As you grow older your body’s efficiency and immunity deteriorate. This may result in a variety of diseases that could be avoided by undertaking yoga for seniors. Yoga can also help seniors feel less miserable, happier, and more fulfilled.
Benefits of Yoga for Seniors
Some of the benefits seniors will appreciate when they’re involved with yoga include:
- Seniors tend to find it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. However, research suggests that seniors who practice yoga not only fall asleep faster but sleep better for a longer period of time.
- Seniors who have problems with their hands caused by rheumatoid arthritis were shown to significantly improve their hand grip strength by practicing yoga.
- Studies suggest that diabetic seniors who engage in 40 minutes of yoga daily had lower A1C levels and improved lung capacity.
- Researchers who evaluated the benefits of yoga on heart disease’s risk factors found that within three months patients’ blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and triglycerides decreased.
- Many middle-aged persons are known to gain weight but practicing yoga for 30 minutes weekly will help offset this. In fact, it can even help you lose weight.
- Yoga helps improve your mood and anxiety level because it gives GABA (a calming chemical in your brain) a boost.
- People who suffer from chronic pain will either improve or maintain their symptoms after practicing yoga for four weeks. This is great news for people who want to take less pain medication or who want more social interaction.
- You can build up your balance, strength, and confidence by practicing yoga.
Important Guidelines to Follow When Engaging in Yoga for Seniors
Now that you know why you should engage in yoga for seniors, here are a few things that you should remember while doing so:
- People with osteoporosis need to pay special attention to postures like straight-legged forward bends and end-range twists. These can increase their risk of vertebral fractures.
- Paying attention to your body alignment and posture while practicing yoga is important.
- In yoga for seniors, asanas should be held for a shorter amount of time. Remember, most seniors don’t start off with a lot of strength which is why they should start by only holding a pose for 10 – 15 seconds. You can repeat a pose and slowly increase the length of time it’s held.
- People should learn that by focusing their gaze on a specific spot they’ll be able to maintain their balance better. For rotational poses this spot should be either on the ground itself or straight ahead, never upward.
- Instead of including many complicated or challenging poses, make sure you only do one per session. Once that pose is no longer as complicated or challenging, you can introduce another one.
- Your focus should be on poses that will stretch and strengthen those areas that are known to either be tight or weak. This includes your ankles, hips, lower back, hamstrings, and pectorals. It’s also important not to put a lot of weight on your wrist as these typically grow weaker with age.
- Each pose should come with a variety of options. You can also use props to help with body alignment and balance. These props may also help support and protect your joints too.
Besides always maintaining proper fitness, it’s also important to make sure that you take care of the rest of your health as well. This includes your hearing, which is something that you can trust Countryside Hearings Aid Services to help you with. Even if you don’t feel as though you have any hearing issues, you should contact them today for a hearing exam.
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