CIIS Public Programs Podcast

Transcript

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[Cheerful theme music begins] 
This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  

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Meg Jordan: It's always a pleasure to do things, events like this for CIIS Public Programs, but I got particularly excited when I got to get this extraordinary book in my hand, and I read it cover to cover. And I'm recommending it to everybody I know, Susan. So, thank you for joining us in this wonderful endeavor here to give people this sense that they really have a sort of inner monitor that is going to allow them to come into a more graceful, loving relationship with their body. So, your title. Let's just start with that: The Inside Story, The Surprising Pleasures of Living in an Aging Body. What motivated you? 

Susan Sands: First, Meg, I want to thank you for that nice introduction. And for having me here at CIIS. I used to be a supervisor here, many, many at CIIS- [Meg: Yeah.] years and years ago. [Meg: We do, we exploit a lot of psychologists out there for their hard work. Thank you, thank you for your service.] [Both laugh] Yes indeed. So, the title, you know, I think there are sort of two things about the title. One of the one of them is that it suggests that, you know, The Inside Story suggests something hidden [Meg: Yeah.] that you don't know about, but I want to let you in on and in fact, I do want to let you in on how important you know, body awareness is for our well-being. But then you know, it's also, it alludes to the fact that I want to talk about your inner body, sensing yourself from within. In other words, your inside story and I want to help you have a better inside story. 

Meg: I like that. I like the fact that, you know, people it seems like many decades of our life. We're always interested in our perceptions, or you know, how our people perceiving me all the data, all the information coming from the outside and here looking at interoception, you know, all the inward and embodiment of that. That's a, that's a big shift for people to make.  

Susan: Yeah. Well, that's exactly the shift that I want people to make, you know, to stop thinking about how they look from the outside. [Meg: Right.] And how they actually feel on the inside. And I just think that it's so helpful, especially for women in our society to get away from the focus on the, on the on appearance and how we look. And sadly enough, it doesn't go away, you know, as we get older, people are still concerned about that and I'm concerned about women, you know, continuing to have those concerns as they get older.  

So, what's great is this new science has come along and it's as you said, it's called interoception, and it's just burgeoning right now, you know, there was some talk of it in the early 19th century and then some in the 1990s, but the last two decades there have been hundreds and hundreds of studies. And basically, what interoception is, it's an ongoing process in our bodies. It's going on all the time. There are these sensations that are coming up from small nerve fibers all over our bodies. And these signals are getting funneled, you know, into our spinal cord and then you know, up through the brain stem where they’re mapped, they’re processed and mapped somewhat to give you a little map of our body, but then they go all the way up to the something called the insula, which gives us a sense of our whole body.  

Meg: We both share that. We both share this kind of love of what this emerging science is and are helping in behavioral health and psychology. Just this new science of embodiment really, you know, this is a big psych school as you know, CIIS we've got five counseling psychology programs. We have a clinical PsyD program. And it used to be that just one of our psych programs, somatic counseling and psychology was the kind of a chief one that looked at the body, but it's spread everywhere now. Every branch of psychology counseling, master’s in social work, clinical social work, pychiatric RN. We're all saying. Wow, the body starts with the information. This whole somatosensory apparatus is finally gaining the respect it needs. [Susan: Yeah.] And what I love in your book is, is you even point out. I think that you know, Freud touched upon this a long time ago, but then sort of abandoned it as everything went more psychoanalytic, you know, but the sense that the body, the body holds the knowledge, the body holds the signals.  

Susan: It's the foundation of our being. You know, the mind is rooted in the body. That’s what’s so great.  

Meg: Yeah, it is great. It's great to be able to share a way for people to do this sort of tuning into this triumph really of new body science, you know, to use it to their advantage because what you referred to before to is a sad statement of ageism in our, in our society, in today's modern societies all over the place, where people still feel that, without the right, look, without the right appearance, somehow I will be dismissed. I will not be heard, and I thought that was something we could get rid of in our 20s or 30s to be honest. [Susan: Right.] But wow, it's still accompanies. So, is this an antidote to ageism?  

