Yoga and Aging: How the Practice Can Help With Balance, Flexibility, and Mobility
Retirement Mount Maunganui
Balance and flexibility are two of those things we tend to just shut off and not think about until they impact us. But both balance and flexibility are hugely important in maintaining mobility, especially as we age.
Once mobility has been lost, it can be quite difficult to get back again. This is especially true for seniors, who might become at risk of falling or injuring themselves as balance and flexibility decline. As a result, practising mobility each day in the form of yoga can be a great way to maintain balance and flexibility, and to keep yourself mobile for much longer to come.
Benefits of Yoga for Seniors
Yoga is a great choice for increasing flexibility and balance, and for maintaining mobility, because it focuses on creating purposeful movement and increasing the comfortable range of stretching motions. This also helps to build both strength and resilience, which are both essential in maintaining mobility.
Creating this resilience and strength in the body is really important for seniors. As you age, falls become more and more risky.
Yoga helps to build resilience into the muscles, so in the unfortunate case a fall does happen, the risk and potential for harm is minimised, and the body maintains the ability of the body to repair and restore after any damage happens.
Adapting Yoga for All Levels
So, why yoga over other forms of exercise?
Yoga is low impact and, most importantly, is able to be easily modified for different levels of activity and strength. For example, if you aren’t able to stand for long periods or if you struggle with maintaining balance when beginning to practise yoga, a chair aid can be used to reduce the effort and keep you safe.
Yoga can also be adapted, by adjusting the length of time you hold a particular movement, as well as the level of stretch that’s incorporated into each position. This means that yoga is a safe practice with lots of alternatives and alterations that can help to keep your body safe while also creating progress.
Yoga in a Sustainable Community
If you are familiar with the practice of yoga, you might also be familiar with the tenets of yoga that have their roots in sustainability and harm reduction. Yoga is a practice designed to put you in the mind of spirituality, but is open to the interpretation of what each person’s practice of spirituality can be.
In a sustainable community like Pacific Lakes, this can look like connecting with nature, spending time outside, or even undertaking eco-friendly projects. These are also great choices for making or maintaining new connections, building friendships, or just spending time around other people.
Expert Opinions
Feeling comfortable and secure as you age is something that many people strive for, and one of the best ways to achieve this is through routine exercise and maintenance of muscles.
However, keeping on top of your exercise regime can be difficult. As a result, specialists recommend low impact, low effort exercises like yoga which can be easily modified to suit changing health needs.
Conclusion
Maintaining your health as you age is important and comes through aligning a healthy, sustainable lifestyle with plenty of effective exercise. Incorporating yoga is one option for a low-impact, easily modifiable routine that can encourage you to engage with nature and increase your overall wellbeing.
Remember that each yoga pose can be modified for any special health considerations. For further information, get in touch with a member of the friendly team here at Pacific Lakes!
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