Yoga for seniors -15 Days Retreat in Nepal
Old age could be blissful by practicing yoga!!!
If you are over 50 and you are searching how to make your life more meaningful and peaceful this is definitely for you.
After experiencing most things in life, you could still feel like you need time for you, time to rediscover your happiness, to relax and be with yourself.
Nepal yoga home has created a retreat for you! Come for a few relaxing days surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and nature, make your holiday fruitful while you learn and inspire yourself to be healthier and more peaceful.
If you want to devote the rest of your life toward the spiritual path, Nepal Yoga Home might be the best choice to step out and start your special journey.
The third age could be the best time of your life to start a healthy and relaxing regular yoga practice, breathing exercises and meditation. Old age is just a cycle, a cycle that will take you through another beautiful phase of your life.
This is the stage when you have more time for yourself and the spiritual part of your life. Then again, it is also the time when you are more susceptible to age linked ailments and illness such an arthritis, rheumatism, diabetes, high blood pressure, memory loss, stress, depression, hormonal fluctuations etc .Yoga is beneficial for the prevention and control of these and many other common health and emotional problems linked to old age.
A regular Yoga practice is the best way to maintain a healthy life on elderly stage.
Nepal Yoga Home provides a seniors yoga practice, focused on proper body alignment including: physical limitations, aches, pains, and weaknesses. Our yoga course for senior citizens is specifically designed for your physical condition which augurs your emotional and mental well being. The yoga poses tone up your muscles, improve circulation of blood, reduce stress and wards off depression. Yoga and meditation are the best option to keep a fit body and a healthy mind that lead to better health and better ability to cope with the aging process. Senior people have to face many physical and mental problems, reason why yoga-meditation and the spiritual path will definitely make your life easier.
In most cases, seniors can absolutely do yoga. If you can breathe you can be benefit by yoga. So, old age is not an obstacle for yoga and meditation. Most of people they think yoga is a physical exercise, therefore hard to practice at old age, but in fact yoga postures (exercises) are only one dimension of yoga.
Yoga has different dimensions like: meditation (techniques of peaceful and stable mind), pranayama (breathing exercise), prathyahara (mastery of sense organ), dharana (more aware mind) ect. Everyone can be benefited by yoga if they really want.
Many people with hectic schedules only find the time for activities such as yoga in retirement. Retirement is the perfect time to pick up the healthy habits that will promote longevity.
When you were a child everything was beautiful, but you were enthusiastic to grow up because you wanted to experience life. When you became young, you felt life was different, when you come to a old age, all the longings are over, the whole life is behind you and you are once again childlike.
Our yoga seniors courses can be a very fruitful and wonderful experience for your entire life, you just need to accept the help of yoga and meditation. If you establish yourself in other dimensions of experience through yoga and meditation, your body and mind will become an easy thing to balance and manage.
In old age bodies have to face different degenerative illness, physiological changes in the heart, blood vessels, lungs, nerves and other organs. Ailments that are linked to old age are joints inflexibility, poor blood circulation, arthritis, vision problem, sleep disorder, breathing problem, stress related problem, chronic pains. The reason for many of these problems can be insufficient exercise, over thinking, unwise eating habits, and shallow berating. This can be addressed by yoga, through exercises, thinking patterns, shallow breathing exercises, unwise eating and the correction of other habits.
Benefits of yoga for seniors
Yoga and meditation practices are good to keep a fitter body, a calmer mind and a more relax life. It helps you to be more in touch with yourself enabling you to accept who you are and the state you are in creating a positive approach in life for elder people.
Yoga asanas are good to strengthen the bones and muscles, meditation aims to quite the mind and the breathing techniques are designed to make you feel refresh and to clean the air that passages through our nerves channels.
Physical balance decreases in old age, but yoga poses and breathing exercises help to regain the balance in the body.
Attending to regular yoga and meditation classes will also establish a sense of young.
Meditation helps to reduce loneliness and boost the immune system in seniors.
Lack of movement and stretching leads to joint deterioration and loss of flexibility, yoga asana offers great results to keep flexibility in the body and healthy joints. It is also good to preserve heart disease, Alzheimer’s and high blood pressure.
Yoga leads towards creativity, increase learning abilities, improve memory and allows higher levels of moral reasoning.
Yogic relaxation, meditation and voluntary regular breathing are all great medicines for sleep disorders, diabetic type ‘B’, cholesterol, triglycerides and anxiety.
Yoga and meditation have shown different benefits in senior’s like:
- Improve quality of old age life
- Improve sleep quality
- Reduce stress and improve depression
- Keep balance in physical and mental body
- Help to control blood sugar
- Enhance respiratory function
- Improve memory
- improve arthritis pain
- Prevent osteoporosis
- Moderate chronic pain
- Increase joint flexibility
- Prevent and heal HBP
- Reduce body fat
- Cure back pain
- Improve poor blood circulation
- Improve vision problems
- Remove chronic pain
- Reduce use of alcohol and other drugs
- Sustain or build strength and mobility.
