Conscious Aging Facilitator Training Program

According to the U.S. Administration on Aging, by 2030 there will be approximately 72 million people aged 65 years and older. In our youth obsessed culture, there is a lot of anxiety about aging. Many people will face their later years as solo agers. Fears about aging or facing death and dying alone are painful for many.

Aging is indeed challenging… yet it is also a time of great opportunity for spiritual, emotional, and psychological growth.

Over the course of four years, IONS developed the Conscious Aging workshop to address these challenges and opportunities. We found that older people are yearning to engage in dialogue together on these issues. They are looking for guidance, meaning making, connection and community to help fortify themselves for their aging years. Out of this experience IONS created the Conscious Aging Facilitator Training program.

A Comprehensive Training Program

Lead the workshop in your community!

The Conscious Aging Facilitator Training Program provides facilitators with resources to market, set up and conduct the eight-session IONS Conscious Aging workshop in their local community.

IONS Facilitators have a unique role to play in helping elders explore the bounty and challenges of their senior years. In presenting the Conscious Aging workshop in their own communities, the goal is to build a safe and creative space for people to explore the gifts of later life, develop strategies to alleviate the stressors of aging, and foster and relish accrued strengths and wisdom.

The Conscious Aging program is based in part on the research and practices described in two of IONS’ seminal books: Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine, and Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life

Field-tested across a broad range of practitioners and settings, this self-paced, self-study program is designed for those who have experience in facilitating groups as a practitioner or community volunteer, especially active or retired social workers, psychologists, MFTs, counselors, ministers, trainers, faculty, coaches, community group leaders, group facilitators, and nurses.

People often assume that the solutions we seek come from outside ourselves, but it’s important to recognize that some of the problems — as well as their solutions — arise from within us. In other words, it’s about consciousness.

The focus of the Conscious Aging workshop series is to invite shifts in consciousness away from self-limitation, lack, isolation, and fear and toward expansiveness, inclusiveness, wholeness, connection, and compassion.

IONS Conscious Aging Facilitators guide workshop participants as they:

• Explore unexamined, self-limiting beliefs and assumptions about aging and learn to make better choices about how to age more consciously;
• Develop skills of self-compassion to cope more effectively with the stresses associated with aging;
• Discover what has given heart and meaning to life and how that can enrich intentions for a healthy aging process;
• Identify regrets, sufferings, and negative self-concepts that can impact a deep appreciation of life;
• Minimize feelings of isolation from others and deepen relationships;
• Learn strategies to manage fears in the presence of death through the transformative power of surrender and acceptance;
• Cultivate a personal roadmap for the aging journey by deepening spiritual life and learning to make each moment matter.

We have found that older people are yearning to engage in dialogue together on these issues, desiring  meaning making, connection, and community to help fully flourish in the last third of life. Participants will experience all of that and more by engaging in this unique workshop.

As an IONS Conscious Aging Facilitator, you may charge for your workshop, or you may offer it to your community for free — it’s completely up to you!

We do ask that our facilitators agree to provide the Conscious Aging Workbook for each participant in the workshops you conduct. Facilitators may purchase the workbooks and distribute them to their workshop registrants, or facilitators may ask the registrants themselves to purchase the workbooks. This workbook ensures that all participants receive standard information on the topic. You may charge fees to cover the workbook cost if you so choose. We offer the books to Conscious Aging facilitators at a wholesale price of approximately $15 USD per unit.