Susan: Well, that's what I'm hoping. Yeah, and of course, to sexism as well because this is all harder on women, you know, and when ageism and sexism come together. It's hard to be in an aging female body for some of us. I mean things have gotten better. There is the positivity, the Women's Positivity Movement and you do see you know, models of different sizes, now, occasionally, or even seeing some actresses and singers and so on that are heavier than we would have in the past. But still women tend to be looking at themselves through this male gaze, you know, and the male gaze is looking at young, slender, sexy bodies, you know, and I mean part of that is sociobiological, of course, because they want to carry, they have to carry on the species and that's a sign of childbearing health, somebody who is young. 

Meg: Amazing. That is a biological way to look at it. But there's, you know, we're speaking to LGBQT audiences as well. Does your book with this interoceptive, does this message apply to people across gender spectrums?  

Susan: Oh, I- oh, it definitely does. And that you don't, you don't, you don't have, you can be of any gender identity, and still gain from my message, which is that it helps so much to get in touch with your inner body sensations. Frankly, I don't think that we of all these different gender identities, or sexual orientations are very different on the inside, which is what I'm talking about. I'm really talking about the inside body. What I'm talking about works for everybody.  

Meg: And this, and the narrative of ageism. I think works across, although there's strong social advocacy within varying sexual orientation and gender identity orientation. There's such a push now, in our, in our contemporary life, to abandon some of these older narratives that are so troubling and distressing, but I think that this physiological lens you look through, the cultural lens that you've been looking through in this book. There is information in here that's so critical for everyone. I was so impressed. I'm just going to pull up one of my favorite quotes for you as well. “You can write and rewrite your inside story throughout life.” And you talk about periods of adolescence, menopause or andropause, or the aging body. “These are all opportunities to rewrite your inside story through exercise, meditation, nutrition, social interactions.” What, what led you to say all that?  

Susan: I think it's, it's really, it came out of my personal experience. You know, when I was about 65, I could feel some signs of aging, you know, of course happening and also, you know, some signs of anxiety and all kinds of things. And I, I have done enough meditation in my life, that I know that if I just sink down into my body, I immediately feel better. You know, you feel more grounded, you feel stronger, you feel clearer. And so, as I was going about my life and certainly during the pandemic, when I started writing this book and there was the anxiety of the pandemic, I kept finding myself really sinking down into my body and finding that calm state. It's not only calm, it's also very pleasurable to be in your body. And that's why I've got the subtitle of, The Surprising Pleasures of Living in an Aging Body, because when you're really dwelling in your body, living in your body as I call it, it's very, very pleasurable and it's this works for, for anybody of any age. But as we get older, it's so particularly important because our bodies are getting frailer, they're getting you know, less stable, less reliable and if we ever needed this interoceptive awareness, it's when we're older and yet nobody has talked about it. I mean, no, no aging experts that I'm aware of, you know, have really talked about the importance of body awareness and interoceptive awareness for aging and yet it's so intuitively obvious, that that's what we need more of as we get older. So we can feel really grounded and rooted in our bodies.  

Meg: And it's, I know when we had our little pre-talk. I said to you, I've had so many decades of working. Like there's just a taskmaster behind me saying, go faster, do more, go faster, do more and therefore like James Joyce said in Dubliners, you know, Mr. Smith lived, six feet ahead of his body. It was like I was basically living six feet ahead of my body, and I decided on January 1 this year that I was going to start doing this. Thirty minutes of yoga with Adriene this wonderful yoga teacher on YouTube in Austin. Because all of my grad students adore her and I went, all right, I'm checking this out, that half hour of meditative sit and a half hour of yoga and might’ve modified it a lot. This body was not a bendy body. So, but now after three, four months of this, I'm suddenly feeling like aahh, the body wants to do this right now, it needs to stretch, this hip that was hurting a little bit, it needs to go like this right now. I'm finally getting a sense of interoception, what it is, in a really visceral way. So, I just want to impart that word to everybody, that this book is real. The information in it is so skillfully crafted, skillfully written in a way that just allows people to experience this and it's not just meditation, yoga, and breathwork. But it's this neuroplasticity, you talked about in the brain to the aging brain has some benefits to its, about handling mixed emotions, things like that. Why is that?  

