If you are a senior who needs to do more to keep your balance and flexibility from slipping away, yoga is one activity to include in your life.
Additional benefits for seniors include greater body strength, mobility confidence and learning various breathing techniques that bring vitality to daily life and greater peace of mind.
Gentle yoga or chair yoga (chair yoga is performed sitting and standing without getting up and down from the floor) is a very practical and doable activity to include in your life as we embrace the changes that come with aging. There are no age limits. There are older adults still engaging in yoga well into their 90s.
Gentle and/or chair yoga, for women and men, will introduce you to yoga practice in a way that suits your body and guides you to do only what is comfortable for you.
The YMCA, in Mesa, offers gentle and chair yoga as a way to help seniors add to their quality of life. Classes at the YMCA are casual and welcoming. Joining a yoga class regularly brings you into a community of peers who share this activity. It can be fun.
Kripalu yoga, or hatha yoga, is the type of yoga offered to seniors at the YMCA because it is an integrative approach to health and wellness. This type of yoga brings to seniors a comfortable crossroad of East (the origins of yoga) and West (contemporary needs) to help transform seniors’ years into a very different physical and mental state of being.
Yoga also helps deal with an all too common issue for seniors, which is social and personal isolation. The healing properties of yoga help seniors reconnect within—turning to the mind to help heal the body, and using the body to help nourish and heal the mind.
Please consider trying (or resuming) your practice of yoga at the YMCA, located at 207 N. Mesa Drive. Call (602) 212-6106, or visit valleyymca.org/mesa to download a YMCA class schedule.
Another option to get you started would be to try a free gentle yoga class, which is offered on the last Thursday of each month at the Mesa Public Library, located at 64 E. 1st St. Visit the website at mesalibrary.org, and see Events for specific information.
Finally, if you prefer going to a yoga studio, look for one offering gentle or chair yoga and give it a try. As a 68-year-old yoga instructor, I’m a big advocate of bringing yoga into the lives of seniors.
I hope to see you in yoga class soon.
If you have questions, please email me at senoj99@gmail.com.