6 Ways to Foster Brain Health with Yoga

by Nina and Ram

Mademoiselle Ferrand Meditating on Newton by de La Tour

In his post Mental Exercise, Yoga, and the Perfect Brain, Ram mentioned six basic ways you can help prevent age-associated memory loss and foster brain health. Today I thought we'd look a bit closer at each of those ways, so if brain health is a concern of yours (and, really, who isn’t concerned about this?), you can target your yoga practice to help support your brain health as well as your overall health in general. 

1. Engaging in Physical Activity. Engaging in regular aerobic activity leads to structural changes in the brain that result in improved cognition. Physical exercise increases nerve branching and in some cases triggers regeneration of new nerve cells, especially in the memory centers of the brain. Physical exercises help you learn new things, and to be more alert and attentive owing to the structural changes. Scientists believe that physical exercise triggers increased blood flow to the brain. The greater the blood flow is, the more oxygen and other important nutrients that reach the brain, which may explain the cognitive improvements associated with exercise. Physical exercises will also help maintain optimal blood pressure, control diabetes and lower cholesterol levels, all of which are potential mental risk factors.

A regular, well-rounded asana practice provides an excellent form of exercise, fostering strength, flexibility, balance, and agility. But targeting cardiovascular health with your practice could be especially helpful for brain health (see About Yoga for Heart Health And Circulation). As Ram says, “What is good for the heart is good for the brain.” After all, your brain is one of the important organs of your body, just as your heart is.

2. Staying Mentally Active. Just as exercise and physical activity prompt muscles to grow stronger, mental exercise tones thinking skills and memory. Mental exercises maintain, build, and remodel neural network connectivity, trigger production of nerve growth factors that increase neuronal branching, and stimulate new synthesis of neural cells. The brain actively grows and rewires itself in response to stimulation and learning. Our brain grows stronger from use and from being challenged. This is called brain plasticity. Plasticity is the reason why stroke patients can relearn skills after a brain damage and also explains how a healthy part of the brain might assume the job of a damaged part. The brain is continually morphing/re-sculpting itself in response to new experience and learning. The greater the neural density, stronger and more resilient is the brain and mind that keeps the physical body strong, in turn promotes healthy aging.

According to Baxter’s post How Yoga Sequences are Brain Aerobics, to be a “brain aerobic” an activity: needs to engage your attention, must break a routine activity in an unexpected, nontrivial way, and must involve more than one of the senses. So practicing yoga asana mindfully, which not only engages your attention but involves more than one of your senses, can meet all three of these requirements if you intentionally keep your practice varied (see Practicing Yoga Mindfully and Stuck in a Rut?). Meditation and pranayama can also meet these three requirements, again, if you vary the practices. See How Yoga Sequences Are Brain Aerobics for more ideas. And, of course, simply learning new yoga poses and practices, and studying the scriptures (see The Power of Svadhyaya, Part 2) provide excellent learning opportunities.

3. Being Socially Active. Social engagement reduces the risk of isolation and depression. Remaining socially active also supports brain health and delays the onset of dementia. Because being socially active requires that you plan, participate, engage, and be attentive and alert, it qualifies as mental exercise. Social engagement is also a learning exercise for the brain and mind. As with other mentally stimulating activities, social activities help build up healthy brain cells and the connections between them.

Attending yoga classes and participating in your local yoga community is a good way to stay socially active as well as to keep your practice going strong. See 8 Ways to Join the Yoga Community for more ideas. You can even practice yoga with one or more friends (see Practicing Yoga with a Friend).

4. Eating a Healthy Diet. High blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol are potential mental risk factors and increase the risk of dementia. A healthy diet helps to keep these factors at optimal levels. Some of the consequences of chronological aging are increased oxidative stress, free radical production, and uncontrolled inflammation that not only hasten aging but also trigger rapid brain aging. A healthy diet soaks up free radicals and brings down inflammation, thus preventing brain decay. Eating a healthy diet promotes good blood flow to the organ system, which includes the brain.

Practicing yoga stress management techniques improves digestion, prevents stress eating, and reduces cortisol levels. Cultivating mindfulness with meditation and asana practiced mindfully can help make you more aware of what your body really needs (and what it doesn’t). And using your meditation practice to strengthen you will power will help support you in changing your eating habits. See Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Overview for further information. 

5. Managing Chronic Stress. Chronic stress (see About Stress: Acute vs. Chronic) causes havoc not just to the body but also to the brain. Chronic stress brings with it several health issues, including constant fear, worry, anxiety, depression, and memory deficits. 

