Science, Yoga, and The Aging Body: What Postures, What Practices?

This post is part of an ongoing public discussion relating to the scientific research of yoga and follows a two-part online webinar, Scientific Research on the Elderly and Yoga, which can be found on our events archive here. Comments are welcome in the comment field provided below this post. All comments are moderated for content and may or may not be published.

Scientific research shows that yoga affects the aging process.

During COVID, we’ve all thought about our elders: how to care for them, how to protect them, and, as yoga teachers and practitioners, how we might even use yoga as a way to ameliorate or improve their experience of life in lockdown. In April, as the pandemic began, I met with Yoga Alliance’s Director of Yoga Research and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School Dr. Sat Bir Singh Khalsa to talk about these issues in a two-part CE Webinar series called “The Elderly and Yoga.” Dr. Khalsa presented scientific publications on yoga and aging: Part 1 covered musculoskeletal and cognitive decline, and in Part 2 addressed anxiety and depression in the aging population, a particularly relevant topic during COVID.

In all of his talks, Dr. Khalsa uses this “logic model” that depicts typical traditional yoga as having four common practices—physical exercises, breath, relaxation and meditation, and relaxation.

Those over 65 don’t generally just jump into an average yoga class.

Aging people typically benefit from modified yoga classes tailored to their abilities and limitations, but they may be reticent to try. Dr. Khalsa observed that the mainstream public perception of those who practice yoga does not include people 65 and older. Referencing a peer-reviewed study published by several of his colleagues in which 168 covers of Yoga Journal were analyzed from 1975–2015, Dr. Khalsa said that most people think of yoga as a practice for young-to-middle-aged, White, thin, and flexible women. Anyone with physical limitations, which aging almost always brings, are challenged to consider yoga a practice as beneficial for or relevant to them.

Considering how to introduce yoga to this group, the question of what’s the right challenge and how to create comfort are then things to keep in mind. Scientific research has accounted for the imbalance between the perception of yoga overall and its relevance for the aging population by studying mostly modified yoga practices. All studies we see for this group involve basic, gentle movements, with chair yoga, for example, featured in a recent pilot randomized control trial study on those with osteoarthritis. Chair yoga has so far been the most studied modification.

Three citation highlights

In a study published by the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, researchers found “robust evidence for promoting yoga in physical activity guidelines for older adults as a multimodal activity that improves aspects of fitness like strength, balance and flexibility, as well as mental wellbeing.” They determined that multiple physical functions and health-related quality of life outcomes improved in this population compared to both control conditions in the study.

A research article by The Gerontological Society of America, “Yoga Is as Good as Stretching—Strengthening Exercises in Improving Functional Fitness Outcomes: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial”, measures hatha yoga against conventional CDC stretching guidelines for improving functional fitness outcomes and found that the “gentle and modifiable nature of practically all Hatha yoga” makes it “easy to adopt and maintain in older adults.”

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