When David Wilson was in his 50’s he believed all sorts of stories around what his age meant about his physical capabilities. Now David is a leader in the movement and anti-ageism communities. Today he shares his ideas on how to have a thoughtful and productive movement practice as we age, and how to let go of our own agist narratives. If you are struggling with the idea of getting older, this episode is for you!
When David Wilson was in his 50’s he believed all sorts of stories around what his age meant about his physical capabilities. Now David is a leader in the movement and anti-ageism communities. Today he shares his ideas on how to have a thoughtful and productive movement practice as we age, and how to let go of our own agist narratives. If you are struggling with the idea of getting older, this episode is for you!
Link for David:
https://www.instagram.com/oldscoolmoves/
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https://www.mollysider.com/contact-us
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Sure. They tell us exercise is an important key to a long and happy life, but does anyone out there ever feel like it's a burden? If you've never thought of yourself as an athlete, it can be hard to start and often even harder to stick with it. Not to mention all the messages were sent about what a healthy body should look like.
Cue the muscular 20 somethings half naked, hanging from the pull-up bars. So what do we do if we're feeling intimidated, discouraged, or just too old to start now?
Welcome to I Am This Age, the podcast proving you are never too old to make a big change. I'm Molly Sider, your host, a certified professional life coach and real life change maker in my forties. When David Wilson was in his fifties, he had all sorts of stories about his age and what that meant for his physical capabilities.
And now he's a leader in the movement and anti ageism communities. And today he shares his answers to all of those questions. Plus what's important, what's not important, and how to let go of our age. Narratives. But before we get started, I wanted to mention that I am currently taking clients. So if you wanna work with me on changing something in your life through identity revealing stories, click the link in the show notes, press send, and I'll reach out to you with the next steps.
You have to take the first step and I will take care of the rest. Okay, now on to the episode.
My name is David Wilson. You might actually know me as under my Instagram handle, which is old school moves. I'm 63 years old and I'm a movement guide. And an anti ageism advocate.
David was a high school English teacher for a long time, and back then not so athletic. While he recognized the importance of being active, he had trouble finding an activity he really enjoyed. He would try something for a month, then quit, then try something new, then quit that. Sound familiar? . Eventually David came across martial arts, which stuck for a while because he enjoyed the community, but David's also competitive.
So competitive that he was comparing himself to other students and mentally beating himself up if he couldn't do something that they could to the point where he began to have knee problems.
It was then that David's instructor gave subtle suggestions that perhaps David was a bit too old for this kind of martial art, but his instructor wasn't the only person giving David this message. The other students were too, and soon he began to feel excluded from that community. He had once loved all because of the perception that he was too old.
David, like many of us already had his own story about what. age meant about him, and this experience only fed that story. So how did David change that narrative?
So I was at a point where I'm 55 years old. I have a huge fear of certain things as I grow older, which now I realize were based largely on myths, but I didn't then.
So I had this image of myself old in a home somewhere, decrepit, senile disoriented. Lost, unloving, un cared for in a hallway somewhere. And this was the image I had and I thought, okay, I, I wanna put off that for as long as I possibly can. So I have to find something else to do to try to keep myself active and in completely by accident.
I fell into the most wonderful of studios where were cognizant of my age, but my age didn't really matter. And they begin to challenge me with my own stories about myself, especially around my own perceived inadequacy and some of the perfectionists, and in all honesty, rather cruel attitudes that I was bringing toward myself.
So, Through just the way that they were in that studio. They transformed my practice from one of almost constant self-critique in a really negative way. So I never said anything positive to myself or very, very seldom. They transformed that constant critiquing to being more curious about what I can do with my body, how my body is changing, how I'm changing, and also to find ways to be compassionate toward myself.
So now my entire practice and the way that I teach is built around those two principles. Curiosity, because curiosity is a non-judgmental form of inquiry. So when I'm curious about something, it's not, I'm doing it right. It's not, I'm not doing it right. It's what can I discover here? What is interesting to me?
