This entry was posted on Jul 22, 2025 by Charlotte Bell.
In keeping with the Facilities for Illness Management (CDC), falls are the main reason for damage or injury-related loss of life in older adults in america. There are lots of causes that older adults are extra vulnerable to falling, and to struggling critical damage after a fall. Bone and muscle loss are a pure a part of getting older, sapping our power and stability. Listening to impairment can have an effect on your vestibular system’s capacity to maintain you in steadiness. Some frequent prescribed drugs may cause dizziness. The excellent news is that yoga might help. In future posts, I’ll make strategies for yoga practices that may assist us construct balancing abilities. In at this time’s submit, I’ll describe six components to contemplate when making a apply for good steadiness.
Good Stability is Greater than Simply Tree Pose
Working towards Tree Pose (Vrksasana) can undoubtedly be part of your balance-building routine. However there’s extra to it. Sustaining good steadiness over your lifetime requires contemplating the entire physique/thoughts spectrum, and yoga can go a great distance towards honing the abilities that contribute to steadiness.
Right here’s an inventory of what I do know to be parts of regular steadiness. There might be extra that I haven’t discovered about but. That is an ongoing space of examine for me, so I’d love to listen to from readers who can share extra data.
Ingredient #1: Robust, Delicate Ft
Our toes are our basis. And but, we have a tendency to not give them the eye they deserve. Our toes can lose sensitivity over time, as a result of neuropathy, maintaining them in tight or ill-fitting sneakers, and as a result of common getting older. As a way to preserve good steadiness, our toes should be robust, cellular and delicate. Energy requires utilizing them—strolling, operating, training yoga’s standing poses. Our toes are intimately concerned in steadiness, so that they want to have the ability to transfer freely. It’s additionally essential to have the ability to really feel how our toes are articulating with the bottom, so we will detect when our toes are grounding erratically.
Ingredient #2: Bone and Muscle Energy
Chances are you’ll be stunned to be taught that muscle mass begins to lower in our 30s. It’s true, and the speed of lower accelerates round age 60. Muscle power and mass are essential in sustaining bone well being. Weight-bearing train like yoga and power coaching might help us preserve total muscle and bone well being.
Ingredient #3: Core Energy
A powerful core—each belly muscle tissue and again muscle tissue—stabilizes the entire physique, serving to us preserve good steadiness. In flip, balancing workout routines might help us preserve a robust core. Suppose poses like Boat Pose (Navasana), Bridge Pose (Setu Bandhasana) and the child backbends like Locust Pose (Salabhasana).
Ingredient #4: Flexibility
It’s inevitable that we’ll, at instances, lose our steadiness. However after we do, it’s essential that our our bodies are capable of get better, which might help forestall us from falling after we lose our steadiness. Which means that we have now to have motion choices. A physique with stiff joints merely will likely be much less more likely to keep upright after we journey, twist an ankle or falter whereas strolling on uneven floor. Yoga, after all, is particularly suited to selling flexibility.
Ingredient #5: Vestibular System
In keeping with the Cleveland Clinic: “The vestibular system consists of sensory organs in your interior ear that aid you preserve your sense of steadiness. We’re continually in movement, and so is the world round us. The vestibular system, when it’s working, helps your physique perceive the way you’re transferring and the way issues round you might be transferring to assist preserve your steadiness or steadiness.” Yoga is exclusive amongst bodily practices in that most of the poses require our heads to be in positions apart from upright, which stimulates and strengthens our vestibular system.
Ingredient #6: Focus
Many falls occur after we’re merely not paying consideration. We could also be mountain climbing on uneven terrain and serious about one thing else solely after we journey over a rock and fall. Or we could also be training Tree Pose and misplaced in thought when our steadiness abruptly falters. In any case, listening to our actions, the environment, our posture, the connection of our toes to the bottom—all these items might help us steadiness. Mindfulness apply is essential to serving to us develop focus abilities.
In Conclusion: Construct a Yoga Apply for Good Stability
In fashioning a yoga apply for good steadiness, we have to take into account all these parts. Over the approaching weeks, and maybe, months, I’ll be sharing practices I do know to be useful. Yoga generally is a great ally in maintaining us upright. Within the meantime, apply poses to strengthen, stabilize, stretch and promote regular steadiness.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.
