I Understand You.
To understand is wisdom actualized. It is the illumination of wisdom.
A Growing Young Perspective says “I understand you. I love your voice. To be honest your enthusiasm is infectious and your sense of humor makes me happy. I wonder how resilient you are, and what exactly is your wisdom. Do you practice daily optimism for the good life? Do you choose curiosity over fear? I know you think soundly and that you help others rise up with your compassionate intelligence and super sensitivity. To love and be loved is the art of friendship. Work and play and express yourself. When you open your mind you will bend without breaking, let go and dance. An organized life brings more joy and laughter, and tears are cleansing and renewing. When I wake up in the morning I think about all of the things I am about to learn.”
Slow Beauty® does not accept the term or idea of “anti-aging.” We are not in a power struggle with the aging process. We believe in the concept of “growing young.” In his book Growing Young, anthropologist Ashley Montagu has identified twenty-seven behavioral needs of human beings that when developed and nurtured throughout an entire lifetime, enable us to “hold youth.” We prefer Montagu’s idea as an alternative to the “anti-aging” rhetoric marketed to us by the beauty industry. Better to identify what we personally need for our sustained health, well-being and beauty through a process of discernment and embodiment, than to blindly accept the biased beauty myths marketed to us by the industry. These beauty myths place a hyper focus on aging that perpetuates systemic fears about the aging process rooted in an obsession of youth.
We explore and amplify the essence of these needs through Slow Beauty® as a guide to help you envision, define, and express your personal beauty standard.
Of these twenty-seven needs, Montagu states the “humanizing need,” LOVE, stands at the center of all other needs - love for self, love in and for others and love for mother earth.
What is it that you need?
SONG
Singing is a way to understand the power of our voice. When we sing, really sing, we know our range, and it may just surprise us. When we know our range it comes with us wherever we are, allowing us to express clearly our needs and what needs to be expressed. Sing, and be in love with the sound and range of your voice. To just let go and dance is the most amazing feeling. To dance is to be in tune, it is to speak the language of the body, the language of the eternal. When we try the unique dances of various world cultures, we better understand who they are because it is in the subtlety and nuances of the movement where their truth pulsates with life. There is also a door to freedom in dance, an opportunity to completely relinquish control, fear, rigidness, judgement, and prejudice. Dance loosens all of that and sets us free. When we give ourself permission to really dance, we are dancing with the cosmos, with eternity, with the infinite, with the source. Dance is therapy, renewal, and replenishment. “There is release and a replenishment of psychic energy that leaves one with an oceanic feeling of freedom from which all constraint has fallen away, in which the free play of the emotions in disciplined response to music has its way. One is infused with lyrical joy.”
HONESTY
We need to be honest, trusting, and trusted. Often, we are not honest with ourself or others because we are fearful. We need to move beyond these fears to honest expressions of what our needs are, and trust ourself to express those needs. When we build a foundation of trusting ourself by expressing our needs and leave situations that do not support those needs, it becomes easier to trust others and the world at large.
OPTIMISM
Eternal optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy of one success after another. The inevitable set-backs of life, are smoothed by feelings of optimism.
COMPASSIONATE INTELLIGENCE
We need to care, nurture, nourish, support, and sustain others through this combination of strength and loving kindness. Compassionate intelligence sees potential and helps people rise up. When it sees weakness it does not trample, it reaches out a hand and lifts up. There is no hate, only empathy. There is no fear, only fearlessness to recognize that what we see in others is a part of us too, no matter what. This need reaches across lines, boundaries, fences, and borders. It says, “I understand you,” “I am here for you,” and “I hear you.” It never makes fun, destroys, or knocks down. It smiles, builds up, and puts back together.
LAUGHTER & TEARS
Laughter is the realest of the real. It is a glorious outburst of authenticity. The smile that accompanies laughter is the personification of friendliness and warmth. Laughter is healing. And so are tears. Tears cleanse, rebalance, recalibrate, restore, soften, and open a hardened heart. Laughter and tears enjoin feelings of goodness, wholeness, and renewal. We rejoice in the freedom to laugh and to weep for our mental, physical and spiritual health.
ENTHUSIASM
This is joie de vivre, literally “joy of life.” Enthusiasm is excitement and exciting. It is infectious. It gets things done, motivates others to get things done, uplifts, and energizes. Enthusiasm is real, authentic, and earnest.
A SENSE OF HUMOR
Find ways to laugh at yourself. A sense of humor loosens and frees us from the harsh realities of suffering and banality. It adds texture, color, shape, and taste to what is otherwise boring and stagnant. A sense of humor lightens the load and colors what is otherwise dull and gray. Humor erupts at the intersection of the unexpected and incompatible.
JOYFULNESS
Joy is a quintessential need most connected to the spiritual realm. It is an essence that is fluid, creative, regenerative, and enduring. Joy is vital. Joy is always young and always an access point to growing young. With joy there is no chronological aging, it is boundless. Joy is pure life.
TO BE EXPERIMENTAL
What type of thinker are you? When you think experimentally, you become an observer, setting up hypotheses and then testing them to see whether they are true. When you are an observer, your range of life experience is larger - it has more longitude and latitude, more texture, and more sensuality.