What might I like to explore further? Or do I want to explore this further? It's a really non-judgmental way for me to be in the world, and compassion grows out of that. The less judgment I bring to my practice, the easier it is to not be judgmental of myself in my practice, and in fact not be judgmental of myself in my life, and as a side benefit to be far less judgmental of other people, the people around me.
So it's, it's like, I would say the key to my movement practice really wasn't the movement at all, . It was the change in mindset, which has just led to incredible growth. So some of the things that I would've said to myself, I can't do this. I caught myself and said, well, where is that coming from? Maybe I can, is it that I, I'm afraid of looking stupid, or I'm afraid of looking incompetent?
Who cares whether I look stupid? Who cares whether I look incompetent? I want to see whether I can do this. As I had one success after another in this domain, uh, it, it became easier to simply recognize that little devil on my shoulder saying, no, you're too old. Don't do this. Don't even try and, uh, say, no, no, no.
I don't need you little devil on my shoulder. Go away. Let's actually give it a try. And more often than not, I might not have been able to do it right away, but that just told me, okay, you're doing something that's worthwhile, that you're not going to get right away, and you're going to get something out of that learning process.
Um, and, you know, there are some things that I really try to do that, you know, maybe I won't ever be able to do, but it's the process where I'm actually learning something about myself and how I encounter that challenge, which I find immensely more valuable than the way that I was treating myself before.
, I love the piece about curiosity. I often talk about curiosity. you know, we're human and so we have judgements. We're gonna make judgments, but I try to catch myself and, I'm always just trying to stay curious rather than in judgment.
And it really, creates so much more compassion, just in general, and it's like a softer way of going through life. It really makes everything a bit more enjoyable, in my opinion, in my, in my experience,
And it humani. It humanized me to myself. And it humanized other people to me as well. So the minute I became more curious about other people, all of a sudden magical thing happened. They became individuals rather than, and with just as rich lives, just as interesting lives, just as important lives as my life, and rather than representatives of whatever group or whatever othering tendency my mind brought to that encounter.
So it really helped humanize me toward other people and humanize other people. For me, it's, it's been just a tremendous experience where it's, it's far easier for me to actually connect with other people than it had been for me previously.
Yeah. That's amazing. And I'm curious how, because it's one thing to, put this into practice or to know that this is your practice and talk about it now, but how did you get from the previous state of mind and your mentality to now this state of staying curious, being able to remind yourself to stay curious, noticing when you are in judgment versus staying curious.
What did that transition look like?
I, I think it's just been a question of practice, I'm going to notice what's going on in my body. I'm going to cultivate awareness and presence in the moment, rather than being stuck in some kind of narrative from the past or some kind of nebulous and often meaningless hope about the future.
Can I just be aware and cultivating that awareness in the moment? Noticing, noticing has been so important for me and that is very useful for me to notice when I'm not noticing, because that's what , I know that sounds really silly, but when I notice that I'm not noticing it means that I'm stuck in a story somewhere.
That I'm actually somewhere else. So, the practice of curiosity and noticing what I'm not noticing the, you know, the more I practice it, the more I get better at it. That's the simple answer anyway.
David was growing both physically and mentally from his experience at the studio. The owners of the studio liked David too, so much so that one of the owners, her name is Catalina, became a kind of mentor for David and eventually offered him an opportunity to teach at the studio. During this time, David had also started his now very well followed Instagram account at old school, moves old cool moves, get it to give representation to older people being athletic who weren't necessarily athletic in their youth.
But what kind of things does a person learn in this kind of a class? I'm in my mid forties and consider myself active. So how does this benefit someone like.
What I do in invites a sense of awareness, helps people understand things that they can be looking forward to judge whether they're working too hard for themselves or whether they're working not hard enough because that's a thing too.
And then we build on that over the weeks.
So my one and only rule is practice today in a way that makes you excited and eager and joyful of practicing again tomorrow. So practice a day in a way that really makes you want to practice again tomorrow and capable of it too. So if I go too hard, that means my body's going to be sore for a good number of days and I'm not going to want to practice again tomorrow.
