Hello Natalie
sorry I have been out of email for a while and now i have just saw your message. Please don´t hesitate to contact with me trhough this email [email protected]
I have lived also in Palma de Mallorca for a few years.I was born in 1955 and have two girls and three grandsons and grand daughter .Didi and you have an interesting life and your project is also interesting.
We can exchange experiences. We are begining our group now but we are so uplifted

Un beso para las dos
Juana

Friends,

I am trying to contact Juana in the post above, and the email she has indicated is not valid. Can anyone help me with this.

Thanks!

Message for Juana and her group follows:

Hola Juana,

Mi nombre es Natalie y he visto tu “post” en:

http://shambhalatimes.org/2010/04/09/join-us-in-a-network-on-aging/

Acabo de registrame en este grupo.

I am Canadian but have lived in and out of Mallorca for almost 41 years. In collaboration with a Tibetan woman friend, we are creating a small retreat centre, here, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, on the West Coast of British Columbia, outside Vancouver. The centre is called Saffron Lions Retreat Centre. I am interested in being in touch with you and as you wrote: diverse group – because, for one thing, Didi, with whom we are considering to host day workshops, is interested in building a hospice centre in her village in Tibet (China of course) where the recent earthquake took place. I think we could learn a lot from what you wonderful women are doing and learning together. Didi was born in 1950 and came out of Tibet walking over the mountains around the time of the 1959 uprising. I was born in 1942 and about four years ago, “he tenido un enfarto cerebral en España y entre mis amigos en la isla y los medicos en el Hospital Son Dureta en Palma de Mallorca realmente me han salvado mi vida”

Bueno, por el momento, espero noticias tuyas,

Un gran abrazo,

Natalie

Natalie Drache

Dear friends

We are a spanish group formed by eight women who six years ago have decided to create an asociation in order to work on aging and help each other in the process of dying. We are a diversity, doctor, nurses, psychologist, finances, decoration, theatre and universal energy workers. All of us except one are Shambhalians, sacred path and vajrayana students. We have written down the Statement and now we are in the process of registering it. Even we have the name “ in Spanish: “ EL JARDIN DE TARA” ( Tara´s Garden)

But is good news that this is already working in the context of Shambhala. So we would like to join your group in this project and know about what is already done and how to colaborate with you.

We can do it trhough messages since our English is not enough fluent to speak by conference

So we wait for your response . You can do it to my email [email protected]

Thank you

Juana Piney

Shambhala Madrid

In the “Statement on Aging in Shambhala”, point (4) speaks of the “inevitable decline in physical and mental capacities.” I think this point should be revised to be clearer about what is *increasingly-likely* and what is *inevitable* about aging, still speaking the truth about the realities while avoiding negatively-predictive presuppositions.

Point (4) as it stands is accurate with regard to *physical* capacities. The latest scientific research into brain plasticity, however, has established that, with the appropriate ‘exercise’, *mental* capacities can be maintained at approximately age 25 right into extreme old age, barring some physically-debilitating condition affecting the brain.

It is equally true that environmental conditions and/or genetic predispositions may, at any time, create conditions that lessen mental capacities (e.g., stroke), and that this likelihood increases as we age.

I submit that the revised statement below is more accurate in light of what is now known, and more mentally healthy:

“(4) In Shambhala we can recognize both the opportunity to be more openly engaged with the world as we grow older and, at the very same time, the increasing likelihood of conditions that lessen mental capacity and the inevitable decline in physical capacities that culminates in death.”

For elders, this is an important distinction which encourages a positive attitude about a multitude of health choices, e.g., knowing that physical events affecting mental capacity become increasingly-likely, but are not inevitable for everyone, one might choose measures proven to support mental acuity and then might become even more diligent in the maintenance of physical health.

This is wonderful and will be meaningful to so many of us, especially in a culture where aging is seen almost as a type of illness rather than an opportunity for deepening the joy our life can bring to us and others.
Thanks!