fruits of your long life of practice. My question is about how to practice joyfully with the physical limitations and the pains that happen as we grow older. I'm more than twenty years younger than you are, but already there are things that I used to enjoy doing, like walking for long distances or sitting for a long time. And those things now are not easy for me to do or they cause me pain. And I would like to learn from you how to use these experiences to help me to live joyfully and to make other people happy instead of letting these experiences isolate me and separate me from other people. Thank you.

Our friend is sharing about her experience with some of the physical limitations that are coming into her life as she grows older. And she has pain now in doing things that she used to be able to do easily like walking for a longer distance or sitting for a longer time. And she really has the aspiration to use those painful experiences as the kind of mud to grow a lotus of greater connection and joy in her life and not to drown in the pain and allow it to become isolating. So how can she practice to use these experiences to grow in her joy and her connection?

I think there are moments when it's not too painful. And we have to profit from these moments. We have to enjoy deeply these moments. And we have to use these moments to do the exercise that helps the body to restore something that it has lost. When you do exercise, it's not only for you to have a better body, but you feel happiness. You feel happiness and joy that help nourish you. When I do mindful movements, I like to think of my teachers, think of colleagues of mine who have already passed away, many of them, and those who are already on wheelchairs. So when I do these mindful movements, I feel how precious, how wonderful that I can still do it. So every movement gives me a lot of joy. That is very important.

You have to enjoy every moment that is left for you to live. And there are ways to enjoy these moments deeply. And if you know how to live happily, the present moment, it will help improve the situation of your health. We know that relaxation is possible in the standing position, the walking position, the sitting position, and the lying position. So we learn how to be relaxed in all these four positions. And that will help reduce the amount of pain in our body. And then the people around us, they are interested to learn about that because many of them are still young, but they already have that kind of pain and tension in their body. And it is possible for you to create a Sangha, a group of people of all kind of ages in order to enjoy the Sangha and to share and to learn from them.