But I also want to feel that I am growing and developing, so I have to be practicing hard. or I have to be practicing in ways that are challenging enough to me that are both challenging and nurturing for my body. Although that's a false dichotomy because sometimes the most nurturing thing that I can do for myself is to challenge myself, but sometimes it's also to back off. So that is basically how the program differs from maybe something else that you might see out there. That there really is an emphasis on developing self-awareness.
When I do a pushup, I need to be focusing on stabilizing my core. Whereas for somebody else, it might be, when I do a pushup, I need to work on keeping my shoulders away from my ears so that I can stabilize my shoulder. So recognizing for themselves what their their particular opportunity to build capacity might be, because it won't be the same for everybody.
So I know that an being an anti ageist is really important to you, and I'm curious, what role do you think ageism typically plays in how we move our bodies and how people teach us about moving our bodies?
Wow. What a fantastic question. I think that when we begin to encounter any ism, so whether we are beginning to understand a little bit about racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia, ageism. The, our first task is to begin to look at ourselves. And I have been, and in many ways still am quite ageist because I, I swim in a sea of ageism.
So ageism is I would say one of the last socially acceptable forms of discrimination. And to illustrate that just, go to your local drugstore and look at birthday cards and how many of them are about being over the hill. Or you see images of the little old lady, little old man with a cane all bent over, or talking about, you know, basically losing our minds.
So seniors moments, all of those things are based on stereotypes that are simply not true. So, frailty and. age are not the same thing. Frailty is, is is not in an inevitable aspect of old age. In fact, in Canada where I live people, first of all, 5% of the population is frail, period, no matter what age.
And, and that only increases to a maximum depending on the scale, you're looking at a maximum of about 20% for people, uh, 65 to 79 years old. So the vast majority of us simply will not become frail at all. And while frailty is a very common, a very, very common condition associated with age, it's also the most easily remedied.
Because so much of frailty has to do with lack of physical activity or engaging only in certain types of physical activities that don't really challenge our bodies in all of the ways that our bodies are simply. Designed, and I don't really like to talk about design, but in all of the ways that our bodies can move as a result of evolution.
So being willing to move our bodies a little bit more and maybe move our bodies in ways that they haven't moved for a long time is one of the things that can protect us from frailty and actually pull us back from the edge of frailty as we age. So the idea that there's nothing that I can do as I get older.
It's simply in most cases, not all cases wrong. And at the same point, I I, I, I want to emphasize too that there's a real mental thing around associating, oh, I have to be very, very physically capable in order to be happy as I age. Well, that's simply not true either. There are many, many, many ways to be happy with all sorts of different abilities within our bodies and mental abilities, so on and so forth.
So, all of this fear that we have around aging. If we could simply accept that there are many, many, many ways to be engaged and happy and contributing and nourished and nourishing within the world, then a lot of the terror around aging can dissipate. If we begin to see aging as simply a developmental process, the way that we look at developmental processes throughout the rest of our lives, if I'm given the permission to age in as many ways as I was given permission to be in my middle years, and as I was given permission to be young, why?
Especially when old age, depending on how you. Is from age 60 or 65, then on up, and peoples are living into their nineties now. That's a huge age range, surely. I am going to experience developmental changes as I go through that life stage. And why can't I be curious and interested in those as well, rather than fearing them?
So there's a big difference between adapting to change and fearing it. Fear typically paralyzes us. Whereas if I can still be curious about the changes that my body is going through, curious about the possibilities that that affords, then that gives me a way to still be engaged in my life up until the very end.
I hope to be really, really curious about the process of death when that comes to me as well. And I hope to be learning right up until the moment when I truly can learn no more.
I feel emotional after that answer. But when you just said that, staying curious even about the process of death it just made me think of my aunt when she was in hospice. She had pancreatic cancer and she was this really brilliant, very curious person up until her last, days.
I remember being with her in hospice and she was jaundice, so she was like, A greenish yellow color. And she would just like, but she would still sit up and com and talk to us and have conversations and like she was on so many drugs, so she would start to sort of slump over and it was always to like, she'd always lean to the same side, to the right, I think it was.
