Speaker Topics

CONSCIOUS AGING
I have often thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to be a hundred years old with a fully functional healthy body and all the knowledge accumulated though the experiences of a lifetime.’ Well, I’m not certain about the hundred-year mark, but I can vouch for the joy and fulfillment of an older body (mine is 73) with the accumulation of experience-based knowledge. If repetition makes the master, and in my experience it does, then the longer we retain a healthy physical function, the closer we come to mastering the arts, professions and personal practices that give us a sense of wholeness, self-realization and pleasure.

Cognition
For over ten years I have worked with people afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease, which I have often compared to a highly accelerated aging process, including the loss of strength, balance, coordination and cognition. Arriving at a method of training in breath and movement that is effective in slowing down the inevitable progression of symptoms and the subsequent increases in medications.

ENDURANCE
Like a car on the highway, if the carburetor is working properly, the engine will run smoothly and efficiently and travel more miles, with less stress on the mechanical parts and fewer breakdowns. Same with the body. Correct diaphragmatic breathing, preferably through the nose, equates to a more efficient use of oxygen. Meaning a lower heart rate, lower blood pressure and many more years before something breaks; like the car, we travel more miles.

ABOUT RICHARD
My journey began at ten years old, when I suffered a hangman’s fracture, commonly known as a broken neck. My path has taken me from weight rooms to martial arts dojos, from university psychology classes to boxing rings, from the psychiatrist’s sofa to Pilates and yoga studios and finally to a personalized method of training that contains the essence of all these disciplines, pure and simple; the union of mind, body and spirit through a combination of conscious breath and movement, leading to strength, endurance, vitality and heightened awareness.