Blog #3 for Community Health Nurisng: Stein Senior Center, 204 E 23rd St, New York, NY 10010. Tuesday, June 21, 2016, 9:00am – 3:00pm.

Today was my third day being in the Stein Senior Center. I feel like I get to love this place more and more, because you never know what you can learn from the lovely elderly from a bland new day.

There are a lot of different interesting activities being held in the center, and for today we have the Yoga class and the Zumba class. I feel lucky that I was able to attend both. At 12:30pm we started the Yoga class. My partner and I were the only two young girls in the class room. All other students were seniors and the teacher is a very elegant elderly and seems like at her 80s. I was surprised and motivated by her enthusiasm for still being a teacher and dedicated herself to use her passion and try her best to teach. I felt warm and welcomed as the teacher and all the senior students there were welcoming us with a big smile. Later we began the class. We did a lot of stretching exercises with the help of the teacher during the class. Couples of the gestures of Yoga were difficult for our bodies to reach or to maintain, especially for the beginners. I was surprised by all the senior students in the class of their endurance that they were trying hard to reach and maintain those gestures and positions. They were also being very engaged in the class. They were actively asking questions such as for this position which of the body part should be put on weights on for balance. I truly felt their enthusiasm for learning and their passion for doing their best. After this happy Yoga class we went to join the passion Zumba class. At this class the elderly were even being more active when dancing and I saw many lovely ones were dancing happily at their 80s.

I learned a new lesson from these amazing elderly. People usually stigmatize “aging” as an unpreventable human process that could prevent you from doing things that you were able to when you were young. However, this is not the case. Aging is nothing that can prevent our lives from being happier. We can still learn as we were young and enjoy things that before we were not able to. Which is really amazing. And the most important point is that being young is the state of mind, as long as we were young at our hearts we can still enjoy things around us at our 90s.