Susan: Yeah. Well, you're talking about some of the changes, you know, actually in the brain that come with aging. Is that what you're asking about? [Meg: That's right. Yeah.] Yeah. Well, I think that that hasn't been talked about very much either, you know, people talk about how we're happier as we get older or mellower as we get older. We're less reactive. There are some reasons for that. You know that are part of the aging brain and one of them is that interoception, despite all the positive things I’ve said about it. It actually wanes a little bit as we get older, not completely gone. [Meg: No.] By any means, but what I mean by that is that we don't react as much in a physical way to our emotions and that's my experience.  

I remember, you know, going to final exams in college and having sweaty palms and fast heartbeat and stuff and that's just not so true anymore. So, our bodies are less reactive in that way. Thank goodness. Also, our amygdala. You know, in our brain, which is the part of the brain that is, so it's kind of in charge of emotions and particularly negative emotions, it generates them. That also gets a little weaker. So, the amygdala is also, the waning of the amygdala, the decline of the amygdala also makes us a little, you know, calmer as we get older. Yeah, and then there's another change that another research group has been talking about, which is we can take more cortical, higher brain control. And so, we can sort of take control and we can turn things in our mind. We can change things, situations, just to give them a different more positive slant. That’s often called the Positivity Bias like by Laura Carstensen at Stanford. She's the one that coined the term, and it means exactly that, that if we're in a situation that's getting a little difficult, you know, the kids with us might be saying, oh my God, what's going on here? And we're trying to sort of take a positive slant on it. It won't last forever. You know, so I think that's very helpful to us as we age that positivity bias.  

Meg: So great. And I think this, the other one that you mentioned too in the book is the ability to handle mixed emotions. Like, yes, this is a very sad event and I'm also kind of content over here. You know, that, that stretch that damn, I can feel two things at once now, And I don't have to have the negativity bias. Normally that, it really runs us. It's a survival instinct. It's dampened down a bit, dampened down a bit. And I didn't know if that was because I'm, I'm closer to death. So, I've got to accept things as they are, but it is these kind of neural wiring changes. 

Susan: That plus, you know, being closer to death. It gives us a different perspective. [Meg: Yeah.] We know that time is limited and so we better make the most of it and not worry our way through it, but you know, enjoy it. So, I think that change in perspective, you know less time ahead. You know, we better do it now or we're not going to have a chance.  

Meg: I love that. I'd love to talk about too, because I think it could really help people, friends I know, who are, who are still a bit obsessed between the difference with body image and body and not coming into body sense. You made a beautiful distinction there. Could you talk on that, a bit?  

Susan: Well, that term body sense is not used usually. I mean, I use it for having interoceptive awareness, in other words, being able to sense your body from within being able to feel your body. So that's what I'm calling body sense. It's another word really. I think that's an easier word for interoceptive awareness. Body images, not how we sense ourselves from within but it's how we see ourselves in our minds eye. [Meg: Our imagination. We're imagining others see too.] Yes. What we imagine other people see and how we imagine ourselves. And, of course, that's where, you know, a lot of people get in trouble, is with their body image. [Meg: I'll say.] Yeah. 

Meg: I think men are actually in trouble, too. I mean, I've always as a journalist, health journalist and nurse, I've always kind of been an advocate, like yourself for women's image and body dysmorphia of when you looked at eating disorders and everything together, but I honestly I'm hearing a lot from young men now because of Marvel movies and the hyper masculinized heroes, action heroes that there's this this perfection stance of a male physique and there's a slight rise in young men's eating disorders as well. [Susan: Yes.] Kind of a frantic grasping of ketogenic diets that are just going to chisel them down to, you know, god-like proportions. And so, I just just getting run out with body image and cultural societal norms, this is tough. This is a tough frontier that you’ve… 

Susan: Your body image is so linked to self-esteem. [Meg: Yeah.] I mean it's, you know, it's everything and to depression and eating disorders and anxiety and you know, it just body image is crucial and that's why I want us to have the feeling from the inside, you know, [Meg: I like that.] and it really takes us away from our appearance. And if in fact, you're on your way to a party and you're worried about how you look or something, just sink down in your body and you'll immediately feel better. [Meg: Sink down into the body.] Because you’re feeling yourself from within.  

