Yoga for Healthy Aging is Not Science Fiction: A Real-Life Mission Statement

by Nina 

Field of Mars by Marc Chagall*

“As more people are living longer and fewer are dying young from diseases caused by infections or insufficient food, exponentially more middle-aged and elderly people are suffering from chronic noninfectious diseases that used to be rare or unknown.” —Daniel Liberman

I’m just finishing up the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, a science fiction epic that takes place in the near future about the very first human settlers on Mars. The series spans a period of about 200 years, and several characters you meet at the beginning of the series are still alive at the end. When these characters are in their seventies and eighties, a longevity treatment is developed by Mars scientists that allows the original Mars settlers to continue to live active, healthy lives for an unknown amount of time. Although these characters do develop certain long-term memory problems (mostly about their middle lives), they continue to do productive scientific work, are energetic, physically fit and disease free, and even have active romantic and sex lives. Near the end of the series, a few of them die quite suddenly, not of any long, lingering diseases but very quickly of heart failure. And that seems to be the end that most, if not all, of them, will be facing.

Oh, if only old age was really like that, right? But this science fictional scenario actually exemplifies the very issues I wanted to talk about today. For when we talk about “healthy aging” on our blog, Sax, Nadia, Ann, Coyote, Michel, Maya and others in the Mars trilogy are ideal role models, not because of how long they live but for how healthy, physically active, and intellectually engaged they remain until the ends of their lives.

Lifespan. I guess this is rather obvious, but our “lifespan” is the period of time during which we are alive. But that lifespan could include any number of years spent in poor health. Sax, Nadia, Ann, et al in the Mars trilogy don’t have problems with ill health because in their science fictional world modern medicine can fix almost everything (although one man does die of leukemia). But here in the real world there are many medical conditions that just can’t be cured yet.

Morbidity. Right now, although our lifespans in first world countries have increased significantly due to better nutrition and modern medicine, as Daniel Liberman said in the quote above, middle-aged and elderly people in first world countries can suffer many years of ill health before they die. Lack of exercise, poor eating habits, and stressful lifestyles cause heart disease, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, and other chronic problems. This period of ill health during your lifespan is referred to as morbidity.

Now let’s do a little bit of very simple math:

Lifespan – morbidity = health span

Health Span. To put it in words, your “health span” is equal to your lifespan minus the amount of time you spend in ill health. This is the period in your life during which you are generally healthy and free from serious or chronic illness. For the people in the Mars trilogy, since they are very healthy until they suddenly die of heart failure, their health spans are very close to the length of their lifespans. But I’m sure in real life we all know people who live for years in a very debilitated state, perhaps in a nursing home, and I think we can all agree is not a future we would want for ourselves, if we can help it. (See Longevity vs. Morbidity for information about the epidemic of morbidity in the first world.)

So, to be clear, when we talk about yoga for “healthy aging,” we’re not talking about yoga for increasing your lifespan or your longevity. We’re talking instead about doing what you can to keep your health span as long as possible. And while you are makiing your health span as long as possible, we hope you'll also be making the period of time you spend in ill health near the end of your life as short as possible (this is called "compressed morbidity").

And, yes, we believe that yoga can help with this. Our mission here at YFHA is to explore all the ways that yoga can help foster your physical, mental, and emotional health during your lifespan (see Opening Your Yoga Toolbox). And because we’re not living in a science fictional universe, we must acknowledge that there will be times when ill health is unavoidable. But yoga has sometime valuable to offer you during those times as well, including both spiritual wisdom to guide you and tools for cultivating equanimity that will help see you through hard times.

This is all pretty basic stuff, but it’s worth saying because we want to set realistic expectations. We’ve certainly seen prominent new age health gurus out there claiming that you can “reverse aging,” choose your “biological age,” or “change your relationship with time” with yogic practices. But that really is science fiction. And here in the real world you deserve more than that.

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