Yoga for Aging Gracefully
Starting tomorrow, I’m teaching a series of yoga classes called Yoga for Aging Gracefully, held via Zoom on Tuesdays, February 3–24. Each class runs from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time.
Staying active as you age requires moving smarter, recovering better, and keeping your body in top condition. In my video posts last week, I shared a bit about my journey to yoga and introduced Yoga to Thrive, a comprehensive practice that blends vinyasa, yin, and Self-Awakening Yoga with strengthening exercises to help you age gracefully, preserve your range of motion, and prevent injuries.
Yoga to Thrive has four guiding principles outlined below.
Body Awareness: Throughout class, you’re encouraged to observe and notice sensations to access your body’s wisdom. By using the “as-is” principle, accept yourself and your experiences in the moment and remain inquisitive without judgment.
Mobility and Flexibility: Mobility is essential for preventing stiffness and injury. Regular stretching and myofascial release can enhance flexibility and improve movement patterns, allowing you to maintain your range of motion. In Yoga to Thrive, we move in all planes, work with our connective tissues such as fascia, ligaments, and tendons, bring awareness to areas of tightness or stickiness, and recognize asymmetries in the body.
Strength: Muscle mass naturally declines with age, but resistance training helps sustain strength, bone density, and joint stability. Yoga to Thrive classes incorporate movements designed to strengthen muscles and encourage practitioners to pay attention to which muscles struggle to engage or are unable to disengage or relax. The combination of strength and flexibility helps us achieve stability and our most efficient alignment, enabling us to move with ease.
Balance: Developing balance aids in functional movement and helps us avoid injury by strengthening stabilizer muscles and cultivating proprioception (a sense of your location in space). When you maintain balance, you are better equipped to catch yourself if you trip or slip, and you can sustain independence by being able to move well.
Each of the four yoga sessions will incorporate the guiding principles.
Register here for $60 for the series. We get started tomorrow!