Meg: These 30 women that you interview in the book, extensive interviews, but you also really go into the insights and learnings you've gathered from other researchers, and it's a book, really blends both of these together, but were they at the happiest years of their lives? [Susan: You're saying the interviewees?] Yeah. Yeah, because you strike me as being at the happiest in your life, I don’t even know your whole life. [Susan laughs] I just know that in between your smile and the way you reside in your body and the confidence you exude in it, it just strikes me as maybe happiness is an elusive word. I don't know, Susan. Maybe it's just got contentment. To reside, to fully occupy.  

Susan: Well, and just being older, you know, there's so many things about being older, you finally feel like you can damn well please, you can do what you damn well please. [Meg laughs] I mean, you sort of take off the veils, you know, like it or leave it, like me or leave me just so there's, there's a lot of that going on. But what I found with the interviewees is they all said, something like, I'm not happy about, you know, my flesh sagging and wrinkling and everything but it kind of, it is what it is. Just accepting it more. I think there's a great deal of acceptance that can come out of aging. [Meg: Yeah] They all said in many ways, I'm happier now than ever before. They didn't mean it in every way. I mean, you know, I mean we all kind of miss being able to downhill ski in the way we used to. And you know, there's all kinds of stuff you can miss but but there is good stuff, you know? And it's so interesting that happiness is the thing that's found in, you know, study after study. You probably know about the study of thousands of people that yielded that happiness curve. [Meg: Oh, yeah, this is great. I remember this. Yes, yes.] Yes, it sure. And it works all around the world, in different societies and so forth. And the curve shows that we are happiest when at the beginning of our lives. And then it dips down in middle age, right? And then it starts going up again. And the year of the greatest happiness on this curve is 82. [Meg: 82. Hear that everybody, 82.] And that's based on, you know, interviews of people on, you know, life, satisfaction, happiness, all kinds of things like that.  

Meg: So great. I think of my own parents at 82 and my mother used to tell me that there's this. She'd say, yeah, you think you know so much about your brain and health and science and all this she says, but the brain has a little inhibitor, inhibitor in it. And by the time you're 82, it's gone. I’m completely uninhibited and I thought that I thought that when I was in the grocery store line the other day and somebody just going to cut me off and I thought, you know, I would normally just sit here and growl and I said, excuse me. I had no more. That that inhibitor has kind of disappeared. I can speak up for myself, quicker, easier, the voice, the voice comes out now. Now, I know that there's lots of social cultural ramifications for what I'm saying. You know, not everybody finds their voice, that everybody moves into these elder years with a sense of elder agency, but I think that the tools and techniques that you're offering in this book are a gateway for a lot of that. Yeah, what are some of your favorites? Let's go into that and give people some good practical, [Susan: Some gateways?] Yeah. [Susan: You mean how to get how to get how to really enjoy our final years?] Exactly how to get in touch with these surprising pleasures. You know, you look at, I mean, you've you said you got to meditate, you got to move, you've got to nourish your body correctly, you know, you you it's kind of like a the wellness champion in me was really excited to hear you just lay out some of these very practical things as well.  

Susan: Yeah, and I mean, you can do it on your own as I've been sort of showing you can just decide to sink down and check in with your body. And then once you've checked in, then, you know what it needs. And you know, what kind of changes to make in it, you know, like when you're lying on the yoga mat, you feel that sore back. And you just move into, you move into that sore back more and then you know what you're suffering with, you know, you've got the information to move around, stretch out that sore back, move it, you know? So, you've got the information and then we've got all these incredible, which you mentioned, all these these incredible practices. You know, thousands of year old practices, they obviously work. And you know, meditation is so good for everybody because you know, it increases your emotional capacity for regulation and and and your compassion and the sharpness of your tension and so on.  