While stress hormones do sharpen attention and spur us to take needed action, we are not designed to handle high levels of stress hormones day after day, year after year. In the brain these stress hormones weaken blood vessels, kill off neurons, and shrink the hippocampus, resulting in memory loss. Chronic stress also speeds up the normal aging of other cells that in turn affects normal structure and function of the brain.

Using yoga’s stress management techniques help you dial down stress levels when you are suffering from chronic stress (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga). Cultivating equanimity in the face of life’s difficulties will help you from getting stressed out in the first place (see 7 Ways to Cultivate Equanimity with Yoga). 

6. Sleeping Well. Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation triggers accelerated mental decline. Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate, and leads to impaired memory and physical performance. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Just as sleep gives the body time to heal itself, sleep allows neurons to lower down their neurochemical activity and repair themselves.

Without sleep, neurons become “fatigued” and begin to malfunction. Sleep helps to clear out toxins from the brain as well as from the body (see Sleep, Alzheimer's Disease, and Yoga). Finally, the brain gets exposed to thousands of stimuli through the five senses, and sleep helps to reduce chaos and bring order to the information flow, helping to put an order to these information inputs and archive them as memories. 

Yoga can be really helpful for improving sleep because you can use it to manage your stress levels and reduce anxiety, both of which are frequent causes of insomnia (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga and 10 Ways to Soothe Anxiety with Yoga). If pain or physical discomfort is keeping you awake, you can use yoga pain management techniques (see Yoga for Pain Management). And soothing practices, such as restorative yoga and simple, calming forms of pranayama, can help you if you wake in the middle of the night. See Yoga for Insomnia, Part 1, Day to Night: Yoga for Better Sleep, and Five Tips for Better Sleep for further information.

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About Mudras for Healthy Aging

by Beth Gibbs

From Mudras for Healing and Transformation by Joseph & Lilian LePage

When Joseph LePage, my primary yoga teacher, first introduced hand mudras into the Integrative Yoga Therapy Training program, I resisted. I simply did not get it. But having been raised a “good girl” with respect for teachers, I went along with the program. He introduced them. I listened. I practiced. And I felt nothing. Nada. No energy shifts, no sensations, no nothing. So much for mudras, I thought.

Then about three months later, I found myself in a stressful situation. My hands automatically moved into one of the grounding mudras I’d been practicing and WOW!!! There it was. My palms tingled, my breath slowed, and I felt a sense of calm in the middle of that most uncomfortable situation. It actually worked. I was amazed and delighted.

So, what are mudras exactly? The common English meaning of the word is “gesture,” or “seal.” The word in Sanskrit means “to bring forth pleasure or enchantment.” Mudras are thought to have arisen spontaneously from the deep meditative states experienced by the ancient Indian sages. Mudras can be used to recognize a quality, attitude, or energetic state that is already present within and waiting to be awakened. Examples of some desirable states for most of us modern humans are calming, energizing, focus, or balance. 

Gestures of the hands, face, and body are common in our everyday life. They can communicate moods and intentions that go beyond language. In some cultures crossed arms signal an attitude of defensiveness, palms together in front of the heart can mean devotion, and a bowed head can send a message of grief or sadness. Because I love metaphors as a way to help me understand new information, once I grasped the basic principle of mudras, I searched for a metaphor to make the information personal and memorable. It took a while but when I finally gave up my flip phone, bought a smart phone, and used the GPS function for the first time to get directions to a workshop I was attending, the light bulb went off. GPS! Global Positioning System! Simply put, at least for me, it goes like this:

Mudras can be thought of as a global positioning system for realizing a desired quality. Consciously place the hands in a particular position, pay attention, and allow the mudra to bring forth the quality. 

Now I practice mudras regularly and can definitely feel their effects. Here are three of my favorites.

Adhi Mudra 

The Sanskrit word adhi means “primordial” and refers to our natural state of being. The gesture is said to bring the breath to the base of the body, help with anxiety, and instill a deep sense of grounding and stillness. 

Instructions:

1. Sit with your spine comfortably aligned. 
2. Soften your chest and shoulders.
3. Close your eyes or keep them slightly open and gaze down at the floor. 
4. With both hands, form soft fists by placing your thumbs across your palms and folding your fingers around your thumbs.
5. Rest your hands, knuckles down, on your knees or thighs.
6. Hold the mudra and sit quietly for 2 - 5 minutes as long as you are comfortable.
7. Focus on your natural breathing process. 
8. When you are ready to come out, release the mudra and stretch your body in any way that your body needs to stretch.