And she would just, every time and then she'd wake up and I remember noticing it, but I remember at some point just sitting in there with her and she kind of fell asleep and then she woke up again and she looked at me and she's like, the leaning thing is so interesting. I wonder what that's about,
exactly. And, and to see the change as something that still affords us opportunities in some way, shape or form. So with all stages of life, with all stages of life, there are things that we lose, but there are also things that we gain at all stages. of life, and yet the narrative around old age, certainly, you know, the, the, the stereotypes are all about loss, all about loss, and that's simply not true.
I'm, I'm sure that you're aware of the whole idea of the ur of happiness, that in fact people are happier at the beginning and the ends of their lives then in their middle years for all sorts of reasons. And, and to think that that happiness for old people or older people or olders is Ashton Applewhite would say herself
Side note. Ashton Applewhite is the author of the book, this Chair Rocks, where she talks a lot about what David is explaining. I also happen to interview Ashton the week after David, so you'll get loads more about that in a couple of weeks. Anyway, moving on.
to think that that happiness for olders comes in spite of incredible, incredible prejudice and discrimination. That's really quite something.
Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking about that idea a lot just in the past few days. I think I'm 44, so I don't know, maybe I'm in the middle of my, I'm middle-aged, but it's been a rough few months, for a lot, loads of reasons. and I just keep having to remind myself , like, oh, I'm in the middle of it. This is the hardest part for a lot of people. It's really helpful to sort of zoom out and gain some perspective
Uh, and I think one of the gifts of age is I'm far more my own authentic self than I was. So I think the sooner that we can let go of some of the expectations that society would place upon us for example, Independence, whether it be financial or physical independence, and begin to see interdependence instead.
as I had to learn, stop comparing myself with others. Stop this wishful thinking,
and see the opportunity for connection, for happiness. And sometimes that's connection just with myself. What opportunity for connection and, happiness and enjoyment and joy is there right now.
Right now. So I, I was, I was in fact listening to a, a woman I follow on Instagram named Dr. Burise Berry. And, and she offered a really powerful. Way of cultivating that. Um, a very recent post in which she was suggesting is, what do you want in your life tomorrow that you actually have today so that you can feel gratitude toward that today, so that when you wake up tomorrow, you already wake up feeling gratitude for that thing.
So, are you grateful for the bed that you sleep in? Are you grateful for the sunshine that you wake up to? Are you grateful for having breakfast makings in your fridge? What, what are I grateful for today? I found it a really powerful practice for myself this morning when I was walking through my neighborhood.
What are all of the things that I'm really grateful for right now? . so that then when I wake up tomorrow, I can be grateful for those things. And it, sets me up to let go of a lot of the narratives around. I'm not enough, I don't have enough, I'll never be enough. I need to get somebody to fix me or buy something to fix myself.
Which is, the dominant narrative that I have lived with for my entire life. And that most of us who are living in the West are, I would say I would go so far as to say oppressed by.
What a beautiful way to. Access the idea and to understand and apply the idea of enjoying the journey because I, I think a lot of people talk about that, but it's really hard to, really apply and play out in your life. And that's sounds like such a, beautiful way to sort of simplify it.
I've read a lot of Eckert Tole and he's always talking about, you know, it's not the goal that we're after. It's the feeling that the goal will give us. So understanding that, how can you feel that feeling that you're after today and tomorrow? And I think that's such a beautiful idea.
And also sometimes a little hard to wrap your brain around and put into. And to apply it. To truly apply it, but what a beautiful way to do it.
I think it's hard if we think that we should only be grateful for big things.
Yeah.
But when I think about it, , I'm, I'm pretty grateful for a whole bunch of little things, you know, so I don't, I don't have to have won the lottery to be grateful. You know, I can be grateful for a whole bunch of little things.
And I think that this, this actually also plays out in the movement sphere where because of toxic fitness culture we have a tendency to focus on what we don't have, rather than what we do have when our bodies are constantly, constantly supporting us in so many ways, most of which we are not even aware of.
