What is Healthy Aging, Anyway?

by Nina

Dahlia by Melina Meza

It has only struck me recently that while we’ve written about what aging is and the many ways yoga can help foster healthy aging, we’ve never really addressed what “healthy aging” is. So I thought I’d take a moment to give an overview of the thoughts that Baxter and I currently have on this topic. At this point—we’re still just discussing these ideas—we consider healthy aging to have three important aspects:

• Compressed Morbidity
• Independence
• Equanimity

And the reason why we’re such proponents of yoga for healthy aging is that we believe yoga can help with all three of these aspects of healthy aging. For now, I’ll just give you a brief overview of how.

Compressed Morbidity. Last week I wrote a post Longevity vs. Morbidity comparing the difference between longevity and morbidity. The medical term “morbidity” refers to the period of time you spend in ill health before you die. Obviously we all would like—both for ourselves and for our loved ones—to keep this period of ill health as short (that is, compressed) as possible. A well-rounded yoga practice, especially one that includes stress management, can help by preventing some of the diseases, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes that plague people during their older years.

Independence. Another goal I think we all share for ourselves and our loved ones is that we can continue to live independently and care for ourselves as long as possible. From our point of view living independently includes both the basic daily self care activities, such as dressing, going to the toilet, getting up and down from a chair, doing light housework, and so on as well as the ability to continue to do the activities we love (which I wrote about in my post Being Able to Do What You Love) for as long as possible. A regular asana practice—even one that is modified over time—will help keep us able bodied, rather than sliding into the stiffness and weakness that results from a sedentary lifestyle.

Equanimity. For me, maintaining emotional stability as we age is the most important aspect of healthy aging. For even if we can “compress” morbidity, we will certainly have to go through poor health at some point. And even if we can prolong our independence into old age, we may eventually have to face the loss of that, however briefly. In addition, even if we are ourselves blessed with long and healthy lives, we’ll all have to deal with losing people we love. So being able to handle the challenges ahead with balance and grace is crucial. But I also believe that this is where yoga has its greatest strength. Stress management practices help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. And meditation and yoga philosophy can help us keep grounded and strong. At least that is my fervent hope.

Baxter and I will be writing more on these topics in the weeks to come, but we’d also love to hear your thoughts, ideas and personal stories.

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Continuing To Do What You Love

by Nina

The other day Baxter and I were talking with an editor about a possible book on Yoga for Healthy Aging—isn’t that exciting?—when he said something about healthy aging that really struck me. We were going through the possible definitions of "healthy aging" (look for a post on that topic from me soon) when he mentioned that for a lot of his students, healthy aging meant being able to continue to do the activities they loved. Some examples he gave included a woman who wanted to be able to take her grandchildren on hiking adventures and another who wanted to be able to continue with her intensive gardening work.

What's so great about yoga is that a regular yoga asana practice can help with these goals for healthy aging. You can use your yoga practice both to fortify yourself and balance your body to keep yourself in shape to continue doing what you love.

Kale by Melina Meza

Let’s take the example of gardening because that’s something I do a lot myself. Gardening can actually be quite hard on your body. You spend a lot of time bending forward, which can be hard on your lower back. Bending forward also stretches the back side of your body (your legs, back, etc.) while creating tightness in the front body, the same way that sitting at your desk all day does. You also use your arms stretched out in front of you all day, which tightens your shoulders. And you need strength for digging holes, and the occasional lifting of bags of fertilizer, large plants, etc.

But you could easily plan a “gardeners” yoga practice. Backbends would strengthen your back body, stretch your front body, and restore the natural curve of your lumbar spine that gets overstretched from all the forward bending. Backbends would also help stretch the fronts of your thighs and strengthen the hamstring muscles in the backs of your thighs, balancing the strength and flexibility your legs. Twists would help release tension from your back, as well as strengthening back muscles and bones. Upper body strengthening poses (see Upper Body Strength the Easy Way and our many posts on individual upper body strengthening poses) would help you maintain your strength, and shoulder openers (see Standing Shoulder Stretches and Opening Tight Shoulders) would help you keep your shoulders flexible. Full and/or gentle inverted poses where your legs are elevated, such as Legs Up the Wall and Chair Shoulderstand (see All About Supported Inverted Poses), would foster good circulation in your legs and relieve pressure and possible swelling in your feet, ankles or legs from being on your feet all day. And if your gardening session causes mild back pain, a back care sequence, such as Low Back Care Sequence, would help relieve it.

For each activity—whether it is hiking, surfing, cycling, traveling, playing with your grandchildren, cooking for family and friends or hula hooping—you could come up with poses specifically targeted to help you maintain the physical skills you need. But because a balanced yoga practice helps you maintain strength, flexibility, balance, and agility as you age, any regular yoga practice is going to be helpful for all these activities. And fortunately for many of us, yoga is one of the activities we hope to continue doing as we age, and that’s what this blog is all about!

What are your favorite activities you’d like to keep doing as you age?

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