Harmonize your entire being!
Yoga can be vital to aging, feeling great, and remaining strong and flexible when we reach our forties and beyond. It is a wonderful practice to improve physical strength and flexibility and, most importantly, boost mental health. Yoga helps us become more productive at work, more caring in relationships, and more responsible contributors to society and the inhabitants of this planet.
Yoga harmonizes our entire being, leading to a healthy, limber body and a more focused, calm mind. It also teaches us to be more comfortable in uncomfortable places and positions. We deal with challenging physical limitations that come with aging, but yoga can be a great exercise routine to indulge in to keep our bodies and minds strong. Our bones, muscles, and tendons tend to become weaker as we get older and can break down from limited use. Yoga helps to rejuvenate our bodies while removing stress and decreasing the onset of fatigue.
Yoga takes practice, and, like most things, the more you do it, the easier it gets. You learn what you need to do to hold poses, such as make minor adjustments in your balance and your gaze to hold a tree pose, for example.
Importantly, yoga teaches us to connect our breath to our movement, and this is a powerful lesson to bring to the rest of our lives. There is also something beautiful about a Vinyasa practice: you flow through poses, opening up the body from all sides to let your energy move freely through you — essentially getting everything unstuck. Many feel their creativity soar after a yoga class.
Don’t be intimidated by the vocabulary or complicated poses; yoga is for any body type and age.
RESOURCES + TOOLS
Below are 12 key poses from Elizabeth’s book Nurture and Thrive that you can learn on your own or build into a flow series.
