In this episode of the Living The Retirement Lifestyle Podcast we meet Dr Andrea Pennington and hear how turning 50 led to a move to the South of France with her daughter and what can only be described as an awakening. Life in the USA with an enviable career path as a qualified physician, actress, singer, media super star and best selling author she discovered it wasn’t fulfilling enough… something was missing

Following a near death-like experience this popular physician and medical journalist realized that her past conditioning was causing her to live an inauthentic life that created depression and anxiety

Tune in to find out what led to her transition and why she chose to focus on alternative medicine and why she believes some of our best work occurs after 50

She talks about her ayahuasca ceremony in 2017 in Peru with a beautiful ayahuascera (medicine woman) whose family lineage included many shamans but she wasn’t ready for what was being revealed back then but by the time her mother’s memory was being eroded by Alzheimers she says she was definitely ready and she shares that one of the highlights of a later ceremony included connecting with the soul of her mother and able to grieve the loss of her memory and the mother she once knew.

This was all fascinating to hear as we had read and heard about shamans and ayahuasca ceremonies but never met anyone who could share their personal experience and provide a better understanding of one of those ancient arts now practiced in our modern world

Moving on…

We chatted about retirement and what science is showing us, about having an ikigai and about the inhabitants of Okinawa where men and women live on average seven years longer than Americans and have the longest disability-free life expectancy on earth. Apparently Okinawa is known as “the land of the immortals” and more people over a hundred years old live there than anywhere else. They don’t have a word for retirement but instead have the word ikigai which roughly means “the reason you wake up in the morning” or as Andrea translates it “having a life purpose”

We reckon that Andrea has found her ikigai