 This hour, we are happy to introduce Lynn Barre, aka Lucena Wisdomseeker, who will be presenting Brain Fitness for Boomers in Virtual Worlds, The Wave of the Future. Lucena Wisdomseeker has been a university instructor in literature, a college counselor for at-risk students, a psychotherapist in private practice, and in semi-retirement a life coach. She is co-leader of the Mentor Coach Alliance for Positive Psychology. She and her husband, a musicologist, blog about the connection between music and well-being at musicandhappiness.com and our active in the American Society on Aging. Welcome, Lucena Wisdomseeker. Thank you. Can you all hear me now? Just so you know, you can hear me. Thank you. Thank you. So, I know that there are people besides those in the auditorium who are watching this, listening to us, so I'm speaking to you as well. I'll end just a moment. So, let me know if you can hear me. I'll try to speak so that slowly suit in here. Is anybody in this audience age 55 or older? Say yes and chat if you are. Whatever age you are. Are you interested in staying as mentally and physically strong as you can for as long as you can? If you are, say yes and chat. Good. I'd like to have a little bit of dialogue going on here. Well, I came here today because that's what I'm interested in, too. It's why I came into virtual worlds and why I've built the whole Bring Health Fairgrounds as I'll show you. I'll also be building a similar place at OpenSim soon. This is work I do outworld in real life as well. In virtuality or outside, I do my work with the support of other people because it's much more fun for me to do it that way and I meet the most interesting people. A lot of psychological research shows it's also extremely valuable for your health and happiness to have strong social connections and positive relationships. That's what I want to focus on here. There are some simple ingredients that can really nourish your brain when you put them together and feast on them regularly. One of them is community. How does community develop? Let's try a little experiment here. Look around wherever you are right now, whether in this auditorium or in some other space in world. Who do you see around you? Find someone you don't know and wave to them in an IM with a smile or use chat to do it if you don't know how to IM. So take a minute to just do that wave to somebody in this room or the room you're in. Don't worry about getting a wave back yourself right now. Just focus on giving. It could be just one other person and even more if you want. Now notice how you feel in this unfamiliar and rather impersonal kind of space we're in. Has anything changed for you because you reached out and waved to somebody? Just put something in chat if it has. Can you all still hear me okay? Just let me know please so you can hear. Good. Great. So I just want to pay attention to what happens when you do various kinds of things as we go along. The positive psychologist Dr. Barbara Fredrickson has a theory about relationships that she describes in her book Love 2.0, how our supreme emotion affects the positive relations with others of feedback that will occur to this type of support. This is another situation that tends to lead to greater creativity and problem solving in life. More ability to build. I draw this kind of research from psychology and other fields related to brain health to make applications to daily life and that includes virtual life. So everything I show you today and there's a lot I don't have time to show you, you need to come and see them for yourself, is part of a bigger picture. That is I'm interested in creating environments in virtual worlds that are user friendly, easy to move around in and fun to share with others. I want you to be able to help your brain quite literally renew itself at whatever age you are by spending time on the whole brain health fairgrounds. As an aside, I use the term whole brain health because research shows that the entire brain needs to be nourished holistically through attention to the body, the mind and the spirit. This is only the beginning. I want you to go from the fairgrounds to other virtual destinations that can also contribute to bringing you a higher quality of life. Once you know what to look for, you have a lot of choices when you understand more about brain fitness. Finally, I think virtual worlds can be especially appealing and valuable to the big population of people age 55 and older. This is where research into healthy aging and brain fitness can join together to develop really useful kinds of virtual lifelong living programs. Lifelong learning is what I meant, but lifelong living sounds good too. Looking at information about how to make this call better. So we may be stopping the call in a moment. I guess Beth will tell me what to do. That's fine. We can stop and start up the audio. So I will pause for a moment here and give the time for the next slide to rest. Hello. Hello. Lynn, can you hear me? All right. I'm going to continue. I'm hoping that this will be a little bit better. Lynn, are you able to hear me on Skype? Now, I just wanted to say here that's good to know. Oh, I'd like to be heard. Okay. So tomorrow at 4pm, MVT, I'm holding a networking party on the fairgrounds if you're interested in brainstorming about lifelong learning. The SLURL is in the conference schedule for you. Now to put flesh on these bare bones, I'd like to give you a brief tour of the fairgrounds on second life. As you see, this is one of the destination hubs. Everybody okay with this now? If I go forward? Okay. We're really proud of our hubs. This is where you first land whenever you visit us. The button in the center of each hub pops you up to the second level and back down to the ground. The paths lead you to the activity areas where you can actually exercise your body, mind, and spirit. As I said, paying attention to all three parts reaps the greatest dividends for brain health. There's an info sign on each arch that will take you to a web page with more information, including