But then it's very interesting. There's not much research on older people. And meditation, but the little research there is, one of my favorite things is that the brain, actually the biomarkers in the brain, are younger. So, our brains are better preserved if we do meditation, And that's shown up that's showing up over and over again. And you know, they, some of them have found that it's seven and a half years younger, you know, [Meg: I know it. I know it. I’ve been following it.] Yeah, of course, of course eating, right, and you know, exercise is incredibly important as we get older. And the other things of course are remaining socially connected.  

That's really good for being older, any kind of movement and I would add to the things that most people talk about, body awareness. [Meg: Yeah, exactly.] Because actually I think you know that we actually have the capacity as we get older for more embodiment because of all the things I talked about, you know that our bodies are less reactive. I think there's more sort of quiet and space inside and that we can be more embodied and some of us embodied really for the first fully embodied for the first time in older age. Which to me is just one of the most wonderful things because embodiment, you know, living in your body, having the mind and body integrated. It's so important for our well-being, for everything.  

Meg: There's so many ways that we see in our students, in their Integrative Health master's program. Today, they started giving their oral defense of their thesis. And their capstone projects and one of them in particular was talking about this trauma age that we live in that we have come through especially in the last couple of years and that it's really organizational leaders and workplaces and all need to have some trauma-informed, kind of mindfulness in order to work with employees there. Yeah, because the employees are saying, I can't afford to stop and pay attention right now to these things because I have no control over them, and I can't expect to get any help with it. I'm on my own. I'm working remote. I'm this or that there's this continuous, it's not full-blown PTSD, but it is this kind of high level of noise of a cortisol outpouring of stress and anxiety. And it is ubiquitous right now, especially in workplaces, and we're seeing that you're seeing the statistics as well as a clinical psychologist of the rise of anxiety and depression, not only in the workplace, but in school-aged children, in high schoolers, in college level. It's an overwhelming distress alarm right now. And, and if it goes on too long, there is a disorder in the multi-dimensional assessment of interoceptive awareness that MAIA you described beautifully in her book. If you have her book, page 94, it's fabulous and it gives about seven points I think of, time to check in. Do you notice where tension is in your body? Can you even notice it? Do you notice when you're uncomfortable in your body? There's another one. Can you use your breath? You're breathing to reduce tension. I mean some of these are first time sentences for a lot of folks, you know.  

Susan: Yes, yes, and this, and this questionnaire you're talking about is a questionnaire trying to assess your amount of interoceptive awareness, and so, right, and so many people don't have it and need it so badly right now. Jon Kabat-Zinn, you know who started the sort of, Meditation for Regular People revolution, I mean, he was going into workplaces, he was going into various hospitals, and that's the way he started, and I do wish, and I do think, you know, now that things seem to be calming down in the viral world, that a lot of us should go into the workplaces. [Meg: Mm-hmm.] And you know, I think it would be the thing to do. It's, it’s the social action of the time, [Meg: It is.] really, [to try to help people calm down. But not just through leading meditation, but giving them their own tools, like meditation or yoga, [Meg: I know] or just deep breathing, you know, all the way from the pelvis, all the way up, up here, because it really, it triggers a different state, you know, it takes you from this sympathetic nervous system, which is all about, you know, flight and fight, and it puts you into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is all about resting and digesting, [Meg: Puts the brakes on.] timing, [Meg: Yeah.] calming and, you know, you can actually feel sometimes when you do that deep breathing, you can actually feel that switch right around here. You can actually feel it changing, and so, we have these tools, and we do have to get them out of there. And it's not that other people haven't thought of this, but I'm just going along with you and saying, we need to do more of it now. [Meg: Mm-hmm.] And in the schools, you know, meditate- there are people who meditate with kids in the schools, and I- I was aware of a project fairly recently of people that went in and taught kids in the inner city schools, kids that were particularly stressed, according to their teachers. They went into classrooms with kids who were particularly stressed and taught them meditation. And then, they did some pre- and post-tests, and they found that they actually got calmer. I mean, it is really something, 

