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Move — Just Say Om: 7 Reasons You Should Embrace Yoga

Want to stick to your resolutions to break bad habits and improve your health? Take up yoga

   

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The ancient Eastern art of yoga combines gentle movement, meditation and breath control and has become one of the most popular ways to destress and work out in the West. But what makes yoga so good for us, and why should we practice it? Carol Krucoff, yoga therapist at Duke Integrative Medicine and coauthor of the book Relax into Yoga for Seniors: A Six-Week Program for Strength, Balance, Flexibility, and Pain Relief, says yoga improves our health on many levels and can be especially beneficial to our brain. Practicing yoga just once a week, Krucoff says, brings the following benefits.

1. Yoga is exercise. Scientific studies continue to underscore that virtually any kind of physical activity — from running and dancing to simple stretching — offers big benefits for your brain and overall health. Yoga incorporates gentle movement that is scalable, meaning that you can tailor your practice to your body’s individual restrictions.

2. Yoga improves heart rate, blood pressure and other health markers. Breath control is one of the hallmarks of yoga practice, and learning to harness the power of breath can offer deep health benefits, Krucoff says. Studies back her up. That’s because these breathing techniques can “open a very powerful doorway into the central nervous system,” the place that governs the fight-or-flight response, creating “a whole powerful cascade of physiologic changes, such as lowering heart rate and blood pressure.” And we know that what’s good for the heart is also good for the brain.

3. Yoga fosters community. Scientists are learning that isolation is detrimental to our health as we age. But by attending a yoga class, you’re instantly immersed in a like-minded, supportive community. “Very good Western scientific research has suggested that loneliness is a risk factor for heart disease, so just the power of being together in a room with other people doing the practice has health benefits, too,” Krucoff says.

4. Yoga improves flexibility. Want to be able to continue all your daily activities as you age? Want to help prevent injuries from other sports so you can stay active? Then staying limber is critical. Yoga incorporates gentle stretching and flexibility-improving techniques that can vastly improve your ability to move.

5. Yoga promotes better balance. For many older adults, the risk of falling is real and dangerous, but yoga may be able to help. Researchers have established that exercises that challenge balance help prevent falls. Yoga not only does that but also can help you build core strength, further reducing your chances of falling. A small 2013 study of older adults found that those who participated in a 12-week yoga program — averaging 20 classes — had significantly improved standing balance and experienced big increases in several other mobility measures, too. 

6. Yoga may help slow age-related cognitive decline. A recent small study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that middle-age and older adults who practiced yoga for an hour each week and meditated for 12 minutes each day for eight weeks not only improved their moods, but also scored much better on a memory test, compared with a group that participated in a brain-training program for the same amount of time each week. Other small studies have found that yoga can improve memory, attention and mental processing speed.

7. Yoga may reduce stress and anxiety. A number of studies have shown that yoga may help reduce stress and anxiety, which is detrimental to health, and may enhance mood and overall sense of well-being, according to the Mayo Clinic. (See the study above, for example.) “Even in the midst of chaos, we have many tools that yoga can offer,” Krucoff says, that can pay health dividends by helping to relieve “toxic emotions.” Yoga does this by helping us refocus on the positive instead of the negative, Krucoff says. “Some of yoga’s guiding principles are feeling gratitude and compassion.” Many of us are focused on what’s wrong or bad, but yoga “invites us to step away from that” and to focus on “what’s good and what’s right.”

Krucoff says yoga is appropriate for just about everyone, with a few caveats. “Make sure it’s an appropriate class with a well-trained teacher, and tell your teacher about any health issues and injuries you might have. And remember — you’re the boss of your body.”

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