Jnana Mudra

The Sanskrit word jnana means “wisdom.” Clear seeing, focus, and concentration are the qualities that this mudra brings to realization. Jnana mudra directs the awareness to the third eye, the space between the eyebrows. This is perhaps one of the most well-known mudras used for meditation. 

Instructions:

1. Sit with your spine comfortably aligned. 
2. Soften your chest and shoulders.
3. On both hands, touch the tips of your index fingers to the tips of the thumbs. Your thumbs and index fingers will form a soft round circle.
4. Relax the backs of your hands on your knees, with the middle, ring and pinky fingers extended.
5. Close your eyes or keep them slightly open and gaze down at the floor.
6. Hold the mudra and sit quietly for 2 - 5 minutes as long as you are comfortable.
7. Focus on your natural breathing process. 
8. When you are ready to come out, release the mudra and stretch your body in any way that your body needs to stretch.

Hakini Mudra 

The Sanskrit word hakini means “power, dominion or rule.” The quality realized here is balance and integration. This mudra facilitates full yogic breathing and supports overall health and healing. 

Instructions:

1. Sit with your spine comfortably aligned. 
2. Soften your chest and shoulders.
3. Hold your hands facing each other a few inches away from your solar plexus.
4. Touch the tips of the fingers and thumb of your left hand to the corresponding fingers and thumb of your right hand.
5. Create space between your hands as though you are holding a ball.
6. Relax your hands in your lap, with the pinky sides of your hands, your wrists, and your forearms on your thighs or in your lap. 
7. Close your eyes or keep them slightly open and gaze down at the floor.
8. Hold the mudra and sit quietly for 2 - 5 minutes as long as you are comfortable.
9. Focus on your natural breathing process. 
10. When you are ready to come out, release the mudra and stretch your body in any way that your body needs to stretch.

Mudras can be used in combination with an asanas or practiced on their own. They are also a go-to practice when your body requires long-term rest. With some exploration and practice you will find the ones that work best for you. For more information about mudras and their uses, I recommend Mudras for Healing and Transformation by Joseph & Lilian LePage.

Beth Gibbs, MA, E-RYT 500, is a certified yoga therapist through Integrative Yoga Therapy. She is a senior member of the IYT teaching faculty and directs the school’s Professional Yoga Therapist Internship Program. Beth has a Masters degree in Yoga Therapy and Mind/Body Health from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and has served on the Educational Standards Committee for the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Her website is: proyogatherapeutics.com.

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Practice

by Baxter

Leslie Greinstein, Age 62, Practicing Mayurasana with a Prop

When my friends inform me that they have started to “practice” yoga, I am always pleased to know it. But the part of me that knows the true benefit of practicing regularly—what we here at YFHA refer to as “home practice”—always has to ask them how often they are doing yoga. Almost invariably, they are taking one, sometimes two, asana classes each week at a yoga studio. This is a great start, and I want to encourage those of you out there at this stage of practice to keep it going. At the same time, we know from the oldest of yoga philosophy texts that the fruits of yoga come partly from consistent, daily practice. 

The Sanskrit term for practice is abhyasa, which means, its simplest definition, “diligent, focused practice.” In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, about 2000 years old and one the most relied upon texts on the philosophical and practical basis of yoga, several passages are devoted to describing abhyasa and its relationship to other key concepts on yoga, such as vairagya, or detachment. The ancient yogis saw the negative effect an undisciplined mind can have on our overall happiness and contentment. Their solution was to train the mind and quiet the overly active thought processes that create so much suffering.

The Yoga Sutras tells us that regular practice (abhyasa), done with the right attitude (detachment, or vairagya), is what will quiet our minds:

1.12 Practice and detachment are the means to still the movements of consciousness.
1.13 Practice is the steadfast effort to still these fluctuations.
1.14 Long, uninterrupted, alert practice is the firm foundation for restraining the fluctuations —translation by B.K.S. Iyengar

Nicolai Bachman, one of my favorite contemporary translators of the Yoga Sutras, has a slightly different take:

1.12 The stilling of the mental fluctuations (i.e. quieting of the mind) is due to diligent practice and unattached awareness (vairagya).
1.13 Abhyasa is the effort put forth to maintain a point of focus.
1.14 Abhyasa becomes firmly established when pursued with eagerness, sincerity, and continuity for a long time.

