If you want to improve your strength and flexibility, yoga is a great activity to consider. What’s even more impressive is that yoga is perfect for everyone, yes, even for seniors.
There are several types of yoga, but most of them focus on relaxation. Some styles will encourage you to move more, while others will teach you poses to improve flexibility. In most cases, yoga involves attention to breathing.
Yoga can provide mental and physical health benefits for everyone. And if you have an illness or currently recovering from surgery, this activity can become a fundamental part of your treatment and recovery, potentially speeding up your healing.
You may opt to join yoga classes. But if you have specific needs due to medical and surgical therapies, a yoga therapist can provide individualized plans to help you recover better. Essentially, yoga can support the recovery process and help you manage your symptoms without getting too stressed.
Flexibility
Yoga works by stretching the muscles. When you do this, you will move better and not feel stiff or exhausted. People may feel the difference at various levels. However, you should be able to notice the benefits in roughly two months of yoga.
Back pain relief
The specific poses of yoga are good methods to ease pain and improve mobility of people with significant back pain. Many experts recommend yoga as the initial treatment for chronic low back pain.
Improving strength
Some types of yoga specifically target strength improvement. Practicing power yoga or ashtanga will help you enhance your muscle tone and reap endurance benefits. However, other styles of yoga, such as Hatha and Iyenga, can also provide strength, even though they are not as physical as extremely physical yogas.
Poses such as the plank, upward dog, and downward dog can build your upper-body strength. Similarly, if help for extended breaths, the standing poses can build strength in your abs, hamstrings, and quadriceps. If done right, these poses combined can build deep abdominal muscles and core strength.
Managing stress
Experts conclude that yoga can help people effectively manage stress. Several scientific pieces of evidence shows how effective yoga is in improving mental health and supporting stress management.
It’s particularly helpful in seniors as this activity promotes quality sleep, mindfulness, weight loss, and healthy eating. However, seniors with physical limitations may need an individualized plan. Also, make sure that they wear medical alert bracelets for safety purposes.
Better posture
Your posture will significantly improve as you become more flexible and more potent. Many yoga sitting and standing poses make the core stronger, primarily because you need to use your core muscles to maintain the poses. And with a stronger body, you will most likely develop a better posture, allowing you to stand firm and tall.
In addition, yoga allows you to become more aware of your body. As a result, you quickly notice if you’re slumping or slouching, so you can correct your posture right away.
Brighter mood and more energy
You will instantly feel increased physical and mental energy with just a few yoga classes. Your enthusiasm and alertness will boost, and you will no longer feel frequent negative emotions.
Good for the heart
Yoga is known as a great activity to lower blood pressure. It also slows down the heart rate, which is highly beneficial for people with heart disease and high blood pressure. In addition, yoga is associated with lower cholesterol, a better immune system, and lower triglyceride levels.
Less stress and more calm
Practicing yoga will help you feel more relaxed and less stressed. Yoga uses several meditation methods that calm the mind- the best way to achieve optimum calmness is by focusing on your breathing as you perform yoga poses.
Improved relationship with the community
Yoga isn’t just good for health. It’s also an activity that will allow you to connect with your community. Yoga classes can reduce loneliness and offer a safe environment to heal together.
But even one-on-one yoga classes can effectively reduce the feeling of loneliness as your instructor will respectfully acknowledge your needs by providing a personalized yoga plan for you.
Better sleep
Studies show that a regular yoga routine will help you calm down and put you in the right mindset to sleep better. The exercises you do will also help you stay asleep to get adequate rest as your body hibernates.
If you want to improve your quality of life, make sure to consider yoga. Aside from the mentioned benefits, it can also support people with balance issues, osteopenia, arthritis, chronic pain, and oncology.