health

by Nina Dahlia by Melina Meza It has only struck me recently that while we�ve written about what aging is and the many ways yoga can help foster healthy aging, we�ve never really addressed what �healthy aging� is. So I thought I�d take a moment to give an overview of the thoughts that Baxter and I currently have on this topic. At this point�we�re still just discussing these ideas�we consider healthy aging to have three important aspects: Compressed Morbidity Independence Equanimity And the reason why we�re such proponents of yoga for healthy aging is that we believe yoga can help with all three of these aspects of healthy aging. For now, I�ll just give you a brief overview of how. Compressed Morbidity. Last week I wrote a post Longevity vs. Morbidity comparing the difference between longevity and morbidity. The medical term �morbidity� refers to the period of time you spend in ill health before you die. Obviously we all would like�both for ourselves and for our loved ones�to keep thi...

by Nina Kale by Melina Meza The other day Baxter and I were talking with an editor about a possible book on Yoga for Healthy Aging�isn�t that exciting?�when he said something about healthy aging that really struck me. We were going through the possible definitions of "healthy aging" (look for a post on that topic from me soon) when he mentioned that for a lot of his students, healthy aging meant being able to continue to do the activities they loved. Some examples he gave included a woman who wanted to be able to take her grandchildren on hiking adventures and another who wanted to be able to continue with her intensive gardening work. What's so great about yoga is that a regular yoga asana practice can help with these goals for healthy aging. You can use your yoga practice both to fortify yourself and balance your body to keep yourself in shape to continue doing what you love. Let�s take the example of gardening because that�s something I do a lot myself. Gardening can a...