The winter term kicked off at Yavapai College’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on Jan. 27. It was the first day for many of the classes offered at the Sedona Center campus this season, including The Art of Aging, lead by OLLI Leadership Council Chairman Anthony Caetano. The four-hour class consisted of a one-day university lecture video and discussion of growing older based on biological, psychological and social research.
The Art of Aging could be seen as an analogy for the OLLI program as a whole, which was founded as a way for people ages 50 years and older to continue learning. The Sedona OLLI program launched in 2003 with 24 members, according to a recent orientation presentation by YC’s Lifelong Learning Dean Dennis Garvey.
Now, Garvey said, there are about 1,000 members in the Sedona campus with 4,500 all across the county. In fact, the college estimates that one out of 10 Sedona residents are OLLI members.
In the Art of Aging video lecture, Brian Carpenter, psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, explained that people who have negative stereotypes about growing old when they are younger are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke by age 50 and on average die seven-and-a-half years earlier than those with more positive views. The phenomenon is thought to be due to those people producing more stress hormones when presented with anything that involves themselves aging and possibly not taking care of themselves as much.
Carpenter said those who live the longest exercise regularly [even just walking], eat more plant-based diets and don’t overindulge when eating, are social, often involved in a close faith-based or like-minded community, put family first and exercise their brain like their body.
OLLI members tick off many of those boxes, including being involved in a social group and exercising their brains, either by learning or facilitating a class as a volunteer [and earning a voucher for a free class].
Suzette Lawrence, 63, has been going to classes and teaching at OLLI for three years. Originally a nurse-midwife in Denver who also taught nursing students, she will be teaching Fat Burning Nutrition, Healthy Aging and Look Younger classes this term.
“It keeps you fresh,” Lawrence said of having an incentive to stay in tune with the field she retired from. “Staying on top of what’s changing — especially in anti-aging [because] there’s so much interesting, great, data-backed information. So that’s why I do it. It makes me learn so that I can then teach.”
Lawrence also said she attends OLLI classes to “meet people and learn from my neighbors,” and that OLLI brings her a social environment with like-minded individuals.
“Everyone in this room is interested in healthy aging — not everyone [older] is. A lot of people don’t understand that there is a way to age in a healthy way, that they can impact their health,” she said. “They really do think it’s all genetics — that they don’t stand a shot. That it’s just like, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
Sheila Jordan, 57, moved to Sedona a year-and-a-half ago from California, where she was an elementary school teacher. She joined OLLI a year ago to meet people and keep learning.
“I’ve taken a variety of classes,” she said. “A yoga and meditation class and kind of some self-help [classes] to begin with, and now the classes I’m taking this year are more knowledge-based classes.”
Jordan said she is looking forward to the Geology of the Colorado Plateau class she signed up for this term because she loves hiking in the area and wants to know more about the rock formations.
“I retired early so that I could do things that I love, and I hope to do things as long as possible,” she said.
As to why she took the Art of Aging class, she said that as she is entering that phase of her life, she wants to get the most out of it.
“I obviously know a number of things that are going to happen as you age,” she said. “But [you can also learn] things you can do to mitigate some of those things and live the best life you can live with the time left that you have.”
Jordan said the older friends she met both outside and within the OLLI classrooms are great to have in order to help ease her into the aging process.
“If you have an issue or problem and they’ve already experienced it, then they can definitely guide you through it and give suggestions,” she said. “I have some friends that are quite a bit older and have embraced life and not let their age keep them from living fully. And so I want to follow in their footsteps and grow up to be just like them.”
After the Art of Aging mid-class break, Anne Snowden Crosman stepped in front of the class, making everyone, including Caetano, stand up and sing along to Frank Sinatra’s “Young at Heart,” before leading the class outside to do “therapeutic laughter exercises.”
The 75-year-old said she wants to live to be 125 years old and beat the Guinness Book of World Records for the oldest-living person, who died at 122 years old. Crosman said that along with the tips given by Carpenter in the lecture video, the de-stressing that comes from laughter is essential for living a prolonged life.
“It’s all about reducing stress and taking your mind off your problems and increasing the endorphins in your body, because these are exercises that are actually similar to aerobics,” Crosman, a Certified Laughter Leader, told the class. “It’s not like laughing at a joke for two minutes. It’s like laughing and doing a number of exercises. And it makes the body work and it increases our circulation.”
Once outside, the class couldn’t help but laugh, first nervously and then naturally, as they were directed to walk like a penguin and repeat silly phrases.
Crosman wrote the book “Young at Heart: Aging gracefully with attitude,” in the 1990s. Some of her other aging tips are “do not talk about your aches and pains — nobody is interested,” and do something that continues to give your life value.
“I always smile to myself when I say, ‘What do you do?’ and [people] say, ‘Oh, I’m retired,’” Crosman said. “I think work as a volunteer, which we do here at OLLI, is necessary.”
Alexandra Wittenberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126 or at awittenberg@larsonnewspapers.com