videos and audio clips. An example of user-friendly approach we take. Okay. This is the information area. Wow. I take bad pictures trying to get everything in. I need to use a wide-angle lens, but then everything looks weird. So right next to the hub, you can get some basic information about us. If you're interested in non-technical materials based on brain research, the gift bibliography box gives you a lots of sources. The other big gift box holds information about positive psychology, which is my field. It gives you an online link to a free strengths quiz, which you can take in several languages, by the way. How do you get around the fairgrounds? I'm going to now try to use the pointer here. There's one way, our hobby horses. You could res one to ride it, and it will disappear when you get off. Cool. Or you can res a bike, either a mountain bike or a racing bike, and it will also disappear when you hop off. Throughout the fairgrounds, we offer experiences more than straight information, teaching through doing. Everything here works better when you do it in company of others, although most activities can be done alone as well. Here's an example. We call it the brainy maze. Why brainy? Because it makes you work for your reward. See the stop sign? Would you pay attention to it or go right in? Which would you do? The goal is to find the books in the maze that hold separate lines of a poem. Not every book you see does. Once you find all the lines, the treasure chest explains what you need to do with them to get your reward. In this case, Linden's. Every month, just before fair day, the poem changes, so there's always a new challenge to try. And new challenges are one key to continued mental alertness. Fair day, by the way, comes once each month on a Saturday or Sunday. From noon to 6 p.m. M.V.T. That's like a big party with special events that showcase other programs on the grid. Very exciting. This September 28th, we're featuring the Shanghai sisters fire show, complete with fire juggling. Did you know that juggling is a perfect exercise because it stimulates body, mind, and spirit? One more thing in this image, and I don't know if my clicker is working. Can you see a red arrow any place as I click? Here's another way to add to your income. The golden scroll just inside the entrance to the maze asks you to leave a piece of advice for other visitors in a seven-word sentence. Here's one example someone left recently. Brain mantra, use it or lose it. How about adding your own words of wisdom in the chat right now? Can you think of seven words of advice you would give other people? This is a great way to give to others here in the room. And you can do it while I try to res the next slide. So if you think of words of wisdom, just stick them into the chat. That would be terrific. And here's another kind of maze we host. A monster 3D maze made and maintained by someone called almost their inventor. You know, even in virtual worlds, people have a strong ground plane bias. This kind of maze forces you to think in different spatial patterns. It's also great for memory training as you try to remember if you've already run through this or that room. Mases can be more fun and more valuable to you if you walk them with others. You can argue in a friendly way, of course, about how the poem should be put back together in the brainy maze. Here you can help each other find the maze exit, reducing your stress level if you're not good and I am not good at this at finding your way out. The maze also changes each month before Faraday to bring you a brand new challenge. Remember, use it or lose it. Now this is what we call the Grove of Wisdom. I've already mentioned the role positive psychology plays in fostering brain health. Remember the gift box in the information area? Here is where you will bring the results of the strengths quiz you took. A basic mantra of positive psychology is that other people matter. This means that over and over studies show the strong links between healthy relationships and a high quality of life. The strengths that seem to be most helpful for people are gratitude, the ability to love and be loved, vitality, hope and curiosity. So these can be worth cultivating even if they're not your top natural strengths. I chose the virtual world name of wisdom seeker for a reason. My ongoing quest is to find the many kinds of wisdom wherever they exist and however they are practiced and bring them to the fairgrounds. Wisdom is the only strength that seems to have no downside. You can't overuse it. Remember, I don't claim to have wisdom. I just claim to seek it. The owl is a symbol of wisdom in many cultures. This is the owl over here if you can see him. If you come to the fairgrounds, he moves his head towards you. This one seems to be kind of doubtful about me and my wisdom. That's maybe because my top strength is curiosity, which means that I never get bored. But when I overuse it, I can get into trouble. I ask too many questions. Do you identify most with any of the strengths you see under wisdom here? Creativity, curiosity, judgment, which means open-mindedness, love of learning and perspective. If one of those you think is your one of your top strengths, would you just toss it into chat? I'm just curious to see if there are any commonalities among the group. We're already on the upper level of the fairground, so let's take a look at the center of the arts for all being in the art gallery. The center of the arts is here. Love of learning. That's one of my top ones too. Interesting. Great, great creativity. Love of learning. There's a lot of new research on how the arts can revitalize your spirit and mind and body too. Listening to music and dancing in groups happens all the time in virtual worlds. People gather for art gallery openings and poetry readings and readers and writers groups. Why do you think these are so popular? There's a real reason why. People sort of instinctively know what really will nourish them. So of course we have music on the fairgrounds, pianos all