The Benefits of Yoga for Seniors

by Senior Protection Blogger

Yoga helps to reduce anxiety, lowering your heart rate, blood pressure, and helps you breathe easier. This can be attributed to the low-impact way of exercising and strengthening muscles. Yoga has even been reported to improve sleeping habits. This relaxing way of exercising for seniors has become a way of life for many and continues to thrive across the world.

As we age, it is important to incorporate a healthy and active lifestyle through physical activity and yoga will offer that slow and gentle approach for a safe workout.

Benefits of Yoga to Seniors:

Balance: Many instructors of yoga have stressed that one of the major benefits of continuous participation will help with one’s balance. The repetitive transitions, increased strength and movement all contribute to better balance while performing yoga.

Strength: Believe it or not, many of the poses performed by doing yoga require a tremendous amount of strength to hold and balance. If you were to add a few yoga workouts to your weekly routine it can offer you a great way of strengthening your body in all levels.

Posture: Practicing proper posture is important for everyone but as we age it becomes more difficult to maintain a good posture. Yoga has been known to offer its recipients a benefit of just that. Many instructors can help you target some important poses to help increase your posture.

Attitude: Exercising on any level can help offer a better mood or mindset, but yoga has steadily become the king of increasing your mood or attitude. Let’s face it, not too many physical exercises will offer a way of relaxation and mood setting.

Mental Workout: Yoga is also great for mental health. It improves mood, focus and concentration, especially in relation to the types of yoga which include meditation as part of their routines. Two such types are Hatha, the origin of all yogas, and Kundalini yoga. Kundalini yoga was formed in the 5th century AD to work on the energy centers of the body, known as the chakras in traditional Indian medicine (Ayurvedic medicine).

Increased Mobility: One of the biggest health challenges for seniors tends to be pain and stiffness, such as that of arthritis. If we feel pain when we work out, we avoid working out. However, the less we move, the stiffer we become and the more pain we suffer. So we work out even less, leading to a vicious cycle of pain, stiffness and lack of exercise that can leave many people house-bound or even chair-bound when they could be out making the most of their golden years.

Start living life on your terms and be as healthy as you can be.