Aging Awake: Choosing Aliveness

By Fleet Maull, PhD

There's a moment many of us face, often in our fifties or sixties, sometimes earlier, when we realize we've become careful in ways we didn't intend. We've stopped trying new things. Stopped asking certain questions. We still show up, still function, still care for the people we love. But something has muted. The spark has dimmed.

If you've felt this, you're not alone. And it’s important to understand that this dimming isn't inevitable: it happens through disengagement, and disengagement is something we can work with.

I think about this a lot, both personally and in my work. I've watched people in their seventies radiate curiosity and joyfulness, while others, twenty years younger, seem to have already settled into resignation. What makes the difference? Their relationship with life itself.

Aging as a Series of Transitions One of the most helpful reframes I've learned is that aging happens through transitions. Many transitions. Some transitions are physical. Changes in hormones, energy, sleep, how our bodies recover. Others are relational and social. Children growing up and leaving. Careers evolving or ending. Caring for aging parents. Redefining partnership. Still others are deeply internal: questions about meaning, purpose, legacy, and how we meet uncertainty.

For women, menopause is one significant transition that often goes under-supported. For men, there are parallel shifts that rarely get named with the same clarity. And for all of us, there are moments when the life we've been living no longer fits quite the same way.

These transitions ask something of us. They ask us to listen, to adjust, to let go of old identities and make room for new ways of being. When we resist them or try to power through without support, our nervous systems often tighten. When we meet them with curiosity and care, something else becomes possible.

When Vitality Quietly Slips Away Most people don't come to me saying they've lost their zest for life. They say they feel flat. Or tired in a way that rest doesn't seem to fix. Or less interested in things that used to make them happy. They're still responsible, still showing up, but something feels muted.

This kind of disengagement doesn't usually arrive all at once. It seeps in slowly, often during periods of prolonged stress or repeated transitions. Over time, we may begin living more on autopilot, narrowing our world in subtle ways. We stop exploring. We stop asking new questions. We stop expecting life to surprise us.

From a nervous system perspective, this makes sense. When the system has been under strain, it prioritizes safety over aliveness. But here's the key: aging itself doesn't take away our vitality. Disengagement does. And disengagement is not a permanent condition.

What Healthy Aging Actually Means When we talk about healthy aging, the conversation often focuses on external metrics: diet, exercise, supplements, and longevity strategies. These matter. Our bodies deserve care and respect. But healthy aging is also an inner discipline, one that involves how we relate to our experience as it changes. For me, healthy aging rests on a few essential qualities:

• Attention matters. Where we place our awareness shapes our experience. Do we only notice what's no longer working, or do we also track what's alive, meaningful, and still growing?

• Curiosity keeps the psyche flexible. It allows us to meet change as an exploration rather than a threat.

• Embodiment means staying in relationship with the body. Not judging it, not abandoning it, but listening to it with respect.

• Meaning evolves over time. What mattered deeply at thirty may not be what matters most at sixty or seventy. Healthy aging involves updating our sense of purpose as life invites us into new roles.
  

These are practices. Small, daily choices that shape how awake we feel inside our own lives.

The Nervous System and the Capacity for Aliveness One of the most important insights from neuroscience and trauma-informed work is that our capacity for vitality is closely linked to our nervous system state. When the nervous system is chronically stressed, overwhelmed, or stuck in survival mode, our world naturally shrinks. Energy becomes scarce. Motivation drops. Pleasure and curiosity are harder to access. Over time, this can be mistaken for just getting older.

But regulation changes the equation. When the nervous system experiences safety, support, and connection, it becomes more flexible. We regain access to creativity, engagement, and emotional range. This is true at any age.

From this perspective, healthy aging means creating the internal and relational conditions that allow life energy to flow more freely again.

Staying Awake Requires Participation There's a moment, sometimes in midlife, sometimes later, when we realize that the next chapter of life will not simply happen on its own. It will require participation. Staying awake to life means making conscious choices. Remaining open rather than defended. Continuing to learn, engage, and feel.

And this includes allowing ourselves to feel grief. Aging brings real loss. Bodies change. Roles end. People we love get sick or die. Staying awake means feeling all of it while refusing to let contraction become our default posture. Vitality lives in presence, at any age.

Why Community Matters One of the most damaging aspects of aging in modern culture is isolation. Many transitions, especially those related to the body, identity, and meaning, are still not spoken about openly enough. People suffer quietly, assuming they're alone in their experience.

They're not.

Community changes everything. Hearing others name what we're feeling reduces shame and restores perspective. Learning from both science and lived wisdom gives us language, tools, and hope. Wise companionship reminds us that aging is not something to manage alone. This is one reason we create shared learning spaces at HeartMind Institute. Not to offer quick fixes, but to foster understanding, agency, and connection.

A Deeper Conversation About Menopause and Beyond This month, we're offering the Menopause Redefined Summit, a focused exploration of one powerful and often misunderstood life transition. While menopause is central to the conversation, the deeper themes reach far beyond it: agency, education, embodiment, and the possibility of redefining what aging can look and feel like.

Menopause is a threshold. And thresholds, when met with awareness and support, can become gateways to greater clarity, freedom, and vitality. This summit is part of a much larger conversation about healthy aging, one that honors the body, respects lived experience, and invites us to stay engaged with life as it evolves.

Choosing Aliveness, Again and Again Aging awake is an invitation to show up. Noticing where we've become less curious and gently reopening. Listening to the body instead of fighting it. Allowing life to change us. At every stage of life, we're invited to make a choice: to contract or to engage. To settle into resignation or to stay in relationship with wonder, learning, and meaning.

Healthy aging is a practice, and we can embrace it every moment, starting now.