Meg: Well, I think, I think I want to add something to that list, and that is to hang around with a mellow elder. I think that it's as good as- it's as- and I'm thinking about my weekend. I went camping over the weekend with eight family members- son, his wife, two grandbabies, a daughter, her boyfriend, and who joined us, but my ex-husband, and I was there. And I thought, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we'd be at each other's throats. This could never have happened. Now, we're a couple of mellow elders, and we’re joking about this and that and- and it was this big crazy family camping adventure. Fast and furious, over the weekend. And I look at it though- it was setting an example in a sense. It was that morphogenetic field that Rupert Sheldrake is to talk about. We were setting an example of positivity bias, of a lack of agitation or hyperactivity or hyper-reactivity, and that role modeling had an effect with everybody else. With my, you know, 38-year-old, 40-year-old children as well, who also got to be around a mellower elder. So, you, you know, you go into this and the emotional body in the book of why we do mellow out a bit and you covered a lot of that. I don't mean to have you cover it again. I'm just- I'm just reflecting on- 

Susan: You know, I just- I just wanted to add something in about being around elders, because I think it's also so important for combating ageism. [Meg: Yes, yes.] You know, because if you think of older people as being in some other world, you know, it's like another- another planet or something, you know, then you're going to hold onto your ageism, that older people are weird, or, you know, they've disappeared or they're not interesting or something. If you can have intergenerational groups, and really get to know each other, that is just great, and that- so that's one of the ways of combating ageism too. 

Meg: It is. Intergenerational groups, I mean- oh, we need more of that. And more that, especially, in a day and age of such reliance on technology, you know, and- and not to be put to pasture because we don't catch on to technology as- as fast as my three-year-old granddaughter, maybe, but in terms of cultivating healthier emotions, that's- that's a lot. I mean, that is- that is unstoppable in terms of the benefits to the human body and to societies as well, that cultivation. So, I think we're happiest at this stage. I'm going to go over that. I like that very- I'm sticking with it.  

Susan: However, there is still a lot of ageism. And a lot of, you know, internalized ageism, and that's the worst, is when we think of ourselves, you know, in less positive terms. We think that, you know, younger people won't want to talk to us because we're boring. [Meg: Are we…] Yeah, that kind of thing, or we’re- we think that we’re over the hill and we can't really do anything. And so, you know, I think that's so important too, because, you know, those studies by Becca Levy show that people that- that- that have more positive internalized views of being older, they actually live seven and a half years longer - it's another seven and a half - but it's so fascinating because she was able, you know, to- to take people who- who answered questions about what they thought about aging, starting when they were little kids, and follow them over the years, and then she was able to take that and add it to another sample. And- and then- and- and also look at death statistics, and she was actually able to prove that people who, years earlier, had said more positive things about aging, and aging people actually lived seven and a half years longer. I mean, when those studies came out, that really rocked the aging world, I mean, that was- that's pretty amazing. So, it shows how important our views of aging people are too. And that's another reason to get together with people like you. [Meg: And you.] Yeah.  

Meg: Seven and a half years longer. Yeah, Levy’s team found that older people who even rejected age stereotypes were less likely to develop Alzheimer's. I remember that that came out.   

Susan: That’s another study. [Meg: Yeah.] Or to have heart attacks. [Meg: Right.] That's another part of her work. 

Meg: Self perceptions of aging, ridding yourself of ageist beliefs, this is right up there, in my book, with meditation, the yoga, the breathing techniques, the releasing of tension, the developing of the interoceptive awareness, that- here's a one quote in your book here: “Levy’s team found that positive self-perceptions of aging increase longevity more than low blood pressure, low cholesterol, BMI, non-smoking, or exercise.” And- oh, and then, how many times have we been beat up about our BMI? You know, it's a synthesis like, let's let go of that one right away, so, I'm all for it. Oh my God. [Susan: Right.] There's a call to action here, really, you know, a call to action just for all of society, like you said, for- for people to drop the ageist, the internalized ageist, and just like we don't want to internalize an oppressor mentality of any kind. So, taking on this kind of freer, more liberated, happier self-talk in life, re-envisioning ourselves in a way, forgetting these negative stereotypes. Did the women in your- in all of your interviews, did they do that better in a group, or one-on-one? Did they join classes to learn that? How did they go about improving this inner self-talk? 

