivating than simply playing golf or spending time on a beach (as wonderful as these activities might be).

It’s really about living your elder years as a full expression of your human potential.

The great news is that cultures in which elder years are anticipated with excitement often have the longest-lived, most energetic and joyful elders!

Every year now, we hear more amazing stories of elders who are stretching what is possible, from running marathons to writing groundbreaking books to creating new social movements.

Wise, engaged and caring elders are essential for our world. So many of our collective challenges are born of conflict, misunderstanding, greed, unhealed wounds and lack of foresight – all areas that elders are naturally gifted in helping to solve.

In many ways, it is our elders who are most able to create a real shift in our world to one that is healthy, sustainable, peaceful and prosperous. Elders, seen rightly, are our most undervalued and underutilized resource!

Shifting this reality begins with each of us. Are you ready to become a shining example of what is possible in your later years?

What is your story of aging? And how might it be holding you back from thriving and living a vibrant life well into your 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond?

In indigenous cultures, elders are honored as sages who are called upon for counsel because of their wider vision of the world.

Instead, the mainstream media bombards us with the message that we must do all we can to fight “the sands of time.” They make it sound as if between retirement and death our only option is to live in some sort of passive holding pattern.

What IS true is that there are many unique issues that may challenge or confront you in your efforts to “age gracefully,” including:

• Feeling isolated and a lack of community
• A loss of purpose and vision for life
• A loss of meaningful roles
• Lower energy and a lack of passion
• Physical pain and other health problems
• The deaths of friends and loved ones
• The absence of positive role models
• Unresolved emotional issues from the past
• Confusion around how to make a contribution to the world
• A lack of spiritual connection and guidance

Facing these areas with consciousness, love and an optimistic outlook is imperative to help you to see beyond the disempowering stories about aging, navigate your own negative beliefs about this stage of your life and create a truly rewarding phase of your life.

Rewrite Your Script of Aging

In this 7-module program with Ron Pevny, one of the world’s pioneers of conscious aging and eldering, you’ll learn how to rewrite the script on your aging journey so that you can live a longer, healthier and more meaningful life. And, you’ll discover how to cultivate more spiritually enriching and impactful elder years than you thought possible!

It all begins with your consciousness, which helps to shape the perspectives that lead you to thrive in body, heart, mind and soul.

Ron will help you step into a new aging paradigm that gives you a more multidimensional understanding of your potential for meaning and continual growth, as well as helping you tap into reservoirs of joy and vitality.

This multidimensional perspective focuses on clarifying your path of purpose and continual growth, making your later years a time of positive impact.

He’ll share how you can fully embrace the identity shift that being an elder represents and write a new script. In the process, you’ll learn to release unresolved emotional baggage that can sabotage your story of aging, get in touch with your authentic vision for your elderhood and tap into the energy and passion that can make that vision a reality.

As you do this, you’ll transform feelings of isolation and loneliness into an empowered and purposeful community of allies. You’ll be poised to create a legacy of service to support a healthy world for our descendents.

And what could be a more beautiful concluding chapter for your life story than that?

Shine Brightly as You Age Consciously

The great news is that while aging does come with its share of losses, the more multidimensional vision of aging, showcased in Transforming Your Journey of Aging,demonstrates that it can also include vast possibilities for true fulfillment and growth.

Ron will lay out expansive possibilities for the gifts you can contribute to the world with the wisdom of your many years.

Ron is not only an expert in the field of conscious aging, he is also a role model and mentor whom you can look to for inspiration and guidance in living a more meaningful, joyful and purpose-filled elderhood.

During your journey with him, you’ll learn that aging well is about so much more than improving your physical health, mental acuity and longevity (though you’ll gain invaluable knowledge on this, too).

You’ll discover deep wisdom and practices that can help liberate you from unresolved “baggage” you may have accumulated from your past… which, of course, frees up more energy and empowers you to live your purpose with more joie de vivre .

In turn, you’ll also come to see that the more clarity you gain around your visions and goals for the future, the more energy and passion you’ll experience on all levels.