over the place that you can actually play, and even a harp in the meditation garden. We also like to support programs that go further and help you appreciate different arts in new ways. It's mind-growing to listen and look with others and to see and hear things from a knowledgeable guide's perspective. I'm going to throw out a provocative idea here. This can be especially important to do, to try one of these things if you are not drawn to them usually. It's worthwhile to try stretching a bit for your brain's sake. The same is true by the way if you're not usually drawn to things like math or science or building or languages. If you try them you're expanding your boundaries by seeking out new opportunities to learn and your neurons in your brain are actually increasing as a result of this kind of effort. Isn't that great? And that happens all the way up into old, old age. As long as we're learning we keep growing our brains. This is inside the center of the Arts for All Being. It's one of the rooms. We've also set up different kinds of spaces in the center for small groups to watch videos and problem self. Here's a whiteboard for group interaction for example. Discussion groups are really good for stimulating the mind. The trick is to join at least one group that requires new ways of thinking or feeling outside the boxes we all tend to stay in. The center is a Moroccan villa. The choice of furnishings is deliberate. You can lie all over the place. Why recreate a classroom? Thinking often happens best in a relaxing atmosphere. Here's our library and this is a place for book discussions or just finding something to read. I collect original poetry and stories from virtual writers. Send me your writings. Rosie is my Irish setter. She's a great companion, especially since I can't have pets now out world. You'll notice other animals around too, like Tabby in the room across the way. Animals are wonderful help for stress reduction, out world and in. And reducing unnecessary stress is crucial for brain health. Here's where you can dance all night just like Cinderella. Almost everything on the fairgrounds is open to nature, the great healer. We've tried to make this place pleasant to walk because so much research finds that walking is the best exercise for the brain, let alone the body, that we can do on a daily basis. And walking and talking with others even virtually has benefits. Instead of sitting at a meeting, try walking together. See what's different for you when you do that. Have you ever tried this in virtual worlds? Walking instead of sitting when you're having a meeting. I wanted to show you where we're going to have the networking party tomorrow. So the first level dance floor. And yes, there are sofas to sit on. So you don't have to stand around. You can use the SLURL to come and visit even if you don't want to talk or party, but I hope you'll come and meet me. That would be great. The slideshow as you see here are up at all times. One gives you an overview of the grounds. The other shows you our gala opening day event, which we had just this past April. We hosted about 20 teachers, group leaders and performers, and had over 100 visitors that day. So it was really wonderful. And I couldn't resist showing you our dragon because I do love animals, even dragons. She's a lovely dragon. Her name is John Quill. She eats bling, so be careful when you approach her. If I'm around when visitors come, I'm always happy to offer a dragon ride around the Sim. What does this have to do with brain health? It's your imagination. We have lots of places for talk and meditation that people are welcome to use. One of the most important discoveries of the past decade or so is the scientific value of meditation and spiritual practice like yoga, tai chi, qigong and prayer. So we've provided many places for activities like this on the fairgrounds. There's a yoga garden where you can indulge your fantasies of doing intermediate poses. If you're like me and you're still in the beginner category, try yoga with a friend. We usually end up laughing our heads off. Sit quietly in this garden, which has a fountain in it with a lovely sound, or one of the others scattered around the grounds. You can talk in these places confidentially because sound won't travel beyond those parcels. We have lots of activities to exercise your body virtually. You can take bike rides around the Sim with others or swim with others using the floaty at the swimming hole. Five people can swim at a time. This group was dancing up a storm recently to the rhythm of the drum beats. Recent studies show real benefits from drumming for many different groups of people outworld. You could even get your own drum at home and join in as you watch yourself. We had trouble getting this group to stop. As you know, if you attend drumming groups in world, drums resonate in the bone, even in virtuality. These drummers and dancers, most of whom are over 55, they said I could tell you that, really got into the groove. Just try this for a moment now. Start a drum beat yourself with a hand or foot. Notice what happens in your body when you do it. It's very good for keeping you fit while you sit at your computer. Did you know that people who automatically jiggle their legs use a lot more calories than people who don't? When I learned that, I stopped telling my husband to stop jiggling. Gentle hair and a virtual ability in second life recently gave a superb presentation on exercises you can do at your desk. The audience responded enthusiastically to the idea and talked about starting a weekly exercise group because otherwise the idea never leads to action. This is another reason for the fairgrounds. If people can find ways to come together easily, they're more likely to make a real commitment and stick to it. And doing brain health activities consistently is what makes them really effective. I wanted to show you a little bit about the... Good, jiggling. Sometimes when we're doing music programs, I have people actually tapping things and bringing little