- Looking and feeling younger
- Decrease overall health care costs
- Increase longevity
- Improve cardiovascular health
- Reduce the excess weight.
- Enhance energy, strength and overall feelings of well-being.
Objective of this course:
- This course will be fruitful to all seniors who are looking to make their old age a healthy and happy path. The main objectives of this course are:
- A big concern for seniors is to feel or to be useless after retirement. It leads the majority of them to depression, mental agony and frustration. This course will show them the right path to de-stress and spiritual life.
- It main goals are to reduce the old age stresses, increase the range of motion, provide a better balance, and help to regain strength and a calmer mind.
- To teach the right art of self care and a natural way of healthy leaving.
- To encourages and support seniors to get the confidence to continue a regular yoga and meditation practice.
- To make seniors life more enjoyable and more manageable, Yoga will make an enormous difference in their daily lives.
- To establish a sense of freedom, independence and relax.
- To improve balance and strength.
- The ability to modify poses according to health circumstances.
- To maintain the mobility of the spine and to develop full motion for functional flexibility and Strengthening of the core muscle
- To encourage relaxation abilities for the mind and body
- To improve different diseases which usually comes due to aging such as stiffness, sleep disorder, depression, back and neck pain, arthritis, osteoporosis, knee and hip pain, heart problem, blood pressure, uric acid, stress, etc.
What will be teach?
Following things will be teach with in this 15 days course.
Yoga Asanas (Yoga Postures)
The Sanskrit term “asana” is translated as pose or posture. The final position of an asana is achieve when all body parts are positioned correctly. Learning basic yoga poses will eases a new yogi into practice gradually.
Our yoga postures are designed for seniors of all fitness, and mobility levels. You can develop a simple sequence of moves for a great wake-up routine each day. These postures will increase strength, circulation and flexibility.
Some Suggested Yoga Poses for Seniors are : Easy pose, Wind reliving pose, Plank pose, Cobra pose, Ca pose, Cow pose, Tabletop pose, Warrior I, Warrior II, Triangle pose, Pigeon pose, Seated Twist pose, Tree pose, Half spinal twist pose, Shoulder Stand pose, Laying Twist pose, Happy Baby Pose, One-legged Downward Dog, Slow Single and Double Leg Raises, Half Spinal Twist (Ardha Matsyendrasana), waist rotating pose, easy fish pose, simple balancing pose etc.
Yoga style:
You will learn how to unify body, mind and spirit through the yoga practice in its authentic form. you will experience yoga as more than just a form of exercise. It will be a whole holistic experience that will rejuvenate body, mind and spirit. Even among those who practice more fitness-focused yoga, the experience will be different because different relaxing, breathing and meditation techniques will be apply.
Our yoga styles are as follow:
Astanga Yoga – Patanjali authentic Astanga yoga is our main yoga. The core principle of Astanga yoga is truly inspiring and easy for older people. Astanga yoga leads step by step in to a new level of peace and flexibility. It is specially designed for elder, It is a modify Astanga yoga for seniors.
Anusara Yoga- the word “Anusara” means “following your heart” or “flowing with grace.” Classes generally have unifying themes and are always conducted in a relaxed, non-competitive atmosphere.
Gentle Yoga- This yoga is suitable and especially helpful for seniors. Gentle movements and stretching through beginners yoga poses can reduce swelling in joints while increasing joint mobility and improving balance that helps reducing falls.
Seniors Yoga- This yoga has been designed by the founder of Nepal Yoga Home. This yoga is simple and easy flow of breath and yoga postures that helps to improve stress of old age, cardiovascular health, digestion-elimination, improves sleep, lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Many old people truly appreciate this style of yoga.
Laughter yoga- is indeed the best medicine to teach to seniors and keep them in good cheer. Heartily laugher gets rid of stress, worry and depression. laughter generates positive thoughts and reduce negative strains.
Therapeutic Yoga- Nepal Yoga Home targets problems by focusing on therapeutic yoga rather than a challenging physical workout. In old age the elder needs therapeutic yoga (yoga according as their problem). We try to deal individually with each case, If someone has a complicated problem, we give them separate classes to heal the senior injury or problem. With this yoga you will learn how to heal old age diseases like stress, anxiety, hypertension, heart problems, arthritis, mobility, sleep disorder, memory loss, back pain, obesity etc
Meditation
Meditation can be a great friend for seniors because it will teach them to stay within them. Meditation is a technique that develops the power to be aware of the present moment, which creates an unconditional peace and awareness. When the practitioner becomes aware he becomes free from the past and the future. Whatever is done with awareness is by definition meditation. This could be breathing, watching the ocean, exercising, listening to music, etc. In essence, meditation is more than just a technique; it is a way of living.
