Health Benefits of Yoga for Seniors
Are you curious about yoga? If you’ve never tried it, you should! Yoga is a gentle practice that’s good for anyone, at any stage of life. In fact, it’s so beneficial for seniors that many active adult communities offer yoga classes for their residents. Let’s take a look at some of the health benefits of yoga for seniors.
- Yoga is great for lifting your mood. It’s well-known that exercise in general can boost endorphins for a boost in mood, yoga’s specific combination of movement, breathing, and meditation take it to the next level.
- By helping the body release tension, yoga provides stress relief. Once that stress is alleviated, you’ll experience a lowered heart rate, improved sleeping habits, reduced anxiety, lowered blood pressure, and improved breathing.
- Practicing yoga improves your balance, flexibility, mobility, and strength. In yoga, you’ll use slow, controlled movements and poses. This helps you develop core strength, which promotes better balance and ability to catch yourself from falling.
- Some yoga poses alleviate pain. Back pain relief and even arthritis symptoms can be eased by doing yoga. In fact, yoga has been shown to relieve joint pain and improve bone density, helping to ward off osteoporosis.
- Yoga classes provide social interaction. Yoga is a reflective practice that encourages participants to look inward, but participating in a yoga class offers seniors a great opportunity to interact with their peers.
- There’s a type of yoga for everyone. Different styles of yoga make it easy to find one where you can fit in, whether you’re an athlete or a couch potato. Which type interests you?
- Hatha: Unhurried and calming, this style introduces meditation, breathing, and basic poses.
- Vinyasa: Energetic and repetitive, the flowing movements of this style challenge endurance.
- Ashtanga: With physically demanding, highly synchronized movements, this style demands accuracy.
- Bikram: Also called hot yoga, this style involves doing poses in a heated room and can help with flexibility and detoxing.
- Iyengar: This style uses straps and blocks for slow-paced movements that help with relaxation and stretching.
- Yin: Poses are held for a longer time to build flexibility and promote relaxation.
- Chair Yoga: For people with balance or mobility issues, chair yoga offers the benefits of yoga without the physical demands and risk of falling. The chair is used for stability and the person either sits on it or holds onto it for balance. Chair yoga helps with flexibility and strength, and regular practice can improve spatial awareness, assist focus and concentration, and increase mental resilience.
When you’re ready to find a luxury apartment in an adult active living community, consider Larkspur at Shadow Creek. A family-owned and managed 55 plus community, we offer resort-style active living apartments in Pearland, Texas, and amenities like a fitness center and exercise classes, including yoga. We give our residents the chance to transition from the responsibilities and burdens of home ownership to a lifestyle of convenience and luxury in our senior living apartments, where they’ll find new friends, new activities, and new adventures. To learn more about retirement living at Larkspur at Shadow Creek, call 832-376-8414, or contact us through our website.