Caregivers know seniors and people who live with disabilities benefit from regular exercise. However, it can be difficult to provide opportunities for physical activity when mobility issues or the weather tend to keep everyone inside. Yoga is one type of physical exercise that can be performed almost anywhere and contributes to healthy aging. With caregivers providing exercise support, yoga for seniors can produce multiple positive outcomes. Liberty Resources Home Choices offers in-home caregiving that includes exercise support in the Philadelphia metro area and eastern Pennsylvania.
Benefits of Yoga for Seniors
There are physical, mental, and emotional benefits that flow from the practice of yoga. This collection of postures, breathing practices, meditation techniques, and ethical guidelines may have existed as early as 1000 BCE. In the United States, most people are familiar with yoga as physical movements coordinated with controlled breathing. Scientific research has shown that yoga for seniors has positive effects on mental health, balance, mobility, and in maintaining the ability to think critically and analytically.
As part of a program of lifestyle support offered by Liberty Resources Home Choices, seniors can undertake a regular exercise plan. Here are some of the most prominent benefits of yoga for seniors:
Stability, Balance, and Mobility
Whether sitting, standing, or lying down, most yoga postures require a focus on balance. There is an emphasis on solid foundational stances, as well as working all sides of the body, front-back, side-to-side, and head-to-toe. By gently and regularly practicing these postures, seniors gain muscle strength. This increase in strength aids their mobility for walking, dancing, and regaining lost balance.
Exercises that improve balance are the most important for reducing the risk of falling. As an exercise for the elderly, yoga helps prevent broken bones and life-threatening injuries.
Flexibility
By gently stretching, loosening, and elongating the muscles, yoga for seniors reduces injuries, such as muscle pulls. Similarly, yoga improves the range of motion in joints. Altogether, increased flexibility allows seniors to move more easily through their days, performing daily tasks that require bending, stretching, turning, and reaching.
Breathing
Breathing is a necessary function of life. Seniors who experience a restriction in respiration, and are out of breath with moderate physical exertion, find great benefit in yoga. Some yoga practices focus only on breathing exercises and meditations. As practitioners learn to control some aspects of respiration, they strengthen the muscles that control this function, from the diaphragm to the pelvic floor.
Through improved respiration, seniors are often able to undertake more physically demanding exercises and tasks. The ability to breathe more easily helps seniors exert themselves and participate more actively in life.
Access
Yoga is accessible. Seniors can get instruction and guidance with one-on-one teaching, video classes, and social groups. Yoga for seniors can be a fun, relaxing way to participate in a group activity. Liberty Resources Home Choices caregivers help seniors who can travel to attend yoga classes, where they can meet friends while improving their health and well-being. Seniors can also perform yoga as part of their in-home care plan. For example, yoga postures can be practiced while sitting in a chair.
Find Caregivers Who Support Independent Living
Caregivers at Liberty Resources Home Choices support the right of seniors and people living with disabilities to live independently, and we honor their power to make choices and decisions. Our qualified staff helps seniors remain living in their own homes. Yoga is an accessible, low-impact, method to enhance physical strength and flexibility, as well as improve and maintain mental functioning. For more information about our services, including exercise support, contact us today.
