By: Kayla Harris
Maintaining flexibility, mobility, and vitality can be extremely difficult for older adults as they navigate the aging process. Seniors who have little to do may give in to their isolation and inactivity, which can produce rigidity in the limbs, a weakened core, and even muscle-mass shrinkage. It’s an all-too-common state of affairs for elderly individuals, and it’s why yoga and meditation are such ideal alternatives for seniors. They’re disciplines that can make a tremendous difference in your mental outlook and physical condition.
There’s no need to join a gym or buy a lot of expensive equipment because they can be done anywhere, at anytime, and there’s potential for social interaction, since senior yoga and meditation classes are fairly commonplace in senior and community centers. Caregivers benefit from a relaxing and enriching discipline that helps them cope with the daily stresses of attending to an elderly loved one who needs round-the-clock care.
Yoga
Yoga is a unique combination of mental discipline and deliberate and gradual physical movement, aimed at improving flexibility and strength. As a mindful form of exercise, it is especially beneficial to seniors and caregivers because it helps establish a strong mind-body connection that’s helpful in overcoming stiffness and muscle and joint pain and alleviating stress. Best of all for elderly individuals, yoga and meditation can be done indoors from a chair, making it easy to use technology, including YouTube videos, fitness apps, and Wii fitness games until you’re able to do it on your own.
Benefits
Yoga confers a long list of mental and physical benefits for both seniors and caregivers. Improved lung capacity and elevated oxygen capacity help make you more active and able to do physical exercise and socialize. Best of all for seniors, yoga’s also great for flexibility and general mobility. It stabilizes your core, improves bone strength, and can even help reduce swelling in the joints and extremities. Because it improves balance, yoga is an ideal form of exercise for preventing falls, a major problem among seniors. Caregivers benefit from reduced stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure, and better, more restful sleep. In some cases, yoga aids cardiac patients in recovering when combined with medical interventions and lifestyle improvements.
Meditation
Meditation is a beneficial practice for individuals who need help relaxing and focusing their thoughts. It imparts a mental discipline that helps calm your mind by focusing on a single image, thought, or even a word. Meditation is widely known to alleviate stress, improve mood and well-being, enhance concentration, and, in some ways, slow the aging process. If you are a caregiver, agitation, powerlessness, and strong emotions may make it difficult to cope with a demanding and stressful situation. You learn to focus thoughts away from triggers that lead to negative and self-defeating behaviors. Because meditation fosters self-awareness as well as an attitude of acceptance, it becomes easier to make and adhere to good decisions that help you avoid unhealthy substances and activities.
Making a mind-body connection can do much to restore your vitality and motivation if you’re an older individual or a caregiver who’s under constant pressure to provide aid for a loved one. Yoga and meditation can bring you to a mindful state that radically alters your perspective, and it heightens your desire to stay active.