Health and Wellness   

This class is for anyone interested in “Birding” or “Bird Watching” to enjoy being outdoors, walking 1-2 miles, and interacting with each other while watching birds. The classroom sessions will consist of birding etiquette and appearance of birds: size, shape, color and identifying field marks. They will highlight bird behaviors and habitats and other interesting aspects of these living dinosaurs and how they reflect the health of our planet.

In the 4 classroom sessions, George will share his photos of birds on PowerPoint, knowledge and experience in birding, and being a citizen scientist. The other 4 sessions will be field trips. Locations include Bluff Lake Nature Center, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, and other locations. These field trip sessions may be longer than 2 hours and scheduled depending on the weather.

Guided expressive writing has been proven to reduce stress, enhance social relationships, and improve academic performance. While these outcomes may not surprise you, expressive writing has also been shown to improve lung function among asthma patients, reduce pain for people with rheumatoid arthritis, and reduce sleep disturbances, among a host of other wellness outcomes.

Over four sessions, you’ll dive into current research on writing and wellbeing, learning how writing practices—such as journaling, reflective writing, and expressive storytelling—can enhance your wellness. Guided by an experienced writing professor, you’ll experiment with these techniques in a supportive environment and develop a personalized wellness writing routine.

The course design emphasizes the importance of community wellness. By sharing stories and reflections with classmates, you’ll connect with others, fostering compassion and collective wellbeing. Together, we’ll explore the healing power of shared experiences and build a supportive and thriving community.

Members should have a notebook

Healthcare is something each of us will inevitably use during our lifetimes. Though many of us are pleased with our own doctors, most of us have experienced frustration with the overall health care system. That system in the United States is huge, enormously expensive and incredibly complicated. At the heart of this system are individual doctor-patient interactions, but operating in the background, and often invisible to the patient are functions and demands which add immeasurably to the complexities of delivering and receiving care.

This course will explore some of the reasons for these difficulties including the organizational aspects and structures of healthcare from the exam room to the macro structures.

Unfortunately for those looking for a comprehensive, let alone easy, solution, you may be disappointed, but we will discuss ways that you can better manage and navigate your own interactions with the system.

As we get older, the risk of falling tends to increase significantly due to a gradual decline in balance abilities. This decline may begin in middle age and progress slowly, making it easy to ignore - until a fall happens. To address this, incorporating balance training into our personal health management strategy is essential, allowing us to take proactive steps toward maintaining stability and preventing falls. Minding Your Balance™ training addresses this need, drawing on lessons from the martial art Ki-Aikido to take a groundbreaking look at balance and its fundamental relationship to mind and emotion. Easy to learn mind body exercises, scientific insights, and stories of applications in everyday life provide participants with tools to immediately improve balance control. Participants work individually and with partners. Activities can be done seated and standing; all activities are adaptable to different needs and abilities.

Recommended - Minding Your Balance: Mind Body Exercises to Improve Balance & Prevent Falls - $15 on Amazon

BE AN OLLI OUTSIDER! What better way to spring into Spring than enjoying nature walks with OLLI buddies while learning from trained guides about the history, plants, animals, geology and environments of some of our local open spaces, and state parks?

The walks are typically 2-3 miles, rated “easy” or “moderate” and sometimes have moderate elevation changes. Some places we’re hoping to walk are Dupont Open Space, Central City (opera house, cemetery), Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge, at least one state park, the Highline Canal and Bear Creek Lake Park.

But wait - the good times don’t end when we finish our walks. Adding fun to this class, we extend the camaraderie via an optional lunch after each walk. And we always invite our guides to join us.

Grab your walking gear and sense of wonder and be an OLLI OUTSIDER!

If you have questions about this class, please call Jan Friedlander, 303.885.9200.

Class fee:  $50 donation to cover guide time 

Science has answered many questions, but we are just scratching the surface on understanding the human brain. Nevertheless, one thing becomes clearer with each new discovery: the brain is massively powerful. One of the more intriguing aspects of the brain is its adaptability. The brain can change! It can employ strategies to improve memory and focus; it can learn to be more positive and ruminate less; and it can reshape itself, assigning tasks to different areas if one area becomes injured or weakened. In fact, it might be possible for the brain to accomplish practically anything! In this course you will learn about brain plasticity, its scope and potential. You will learn the most important law of neuroplasticity and how to apply it: A brain that understands how it works has an advantage.

Recommended books are The Tell Tale Brain, by V.S. Ramachandran; The Brain that Changes Itself, by Dr. Norman Doidge; Into the Magic Shop, by Dr. James Doty