Susan: Well, the people in- the people I interviewed were just regular folks. [Meg: Okay.] I think maybe that wasn't clear in the book. They were just regular folks, friends of mine, colleagues, neighbors, you know, people I interviewed. And you know, they ranged in age from like 59 to 91. So, I just wanted to learn more about aging from them. [Meg: Mm-hmm.] They weren't actually- they weren't actually working on themselves necessarily. You know, some were.  

Meg: Yep, so they weren't all equating aging with degradation, falling apart, I mean, there was a range of attitudes then in what you saw.  

Susan: Absolutely. And for the most part, you know, every single one of them said things have gotten better, as I've gotten older.  

Meg: I love that. Do people realize their own gifts more, as well, your own gifts, your own unique talents? There always seems to be a search for that, you know. 

Susan: I think that's one of the most important things that we can do, as we get older, is to not stop. You know, it used to be that at age 65, you would retire, and then you just, like, you'd want to be at the pool, or be on the golf course or something. Well, of course, we've added 30 years to our lifespan, you know, in the last century, so, if we retire at 65, we have another 30 years. [Meg: It can be so-] So I think that you can have a- you can have a whole other life, and I, you know, I'm writing a book, I've got a friend who's writing songs, I've got another friend who, who moved to Nicaragua with her husband. And moved to Nicaragua with her- with her husband to, you know, to work with a community in the jungle. [Meg: That’s wild. That's great.] Yes. Yeah. So, you know, there's a whole other chapter. And so, that's- that's one of the main things, I think, is to know that you can keep on developing new identities. There's no reason we have to stop.  

Meg: That’s a lot- that's a beautiful thing to remind yourself of. You- you also write in the book that, I think, when Gloria Steinem turned 84, you know, people said “Now, who are you passing the torch to?” and she said, “I'm still holding the torch, what are you talking about?” it's very- something like that. 

Susan: “I'm still holding it and you can light your torch from mine.” 

Meg: Yeah, she said take that, so, continue to understand-  

Susan: And that’s exactly right, she's still holding that, and she's still illuminating her way forward. [Meg: Oh, I know. Very much so.] Right. The other- the other image I like so much, that helps me in getting older, is we've had this image of the, sort of- the lifespan as like this. [Meg: Oh, the arc.] This is not a happiness curve. No, this is the opposite. This is, you know, that you reach sort of your peak, you know, in middle age, and then it's downhill, you slide down the other side, you know, into this despairing old age. And if we can dump that image of the arc, which is all over the culture, [Meg: All over the place.] all over art. It's all over everywhere. We can dump that image. And Ed Diener, who is, you know, one of the positive psychologists, he’s suggesting- he suggested substituting for that a- an upward spiral, an upward spiral with many different trajectories. [Meg: Fantastic. Yeah.] You know, and what trajectories do you see for yourself? 

Meg: Yeah, I'd love that image much more. I think it- the arc is so reinforced in the medical linguistics. Men are told 30 on, they're losing their stamina, their testosterone. Women are told the certain age you have nothing but ovarian failure. I mean, the- the languages, it's laced with all sorts of things that say, your body's not a miracle. Your body is just in a state of death and dying its whole life. And in ridding ourselves of that kind of ageism language, it's pervasive in medical lingo but it's also- it's pervasive, I think, in just how we look at sales and marketing language, whether it's on Instagram or it's on TikTok - who are the social influencers right now, and are we really meant to buy things from a 12-year-old who’s pushing makeup products on Instagram? So, this is- there has to be an active counterpart that’s- yes, your book launches a lot of it but is also shows greater positivity and emotional steadiness and readiness throughout. So, I just- a call to action here for people to come forward and join you in this embodied stance in life. It's really exciting for me, really exciting. 

