You don't have to love getting old.
You just have to love who you're becoming.
I'm Penelope Lane – clinical psychologist, fitness coach, brain trainer, and mindfulness teacher, who spent decades teaching mind-body connection… then promptly ignored it all and woke up one morning unable to get out of bed.
When I realised that everything I’d been doing to stay “strong” was actually breaking me down, I had to return to the practices I’d abandoned and rebuild the whole system properly.
Not just muscle, but mobility, balance, flexibility, and control. Not just an active mind, but a clear one. Not just coping, but emotional resilience. And not just “staying busy,” but living with purpose and intention.
Now I help women over 60 build Whole Strength that stands up to real life – the emotional weather, the mental fog, the existential musings, the runaway grandkids, and the stairs no one warned us about.
I work with women over 60 who’ve had their wake-up call.
Maybe it was physical – the diagnosis, the fall, the morning you couldn't get out of bed. Maybe it was quieter – standing in front of the mirror one day and genuinely not recognising yourself.
Either way, you know something needs to change. You're fiercely independent and want to stay that way. You're exhausted by the noise around ageing – the "turn back the clock" messaging and Band-aid positivity in equal measure.
You want real answers. Real practices. A real way forward that honours where you are now, not where you were at 35.
That's the work I do.
My signature Whole Strength method
Over 36 years of clinical psychology, body & brain fitness training, and mindfulness teaching – plus 67 years of personal ups and downs – I developed a unique approach I call Whole Strength: a practical, evidence-informed way to rebuild from the inside out. It combines four essential components, each supporting the others.
Body
Strength, stamina, mobility, and balance through mindful, purposeful movement. I teach movement that builds capability – the kind that keeps you active, steady, and able to do the things you love.
Mind
Mental calm and sharpness through mindfulness and brain–body dual-tasking. These practices challenge coordination, memory, and mental agility while grounding you in awareness.
Heart
Emotional resilience through self-compassion tools drawn from both psychology and spiritual practice. This is about responding to your own challenges with respect and curiosity, not self-criticism.
Soul
A sense of meaning through simple reflection practices that reconnect you to purpose – the reason you get out of bed in the morning. Because staying alive isn’t the same as feeling alive
My story:
The long way home
For most of my youth, I wasn’t what anyone would call fit. I carried extra weight, had one small health issue after another, and would get puffed walking from one end of the house to the other. Exercise and I had an on-again, off-again relationship – mostly off.
Pregnancy at 30 changed that. There’s nothing like the responsibility of growing a human to make you reconsider the whole “I’ll get to it eventually” approach to health. Therapy helped. So did mindfulness and a stubborn streak that was finally put to good use.
Then I joined a Perth boot camp run by an ex-SAS soldier. It was as intense as it sounds, but it changed me. I worked my way up to the elite squad and somehow – even after the novelty wore off – I kept going. At 61, I ran my first half-marathon.
By then, I’d spent more than 30 years as a clinical psychologist, fitness trainer, and mindfulness teacher. I had this mind–body connection thing down to an art, both personally and professionally.
Or so I thought.
The day my body called my bluff
Wake-up calls never send an email in advance. They don't politely knock on the door. They kick it in and demand your attention, even if you're still in your nightie with your hair sticking up like a cockatoo.
Mine arrived one ordinary January morning. With no warning, I woke up in agony with shooting pain in my lower back and down my left leg.
Now, I'm a stoic woman by nature. I grew up in a time when you didn't complain, you coped. So I did what any stubborn, mildly delusional woman would do: I decided to push through it. Not only to make it to my gym workout, but to teach my own group fitness class.
Because in my head, this was just "a bit of tightness." A stretch would fix it. A few squats and crunches and I'd be fine.
The reality check
Soon it became clear I wasn’t going to my class. I wasn’t even leaving my bed. The only thing my body was capable of was crawling to the couch and lying perfectly still.