The “practice” of meditation is seen as a practice of living, a practice that increases awareness. Our main techniques of meditation are:
▪ Buddha style of meditation,
▪ Breathing meditation
▪ Vipassana meditation,
▪ So-Ham meditation
▪ Mindfulness meditation
▪ Silence meditation
▪ Guided meditation
▪ Soul meditation
▪ Kundalini meditation etc
Pranayama, Banda and Mudra (breathing exercises)
As we age, we stop breathing fully. Yoga reminds us that it is important to exhale as fully as we inhale.
As we grow older, we lose flexibility in our ribcage and sometimes suffer from spinal deformities, creating less room for lung expansion. Most elders can lose up to 20 percent of their blood oxygen levels just by aging.
Fortunately, breathing exercises can help keep you perfect at any age. Breathing exercises will help you to fill your lungs capacity from the bottom to the top and will develop elasticity.
Correct breathing involves relax your body and mind while bringing the fresh oxygen in every of your body cells. Breathing exercises can: lower blood pressure, promote feelings of calm, relaxation and help to de-stress. Mindful breathing takes into consideration three purposes of breathing: replenishing, warming, and cleansing. Focusing on full inhalations and exhalations serves to slow down the heart rate which, in turn, improves focus and increases concentration. Your ability to breath correctly affects everything, from your strength and stamina to your mood.
Some breathing exercises designed for seniors are:
➢ Natural longer breath
➢ Diaphragmatic breathing
➢ Thoracic breathing
➢ Clavicular breathing
➢ Throat lock breathing
➢ Abdominal lock breathing
➢ Root lock breathing
➢ Yogic breathing
➢ Alternate nostril breathing
➢ Nadi Shodhana pranayama
➢ Inner retention breathing
➢ External retention breathing
➢ Sheetali pranayama (cooling breathing)
➢ Bhramari pranayama (Humming bee breathing)
➢ Ujjayi pranayama (Psychic breathing)
➢ Bhastrika pranayama I and II (Bellows breathing)
➢ Kapalbhati pranayama (frontal brain cleansing breath)
➢ Surya Bheda pranayama ( Vitality stimulating breathing)
➢ Different gestures with breathing combinations etc
Yogic relaxation and mantra chanting
We will teach yogic relaxation and mantra as an art of de-stress. Mantra has two components ‘Man’ means mind and ‘Tra’ means wave or vibration. Mantra is a technical practice that results reliable and brings a peaceful experience in the mind. Mantras are the mind vibrations in relationship to the Cosmos.
The Science of Mantra is based on the knowledge that sound is a form of energy that has the power to affect the chakras and the human psyche. Mantras help to make everything less thought and create a more relax mind.
Mental ‘fitness’ is as equally important as physical fitness. In old age mental functions start to decline with age which results in short term memory loss, forgetfulness and lack of concentration. Mantra chanting and yogic relaxation makes and improvement in concentration and confidence.
You will practice some powerful and Vedic mantras.
Yoga Philosophy
The main philosophy of yoga is simply to integrate mind, body and spirit. Yet there is a multitude of philosophical ideas developed by looking into the deeper dimensions of the body, mind and spirit. So, we will teach
❖ Astahnga yoga philosophy for our daily life.
❖ Path way to deepen the spiritual peace by yoga philosophy.
❖ Bhagbat Gita and its importance art for elderly people.
❖ Patanjali Yoga sutra and its importance in old age.
Health Tips and life styles
Health Tips and life styles will be teach. Also you will learn the way of positive thinking. Many health concerns have been linked to the sedentary lifestyle which is typical of many older people so we teach them how to eat, how to sit, how to sleep and how to implement the yoga art of living.
You will learn how to improve relationships at home and at work, better social tolerance, and increased satisfaction in old age. You will get facts and tips on staying mentally fit and maintaining a good attitude as you age.
Precautions for senior while they are practicing yoga
Here are some key things for elders to achieve good benefits from yoga. When people start yoga at age of 50 or older, they usually have various health issues commonly associated with the aging process so they have to take care of themselves.
- A Slow practice is easier for seniors so, do not go fast and take relaxation in between every yoga asana.
- In practicing Yoga, you have to know your body and respect its limits. Do not push yourself to hard yoga postures. Yoga can only be effective if you practice it correctly according your own capacity. The harder you try, the less you get. Be aware of health concerns and ability.
- Older participants may not have the strength required to hold the pose for a longer period so observe yourself and make shorter (ten to fifteen seconds). A pose can be repeat two or three times.
- Focus your awareness on your stretching portion of the body and gaze in a specific spot to assist with balance and peace of mind.
- Make some inspiration source (teacher) which encourage them to keep continues practice. create a supportive environment.
- Support and protect joints like ankles, hips, hamstrings, wrists and pectorals need special attention.
- Know modifications for the asanas will make everything easier and will be more beneficial.
- Keep the Focus on functioning
- Please do not practice watching television or you tube, CD etc. specially In complicated chronic conditions such as hypertension, osteoporosis, heart diseases, depression. Please take help from a yoga expert.
- Yoga poses or stretches should never hurt; release the stretch if it is causing any pain.