instruments with them where they're sitting and just using them because you have all different feel when you're doing something like that. Yeah, up and down. Going up and down as you work is great too, sitting down standing up. I have a timer that I set for every 20 minutes, so I remember to move and do an exercise every 20 minutes. And here's just a little trick. I also hold a soft pillow between my knees because that activates the inner thigh muscles, which are very important for standing up, let alone swimsuits. I wanted to show you some pictures of our free energy class, which we host regularly. It's a really cutting-edge class. We want to offer classes that are challenging and fun and useful to people. So if you'd like to teach anything, please tell me. I have space for you. The teacher of this class, Tuya Heinz, brilliantly teaches somewhat experienced builders how to create innovative animated objects in second life without using scripts. People think it can't be done, but she learned this from somebody and is carrying it forward. She uses a revolutionary new concept called free energy. Here a group is about to get on a rail car made from free energy. We had a lot of fun trying it out that day. And another thing we're doing is collaborating on building a Rube-Goldberg contraption. Can anybody explain here what a Rube-Goldberg contraption is? Let's see if I can type it in. Does anybody remember? See here? This is another view of the contraption. If you look up there, I don't know if you can see it. I don't know if you can see an arrow. I suppose you could call it that. There is a donkey sitting up there. And the idea is to get the donkey to fall into the water down below. That's right. People are giving examples of what it is and different descriptions of it. So there's the donkey up on the board on a wheel. There's a water down below. And over here is a ball that, once you start it rolling, is supposed to go down and trigger something, which triggers something, which triggers something and tips the donkey into the water. It's not very efficient, but it's a lot of fun. It's great fun because we do it together. And even if you don't know how to edit or to build, and I'm very poor at those things, you can stand around and watch. And that's a lot of fun, I find too. You can see that from the class chat. We do this class in text so that students can keep a record and kind of keep. Thank you. Thank you, Beth. That's great. And here Tia made a carousel, which is in process. It sometimes blows up when she tries to start it. But recently, we were all able to get on it and move around. The little things that look like doughnuts are going to become horses one day. And we'll go up and down. They go up and down, and the thing goes around. And we were all on it. I kind of flew off, but I flew around with everybody else and came back to my seat. So that was sort of fun. Once you get the idea of how to do this, how to build this way, the sky and your imagination are really the limit. And creativity builds resilience. And it helps you avoid boredom, both very good. So this is my last slide, which is an invitation to come to the Whole Brain Health Fairground for the monthly fair days. If you join our group, I will send you a notice of the fair days. And this is our logo, inspire, innovate, interact, change. I envision the whole brain health fairgrounds as one strand and a whole network of places in virtual worlds that naturally work together toward the same goals of well-being through lifelong learning, especially for people as they get older. Lifelong learning is a big concept. The more creatively it's approached, the more it incorporates what research is finding about ways we humans can help ourselves live better. The more valuable it will become for boomers and the generations that follow them. I hope you'll come to the networking party here tomorrow at 4 to talk together and experience the fairgrounds. I also invite anyone who would like to show off their program on a fair day to contact me. I try to feature a small variety of different programs each time to introduce new audiences to what virtual worlds can offer already. One aspect of your program should be that it will encourage participants to regularly practice activities that stimulate the body, mind, and spirit within the whole brain health framework I've shown you today. I wanted to give you all a gift here. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to do it. But if you come to the whole brain health fairgrounds on Second Life, you can pick it up by the landing point. It will say, Avakind Gifts. It contains a link to a fun machinima of the fairgrounds that Francisco Kulhaven helped me make. He and other friends from Aris Apps and Keen Academy and OpenSim Educational Project are helping me turn the fairgrounds into a state-of-art changing activity site. The keyword here is changing. Brain health is promoted through new and different challenges. We try to reflect this powerfully on the fairgrounds. Our goal is your well-being over your whole life. And that now is the end and I'm very happy to have any questions or comments or any any response of any kind. Any ideas you have, anything that you found has helped you in this way. I'm very happy to hear about it. I love that. Thank you. I appreciate your participation. It was very nice to have you pop in with some thoughts. That was a terrific presentation and I will just throw this in and please, anybody, if you have any questions, you can also ask her directly in chat. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule as well as I said, which is going to be quite different. There are a variety of social activities this afternoon because I have such wonderful people who work with who have great ideas and get my concept and try to help me develop it, which is one of the great things about virtual worlds I'm finding. And thank you again to our speakers and to this wonderful audience for putting up with a few little technical difficulties in the beginning. Okay, thank you.