Soaring: Using what your body knows

to make your later years your best years

 

by Gail Steinberg

 

Written by a 193-year-old woman and filled with insights and practically true stories, Soaring is a guide for resourceful seniors on to how to answer the questions that become relevant only when we’re over 60.

 

The first book to combine concerns about the normal challenges of aging with ways to use the body to optimize change, it’s a new approach to positive aging providing operating instructions for D.H. Lawrence’s idea that, “the blood and flesh is wiser than the intellect. The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive to the depths of our souls, in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos.” 

 

Offering cues for exploring intense feelings, expressing the unexpressed, and looking at the world differently, soaring is organized around questions that only became relevant when we are over 60 (how priorities change when you’re running out of time; why ecstatic sex gets easier; how to build deeper connections; why finding faith becomes more appealing; how to face your own death, etc.) It is aimed for the subgroup of the 76.4 million people over 60 who are looking for more meaning in life. Each chapter looks at a question designed to provoke, to teach release and to inspire you to love your aging body as you may never have before. Discovering deeper meaning comes naturally when we wake up buried parts of ourselves, uncover hidden memories, loosen knots, connect with the universal energy all living things share, and make joy a priority. It’s time to take pleasure in our strengths, to be audacious and outrageous when it feels right, and to tell ourselves, “Yes, I can have this. I’m worth it.” The feeling that this is the only time I have and I’d better not waste it, is what makes it so important to learn from our bodies while we still can and to answer the questions only we can answer.

 

• Get the facts and the latest research about how aging changes our bodies, brains, and emotions, about activating intuition through movement, and about what our bodies know.
   

• Learn through stories about life-changing events that prove how “our bodies never lie.”
   

• Overcome your sedentary life with “Now Try this:” A collection of open-ended exercises to help you use your own accumulated experiences, provoke new perceptions, and answer your personal questions about how to most fully enjoy your last years.

 

Soaring is for you if you are part of:

 

• The baby-boomer market: Values of self-determination and infinite possibility are so thoroughly entrenched in boomers that we naturally look for new ways to improve our lives. 76.4 million people over 60 are alive today and looking for more meaning in life. In 2017, half of the U.S. adult population will be 50 and older and control 70 percent of the disposable income, according to data tracker Nielsen. By 2050, there will be 161 million 50-plus consumers, a 63 percent increase over 2010. 58% of sales are to women. 38 million women belong to the National Association of Baby Boomer Women. Spending by this group is up 45% in the last 10 years. (Bureau of Labor statistics)

 

• Body/mind/spirit market: 44 million Americans are “Cultural Creatives”; they are mostly upper-middle class, college-educated, intelligent, idealistic, spiritual, and ecologically minded. (Source: a study by the market research firm American Lives, examined in detail in sociologist Paul Ray’s book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World.) “Inner Directeds” is another name for a similar demographic, which contains individuals who demand authenticity, enjoy mastering new ideas, are considered thought leaders and are high-income trendsetters who often drive shopping trends (Source: Stanford Research Institute). Americans spend over $27 billion per year on alternative medicine and related goods and services. (Source: Time Magazine) According to the Book Industry Study Group, 92.3 million books were sold in the Body/Mind/Spirit category in 1999.
   

There is no other book that presents dance as a means to aging better. Books on aging rarely mention dance. Books on dance rarely mention aging. Combining aging with dance will entice readers with an interest in aging and appeal to older readers with an interest in dance.