It is being proven that people who have one or more good friends are in better health than those who have only casual acquaintances or no friends. There are many studies showing the positive benefits of friendship on social, emotional and physical well-being. Having a strong circle of friends can be a good boost for ageing hearts and can help the body’s autoimmune system resist disease.

Casual friendships can help, but one very close friend can do so much to help relieve stress and depression as a close friendship provides emotional support as friends are relied on to give comfort, help and to share and inform each other of things that are happening in their lives.

In addition to emotional support, friendship can help enrich a person’s physical, mental and social health and help us adjust to changes through the rewarding and challenging times of life.
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In our conversation comments this month we would love to hear from you about your experience with a friendship or friendships – are they important and do you have a story to tell?

What are the consequences of the choices we make in life – does the quality of whatever we have chosen to engage with affect other people or do they just affect ourselves personally?  What is the full impact on the many relationships we live with daily if we live irresponsibly?

If responsibility pertains just to the self, are we then responsible for what we choose to associate with, who we choose to surround ourselves with, what we choose to give our attention to, even what we choose to fill our minds with? In honestly looking into how our choices can have a significant effect on the way we express and relate to others, we can see the impact of how the life we lead will impact on all others around us.

There are so many questions for everyone to personally ponder on, with utmost responsibility, we can also ask ourselves the question, does the quality of whatever we have chosen to engage with affect other people?

Very simply, there are two ways we can choose to live responsibly; either we can live with an energy that carries the quality of love, equality and harmony with all, which could be defined as a ‘good’ type of energy, or conversely, an energy that carries the quality of harm, imposition and separation, which could be defined as a ‘bad’ type of energy.
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Once we get our heads around the truthful fact that how we express, act and think, carries an energetic quality that is either harming or healing, we can begin to understand the enormity of the responsibility that lays with each and every one of us in the way we express in our daily lives.

We invite you to join our conversation and share what responsibility means to you.

Healthy Living and Wellbeing – what do these words reflect to us ?

Last month we launched our new Health and Wellbeing page on the Website with some great articles and this month we are adding in new articles to provide you with the chance to discern the concepts of Health and Wellbeing and how they impact on your life.
 
How can we define Health and Wellbeing? How do we achieve it? What does it look like?
 
Can we define healthy living as the actions and strategies we put into place to achieve optimal health? Are healthy living and wellbeing two different concepts?
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We need to look at how we are living and to be aware of everything that we do and all the choices that we make that will have an effect on our overall wellbeing and health.
 
This month’s topic of conversation continues with us unravelling what it means to enjoy true wellbeing in a healthy body. The comments posted have already started to delineate the difference between the two concepts, so please join our conversation topic to further develop our understanding.
 
                     We invite you to join the Conversation and share your comments.

​STILLNESS . . .  Turning my focus inwards, connecting to my breath and to ‘me’, became the beginning of an intimate and beautiful relationship with myself.
 
Our conversation topic for this month is continuing to explore STILLNESS and what effect, if any, it can have on our bodies.  Our focus articles for this month are Reaction, Anxiousness or Stillness and Building an Intimate Relationship with Myself.
 
These articles pose two questions for our readers to explore and comment on in the Join a Conversation.
 
Q:   Is it possible to develop an intimate relationship with one’s self by surrendering, to a deeper depth, to the feeling of stillness, tenderness and delicateness within our body?
 
Q:  Is it possible that when we choose gentleness and stillness over rushing and the busyness of our lives that our body reflects this choice in both our health and well-being?
 
We invite our readers to join in with our conversation topic and share with us all what stillness means to you in answer to the questions we have posed.  Can surrendering to stillness lead to a more intimate relationship with your self and can it contribute positively to our health and well-being?
 
Let the conversations continue . . .  

 STILLNESS . . . is there a deeper depth to feeling the stillness within then just stopping for a moment to recover from our busyness?  This month our Conversation Topic is presenting us with the opportunity to explore how important it is for us to really feel into, and connect more deeply with, our inner being.  As our feature article on Stillness tells us: ‘Stillness offers spaciousness. In that space I become aware of the beauty in harmony. I know that harmony creates a true foundation from which to live and breathe and any disharmony may affect this. In our busy-ness we can lose that sense of harmony.’
 
How many of us are as Jane expresses it: "I am aware too that embracing stillness is not always my way and that like Christopher Robin I say 'Busy, back soon' to stillness, allowing the human-being to be over-ridden by the human-doing'?
 
We invite our readers to join in with our conversation topic and share with us all what stillness means to you and, if you have gone into that deeper connection and feeling of stillness in your body, we would all love to read of your experiences.
 
Let the conversations begin . . . 

Adele’s article on the Joyful Ageing page has brought up many questions for our Joy of Ageing team and we felt it was a valuable topic of conversation for us to pursue this month.  We trust the following questions will stimulate the discussion around ‘Being Honest About my Age.’
 
As woman, have we ever been really transparent about our age? Is there a tendency of not wanting to tell others our age? Why do we like to hide ‘how old’ we are in years? Are we so locked into what society and the media tell us that we have to look like, and to be, at a certain age?  
 
Many women are concerned with how others will react when we tell them how old we are. Do we feel uncomfortable when we are not honest about telling our age? Is this because we feel age controls how I should be living as in "Am I living my life, or a life that someone else is asking me to live?” 
 
