The BIG QUESTION – 6th New Frontiers Retirees’ Conference
By Yvonne Mury
The Big Question loomed before us. What are we going to do to encourage our members when we can’t meet in person? Our NWARTA Executive was in a quandary. It was time for our 6th New Frontiers Retirees’ Conference, but could we pass the test? Our fearless President, Joan Godbout, challenged us to think outside the box and come up with a doable event.
Our NWARTA Exec took the challenge and proposed that we would enter the online world and use Zoom to make something happen. With some trepidation but with determination, we made plans to celebrate our Journey into Wellness on February 16, 17 and 18. Our thought was to encourage our members to enhance their wellness in Mind, Body and Spirit keeping within a budget, but with excellent speakers in each of these areas.
With the help of our parent body (ARTA) we were excited to be able to put together a great lineup of speakers for each morning and send a small registration thank you to those who signed up to attend. We hoped we would actually get people to attend; would we have 20, 30, 40? Our own spirit’s rose as the emails arrived telling us “Yes”. Over 50 seniors, mostly members and some ARTA participants, signed up to join us on the Journey.
Tuesday morning, we were ready to go, and after a few introductions and a welcome by ARTA’s Daniel Mulloy and we were off and running.
Jennifer Buchanan wowed us with her presentation “TUNE IN – Why Music Improves Mood, Memory and Motivation”. We learned how music impacts the brain, our behavior, feelings and function and were encouraged to make our own playlist of a minimum of three pieces of music/songs that we loved. We even got to sing along with Jennifer and her guitar.
Our second day, we took our shoes off with Janet Barker who taught us “How to Treat Your Feet Well”. A great interactive session with foot exercises, knowledge and understanding about how our feet and ankles work and how to be kind to them and ourselves using proper footwear, exercise and stance. Ellen Gleich joined in and used her considerable knowledge and experience with her presentation “What is a Medical Pedicure?” Using illustrations and showing us how to use a pedicure kit, she made many of us wish we could have her here in our homes to give us a pedicure too.
Jody Walker with Chidinma Okoli presented a fantastic session on Thursday entitled “ Transform your Stress: The Resilience Advantage”. Jody taught us how to recognize mental, emotional and physical stress and ways to manage the stresses of this challenging time in healthy ways including breathing techniques and simple ways for recharging our emotions and thoughts.
After each session, participants were invited to join a breakout room to further discuss what they had learned and to get to know others in the group. It was great to hear that those who took advantage of this really enjoyed the experience of getting to share with others after each session.
So did we succeed? We were so pleased by the evaluation responses which indicated that participants gave their stamp of approval to our conference theme, speakers, and the topics presented. Thank you so much to ARTA, our presenters, our NWARTA exec and especially to all of you who attended each day. You helped make our journey into uncharted territory a big success.
