How Yoga Can Support Strength, Balance, and Everyday Movement as You Age

Explore how yoga can support your strength, balance, and mobility as you age — starting where you are today.

Getting up from the couch. Stepping over a garden hose. Reaching for the good casserole dish on the top shelf. It is in these small movements where we first notice our bodies have changed. 

It's common to lose muscle mass as you get older. The condition is called sarcopenia, and it makes everyday activities harder and falls and injuries more likely. Bone density tends to drop too, so bones become more fragile.

Other changes show up as well. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments lose some flexibility, and your joints feel stiffer. Healing can also take longer than it used to. 

So “strength” is about more than just muscle. It's the capacity to do what your day asks of you: standing up from a chair with ease, carrying groceries in from the car, feeling steady on the stairs ...  that's the kind of everyday strength yoga is particularly good at preserving.

Why Balance Declines and What to Do About It

Balance isn't a single skill. It draws on your vision, your inner ear, feedback from your joints and muscles, and the strength to respond. Research shows that visual, proprioceptive (where your body is in space), and hearing all decline with age. 

Here's where yoga comes in. It gives you a way to practice balance using a process called staging. Staging in yoga means building a pose in small supported steps. You begin with the version of a pose that feels steady and add more challenge as you're ready.

Take tree pose (the pose where you stand on one leg and spread your arms over your head  like a tree), for example:

• You start by standing beside a chair with a hand resting on the back.

• You shift your weight into one foot while the other ones stay on the floor.

• Bring the lifted foot to your ankle or lower leg, or just above the knee ... whatever feels right for you in the moment.

• Let go of the chair for a breath or two, then return.

Each stage shows you where you are in life at that moment. And each stage allows you to pause and assess your balance, strength and confidence. As you continue your practice, each stage should become easier. And, as you go through your day, you will likely find that activities you may have noticed becoming challenging become less so.

Fascia, Mobility, and Range of Motion

Fascia is the connective tissue that wraps and supports your muscles and other structures. When it's tight or injured, movement can feel restricted, and the Cleveland Clinic lists yoga among the practices that may ease that tension.

Range of motion is how far a joint can move. Mobility is how comfortably you use that range in daily life: turning to check the driveway, reaching overhead, bending over to tie your shoe. Not

every stiff spot is a fascia issue. 

Yoga helps keep fascia flexible through movement. Healthy fascia is actually slippery and glides as you move. Dehydration, stress, and lack of activity can make it stiffer and less able to slide. Fascia also responds to mechanical stimulation, so the stretching, twisting, and weight-shifting in a yoga practice helps keep it supple. 

Yoga includes two kinds of beneficial movement. Held poses and flowing poses where you move, i.e., flow, from one pose to the next in a continuous fashion, helps to keep tissues malleable.

Proprioception and Balance

Proprioception is your body's sense of where it is in space. Proprioception can decline with age, which makes balance and coordination harder. Yoga gives you a daily way to practice. Stand in Mountain Pose and notice the pressure through each foot. Then move slowly and see what changes. The Cleveland Clinic notes that exercises such as one-legged balance work that is common in yoga can strengthen it. 

Yoga Cikitsa to Get the Most From Your Practice

Yoga cikitsa (pronounced, “si-kitsuh") is the Sanskrit term for yoga therapy. The International Association of Yoga Therapists describes yoga therapy as the application of yoga within a therapeutic relationship that includes personalized assessment and goal setting.

If you have specific issues you would like to talk about to see if yoga is right for you, please schedule a consult with Heather, a one on one, or small group class to get started.

Wherever you're starting from, there's a version of this practice that meets you where you are.

Ready to begin? Not sure if yoga is for you? Take advantage of our introductory offer: 30 days for $30.