Yoga has gotten a bad reputation over the years. After speaking to so many people over the years I have realized the perception that yoga has received. The one aspect of yoga that people have complained about when I mention yoga is that it is too slow for them. Honestly, I felt the same way when I first experienced yoga. I thought yoga was slow and only for certain people. I didn’t realize that there were different levels of yoga and how the poses can be made harder to fit your fitness level. I have definitely come to enjoy yoga and I incorporate it into my training throughout the week as much as I can.

Yoga is a low impact exercise that can yield massive benefits for older individuals. Breathing while holding a yoga pose will create more self-awareness of your body in space. The tension that is part of every pose will challenge your body in a plethora of ways. You will get 4 main benefits from incorporating yoga into your week, which are:

• Balance
• Strength
• Mobility
• Functionality

Balance

Balance shouldn’t be a surprising benefit from practicing yoga. After all, you can probably see the challenge with holding particular poses such as the warrior poses and the tree pose. However, let’s dive a little bit deeper into this topic.

The unfortunate thing about balance is that the only real way to improve your balance is by practicing. Keep standing on one leg until you can hold steady for longer period of time. Increasing your core and leg strength are also a couple ways to improve your balance as well. However, knowing where your body is in space (proprioception) is something that needs to be practiced. I’m not going to go too deep into the biology of balance, but if you want more information please send me a message.

Yoga is great for improving balance because of the variety of different positions that you will be performing. For example, warrior one is a staggered stance with your arms stretched out overhead. Warrior two is a staggered stance with your arms parallel to the ground. This slight change in the arms makes a difference in your center of balance and your equilibrium. One pose might feel different from one to the other. Now, let’s change some other parts of both poses that will change how they feel. Typically you are focusing your gaze on something in front of you, so let’s instead try looking at something to the side of you or up at the ceiling (or the sky, trees, clouds, wherever you feel like doing yoga). This change in your focus will challenge your equilibrium which will allow you to stay balanced in other situations while looking in different directions. I’m positive that a decent percentage of older adults that fall every year can be attributed to looking at something while walking.

Now, let’s bend the front leg parallel to the ground(or as low as your strength will allow). Your body is no longer locked into position, and is instead slightly more mobile which creates more instability. Your core and your hips are going to work much harder to stabilize in an unstable position. This can be very challenging because the less stable you are the more that you have to work to stay stable. You can probably see the trend here. We are progressing from stable and stationary to unstable and dynamic. Becoming more comfortable with your balance in unstable and dynamic situations will keep you safe by allowing you to keep your balance in a variety of different situations.

Strength

Believe it or not you can develop strength by doing yoga. Again, falling back on the misconception that yoga is nothing but meditated stretching. Holding and cycling through dozens of different poses in particular sequences helps build a good amount of strength. Not to mention just holding the poses for extended periods of time. Don’t forget, yoga is stretching under tension, and you tend to hold this tension throughout your entire yoga workout. Imagine holding a warrior pose, which is essentially a lunge, for 15 seconds before transitioning through other poses to do the same thing on the other side.

Holding these poses with tension creates a lot of stability for your joints. You’re strengthening the muscles and creating stability around the joint while holding the pose. Overtime these moves will get easier and easier and you will have to do harder poses to get the same effects. Huh this sounds a lot like progressive overload! Progressive overload is how you get stronger and stronger, because you are constantly challenging your body to adapt and build more muscle to meet the demands placed on it.

Mobility

Mobility is essentially your ability to move through your entire range-of-motion (ROM) without pain. This has some obvious benefits to your everyday life. Yoga has the ability to create strength in different ranges of motion which have huge benefits to your mobility. For example, the downward dog position can help with the ROM of your shoulder through the tension it creates from holding the pose. You would eventually be getting your head through the window that your arms and the floor create to develop your shoulders ability to reach that full extension. This will help a great deal with moving an object above your head such as lifting a box onto a shelf or playing rocket ship with your grandkids. Yoga can allow you to perform such tasks with ease, because you now have the ROM and the strength in that ROM that allows it to be pain free.

Functionality

Yoga’s benefit to your body’s ability to be functional is a given based on all the points I discussed above. The combination of balance, strength, and increased mobility all create one of the most functional bodies that you can ask for. You have created a tremendous amount of stability and flexibility in your body which will allow you to do just about any daily task that you have on your list. Laundry, cooking dinner, getting groceries, entertaining guests, and playing with grandkids are only a few actions that can become much easier. Not to mention other tasks that become increasingly harder with age when the body remains stiff and untrained. For example, getting in and out of the bathtub or vehicle, picking up something small off the ground, and cleaning high and low areas of your home. These tasks can be scary and painful because one false step will result in fall which can lead to serious injury.

Yoga is one of the top exercises you can do

BONUS! One bonus benefit of yoga is HAPPINESS. Your feeling of happiness is essential to your health. The deep breath work, meditation, and appreciation of the work you’re putting in helps to lower your heart rate and stress levels. Stress has major effects on your body by throwing your hormones completely out of whack. So increasing your levels of happiness will allow your body and hormones to react in ways that are much more appropriate. Don’t forget that you will be getting a better functioning body as well. The ability to perform daily tasks with ease all attributes to your happiness. We become increasingly more stressed and frustrated when we can’t do simple tasks that were once easy for us. Yoga is a foundational movement that everyone should incorporate into their arsenal of exercises in order to create a happy and healthy body.