Susan: Yes, it's very exciting for me too. Because we, you know, we have the- we have the chance to revise our vision, you know, and- and really write a new vision, ourselves, for aging. I mean, we have- our- particularly my- my group, the baby boomers, I mean we worked on all kinds of inequality. We've worked on, you know, sexual inequality, and- and racial inequality, and disability inequality, but age inequality, you know, that sort of is a [Meg: The next frontier.] wide open place. It's the next frontier. And so, let's try to re-vision aging as, you know, this upward spiral. 

Meg: But just going to buy a birthday card for somebody. You have to stand at that counter a long time. I've got a friend turning 75, and just to find an upbeat birthday card- every card was an ageist slam of some kind, a derogatory- it was exhausting. I thought, no, I'm not going to bend to these. Okay, that one is kind of funny, but I'm not going to go with it. How do I actually find something else here? You know, this is- 

Susan: It’s really a problem because [Meg: It's a problem.] the ones that are supposed to be upbeat are all about, you know, getting- getting drunk together.  

Meg: Yeah. Or losing your way home or- exactly. I know it. Amazing, but it is true. This is the next frontier, then, for compassionate equitable response. I teach neurobiology too in our masters in integrative health, and there's this part of the brain, anterior cingulate, it's one of my favorite parts, and it's like, it's the kind that discerns, and it's always monitoring your environment, and it's always kind of on alert for that. In other words, it can judge, it can judge good, bad, high value, low value, and the flip side of it is that it also self-judges high criticality, high- poor self-regard at the same time. And so, what I notice in teaching people more discernment is that you have to teach them more self-compassion at the same time, in order to balance out this work, and that it is- it’s said that expression of fullness in the body has to be measured with a big dose of self-compassion too, as you say- 

Susan: Absolutely, but it- it- but that- that- the ACC, I mean, is part of the interoceptive network. [Meg: It is, isn't it? Yeah.] It is, it is, and it's there to take these sensations and to decide, you know, what's the value of these? are the- is it good? Is it bad? Is this sensation coming up? Should I pay attention to it? Shouldn't I? So, it's very- it's a very critical part. But it's critical in both ways. I mean, it's critical also for maintaining our survival. So, if I- if you kind of think about that, oh, here's my ACC, doing its thing. It's trying to decide what's good for me, what isn't. 

Meg: It is, I can feel it. There's this little experiment I do with students. We gather six of them in a circle, and we say, we're just going to throw the ball back and forth to each other. It's an old experiment. It was done on college students years ago. And you say, I'm just going to throw it randomly, to anybody, and you throw it randomly to anybody else in the circle. However, there's a trick to this. You collude with one of them beforehand, and you say, I'm just going to throw it to you, and you throw it to me after about two throws, and if they were all hooked up on functional MRI at that point, it would be flashing. The ACC would be going nuts, especially the dorsal branch, because they'd say, I'm left out. What is this? Nobody likes me. How come they’re not throwing the ball to me? I'm noticing. I'm noticing, I'm noticing. I'm left out. I don't belong. ACC and the dorsal aspect also looks at belonging and the heavy judgment that you lay upon yourself. So, God, I think I would love to see groups formed and study this book and have a book club about it because they would have a sense of belonging and a cheerful high self-regard from just sharing these- these new secret pleasures of an aging body and so, it's just- it's just something I can get pretty excited about, okay. [Susan: I can get excited about it too.] [Both laugh] Well, we've been throwing- I've been throwing all sorts of questions at you, and I'm sorry I jumped all over the place, Susan, I promised to try to stay with one theme at a time, and-  

Susan: I don't want you to stay with one thing at one time. I mean, I know all this stuff. I like- I like some new information coming in, these have been good questions. I really enjoyed talking with you about this. 

Meg: Oh, perfect. Here we are, two women in our 70s talking and having fun about what brings us joy, and I wish, I wish that blessing on people of all ages right now, the ease and ability to just be with that. You know, that is- that is the gift of your book, and I have so enjoyed working with you and talking with you tonight.  

Susan: Oh, I have- I have totally enjoyed this, and it really has expanded- expanded me.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  

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