There is a common misconception that older adults have to lead sedentary lives, watching television or playing table games throughout retirement. However, it is largely a matter of adjusting your lifestyle and fitness activities to best suit your current mobility levels. One of the most popular types of exercise is chair yoga – not only is it accessible, but it is also affordable for everyone. Here’s why you should try out chair yoga for seniors today.
Is Chair Yoga Good for You?
For older adults, it is important to choose exercise forms that are low-impact that are easy on the joints. More importantly, there should be an easy progression to other forms of exercise. One of the best benefits of chair yoga is that it can cater for many different fitness levels, allowing older adults to stay active even if they are fitness gurus, recovering from an injury or new to exercising.
For a more specific list of benefits, chair yoga has been shown to help with flexibility, balance, and circulation. On top of this, the process and activity has also been shown to be able to improve the moods of the participants, reducing stress and combating anxiety and depression.
What Do You Need to Prepare for Chair Yoga?
For chair yoga, since it is both low-impact and low-risk, there isn’t much that you have to purchase or prepare to get started. The most essential equipment that you will need for your practice is to have a stable, armless chair and a level and flat surface to work on. What we are trying to achieve for this is to make sure that your chair does not move while you are doing your exercises. If you are finding it hard to secure your chair, putting a non-slip mat under might help.
On top of this, make sure that you are wearing comfortable clothes and have adequate space to stretch out your arms and legs. Most importantly, make sure that someone is around if you need assistance or support.
Chair Pigeon Is the Best Chair Yoga Exercise
One of the most basic exercises is the chair pigeon. This will help stretch your ankles, hamstrings, hips, and pelvis and improve your body alignment. To do this, sit on the chair and place one ankle onto your opposite knee. You can use your hand to hold onto your knee if you are having issues. After you are ready, flex the foot on your knee and bend forward slowly. After having several deep breaths while bent, slowly move back up and repeat on the other side.
Enjoy Fun Fitness Activities at TerraBella Windsor Lake
Here at TerraBella Windsor Lake, we firmly believe that wellness in all aspects is of utmost importance to older adults. This is why we offer a large variety of different fun and interesting activities every day with our exclusive senior living programs. All the residents in our senior living community can choose between a large variety of different programs like spiritual gatherings, educational opportunities, and exercise classes.
For more information about our senior living options and programs, contact us today and our senior living coordinators will get back to you shortly.
