The other day Baxter and I were talking with an editor about a possible book on Yoga for Healthy Aging—isn’t that exciting?—when he said something about healthy aging that really struck me. We were going through the possible definitions of "healthy aging" (look for a post on that topic from me soon) when he mentioned that for a lot of his students, healthy aging meant being able to continue to do the activities they loved. Some examples he gave included a woman who wanted to be able to take her grandchildren on hiking adventures and another who wanted to be able to continue with her intensive gardening work.
What's so great about yoga is that a regular yoga asana practice can help with these goals for healthy aging. You can use your yoga practice both to fortify yourself and balance your body to keep yourself in shape to continue doing what you love.
Kale by Melina Meza
Let’s take the example of gardening because that’s something I do a lot myself. Gardening can actually be quite hard on your body. You spend a lot of time bending forward, which can be hard on your lower back. Bending forward also stretches the back side of your body (your legs, back, etc.) while creating tightness in the front body, the same way that sitting at your desk all day does. You also use your arms stretched out in front of you all day, which tightens your shoulders. And you need strength for digging holes, and the occasional lifting of bags of fertilizer, large plants, etc.But you could easily plan a “gardeners” yoga practice. Backbends would strengthen your back body, stretch your front body, and restore the natural curve of your lumbar spine that gets overstretched from all the forward bending. Backbends would also help stretch the fronts of your thighs and strengthen the hamstring muscles in the backs of your thighs, balancing the strength and flexibility your legs. Twists would help release tension from your back, as well as strengthening back muscles and bones. Upper body strengthening poses (see Upper Body Strength the Easy Way and our many posts on individual upper body strengthening poses) would help you maintain your strength, and shoulder openers (see Standing Shoulder Stretches and Opening Tight Shoulders) would help you keep your shoulders flexible. Full and/or gentle inverted poses where your legs are elevated, such as Legs Up the Wall and Chair Shoulderstand (see All About Supported Inverted Poses), would foster good circulation in your legs and relieve pressure and possible swelling in your feet, ankles or legs from being on your feet all day. And if your gardening session causes mild back pain, a back care sequence, such as Low Back Care Sequence, would help relieve it.
For each activity—whether it is hiking, surfing, cycling, traveling, playing with your grandchildren, cooking for family and friends or hula hooping—you could come up with poses specifically targeted to help you maintain the physical skills you need. But because a balanced yoga practice helps you maintain strength, flexibility, balance, and agility as you age, any regular yoga practice is going to be helpful for all these activities. And fortunately for many of us, yoga is one of the activities we hope to continue doing as we age, and that’s what this blog is all about!
What are your favorite activities you’d like to keep doing as you age?