The scans filled in the rest: two disc bulges in the lower back, osteoarthritis, and years of bone degeneration. My spine was quite literally collapsing under the weight of my own denial.
Here's the irony: I'm a psychologist, a fitness trainer, and a mindfulness teacher. I understand the body-mind connection. I know stress lives in the body. I've taught mindful awareness and fitness for decades.
And yet, I'd abandoned my own wisdom. I'd been so obsessed with staying physically strong that I overtrained myself into injury. Somewhere between turning 60 and building a business, I got swept into the noise that tells women my age: Stay strong at all costs. Keep up. Keep busy.
What started as strength became armour. But the thing about armour is you can't hug your grandchildren in it.
The choice:
Pushing through
or healing through
Pain will always get your attention when you've ignored the whispers for too long. And when you're horizontal, unable to move without wincing, you tend to examine your life choices with brutal clarity.
I had a choice to make – the same choice I now help other women navigate.
I could do what I'd always done: bulldoze through the pain, keep up appearances, stay busy and hope I'd make it back to "normal." Or I could face what I'd been avoiding: my own limits, my own humanness, my own need to rebuild differently this time.
I chose to stop. To listen. To actually honour what my body was telling me instead of overriding it with willpower and denial.
Finding my way back home
What saved me wasn't a magic stretch or a better physio. What saved me was returning to what I'd walked away from – the power and honesty of the body-mind-heart-soul connection. Not the glossy version of “wellness,” but the practical, sometimes uncomfortable kind that asks you to rebuild everything properly.
BODY: I rebuilt physical capability, but smarter this time. Strength and movement with awareness, not ego.
MIND: I brought back brain-body dual-tasking – balance work while counting backwards, coordination drills that make your brain and body talk to each other again. And I returned to my daily mindfulness practice, creating the mental calm and clarity that makes everything else possible.
HEART: I practised what I'd been teaching for 36 years as a clinical psychologist and mindfulness teacher– self-compassion and emotional resilience. Not beating myself up for "failing," but responding to my own pain with curiosity and kindness.
SOUL: I reconnected to why I wanted strength in the first place – not to look capable, but to be capable. I finally listened to what my soul had been trying to tell me for the longest time, and became curious, purposeful, and genuinely alive.
Here’s what I know now
Here's what I learned lying on that couch:
The body heals when the mind isn't at war with it.
Brain-body training slows decline better than any single exercise.
Self-compassion – not just powering through pain or surface-level positive thinking – is what keeps us steady for the long haul.
And without a sense of meaning, we hollow out and feel empty – even if we look strong on the outside.
My spine injury wasn't the catastrophe I thought it was. It was the reckoning I needed – a path back to the practices I'd abandoned, the wisdom I'd ignored, and the integration I was passionate about teaching but had not been fully living.
If you've reached your own crossroads – if you've had your wake-up call and know there's something more, but you’re not sure where to begin – I can help. Not because I have everything figured out, but because I’ve crawled through this myself, made every mistake on the way, and spent decades helping other women find their footing again.
You don't have to love getting old. You just have to be willing to face what's true and build from there.That's where the good stuff begins.
Fun facts about me
My small rebellion at 67:I've sold my bright yellow Fiat and get around on an electric tricycle instead – adorned with flowers and flower stickers, naturally. I am carrying dumbbells in the back tray for teaching my beach fitness classes.
The most impractical but delightful thing I own: A long sapphire blue velvet theatre coat with gold buttons. Completely impractical for Perth. I refuse to recycle it.
What surprises people most: Even though I'm outgoing and teach fitness classes outside in public, I'm actually a shy introvert. And I'm addicted to BBC crime shows.
My daily pleasure (not guilty at all): Two shortbread fingers. Every single day. Non-negotiable.
The best advice I ever ignored: "Behave yourself and be a good girl."
What surprised me most about getting older: If you put the energy in the right places, it can be the most positive, fabulous, creative, strong, resilient time of your life. Even with a crumbling spine.
