Luckily, the belief that exercise is “for young people” is becoming less widespread. For years, a multitude of scientific studies—and the personal experience of millions of people who are already over 60 years old—have convinced us of, quite the opposite. Perhaps it is when we enter middle age that exercise, of light or moderate intensity, is more necessary than ever to keep our body, and also our mind, active and fully functioning.
A good way to do it, which has more and more followers, is yoga. The traditional, spiritual, physical and mental discipline originated in India that today is perhaps experiencing, at least in our country, its golden age. According to various studies, around 12% of Spaniards practice or have practiced yoga on some occasion. A percentage that would raise the number of practitioners above five million.
This is not by chance, the effects of yoga are noticeable and noticeable very quickly. “There are studies that show that the beneficial effects of yoga appear after two months of practicing it,” says physicist, neuroscientist and yoga expert Sara Teller. “Yoga suits everyone, all bodies, regardless of age.”
The latter is especially interesting for people over 55 years of age who, in many cases, due to life circumstances or simply because they belong to a generation in which sport was not so popular, have not had much contact with exercise at all. throughout his youth. Yoga allows these people to practice an exercise that they can afford and that is very beneficial for them in many aspects, both physically and mentally.
“Perhaps the first physical benefit that we could cite is the improvement of the cardiovascular system,” explains Teller. “For example, yoga reduces heart rate and blood pressure, in addition to promoting greater oxygenation in general of the entire body and in particular of the brain. This not only benefits the heart, but also the brain, promoting calm by improving the parasympathetic nervous system, which is what allows us to relax. Additionally, yoga can increase lung capacity, prevent musculoskeletal injuries, and maintain healthy muscle tone, which improves overall quality of life.”
On a mental level, the expert points out how yoga also improves higher cognitive functions, such as working memory—short-term memory, such as, for example, remembering a telephone number that has just been given to us. “This is crucial,” says Teller, “since these functions tend to deteriorate with age.”
According to the neuroscientist, yoga has also been shown to be neuroprotective, which can help prevent cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's. Additionally, practicing breathing and meditation techniques can increase longevity by improving neural plasticity and neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons in the brain.
Practicing yoga also releases neurochemicals such as oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins, which promote well-being, which can reduce depression, anxiety, and stress by improving the parasympathetic nervous system. This, in turn, improves sleep quality and overall quality of life, encouraging better lifestyle choices.
Teller's data has also been supported recently by a study conducted by Harvard University-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital, which analyzed 33 studies related to the effects of yoga on balance, mobility and mental health in older adults, including 2,384 participants over 65 years of age.
The researchers found that yoga improved walking speed and the ability to get up from a chair, two aspects that are associated with less frailty and greater longevity. "There is potential for yoga to be really useful in promoting healthy aging throughout the lifespan because it provides a physical and cognitive health benefit, but also because it has a side effect that can lead to a healthier lifestyle." overall healthy," one of the study's directors, Julia Loewenthal, told The Harvard Gazette. "It may be positive to start a healthy practice like this at a younger age, but despite that, we still saw clinically significant results in the older population. It's always a good time to start practicing yoga or exercise to improve our health regardless of the stage of life we are in.
The number of benefits of doing yoga, from what we have just seen, is almost overwhelming. However, to see it first-hand, we spoke to people who practice yoga and are now over 55 years old, to observe their experience.
Bienvenida has just turned 70 years old and was forced to retire early due to generalized osteoarthritis. She was an early childhood educator, a job that she loved, but that her body could not handle due to the physical effort it required. Her first contact with her technique came at a mature age. “I started doing yoga 18 years ago as a result of being off work,” she explains to us. “I immediately realized that it would benefit me a lot. Not only because of the exercises, but also because of breathing. Thanks to yoga I have managed to have more strength and a better quality of life. It has not cured my osteoarthritis, but it has made me cope much better and know my body much better. Thanks to yoga I have learned how to move, how to get up... It has helped my health to be maintained and today I have acceptable health, although I suffer crises from time to time."