So, the Yoga Sutras tell us what the goal of yoga is, as well as what the practical tools are to achieve the goal of a mind established in equanimity. I can’t help but recall the old joke about the concert-goer who stops a cabbie in New York City to ask, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” and the cabbie responds, “Practice, practice, practice.” Patanjali adds in certain important qualities of practice that increase our chances of success, whether our goals are purely physical, such as improved balance, are mental/emotional, such as resolving anxiety, or are loftier spiritual goals. Those are stated above as "eagerness, sincerity, and continuity" by Nicolai, and "long, continuous practice, with a quality of alertness" by Iyengar.

Abhyasa applied to asana practice could be simply directing our mind and attention to the breath, a particular body part, or even where the gaze is directed. Applied to meditation practice, it is the effort exerted to maintain a point of focus. The act of applying effort to maintain a point of focus could also extend to things not normally thought of as “yoga,” such as playing a musical instrument or even riding a bike.

When we consciously choose to “practice” in this way, we are also choosing to establish new habits that become stronger with time and consistency. We do this to overcome our old, unhelpful habits, or undesirable samskaras, and replace them with more desirable samskaras that move us closer to our goals (see Changing the Brain's Stressful Habits).

And although Patanjali describes other tools to help us achieve our goals, such as pranayama and cultivating the yamas and niyamas, abhyasa can be applied to all of them as the base practice to amplify all others. So let’s get cracking!

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6 Strategies for Using Yoga to Help Medical Conditions

by Nina and Baxter

De Jur, Age 57

“So, short of unconsciousness, I feel that there is no condition that yoga could not potentially help with!”

In Baxter’s post Health Problems that Yoga Can't Help With, he made the dramatic statement that he felt there is no condition that yoga could not potentially help with. His reasoning was:

“Yoga certainly can bring our minds and bodies into better balance, and seems to support many of the healing systems in our own bodies in working more efficiently. And, of course, stress management, pain management, and bolstering the immune system via yoga can always help at some level with just about any conceivable health issue we may face, even if you are dying.”

Since then, the two of us have been working on identifying the basic strategies that will provide the help he was describing. These six strategies can be used on their own or in any combination as required by the condition. For example, if you are recovering from cancer, you could work on muscular/skeletal health for weakness, immune system support for healing, and stress management for emotional health.

We want to be clear, however. For the most part, these strategies cannot replace Western medicine. In many cases, what you are doing with the yoga is supporting healing, rehabilitating after treatment, or even just providing relief from pain and comfort care. See 5 Ways Yoga Can Affect Your Health for information on this. (Exceptions might include conditions such as anxiety and insomnia that an be managed and even “cured” by yoga practice.)

For information on the specific health problems you can address with yoga, see Common Minor Problems Yoga Can Help With and Common Serious Problems Yoga Can Help With.

Yoga Strategies for Addressing Health Problems

1. Muscular/Skeletal Health. You can use the asana practice to improve the health of the musculoskeletal system by working on strength, flexibility, balance, and agility.

Improving muscle strength can help with any condition that causes weakness, such as sarcopenia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, post-broken bone recovery with secondary weakness from disuse, or having been bedridden as a result of illness or surgery. Improving bone strength can help with osteoporosis and osteopenia (see Yoga and Strength: An Overview).

Improving flexibility can help with any condition that causes stiffness, such as osteoarthritis or Parkinson’s Disease (see Yoga and Flexibility: An Overview).

Improving balance can help with any condition that reduces this physical skill, including frailty from aging and inactivity, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease, peripheral neuropathy from diabetes, and poor eyesight (see Yoga and Balance: An Overview).

Improving agility can help with any condition that affects nimbleness and response time, including any condition that affects balance in general as well as the slowing of brain-body nerve conduction resulting from aging (see Yoga and Agility: An Overview).

Overall the asana practice improves posture, which help problems caused by poor physical alignment, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and back pain.

2. Immune System Support. Using yoga to support the immune system can help foster healing from a wide range of illnesses, including post severe flu, auto-immune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer, and can boost immune system functioning in those with immune system disorders, such as HIV/AIDS and adrenal insufficiency. See Yoga and the Immune System.

3. Stress Management. Yoga’s stress management tools allow you to reduce chronic stress, helping to prevent and/or manage stress-related diseases, including heart disease, hypertension, and digestive disorders. See About Stress: Acute vs. Chronic and The Relaxation Response and Yoga for information. Stress management can also help with emotional disorders—including anxiety and depression—that are caused or exacerbated by stress.

