LIFELONG LEARNING is the highly successful approach to healthy aging that promotes regular and frequent mental and physical challenges to stimulate the body and the whole person, to build new neural pathways, and to satisfy the human need for novelty. What we have realized is that this approach is very much 'lifelong', not just a geratric pursuit at all but one that gets cemented into a person in their school years, through continued exploration in the adult years, and then becomes second nature in the golden years.
Learning doesn't come easy for anyone, it takes effort. Lifelong Learning approaches for this reason often also focus on methods for turning on the learning brain, stimulating the formation of those new neural pathways necessary for banking the new memories, the new experiences. Lifelong learning is Active and Participatory learning and so helps to increase circulation, get all the nerves firing, and oxygenate the body and brain.
The shape that lifelong learning takes in an individual's life is very personal and follows one's own natural curiosity. These are your extra-curricular pursuits. Increasingly, people are specialists in one field or another, and lifelong learning allows for people to expand their base and become generalists. Generalists are very often more self-sufficient as they are comfortable in navigating various waters through their accumulated experiences. Generalists have a better idea of where they are going and where they have been. Lifelong learning is many paths, each capable of helping people maintain or increase their understandings, their capacities, and their health.