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 dying in older adults in the US. There are a lot of causes that older adults are extra vulnerable to falling, and to struggling severe harm after a fall. Bone and muscle loss are a pure a part of growing old, sapping our energy and stability. Listening to impairment can have an effect on your vestibular system’s capability to maintain you in steadiness. Some widespread pharmaceuticals may cause dizziness. The excellent news is that yoga can assist. In future posts, I’ll make strategies for yoga practices that may assist us construct balancing abilities. In right this moment’s publish, I’ll describe six components to think about when making a apply for good steadiness.
Good Stability 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 steadiness over your lifetime requires contemplating the entire physique/thoughts spectrum, and yoga can go a great distance towards honing the abilities that contribute to steadiness.
Right here’s an inventory of what I do know to be parts of regular steadiness. There could be extra that I haven’t realized about but. That is an ongoing space of research for me, so I’d love to listen to from readers who can share extra data.
Component #1: Robust, Delicate Ft
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, attributable to neuropathy, holding them in tight or ill-fitting footwear, and attributable to normal growing old. With a purpose to keep good steadiness, our ft should be sturdy, cell and delicate. Energy requires utilizing them—strolling, working, practising yoga’s standing poses. Our toes are intimately concerned in steadiness, so that they want to have the ability to transfer freely. It’s additionally essential to have the ability to really feel how our ft are articulating with the bottom, so we will detect when our ft are grounding inconsistently.
Component #2: Bone and Muscle Energy
It’s possible you’ll 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 energy and mass are essential in sustaining bone well being. Weight-bearing train like yoga and energy coaching can assist us keep total muscle and bone well being.
Component #3: Core Energy
A robust core—each belly muscle mass and again muscle mass—stabilizes the entire physique, serving to us keep good steadiness. In flip, balancing workouts can assist us keep a powerful core. Suppose poses like Boat Pose (Navasana), Bridge Pose (Setu Bandhasana) and the child backbends like Locust Pose (Salabhasana).
Component #4: Flexibility
It’s inevitable that we’ll, at instances, lose our steadiness. However after we do, it’s essential that our our bodies are in a position to get better, which can assist forestall us from falling after we lose our steadiness. Which means that we now have 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.
Component #5: Vestibular System
In keeping with the Cleveland Clinic: “The vestibular system contains sensory organs in your interior ear that make it easier to keep your sense of steadiness. 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 shifting and the way issues round you might be shifting to assist keep your steadiness 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.
Component #6: Focus
Many falls occur after we’re merely not paying consideration. We could also be climbing on uneven terrain and fascinated by one thing else fully after we journey over a rock and fall. Or we could also be practising Tree Pose and misplaced in thought when our steadiness all of the sudden falters. In any case, being attentive to our actions, our surroundings, our posture, the connection of our ft to the bottom—all this stuff can assist us steadiness. Mindfulness apply is essential to serving to us develop focus abilities.
In Conclusion: Construct a Yoga Observe for Good Stability
In fashioning a yoga apply for good steadiness, 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 generally is a fantastic ally in holding us upright. Within the meantime, apply poses you realize to strengthen, stabilize, stretch and promote regular steadiness.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced 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 folks sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.