Stress management also helps reduce inflammation, potentially helping inflammation-related problems, including as most forms of arthritis, as well as gastrointestinal conditions such as celiac disease and leaky gut syndrome (see Chronic Inflammation and Yoga).

4. Pain Management. Yoga’s pain management techniques allow you to provide relief for a wide range of conditions that cause chronic pain, from migraines to severe osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and cancer. See How and Why Yoga Helps with Pain and Yoga for Pain Management for more information.

5. Cardiovascular and Circulatory System Health. You can use yoga practices to maintain or improve circulation in your cardiovascular system, which is essential for heart health, as well as the health of your other organs (including your brain). Reducing chronic stress also helps prevent heart disease, stroke, arrhythmias, and other circulatory system problems. See Heart Health and Yoga and About Yoga for Heart Health and Circulation for more information.

6. Respiratory Health. Yoga asanas, breath awareness, and pranayama can help improve lung function to foster general health and can help with respiratory diseases, such as mild asthma and COPD. See The Respiratory System and Yoga for more information.

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Balance Pose of the Week: Sky Diver

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Friday Q&A: Depression, Medication, and Meditation

The Gray Tree by Piet Mondrian

Q: I am an avid follower of Yoga for Healthy Aging and have benefitted greatly from the wisdom imparted on this site. Perhaps you can shed some light on the following question: I am taking several medications for depression and anxiety. I would like to start a meditation practice but am unsure about the interactions between psychotropic medications and meditation. Can you offer me some advice with this?

A: Your question is timely and important. As you know, today we turn toward combining the wisdoms of the East and the West. More and more people are managing their moods and physical states by using meditation and body /mind systems to deal with anxiety and depression. There is a newly emerging discipline called “yoga therapy,” which specializes in different forms of treatment.

Meditation is powerful, as you know. But one problem of meditating when you have depression is that the meditation itself can turn on you and become a litany of self-blame and despair. You might think you’re meditating and helping yourself, but you’re not; you’re ruminating, digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. So the biggest contraindication to meditating is severe unregulated depression, and this must be respected because the rumination picks up steam and can drive you into the depths. So it’s wise to wait until you’ve achieved balance before beginning a meditation program. 

You’re wise to ask about the interactions between psychotropic medications and meditation. Most research indicates that it is safe to meditate and medicate both, but until the medication has been carefully titrated and shown to work over a period of time, it is safer to allow yourself to come to your center before beginning anything new. Of course, there are no hard and fast rules; this varies from one individual to the next.

To play it safe, here is what I would do. First off, I would consult with my doctor to check that my moods have stabilized and that meditation is okay. Does your doctor practice Integrative Medicine? That might prove to be an important piece in your decision making process.

Then, if I decided to begin a daily medication practice, I would consult a meditation specialist, an expert teacher, and work closely with that person to make sure that I got on the right track and stayed there. Meditation is a simple practice, so simple that it can be hard to learn. You and your teacher will work together to find the methods that are best for you as an individual. The rewards of a daily meditation practice accrue slowly, but over time they add up and they help you learn to know yourself and to accept yourself deeply. This deep acceptance of self in the moment, whoever that self might be, plays a big part in helping with depression.

Since you’re a regular reader of  Yoga for Healthy Aging, I guess that you probably are already involved in yoga, which is another form of meditation. Yoga is often called a moving meditation. You might consider consulting with a yoga therapist who specializes in mood disorders, someone who will help you find the best yoga moves for you and teach you meditation and pranayama or breath work practices. Different movements have different emotional effects, too, as can the length of time the different positions are held. 

You might benefit from reading Amy Weintraub's book Yoga for Depression. Amy has a training program where she works with therapists to teach them yoga skills. Or you might look for a yoga therapist on the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) website, where there is a list of therapists, organized by location. 

I’m talking a lot about yoga because you’re a reader of Yoga for Healthy Aging, but maybe you would rather choose another kind of meditation practice. There are different schools for you to check out, and the essential factor is: do you like it? Does it appeal to your taste? Investigate, try different approaches. What is your gut feeling? 

You might start your research by reading a few books like The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness (Book & CD), by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, or A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfeld. You could check out a Zen Center. There’s lots of choices, and I’m always happy to say it’s a big world! Whatever your choice, I wish you success. And thanks for asking.