RESILIENCE
How long does it take you to bounce back from a challenge or something that has rattled you? This time frame will give you an idea of how resilient you are. Resilience encourages us to make that “bounce back time” as short as possible. We want to process those stresses that show up in our daily life quickly so we have more freedom to enjoy the fullness of life.
FLEXIBILITY
A flexible mind is a mind that extends itself in all directions. It is a mind always in pursuit of growth. It grows through deep listening and consideration of opinions. When new evidence presents itself, the mind flexes to adapt, rethink, and reconsider. It is a mind that is both respectful of tradition and open to the new. Flexibility requires us to challenge all prejudices, and pursue beauty and truth in the name of self and life itself.
OPEN-MINDEDNESS
We need this to maintain a healthy relationship with all of humanity. When we are in the right frame of open-mindedness, we become free from prejudice and rigidness, and we are more respectful to the ideas and concerns of others. With an open-mind, we are able to connect to our self and others in much deeper and more meaningful ways.
CREATIVITY
We need this to maintain a healthy relationship with all of humanity. When we are in the right frame of open-mindedness, we become free from prejudice and rigidness, and we are more respectful to the ideas and concerns of others. With an open-mind, we are able to connect to our self and others in much deeper and more meaningful ways.
PLAY
Playfulness is where joy resides. Play leads to innovation, it propels us beyond our habits, our limits and our comfort zones. There is an element of surprise, spontaneity, and imagination in play. This concept of the “inner child” is not a cliché, but a real valuable need to be emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy. Play with your thoughts, your ideas, your words, your exchanges with others, and your movements. Approach life through a lens of playfulness. Play in your friendships and with your loves. Be playful with yourself. Play to keep life fresh and lively. Play for vitality.
CURIOSITY
This need speaks to the vigor of the mind, and its unquenchable need to explore. Curiosity is something to be encouraged and celebrated. Ask questions, probe, turn over stones, look under rocks. Be relentlessly inquisitive.
ORGANIZATION
We need organization for clarity of mind, focus and intention. An organized mind is an enlightened mind. When our mind becomes cluttered with distractions and overburdened by too many choices, it is a signal that it is time to slow down and shrug off some of our mental clutter.
TO WORK ARTFULLY
We learn so much about ourself through and from the work we do in the world. Finding the art in the work we do is not always the objective and not always possible. And yet, a commitment and discipline to seek out the essence of the art of our work may transform the banality of the daily grind into daily spaces of wonder.
SENSITIVITY
We live in a world where we are often told we are too sensitive, yet sensitivity is key to experiencing the depth of life. This need is being challenged in today’s world, where we are so caught up in profits and the bottom line, at the expense of the health and happiness of human beings and being human. We need to go deeper with our experience of self, others, and life. “Sensitivity deepens the experience of what life has to offer and enlarges our apprehension and appreciation of it.” Next time someone says, “You are too sensitive,” be sure to thank them, because you are exactly what the world needs right now, at this very moment in time.
THINK SOUNDLY
We are moving at such a fast pace that we have forgotten the importance of observation, analysis, and experimental thinking. We are overly focused on instant results, instant answers, and instant responses. How quickly and thoughtlessly do you respond to texts, e-mails, and comments on social media? It is important to slow down and reflect before acting. We need to set boundaries to keep the distractions that are preventing us from thinking soundly at bay.
WONDER
“Wonder, rather than doubt, is the root of all knowledge.” Abraham Joshua Heschel
A sense of wonder deeply corresponds with life itself. It is an interest, an awe that contains the essence of excitement and possibilities. Wonder is a need that holds expectation, and “participation in the known and unknown.” Wonder opens the door to the mysteries of life, to the invisible, eternal, infinite inner workings of life.
OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN
Play to learn and orient yourself to always be learning. You can learn something from everyone and every situation, every day. Waking up with the thought “What will I learn today?” will keep you in an ongoing state of mental and consciousness expansion. It is when we have the false belief that we already know everything that we become stagnant. Learning is life. A lifelong love of learning keeps the mind flexible, youthful, and enlightened.
FRIENDSHIP
“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.”
William Butler Yeats
A distinct form of love, friendship is important for the development of “good human relations.” What type of friend are you? Who surrounds you? How do you nurture and nourish your friendships? Friendship is to be cherished and nourished; we must weave the threads of trust together. Maybe you are very social and have many friends, or you may only have a few very close friends. Maybe you are your own bestie, or maybe your partner is. Perhaps, as was the case with Mary Oliver and Walt Whitman nature is a trusted and steadfast friend. Whatever form friendship shapes for you, this is wonderful. In friendship are we capable of the ebb and flow of attachment and release with grace and dignity? Discernment.
TO KNOW
To be deeply involved in your purpose leads to knowing. This knowing has profound implications on your mind, body and soul. It gives you a foundation upon which to expand your sense of authentic self.
LOVE
“Out of the learning of love grows the love of learning. It is the consistent exercise of the ability to have love that humanizes us, that makes us human.” - Ashley Montagu
Love is the standout essential need central to our lives. We need outlets to share and show our love in the ways that we individually know how. We also need to receive love in the form we require. Love is presence, love is attention, love is deep into the details. Love, in its truest, most unconditional form, is the best and most powerful healing medicine. Think about the ways in which you need to express your love, and the ways in which you most need to be loved.
