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 demise in older adults in the US. There are a lot of causes that older adults are extra prone to falling, and to struggling severe damage after a fall. Bone and muscle loss are a pure a part of growing old, sapping our power and stability. Listening to impairment can have an effect on your vestibular system’s potential to maintain you in steadiness. Some frequent prescribed drugs may cause dizziness. The excellent news is that yoga will help. In future posts, I’ll make solutions for yoga practices that may assist us construct balancing abilities. In as we speak’s publish, I’ll describe six elements to contemplate when making a follow for good steadiness.
Good Steadiness is Greater than Simply Tree Pose
Practising 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 a listing 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 research for me, so I’d love to listen to from readers who can share extra data.
Ingredient #1: Sturdy, 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, attributable to neuropathy, holding them in tight or ill-fitting sneakers, and attributable to basic growing old. With the intention to keep good steadiness, our toes should be sturdy, cellular and delicate. Energy requires utilizing them—strolling, working, training yoga’s standing poses. Our toes are intimately concerned in steadiness, in order that they want to have the ability to transfer freely. It’s additionally vital to have the ability to really feel how our toes are articulating with the bottom, so we are able to detect when our toes are grounding inconsistently.
Ingredient #2: Bone and Muscle Energy
You might 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 will help us keep total muscle and bone well being.
Ingredient #3: Core Energy
A powerful core—each belly muscular tissues and again muscular tissues—stabilizes the entire physique, serving to us keep good steadiness. In flip, balancing workout routines will help us keep a powerful core. Assume 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 vital that our our bodies are capable of get better, which will help forestall us from falling after we lose our steadiness. Because of this 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 very suited to selling flexibility.
Ingredient #5: Vestibular System
In keeping with the Cleveland Clinic: “The vestibular system consists of sensory organs in your internal ear that provide help to keep your sense of steadiness. We’re always 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.
Ingredient #6: Focus
Many falls occur after we’re merely not paying consideration. We could also be mountaineering on uneven terrain and occupied with one thing else completely after we journey over a rock and fall. Or we could also be training Tree Pose and misplaced in thought when our steadiness instantly falters. In any case, being attentive to our actions, our surroundings, our posture, the connection of our toes to the bottom—all this stuff will help us steadiness. Mindfulness follow is vital to serving to us develop focus abilities.
In Conclusion: Construct a Yoga Apply for Good Steadiness
In fashioning a yoga follow for good steadiness, we have to think about all these parts. Over the approaching weeks, and maybe, months, I’ll be sharing practices I do know to be useful. Yoga is usually a great ally in holding us upright. Within the meantime, follow poses to strengthen, stabilize, stretch and promote regular steadiness.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third ebook 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 folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.