When you join Transforming Your Journey of Aging, you’ll learn the secrets for truly staying “young at heart” – and shining more brightly as you age consciously.

During the program, you’ll:

• Experience a positive vision of aging and conscious approaches to elderhood.
• Tap into purpose, passion and a higher vision for your life.
• Find a pathway for being “relevant.”
• Be inspired by stories of dynamic mentors embracing elderhood.
• Gain access to many conscious aging resources.
• Join a supportive community of kindred spirits.
• Discover practices for better health, mental acuity and well-being.
• Explore the possibilities for the next stage of your life.
• Recognize how spiritual needs change as you age.
• Experience more energy as you shed your “baggage.”
• Explore your role as an elder who can help others now and leave a valuable legacy for the future.

If you’re ready to step out of your comfort zone to experience what’s possible in the later chapters of your life this is the program for you.

What You’ll Discover in These 7 Modules

In this 7-module transformational program, Ron will guide you through the fundamental steps and practices that you’ll need to successfully transform your journey of aging into one of wholeness, joy and deeper meaning.

Each session will build harmoniously upon the next, so that you’ll develop a complete, holistic understanding of the practices, tools and principles you’ll need to sustain your path into a joyful and conscious elderhood.

Module 1: Understanding the New Paradigm of Aging

This session will focus on the emerging, multi-faceted and empowering paradigm of aging (often called “Positive Aging”) and contrast this with the dominant cultural view of aging as a time of diminishment and loss. We will look at why this shift is happening and explore the various approaches that comprise this new paradigm. Then we’ll introduce “Conscious Aging” as a critical foundation for these various approaches – as the inner work that is critical for reaching the full potential of life’s later chapters. And we’ll explore the archetypal role of “Elder” throughout history and the importance of conscious elders in these times of crisis – and great opportunity.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• Much more is possible for your life as you age than mainstream culture recognizes.
• Aging involves loss and decline, but also opens new doors for fulfillment, growth, passion and service.
• How these potentials are best realized through conscious preparation, with the inner work of conscious aging being critical.
• Why it is important to focus on the kind of person you want to be as you look toward what you want to do.
• There is an archetypal call to true elderhood in each of us that is often not heard amid the disempowering images modern culture presents for aging.
• The work of conscious aging helps you respond to this call as you nurture your inner Elder, wisdom and gifts.

Module 2: Entering Elderhood With Grace

As we leave mid-life adulthood (with the key marker often being reaching retirement age), we go through a significant life transition. All life transitions involve a 3-phase dynamic of severance, neutral zone and new beginning. If we support this process of change within, we release disempowering old emotional baggage and enter a new life chapter with a clear vision. Rites of Passage, whether structured or not, have throughout history supported the journey from one life stage to another, and are re-emerging today as important aspects of conscious aging.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• How the journey from mid-life adulthood into life’s later chapters is a significant life transition for your psyche, often heralded by reaching retirement age (whether you retire or not).
• All life transitions involve the 3-stage dynamic of severance (ending), neutral zone (in between who we have been and who we can become), and the emergence of new beginnings.
• You have a choice of whether and how to support this transition in yourself, or to neglect it to our detriment.
• About the dynamics of this transition from rites of passage work, both traditional and contemporary.

Module 3: Healing the Past To Empower  the Future

If we are going to enter our later chapters with clear vision and vital energy, it is important that we review our lives up to now to see what will serve us moving forward, and to heal our past so we aren’t encumbered by old baggage on the journey ahead. For many of us, regret is a crucial dynamic that calls to be healed. Forgiveness, of others and ourselves, is critical, too. Healing our past is greatly facilitated by examining and rewriting the stories we tell ourselves about the meanings of the events in our lives. The Death Lodge practice is a powerful way to bring healing and closure to our lives and relationships, so we can move forward into elderhood without old baggage and are as ready as possible for our final passage.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• Life review is a foundational element in the work of conscious aging.
• How to fulfill your dreams for the future unencumbered by unhealed wounds, regrets, resentments and disempowering stories about the events
  in your life.
• Forgiveness as a process to free you of toxic attachments to your past.
• How to transform regrets and disempowering personal stories, and discover how the Hero’s Journey can be a powerful catalyst for gaining a transforming soul’s eye and deeper understanding of your life.
• Rituals to support you in letting go of beliefs, attitudes, habits and identifications that will not serve your moving forward.
• The Death Lodge practice, which weaves together several dynamics that can help you heal your past so you can move with clear energy into your future.

