How Practicing Yoga can help them get back

1. POSTURE

As we age, most of the people tend to round from their spine.One of the reasons is osteoporosis.Just like a misaligned tire on your car, a misaligned body can create damage!

Our joints wear out when we don’t stand up straight which eventually leads to arthritis.

Some common reasons for arthritis are:
•  Could be hereditary
•  Could be from an injury
•  Could be from joints not lining up properly

When the joints don’t line up, they tend to rub with each other in an uneven way.That’s where a bone spur could happen which eventually causes pain.It is very important to keep a note on our posture as we age.

The most common changes in our posture with age are:

a). Pronation

This usually happens in the right foot. If you drive a lot, you use your right foot a lot. That foot tends to get a slight external rotation and this is called Pronation.When that happens, the knee also gets out of alignment and slowly the hip starts to get out of alignment. To counter clock this, you should do internal rotations of the ankle to bring it back into alignment

b). Dowager’s Hump

This is the little hump at the back of the neck. It is caused when the head is protruded forward. It is very common in people who are very tall because they tend to hunch forward causing the hump to form behind the neck.To avoid this hump, it is very important to have the correct alignment of keeping the ears over the shoulders. The best posture test is to make sure that your ears are over your shoulders, your shoulders are over your hips, your hips are over your knees and your knees are over your ankles.

c). Humerous Deviation

This is when the shoulders roll forward. When you stand, your palms tend to face backwards because your shoulders roll forward. The humorous is the upper arm bone that goes into the socket. Most of the time during the day we are either typing, driving, cooking, gardening etc and in the process, our shoulders are rolled forward and hence the humorous gets misaligned.

To counter clock this, roll the shoulders backwards and work on opening the pec muscles.

2. PELVIC MOBILITY

The point where the pelvic meets the spine is the SI joint. This SI joint can be misaligned if one hip is higher than the other. This can also cause lower back cramps.

A healthy pelvis should be moving forward and backwards, side to side and circular motion.
The pelvic floor muscles are the most important to keep healthy as we age. Why?
Because they are responsible for bladder control, bladder retention and organ prolapse.
The best exercise for your pelvis is hula hooping. The health of your pelvis directly affects the health of your lower back.

The pelvic tilt is also a good exercise for your pelvis.

Cat and cow is a must in every kind of yoga class because it creates movement in the whole of the spine and this is very important because every nerve in our body travels through the spine. That is why they say that the health of your spine shows the health of your body.

3. MUSCLE STRENGTH (MUSCLES OF INDEPENDENCE)

These are the muscle groups that help you get out of the chair.They help you get up and down the stairs, walking, squatting, bending down to pick things etc.The muscles of independence are the quads, hip flexors and gluteal muscles.First of all, the quads should be strong because they contribute to the health of your knees. Squatting is very good exercise to strengthen your quads.Squatting against a wall is very good not only for your quads, but also for your hamstrings and inner thigh muscles which are directly related to your pelvic floor muscles.

Another important muscle of independence is the gluteus muscle. There are 3 of these:

•  Medius
•  Maximus
•  Minimus

These are the muscles that keep the pelvis in place specially when we do balance postures.If these muscles are not strong, the joints tend to collapse on each other causing knock knees.

In short, it is very important to look after your muscles of independence and the alignment of your posture for healthy and safe movements and to be independent in your old age.