So that breath that I take the beating of my heart, my, my ability to grasp with my hands. all of these things. My body is a miracle that is supporting me all the time. And you know, one of the things that I, I in fact just said to uh, uh, a group of people that I was teaching this morning is our bodies want to do what we want them to do, but we also need to treat them as friends and maybe not expect them to do those things right away without care.
Attention preparation. So feeling grateful for the body I have, but also seeing it as a friend where I wouldn't necessarily expect a friend to drop everything and do exactly what I'm asking right now, but I would hope that the friend would really try over time. And that's what my body does over time.
It wants to do what I'm asking it to do. And it listens very carefully to what I say to it, which is kind of important because that means that I need to say nice things to it.
Well, this is great and it sounds super helpful as we're all working on aging successfully. Right, right.
So, so, so first of all, I really don't like the term successful aging because it, it places the burden of aging on the individual when in fact there are so many factors that are going to influence how we age. So, for example, I, I I come from a lower middle class background, but still as, as a white male.
I enjoy certain types of privileges that. You know, many people simply don't have. And certainly through my prof, my profession and my career, I was able to en enrich myself financially so that I was able to do things like go to a gym, like hire a trainer. And I don't need to decide whether I can eat or train , for example.
I don't need to make huge sacrifices in order to do what I'm doing, and I have the time to do it because of the income that I am able to bring in. So the idea of successful aging, I, I I, I, I really don't like if, if I wake up tomorrow and I'm a day older, I am aging successfully, period. Period. And it, it also suggests that there are only certain ways to age.
So, the 80 year old sky diver is deemed to be more successful at aging than the, the, the person who might be in the wheelchair. And well, why is that? You know, just how am I defining success anyway and what, what narrow mindedness am I bringing to that specific term?
Are you alive? Great. You are aging successfully. What a relief. One less thing to worry about everyone, but what if you want to move like David moves? Well, I'd start by following him on that Instagram account we were talking about where he went viral last summer and now has over 100,000 followers.
But David's Instagram videos are meant to show his journey and to just inspire and educate his followers. But as the old saying goes with a great social media following comes great responsibility or something like that.
There are lots of reasons why I can do the things that I do with my body. And one of them is that this is simply, it's my passion and, and I do it a lot. And, and so as somebody who, moves his body a lot, my. My capacity, my physical capacity is, is going to be different than somebody who maybe trains, once or once or twice a week for a half an hour.
My hope is that, people will realize that most interesting and nourishing thing and challenging.
To do is to move like them, not move like me, and to be curious about how they can move, because that's truly what my account is about. And, and I think where I'm proudest is when I show myself learning something where I normalize that process of being uncomfortable and maybe not looking particularly graceful or competent at it right away, but following that idea of I don't have to look competent. What is this need for me? to feel that everybody's looking at me and they're looking for competence all the time.
And I think letting go of that need for competence really opens up possibilities for us to still be doing things that we might be interested in. But if we're married to this idea of competence, then we're never gonna try anything new. And wow, what a sad existence that would be.
that's stressful. I mean, that's really what I'm trying to get to the bottom of here with this podcast is, Yes, you did all of these things and that's incredible. But it had to have been clunky along the way. Can you tell us what that looked like so that we know that it's okay to, change trying new things?
It's wobbly, it's scary, it's clunky, it's ugly sometimes and sometimes it doesn't work. , and that's all.
Okay.
yeah, and, and in fact now, now when I teach, I ask people to find the point where they are feeling awkward.
I
go to the point where you're feeling awkward. Go to the point where you're feeling just a little bit uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. And I don't mean physically uncomfortable.
I mean, kind of uncomfortable in my sense of do I know what I'm doing here? And go to that place because that's where the learning is and that's where the growth is. Otherwise, I'm just practicing what I already know. And that's kind of, sort of a bit, maybe not entirely a waste of time, but it's not as good a use of my.
as I could use it otherwise. So if I can use my time not only to get all of the joy of, of doing something that I feel that I'm already pretty good at, cuz you know, that's, that can be joyful as well. But can I also bring an element of, moving into areas of awkwardness and discomfort and developing a tolerance for that as well.