Yoga, like moderate physical exercise, allows us to acquire and maintain muscle tone and body mobility that are very positive in middle age. “This type of mild or moderate exercise is highly recommended for women who are entering menopause,” reveals Teller, “as more intense exercise carries a higher risk of injury. Although there are many types of yoga, more or less intense, as in general it tends to be very static, it allows us to pay more attention to the movement we are doing and check our abilities, thus preventing injuries."
Elena's story with yoga is a little different from Bienvenida's, as she had a positive first experience with the discipline when she was younger, but motherhood forced her to give it up. “My first contact with yoga occurred when she was living in Amsterdam, about to turn forty,” she tells us. “I was looking for a holiday somewhere that offered more than just lying in the sun when I came across an article in the Financial Times travel section about a yoga retreat in Crete. By chance, the same week I read an article about the same recall in the British Airways in-flight magazine.” As if it had been a sign of destiny, Elena did not hesitate and left for the Mediterranean island.
Suddenly he found himself in an Ashtanga yoga retreat, one of the most demanding varieties of the discipline. “The rest of the people at the retreat didn't know much about yoga either, but the instructors were excellent and helped us get into this practice by building the movement sequences little by little but intensely, for almost three hours a day. “It was a very powerful experience.”
A couple of years later, Elena was able to resume yoga in her hometown, Barcelona. This time she was the Kundalini variety, but her decision to become a single mother forced her to give up the practice for a few years. Additionally, she had a corporate job that required long hours of work and travel, so all of her free time was dedicated to her son. She knew that someday she would take it up again.
“I started practicing it again when I was 60 years old, after a long period of physical inactivity,” he confesses. His body had changed a lot and he thought that returning would be complicated. But he discovered Iyengar yoga, a variety in which various supports are used, such as blocks, ropes or belts, in order to adapt the practice to each body according to its limitations, blockages or injuries.
For Elena, yoga has meant a physical improvement, but also an enormous emotional and spiritual opening. “It is a practice that moves your energy, unclogging emotional blockages that are also in the body,” she confesses. “I continue to practice Iyengar at 67 years old and hope to do so for many years to come. One aspect that attracts me is that both young and old practitioners face our limitations of body and mind, but yoga is for everyone. And that is the great lesson and the great attraction.”
Bienvenida also highlights everything that yoga has given her on a mental level. “Thanks to yoga I reflect much more on everything, I have more will and I focus more on myself,” she admits. “Yoga also teaches you to accept things. Sometimes problems have no solution and if there isn't one, there isn't one. Accepting that can help you a lot. I was a very nervous person, I judged everything, I got very angry, I didn't understand things and it made me very nervous and now, it's funny, but I'm not angry anymore, I don't feel pain, I don't feel that thing that you feel when you're angry. and that was because of yoga.”
These types of effects have, according to Teller, a scientific basis. “In addition to everything we've said before, yoga also increases heart rate variability—how variable the temporal distance between heartbeats is—and it has been scientifically analyzed that the greater the variability in heart rate, the more people become "They feel much happier, they are much more optimistic and they live much calmer and more relaxed."
Both Elena and Bienvenida recommend that all older people start doing yoga, but how do you do it in a simple way and also manage to maintain the habit?
For Sara Teller, the trick is to make it easy for us, make it comfortable and allow ourselves to enjoy it. “I would recommend starting yoga at a center close to home or even through online classes so that it is easy to make it a habit,” explains the expert. “If you can be accompanied by someone, the better, if you always go at the same time, the better. This way our brain will get used to it, enjoy it more and it will be easier for it to become a habit that we do almost without thinking. It is also important to choose a gentle variety of yoga such as Hatha Yoga or Iyengar yoga, so that it does not feel too hard and contributes to getting hooked. In a very short time, we will see results,” concludes the expert.
