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 behind harm or injury-related loss of life in older adults in the US. There are lots of causes that older adults are extra vulnerable to falling, and to struggling critical harm after a fall. Bone and muscle loss are a pure a part of ageing, sapping our power and stability. Listening to impairment can have an effect on your vestibular system’s potential to maintain you in stability. Some widespread prescribed drugs may cause dizziness. The excellent news is that yoga may help. In future posts, I’ll make ideas for yoga practices that may assist us construct balancing expertise. In at the moment’s publish, I’ll describe six elements to think about when making a apply for good stability.
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 stability over your lifetime requires contemplating the entire physique/thoughts spectrum, and yoga can go a great distance towards honing the talents that contribute to stability.
Right here’s a listing of what I do know to be parts of regular stability. There might be extra that I haven’t realized about but. That is an ongoing space of examine for me, so I’d love to listen to from readers who can share extra info.
Aspect #1: Robust, Delicate Toes
Our ft are our basis. And but, we have a tendency to not give them the eye they deserve. Our ft can lose sensitivity over time, as a consequence of neuropathy, protecting them in tight or ill-fitting footwear, and as a consequence of basic ageing. So as to keep good stability, our ft should be sturdy, cellular and delicate. Power requires utilizing them—strolling, operating, working towards yoga’s standing poses. Our toes are intimately concerned in stability, so that they want to have the ability to transfer freely. It’s additionally vital to have the ability to really feel how our ft are articulating with the bottom, so we are able to detect when our ft are grounding erratically.
Aspect #2: Bone and Muscle Power
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 may help us keep total muscle and bone well being.
Aspect #3: Core Power
A robust core—each stomach muscle tissue and again muscle tissue—stabilizes the entire physique, serving to us keep good stability. In flip, balancing workouts 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).
Aspect #4: Flexibility
It’s inevitable that we are going to, at occasions, lose our stability. However after we do, it’s vital that our our bodies are in a position to get better, which may help stop us from falling after we lose our stability. Because of this we now have to have motion choices. A physique with stiff joints merely will probably be much less more likely to keep upright after we journey, twist an ankle or falter whereas strolling on uneven floor. Yoga, in fact, is very suited to selling flexibility.
Aspect #5: Vestibular System
In keeping with the Cleveland Clinic: “The vestibular system consists of sensory organs in your inside ear that aid you keep your sense of stability. We’re continuously 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 might be transferring to assist keep your stability 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.
Aspect #6: Focus
Many falls occur after we’re merely not paying consideration. We could also be climbing on uneven terrain and fascinated about one thing else completely after we journey over a rock and fall. Or we could also be working towards Tree Pose and misplaced in thought when our stability all of the sudden falters. In any case, taking note of our actions, the environment, our posture, the connection of our ft to the bottom—all this stuff may help us stability. Mindfulness apply is essential to serving to us develop focus expertise.
In Conclusion: Construct a Yoga Follow for Good Steadiness
In fashioning a yoga apply for good stability, 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 could be a great ally in protecting us upright. Within the meantime, apply 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 creator of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide 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 Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards.