They say if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. This is why creating a strong and healthy foundation for our bodies and minds is of utmost importance, especially as we age. Longevity Live Paid Content.
Yoga provides the tools to help us in almost all areas of our lives. When we look at the physical benefits of yoga asanas, like core strength, flexibility, and balance, we see how much these things mean to both our safety and health. Yoga can also help us learn to destress, lower cortisol in our bodies, focus inward, and live more mindfully.
Yoga Postures and Benefits
No matter what you hope to achieve, there’s a yoga asana for that.
Yoga uses body weight to strengthen and tone the body while improving your stamina, strength, and respiratory system. Since different asanas use different muscle groups, it’s best to incorporate many of them into your routine.
Best Yoga Postures For Toned Arms
Luckily, many yoga poses are done in a tabletop position or on your hands and knees. These positions provide ample opportunities for your arms to get a great workout. Some of the best yoga postures for toned arms include downward-facing dog, cobra, plank, dolphin pose, and upward-facing dog.
Best Yoga Poses For a Toned Core
Yoga can help if you want to strengthen and slim your core. Almost every asana requires core strength, even one as simple as a lotus pose. However, if your goal is to really target your core muscles, poses like boat pose, plank variations, cat and cow poses, and bridge pose will activate and engage your abdomen and back muscles.
Best Yoga Poses For a Toned Neck and Face
Yoga doesn’t stop at toning or strengthening the body. Some asanas like bow pose, camel pose, and cobra pose can help lengthen and slim the neck and jawline. Since yoga has also been proven to help reduce wrinkles, you can do an entire facial yoga routine to help skip trips to the dermatologist for Botox or other anti-aging regimes.
Best Yoga Poses For Balance
Your equilibrium can be thrown off as you age. While a strong core is vital to help keep your body healthy and strong, focusing on balance exercises can also reduce your risks of becoming off-balance and falling. Yoga increases your ability to know how to move your body within space, allowing you to move confidently through your world. Including asanas like tree pose, warrior variations, chair pose, lounges, and mountain pose can improve balance.
Yoga Beyond Asanas
Yoga offers mental health benefits in addition to all its wonderful benefits for aging bodies. It also helps improve your mood by boosting confidence. It can further assist you to relax and turn your attention inward.
Aside from postures and movements during a yoga class, there are many more elements to living a yogic lifestyle. Pranayama is the breathwork used during yoga sessions. This type of breathing uses intentional manipulation of your breathing patterns to achieve the desired result, usually relaxation.
Pranayama is an ancient technique that has been helping people navigate life for centuries. Today, industry leaders such as Soma Breath have taken pranayama to the next level and created breathwork sessions tailored to your busy life.
A certified breathwork facilitator will guide you through a series of breathing exercises during a breathwork session. The instructor aims to help you destress, increase mental focus, and improve your body-mind connection. Like all exercise routines, consistency is key and a dedicated breathwork practice can help you achieve your goals.
Breathwork Benefits
As you age, pay attention to both your physical and mental health. A consistent breathwork routine can help decrease stress hormones called cortisol in the body. These hormones are thought to contribute to and manifest many physical ailments.
Studies have also shown that breathwork can help lower blood pressure, improve immunity, decrease feelings of anxiety and depression, improve cardiovascular health, and increase mindfulness. Breathwork has even been shown to increase memory capacity.
Adding breathwork to your yoga routine allows you to create an adaptive holistic wellness plan that can help keep your body and mind healthy as you age.
Yoga Community
While yoga is an excellent exercise for the mind and body, yoga classes also provide a great community, which is extremely important as you age. Creating new and lasting relationships with people around you while attending classes, retreats, or other yoga events can provide you with the social interactions you may lose in other places of your life.
Life changes like retirement, relocation, or sometimes being in a different stage of life as old friends can make you feel lonely. Creating a new ritual and routine at a yoga studio can help ease those feelings and connect you with like-minded individuals.
The best part of adding yoga to your anti-aging routine is that you don’t need to be in the gym, sweating for hours to see results. Just as daily short walks are better than occasional long ones, 15-minute daily yoga and mindfulness sessions are just as beneficial.
Falling in Love With Yoga
Yoga is the answer for combating physical signs of aging, such as wrinkles, muscle loss and balance issues. It’s the solution for reducing stress, increasing memory retention, or simply enjoying your own company.
Falling in love with yoga is easy once you begin feeling the amazing benefits associated with a consistent routine. Yoga truly transforms bodies and minds, allowing you to age gracefully and confidently.
Since yoga is adaptable, you can continue to grow and evolve within your practice, molding it to meet your current goals and needs. So, if you want to stay youthful and age like fine wine, be a yogi.
Who is the Author?
Sara Sabharwal is a writer, yoga instructor, and forever yoga student. She also performs sound baths and has a deep love for breathwork. While primarily living in the United States, Sara is lucky enough to call India her second home and spends many months each year expanding her practice. In addition to traveling and yoga, Sara is an author of five poetry books.
Sara Sabharwal