 If we are able to accept and claim whatever age we are at, we are not at the mercy of others’ reactions. When we receive comments such as: “You are not young anymore” which translates to “Don’t you even know that?” or “Act your age!” do we realise this attitude comes from the social conditioning of the stereotype of ageing?
 
Is it possible that we can be truly honest and transparent about our age, when we live fully and are true to ourselves, whatever our age, and not according to any external idea of who or what we should be?
 
 We invite you to and share your comments on this topic. Let the Conversation begin . . .

In our conversation page this month we would like our readers to explore the question 'Is gentle exercise good for your body?'   We invite you to share with us your experiences over the years of gym memberships and exercise programs that have, or have not worked, for you both physically and emotionally.
 
The latest article posted to our Exercise Pages, My Commitment to Exercising – Quality not Quantity stimulated much conversation between members of our team.  How often have we been told that we need to exercise harder and longer for it to be beneficial to our body and well-being? Perhaps the tide is turning and there is now more evidence that this need not be the true way of exercising to promote a fit and healthy body in our elder years.
 
Is it worth considering:
      Is it really necessary to go through the pain and stress that exercise programs are
      mostly founded on OR is it possible to enjoy an exercise program, one that has
     all the benefits and results of a hard and fast routine but in a gentler, calmer way?
 
This is a very important topic for everyone, especially for us in our elder years. You may like to visit the exercise page to read more articles from our writers on their experiences with exercise.
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 Let the conversation begin. . .

 In our Join a Conversation Topic we will explore relationships, the role our choices play and the joy of connecting with others in a range of differing relationships.
 
We don’t have to be in a partnership or marriage, to be in a ‘relationship’. In fact, we are always in relationship with others in everything that we do. Most people have a myriad of relationships as they move through the different stages of their lives – with parents, step parents, grandparents, close family members, siblings, baby sitters, friends, teachers, lovers, partners, work colleagues, shop keepers, service providers, etc., not to mention those relationships we have with our pets!
 
Both sides of the relationship come with a set of expectations, learned ideals and beliefs about what the relationship entails.
 
When we look around us, we see very few ‘relationships’ that are true. By ‘true’, we mean blossoming, with each party being full and vital and naturally themselves.
Is it worth considering that in many of our relationships both parties:

• Find themselves holding back and waiting to see what the other is going to bring, before measuring out what each will give to the relationship
• Hold themselves closed and somewhat distant until it is proven that it is safe to let down their guard
• Find themselves not opening up and letting the other see all that they are –  their true essence.

 
It is great to stop and observe – what is it that we bring to our relationships? Is it fair to say that each person really does want to have a genuine relationship with others and to be seen for who they truly are?
 
We invite your comments to start this conversation on:
Making the most of our Relationships - Is there another way to be in relationships, which is respectful for self and others and which allows us to retain the essential ‘me’.
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                                                         Let the conversation begin . . . 

After reading the latest article, Taking Responsibility for my End of Life Decisions in our Death and Dying page, we felt that this was a most important topic that needed to be shared on our Join a Conversation page.  Is it important that we discuss with our families and friends how we want to be cared for when we can no longer care for ourselves?  Is it also important that we make our wishes known how and where we want to be buried? These questions are just some that are designed to get us talking about whether we do have a responsibility to plan our end of life decisions.
 
Is it worth considering? 

• Through opening up the conversation, is it possible that we can start honouring the dying process so that it is not a taboo subject that makes everyone uncomfortable and reluctant to discuss it?
•  If you were in a position where you were no longer deemed able to make medical decisions for yourself due to dementia or cognitive impairment of some sort, do you want medicine to be used just to keep you alive or only to keep you comfortable? 
•  These are important decisions, yet how many of us have taken the time to consider how we would like to be cared for, were we no longer capable of managing our own situation?
• If we don’t make it our personal responsibility, are we being selfish to leave these decisions to our loved ones?

 
Please share your thoughts and opinions on a matter that can affect everyone regardless of age or of their health and well-being status
 
Let the conversation begin. . . .

​Do you find that the idea of caring for yourself first rarely enters your mind? Or perhaps you hear the voice that says others will think you are selfish or uncaring if you take care of yourself first!
It’s amazing how simply thinking about caring for ourselves can bring up so many uncomfortable feelings of guilt, shame or being judged, to name but a few.

Many of us have been brought up to believe that self care is selfish and that:

• It is our role, or duty, to care for others and that we have to make sure others’ needs are met first.
• We should sacrifice our needs for the sake of others because others deserve our care more than we do.
• Self-care is an occasional treat, when everyone else has been taken care of.

​Is it worth considering?
    Maybe, the truth of self-care is the opposite of what we have been raised to believe – that it is not an indulgence?
    It is actually selfish not to self care, and that by caring for ourselves we are much more able to care for others?
    If we choose the path of true self care we will find out just how tender, gentle and precious we innately are – a true honouring of being a Man or a Woman?
    That there is a relationship between self-care, health and wellbeing?
 
We invite your comments to start this conversation on:
Is it selfish to care for yourself?
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Share with us just how your upbringing has influenced how you have or have not cared for yourself over the years. Have you considered that there are new choices that we can make to bring more self care into our lives?

Let the conversation begin . . . ​