—Lynn


Lynn Anjali Somerstein, PhD, NCPsyA, LP, RYT, is a licensed psychotherapist and yoga therapist in private practice, specializing in anxiety, depression and PTSD. She is also the author of numerous articles about yoga, anxiety, attachment issues and psychotherapy. Lynn is grateful to her many teachers at the Integral Yoga Institute and the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis who offered her extensive and deep training in yoga, yoga therapy, and psychoanalysis. See lynnsomerstein.com for more information about Lynn. 

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Too Young to Feel So Old

by Nina

Brandy Wismer, Age 60

The photos of older women doing yoga that I’ve been posting on our YFHA Facebook Page have certainly prompted a lot of discussion. One comment in particular got me thinking. 

I guess I know I'm getting old when I see Bhavani Cooper's age (56) in a "Yoga for Healthy Aging" Facebook page. 76, maybe. 56? YOUNG.

I left a reply to this comment, but after talking with Brad about it, I thought that it might just be a good topic to explore today, especially after I heard from one of our prize-winning photo subjects, Brandy Wismer, about her experience of being “too young to feel so old.”

You see, many people assume that because we’re talking about “aging,” our blog is just for people in their last one or two decades of life. But the truth is, that people in their fifties are already dealing with age-related health problems. So practicing Yoga for Healthy Aging is beneficial for a huge range of people, of many different ages.

For example, though I’m 63 now, I developed arthritis of the hip in my fifties, and I’ve been using my yoga practice since then to help maintain my range of motion and postpone a hip replacement for as long as possible (yes, that is working for now). And as I looked around at my contemporaries—including "kids" I grew up with—I saw not only cases of arthritis developing in people in their 50s,  but also other age-related problems, such as hypertension, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. I also noticed that people who did not take good care of themselves—who did not exercise, eat well, and manage their chronic stress—tended to be much more unhealthy overall and just seemed plain “older” than those who did. I guess that’s a no-brainer, but witness it in your contemporaries really brings that message home to you. Brandy Wismer’s story illustrates this perfectly. It also illustrates why yoga for healthy aging is so beneficial to people who might even seem "young" to some of you.

Brandy’s Story

I distinctly remember the first day I went to the grocery store and looked at the motorized carts and realized I either need to shorten my shopping list or take the cart. Neither option was what I wanted. I was really frustrated and also sad because at 52 I was too young to feel so old. 

After two knee surgeries, one foot surgery, and a torn rotator cuff and wrist injury that were scheduled for future surgeries, I found myself 50 pounds overweight, with low energy and no self confidence in my ability to change my life. I took pain medicine several times a day just for my body not to hurt. On top of this I had an extremely stressful, but high paying job as an executive for a psychological practice serving families experiencing family violence, addiction and other mental disorders. Physical fitness and taking care of my body were not top on my priority list. 

Two life-changing things happened almost at the same time. The first was caused by the “20 step challenge.” We lived in a two-story home. Going up the stairs was often difficult, so my husband started referring to my “20 step challenge” anytime I went upstairs. Things became bad enough that we made the decision to sell our two-story home and move to a one-story home in an active adult community. At 52, we were both very young for the community, but I quickly realized the more active and fit members of our community, even in their 80s and 90s, were having a great time and I was missing out.

The second thing that happened was I left my high-stress, high-paid job and started over fresh in a totally different career with a financial services firm at a very low paid, entry-level position. One of the perks was a company fitness center with an opportunity to have a full fitness evaluation and yoga classes right inside the company at lunchtime. 

The fitness evaluation told me what I already knew: I was in bad shape. The yoga class seemed like something I could try that wouldn’t be too hard. I started going, and I remember the instructor Kelly not only made me feel good physically, but her centering messages about self-acceptance and encouragement made me start seeing possibilities for myself. I was starting to feel stronger, more flexible, and balanced, both inside as well as outside. I joined another fitness club and went to more yoga and combined it with a personal trainer. I dropped about 50 pounds and realized I really could make even bigger changes in my life. Last fall I made the leap to enroll in a 200-hour teacher training program. In May this year, I started teaching seniors in my own community. For my own fitness, I combine my own yoga practice with cardio workouts on the bike, do weight training and play pickle ball, and even joined a co-ed softball league, which I never envisioned as a possibility. My husband is also joining me for yoga and he is a true believer in the positive benefits for both of us. 

I have never felt better or stronger or more contented then I feel today. Eight years ago I felt too young to feel so old. Today I feel younger than my 60 years. I know I will have challenges in the future, but I’ve also learned that when you fall down, just laugh as you pick yourself up so you can try again. Everyday is an opportunity for a new beginning. 

Brandy Wismer lives in Denton, Texas, and teaches yoga at Robson Ranch.

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