3 Benefits Of Regular Yoga Practice For The Elderly

While doing yoga can be beneficial for almost anyone, this type of exercise can be especially beneficial for people as they age. The ways in which your body changes tend to lend themselves very well to yoga, and this workout can give an aging body exactly what it needs when it comes to physical activity.

To show you just how this is done, here are three benefits of regular yoga practice for the elderly, be it through your assisted living community or by watching yoga videos online.

Develop Stronger Bones

For many older adults, one of the biggest changes with their bodies is the loss of bone density. When your bones become thinner and weaker, it becomes much easier to break them. And if you’re having trouble staying on your feet or getting your body to do exactly what you want, there are many more chances for you to fall or get hurt in a way that could easily break your done.

Luckily, practicing yoga can help prevent this. With yoga, the weight bearing movements can help to strengthen your bones and keep them from thinning quite so quickly. While it will take consistent yoga practice to start seeing this type of benefit, if you can fit yoga into your everyday life, you could keep yourself from breaking bones that otherwise might have been injured.

Keep From Getting Stiff

With any kind of exercise, you’re going to have an increase in mobility. But for many older adults, it’s the easy and smooth movements of yoga that will work best for keeping their bodies from getting too stiff and sore.

Yoga requires you to use a lot of different yoga poses that stretch and move many different muscle groups. Because of this, yoga is a great practice for keeping your body limber as you age and ensuring that you’re able to accomplish everything that you want to do outside of your time spent exercising, too.

Improves Your Balance

So much of yoga is about getting into a specific hold and then holding that pose. As you get into yoga poses that challenge your balance a little more, you’ll soon find that your balance has improved not only when doing the poses, but as you go about your daily life as well.

While some of the poses might need to be modified now as your balance is slowly improving, as you keep up with your yoga practice, you’ll find that not only can you get into the poses easier and hold them for longer periods of time, but that you can also see evidence of better balance all throughout your day.

If you’ve thought about doing yoga before but have wondered how it could benefit you as an older adult, consider using the information mentioned above to help you in making the right decision for you body.