As you grow older and advance to your senior years instead of being more sedentary, you need to be more and more active to avoid age-related problems, such as the risk of injuries, and strains on your joints the incidences of which increase while you grow older. However, you can incorporate a few yoga exercises that can help seniors to continue to stay active and increase their muscle strength and flexibility without the extra muscle strain.
While exercise is great for seniors not all exercises are treated equally. Senior citizens must stay away from doing high-intensity exercises as it can impact the body and make it frail. When the risk of pain and injury starts increasing, the body finds it difficult to recover too. It is the only yoga that has a beneficial impact on the body without any side effects. In chair yoga, the chair offers support for the yoga poses. Chair yoga is particularly helpful in cases of arthritis, vertigo, arthritis, and more. Let us find out about the other benefits of chair yoga.
Increases Flexibility
We all know that yoga improves your flexibility and chair yoga can also help you achieve that. Chair yoga can help stretch different parts of the body, instead of pushing it gently awakens the muscles. This improves the senior citizen’s flexibility and helps maintain it as well. It also helps improve the mobility of a person to complete daily tasks.
Increases Muscle Strength
When a senior citizen goes through the different poses of chair yoga, the muscles can be engaged and make them stronger. This can improve flexibility, and help in improving balance and mobility too. The muscle you gain can also help protect you from injury.
Helps Improve the Balance and Coordination
Chair yoga can also make you more spatially aware as you contort your body through the various poses. Yoga can work on different parts of your body and make them work to the best of your ability, it also helps you find a deeper connection with your body. This can gradually improve your coordination while improving your balance.
Reduces Excess Stress
Another thing that yoga integrates into your life is breathing. We are so used to shallow breathing in our life that we hardly use our breath to the maximum of our ability. Breathing can help you move away from the stressors that are bothering you and pushing you into flight and fight mode, instead of rest and relaxation mode.
When you practice chair yoga you meditate more and relax more. Your body can function optimally only when you are in flight and fight mode.
Enables Better Pain Management
When you exercise you release a happy hormone known as endorphins. This is why you feel in a happier frame of mind an exercise is done, and this not only helps to increase your sense of pleasure and it helps minimize the pain and discomfort. Also, it is great in pain management as it works as the body’s natural painkiller. So practice chair yoga and manage pain in a better way.
Helps Sleep Better
When you exercise you also regulate your body’s sleep-wake cycle better and improve your sleep quality to a great extent. You’ll experience a similar effect with chair yoga, as it enables proper energy exertion and you end up doing your exercises without feeling overly fatigued.
Helps Bolster Confidence and Reduces Depression and Anxiety
There is ample research available that suggests that yoga, such as chair yoga, will reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety for not only the elderly but for people across different age groups. It also reduces the negative feelings that you may harbor in life and after a session, you feel a lot better and refreshed.
Now you know why you should practice chair yoga as it addresses the three aspects of health such as physical, mental, and emotional. You may feel a little overwhelmed at first thinking you may not be flexible enough to start yoga, so starting with a gentle practice like chair yoga will make you feel that you are better equipped to handle the ups and downs of life.
It is non-taxing and just the thing you need to stay healthy for years together. Yoga as they say is for everyone.