And I think that that also transfers into our lives beyond the practice space where if I can tame my feelings around discomfort, if I can tame my feelings around aversion. Maybe there's something really interesting there. If I go into spaces in conversations, for example, where, ooh, this is a little uncom.
but maybe there's something there that's going to teach me something about myself that might help me connect to this other person that, that is going to help me move through the world in a more skillful and compassionate and kind way. I think that we can learn a lot about how to be in the world through how we are with ourselves in the movement space.
Yes. I love that. . If someone over 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 and above wanted to start moving their body and exercising maybe for the first time, what advice would you give them?
Start , um, Um,
easy.
Let, yeah, I know. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a bit of a flip answer, isn't it? Because sometimes we start and we hurt ourselves because we have all of these crazy expectations that are left over from whatever we've experienced before. Right? So I would say go small. So if, if I haven't moved in a while, Ignore all of the guidelines out there around exercising for X number of minutes, X number of times a week.
Ignore them. Because remember that in my opinion, the only really important thing to cultivate is move today in a way that makes you eager, excited, interested, and capable of moving again tomorrow. So that might mean that you think of something, a way that you'd liked to move at some point in your life, any point in your life.
So maybe it was dancing, maybe it was walking, maybe it, maybe it was, you know, doing pushups, but you know, maybe don't do them on the floor. Maybe do them against the wall. Maybe you really liked calisthenics, maybe you really liked yoga, maybe you really liked swimming. Whatever it is, do it for five minutes.
Five minutes. and then assess how you feel the next day. Do you feel anxious, eager to go back to that thing and keep looking until you find a way of practicing that's going to make you want to practice? Because it's a movement habit. And what we really need to look toward building is the habit of movement.
So it's the building, the habit, and the joy of practice that is important.
Far more than any particular exercise, far more than any particular routine. Less than 17%. I think I might be lying there. It might be 17% of Americans meet the recommended weekly guidelines for exercise. And that is a failure. That is a failure of the fitness movement, wellness industry. And I think that it's very useful to ask ourselves, why is that, that I'm not moving?
Is that entirely my fault? Or is it because of expectations around movement that have been placed upon me?
Yeah.
part of my goal, , part of my goal is to dismantle that so that people want to practice. Because movement in our bodies, it releases all sorts of, I'm not going to get too technical here, but it releases all sorts of good things that make us feel good, that make us feel good in our bodies, that make us feel good, connected with other people.
That make, make us more aware of our environment, how we're moving through the environment, how we're interacting with other people, how we're interacting with ourselves, endorphins, adrenaline. These things make us feel good so that only 17% of people. Are regularly engaging in something that can make you feel so, so good. a problem and it, that's a problem that's worse. Interrogating and dismantling the things that prevent people from having that kind of eager, joyful practice.
Oh, yes. I had no idea it was that small of a percentage. That is a huge problem.
Mm-hmm.
Well, we've arrived at my favorite part when I make the guest reintroduce himself without descriptions like career or relationship status. After all, we are not our successes or our failures.
My name is David Wilson. I'm 63 years old. I am a curious and compassionate seeker who is hoping for the rest of his life to find all sorts of meaningful connections and relationships.
Where can people find you, um, say your Instagram handle again, and where else people can find you if they wanna work with you?
Instagram is really the best place to get in touch with me. So my account is at O l d s c o o l m o v e s, as in old cool moves because I actually think that old is being pretty cool.
I agree.
Oh man, I love David. What is smarty? Anyway, for me, that episode was about testing assumptions, staying curious, staying aware of yourself, finding your edge, noticing areas of awkwardness and discomfort, all really important things as we strive to get better and better at literally anything we do Also, no matter where we're at in our life, we are all successfully aging and what a privilege that.
If you enjoyed David as much as I did, you'll find a link to his Instagram account in the show notes and a link to share the episode with someone else you think might love to hear it. It takes about three seconds, and the bigger we grow, the more impactful guests will be able to get for you. So thanks for helping us.
Help you. Thank you also to David Ben Porat for Sound Engineering. Dan Davin for the music. David Harper for the Artwork. I am This age is produced by Jellyfish Industries. I'm Molly Sider. Catch you next time.