About Four Savvy Sassy Septuagenarians now Four Awesome Octogenarians
Once upon a time there were four septuagenarians: Shelah Wilgus, Lora Woods, Joan Virginia Allen and Joyce Faber. We met at a Restorative Exercise™ movement class in Ventura, California, taught by biomechanist, Katy Bowman. In our careers, Shelah was a graphic artist; Lora was a nurse and movement therapist; Joan was an elder law and estate planning attorney; and Joyce was a teacher.
Each of us had health issues affecting our quality of life and we were concerned about how we were aging. As a result of the classes, almost immediately we noticed significant changes in how we moved. We were getting better even as we were aging. We were struck by the logic of Katy’s movement program and the science supporting it. Each of us became certified Restorative Exercise Specialists™ through a six-month training with Katy and we began teaching in various venues.
About the Book
Two plus years after we first met, we decided to get together monthly to write a book about our experiences. We called ourselves the Four Savvy, Sassy Septuagenarians and our meetings Soup & See’s (dark chocolates) because that was the menu! We presented our idea to Katy and the result became our book, Dynamic Aging, published March of 2017. Katy wrote the science and we shared our firsthand experiences.
We thought our health issues were the result of aging. For example, in our book, Lora talks about her restless leg syndrome completely disappearing and a knee replacement surgery that was avoided. Joyce shares that she was facing knee and neck surgery – neither of which has been necessary. Shelah talks about her choice to stop driving and walk everywhere and how she was able to cope with an injury as a result of learning Katy’s work and practicing it. My chronic constipation of more than 50 years disappeared and I was able to do away with my orthotics and walk barefoot again after 20 years. And so much more.
What we learned was that our pain and lack of mobility were not due to our age. They were due to our habits. As our book asks “What if changing how you move can change how you feel no matter your age?”
About Katy
From our book: “Part biomechanist, part science communicator, and full-time mover, Katy Bowman has educated hundreds of thousands of people on the role movement plays in the body and in the world. Blending a scientific approach with straight talk about sensible, whole-life movement solutions, her website and award-winning podcast, Katy Says, reach hundreds of thousands of people every month, and thousands have taken her live classes.”
To us, she is just Katy – our teacher and treasured friend.
About the Blog
Katy wraps up Dynamic Aging in the last two sentences of the book by explaining “why movement needs to play a large role in our life. It’s not so that we can age dynamically, but so that we can live dynamically.” We would suggest it is for both reasons – so we can dynamically age for as long as we live and live dynamically for as long as we age. Thus the name of our blog Dynamic Aging 4 Life. In September 2017, I started the blog to track the on-going activities of we Four as we continue aging dynamically.
Dynamic Aging is about change. Over the past four years, each of we Four have gone through a variety of changes that I have tracked in the blog posts. In 2020, I checked in with Shelah, Joyce and Lora to see how they were doing during the pandemic.
Dynamic Aging Interviews
In October 2021, I was interviewed by Roland Denzel, the Director of Marketing for Propriometrics Press, publisher of our book, Dynamic Aging. We talked about changing the paradigm of aging, living dynamic aging and our Journey of Self-Discovery.
In May 2022, Katy did a podcast with we four co-authors of the book Dynamic Aging: Simple Exercises to Whole Body Mobility, celebrating the 5-year anniversary of its publication. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we were all together again.
About the Future
Going forward, the focus of the blog posts has expanded along with my focus on life going forward. The focus is still on dynamic aging and what that looks like. For me, I am combining two of my passions in life – physical movement and life movement which includes physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. As a certified professional dynamic aging life coach, I am partnering with people as they seek to explore, discover and create their individual ways of dynamic aging, finding what it is they want going forward and what may be getting in their way. Check out my Testimonials to see what others are experiencing. And, be sure to check out the adventures of my husband, Willis and I as we traveled and completed our Journey of Self-Discovery.