Yoga for Heathly Ageing

Saturday, 29th September - 2.00pm - 4.30pm - Yoga for Heathly Ageing

- you may not notice a gradual loss of flexibility until, say, the first day in spring that you start to work in your garden and you realise it’s a bit harder than it used to be and maybe even painful. Although some of this is due to age-related changes, a sedentary lifestyle can accelerate the process. Lets take a look how ageing affects different parts of our body and how we can influence this with our yoga practice:

Muscles: as you age, your muscles and the individual fibres within them gradually shrink and loose mass - however, practicing a wide variety of stretching poses can help you maintain the flexibility and health of your muscles
Fascia: the connective tissue that surrounds every muscle in your body tends to gradually dry out and become more inflexible with age - again, practicing a wide variety of stretching poses can help you maintain the flexibility and health of your fascia as well as your muscles
Tendons and Ligaments: again as you age, the water content of both tendons and ligaments gradually decreases, making the tissues stiffer. Regularly stretching your muscles and fascia will indirectly benefit your tendons and ligaments by bringing nourishment to them and the joints they are connected to
Joints: as some people age, the cartilage within their joints can gradually break down, causing inflammation in the joint, or osteoarthritis. You can reduce the pain and swelling of arthritic joints and increase movement by practicing non-weight-bearing movements in appropriate yoga poses

During this workshop we’ll look at two yoga programmes to improve lifelong well-being: Upper body flexibility practice; Lower body flexibility practice whilst incorporating breath awareness - such as aligning your body; remaining still; a mental focus and maintaining your awareness as you come out of the pose.