Module 4: Living In Between

As we begin to sever from our identification as mid-life adults, we enter the time between life stages called “liminal time” or “the neutral zone.” This time is characterized by confusion, a sense of being in a foreign land without roadmaps, loss of meaning with no clear vision of a meaningful future. It is also full of potential, as the seeds of new vision and purpose gestate in us. There are practices we can employ that can help us use this in between time to gain the new vision and energy that await us in the elder chapters of our lives.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• How to navigate and understand the neutral zone – that critical time between who you have been and who you can become – so that you can use it well as preparation for your future.
• Ways to access the full potential from this liminal time as the seeds of future vision germinate in you.
• Meaningful approaches for entering this time consciously to access the great value available to become aware of, and nurture, these seeds of vision.
• Solitude and silence are critical during this time.
• How time in the natural world helps you get in touch with the qualities, values and callings that are most authentic in you.
• How synchronicities and dreams can be courted and provide guidance for the path ahead.

Module 5: Creating the Legacy of our Elder Chapters

This session’s major theme is that the creation of our legacy does not end with retirement. The legacy we create as elders can be one of continual growth and service to our world. We create this legacy by using the power of intention to set goals for our whole selves rather than just the popular “bucket list.” The “Ten Intentions for Ten Years” practice can help us set such goals – and achieve them. It is important that we create lives as elders that reflect the right balance for us between serving and savoring, doing and being.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• Your elder chapters can be an important time for you to create a legacy beyond what you have created so far.
• The key principles of successful intentionality, which has great power and is necessary for you to reach the potential of your elder years. “Ten Intentions for Ten Years” as a powerful practice for helping you grow toward wholeness as you age.
• How to write a legacy letter and/or engaging in oral history work are valuable ways to get in touch with your legacy and to lay the groundwork for the legacy you have yet to create.
• How to find the balance between serving and savoring, doing and being, which can be difficult but crucial for conscious elders.

Module 6: Practices for Becoming and Staying Conscious

The major theme of this session is “The Self That Wins Is the Self We Feed.” This session will focus on a variety of practices we can use to feed the self in us committed to aiming high as we age consciously. Equally important are those ways of living that tend to numb our consciousness, feed our fears and sap our energy.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• Practices for aging consciously with commitment to thrive in a largely unconscious world.
• Ways to navigate unconscious sabotage and build a future that is based in clear visions and conscious intentions.
• Several practices to help you stay conscious as you feed your best self.
• Techniques for transforming habits and ways of living that numb your consciousness, feed your fears and sap your energy.

Module 7: Finding Support In Community

This session will focus on the importance of finding the support of like-minded others if we are to successfully undertake the journey of conscious aging. We will explore the growing variety of organizations creating supportive communities for our elderhood, including Co-Housing, the “Village” model and others.

We will look at programs, such as Elder Wisdom Circle, the IONS Conscious Aging Program, Sage-ing International’s workshops and the Choosing Conscious Elderhood retreats, which enable people to have the support of community as they do their conscious aging work. And we will explore opportunities for conscious elders to engage in the community service and social action that are crucial in helping the world move successfully through The Great Turning. This session will also address themes that come up throughout the course that call for further discussion, amplification or clarification.

In this module, you’ll learn:

• Conscious aging work requires community support to be sustained
  and successful.
• The growing number of models for enabling you to create and have supportive community as you age.
• Why there can be great value in finding support through Elder Wisdom Circles and conscious aging workshops and retreats.
• About opportunities for serving your community and the Earth as a part of your commitment to aging consciously.
• Why the “Great Turning” needs a culture of conscious elders in every nation, and the creation of such a culture requires the building of community.