This entry was posted on Jul 22, 2025 by Charlotte Bell.
In keeping with the Facilities for Illness Management (CDC), falls are the main explanation for damage or injury-related dying in older adults in america. There are various causes that older adults are extra inclined to falling, and to struggling critical 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 skill to maintain you in stability. Some widespread prescribed drugs could cause dizziness. The excellent news is that yoga may help. In future posts, I’ll make recommendations for yoga practices that may assist us construct balancing abilities. In at present’s publish, I’ll describe six components to contemplate when making a observe for good stability.
Good Steadiness is Greater than Simply Tree Pose
Working towards Tree Pose (Vrksasana) can undoubtedly be part of your balance-building routine. However there’s extra to it. Sustaining good stability over your lifetime requires contemplating the entire physique/thoughts spectrum, and yoga can go a great distance towards honing the abilities that contribute to stability.
Right here’s a listing of what I do know to be parts of regular stability. There could be extra that I haven’t discovered about but. That is an ongoing space of examine for me, so I’d love to listen to from readers who can share extra data.
Factor #1: Robust, Delicate Ft
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, as a result of neuropathy, maintaining them in tight or ill-fitting sneakers, and as a result of common growing old. So as to keep good stability, our toes should be sturdy, cellular and delicate. Energy requires utilizing them—strolling, working, practising yoga’s standing poses. Our toes are intimately concerned in stability, in order that they want to have the ability to transfer freely. It’s additionally essential 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.
Factor #2: Bone and Muscle Energy
It’s possible you’ll be stunned to study 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 may help us keep general muscle and bone well being.
Factor #3: Core Energy
A powerful core—each stomach muscular tissues and again muscular tissues—stabilizes the entire physique, serving to us keep good stability. In flip, balancing workout routines may help us keep a powerful core. Assume poses like Boat Pose (Navasana), Bridge Pose (Setu Bandhasana) and the child backbends like Locust Pose (Salabhasana).
Factor #4: Flexibility
It’s inevitable that we are going to, at instances, lose our stability. However after we do, it’s essential that our our bodies are capable of get well, which may help forestall us from falling after we lose our stability. Because of this we’ve to have motion choices. A physique with stiff joints merely will likely be much less prone to keep upright after we journey, twist an ankle or falter whereas strolling on uneven floor. Yoga, after all, is particularly suited to selling flexibility.
Factor #5: Vestibular System
In keeping with the Cleveland Clinic: “The vestibular system consists of sensory organs in your interior ear that assist you keep your sense of stability. We’re continually in movement, and so is the world round us. The vestibular system, when it’s working, helps your physique perceive the way you’re transferring and the way issues round you’re transferring to assist keep your stability or steadiness.” Yoga is exclusive amongst bodily practices in that most of the poses require our heads to be in positions apart from upright, which stimulates and strengthens our vestibular system.
Factor #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 solely after we journey over a rock and fall. Or we could also be practising Tree Pose and misplaced in thought when our stability out of the blue falters. In any case, being attentive to our actions, the environment, our posture, the connection of our toes to the bottom—all this stuff may help us stability. Mindfulness observe is vital to serving to us develop focus abilities.
In Conclusion: Construct a Yoga Observe for Good Steadiness
In fashioning a yoga observe for good stability, we have to contemplate all these parts. Over the approaching weeks, and maybe, months, I’ll be sharing practices I do know to be useful. Yoga could be a fantastic ally in maintaining us upright. Within the meantime, observe poses to strengthen, stabilize, stretch and promote regular stability.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e-book 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 people sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards.
