This entry was posted on Jul 22, 2025 by Charlotte Bell.
In accordance with the Facilities for Illness Management (CDC), falls are the main reason for damage or injury-related loss of life in older adults in the US. There are numerous causes that older adults are extra vulnerable to falling, and to struggling severe damage after a fall. Bone and muscle loss are a pure a part of getting older, sapping our energy and stability. Listening to impairment can have an effect on your vestibular system’s skill to maintain you in steadiness. Some widespread prescribed drugs could cause dizziness. The excellent news is that yoga may help. In future posts, I’ll make recommendations for yoga practices that may assist us construct balancing expertise. In in the present day’s publish, I’ll describe six elements to think about when making a follow for good steadiness.
Good Steadiness is Greater than Simply Tree Pose
Working towards Tree Pose (Vrksasana) can positively 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 could 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.
Component #1: Robust, Delicate Toes
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, on account of neuropathy, holding them in tight or ill-fitting footwear, and on account of basic getting older. So as to keep good steadiness, our toes should be robust, cellular and delicate. Power requires utilizing them—strolling, working, working towards 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 inconsistently.
Component #2: Bone and Muscle Power
It’s possible you’ll be shocked 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 energy and mass are essential in sustaining bone well being. Weight-bearing train like yoga and energy coaching may help us keep total muscle and bone well being.
Component #3: Core Power
A powerful core—each stomach muscle tissues and again muscle tissues—stabilizes the entire physique, serving to us keep good steadiness. In flip, balancing workouts may help us keep a robust core. Assume poses like Boat Pose (Navasana), Bridge Pose (Setu Bandhasana) and the child backbends like Locust Pose (Salabhasana).
Component #4: Flexibility
It’s inevitable that we are going to, at occasions, lose our steadiness. However once we do, it’s essential that our our bodies are in a position to get better, which may help forestall us from falling once we lose our steadiness. Because of this we now have to have motion choices. A physique with stiff joints merely shall be much less prone to keep upright once we journey, twist an ankle or falter whereas strolling on uneven floor. Yoga, in fact, is very suited to selling flexibility.
Component #5: Vestibular System
In accordance with the Cleveland Clinic: “The vestibular system consists of sensory organs in your internal ear that enable you to keep your sense of steadiness. We’re consistently in movement, and so is the world round us. The vestibular system, when it’s working, helps your physique perceive the way you’re shifting and the way issues round you’re shifting to assist keep your steadiness or steadiness.” Yoga is exclusive amongst bodily practices in that lots of the poses require our heads to be in positions apart from upright, which stimulates and strengthens our vestibular system.
Component #6: Focus
Many falls occur once we’re merely not paying consideration. We could also be mountain climbing on uneven terrain and enthusiastic about one thing else totally once we journey over a rock and fall. Or we could also be working towards Tree Pose and misplaced in thought when our steadiness all of a sudden falters. In any case, being attentive to our actions, our surroundings, our posture, the connection of our toes to the bottom—all these items may help us steadiness. Mindfulness follow is vital to serving to us develop focus expertise.
In Conclusion: Construct a Yoga Follow for Good Steadiness
In fashioning a yoga follow 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 could be a fantastic ally in holding us upright. Within the meantime, follow poses you already know to strengthen, stabilize, stretch and promote regular steadiness.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow 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 Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.
