3 benefits of a home yoga practice for osteoporosis
If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, I am betting you have been told, “don’t bend and twist and whatever you do, don’t fall”. And now you are looking for ways to fit exercise into your day.
Recommendations for osteoporosis management include weight bearing cardiovascular exercise, balance training, upper back strengthening for improved posture, and resistance training in addition to being mindful of how we move our spine during daily activities. Now, this may seem like a lot to fit into one week. But what if I could offer you one practice that includes all this and more?
We know that yoga helps us improve our strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, posture and decreases stress and anxiety. I believe yoga is a great addition to any exercise plan for osteoporosis and here are 3 reasons why.
Cover 4 of 5 Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation exercise pillars in one exercise session
Yoga provides us a quick and easy way to hit 4 of the 5 BHOF exercise pillars for your bones in one session. It looks like this:
Body weight and gravity resisted exercise because we hold the poses for 12-30 seconds.
Upper back strengthening when we intentionally include weight bearing on our hands and include movements that lift the chest, extending or arching the upper back into a back bend and opening or stretching the shoulders.
Balance training. Well this shows up in nearly every standing pose and is challenged even more when we move the head to focus our gaze on a lifted arm.
Practicing spine sparing during transitions between poses helps us develop the habit of protecting our spine for our lives off the mat.
Good news! Body in Tune would love to collaborate with you to teach you this precise yoga practice and to support your ongoing practice so you can enjoy your life off the mat with confidence.
Yoga for a focused day
Yoga sets the tone for your day with intentional movement combined with mindful breathing. This has been shown to lower stress hormones thereby keeping more calcium (a building block) in your bones to build and protect the strength of your bones. The hormone cortisol increases when we feel stress especially emotional stress. Stress cortisol leaches calcium out of our bones. We need calcium and other minerals in our bones to build and protect the integrity of our bones
You may have heard of “yoga bliss” that feeling you see in student’s faces when they sit up from savasana or corpse pose and are exiting a yoga class. I know that went to my first yoga class thinking of it as another form of exercise, but what kept drawing me back was the change in my nervous system and how “calm” I felt after each class. At the time I was craving that sensation and honestly, I still do. Hence my regular home yoga practice.
Body in Tune would love to help you create your personalized yoga practice so that you can find your “calm” on a daily basis.
Get all the muscles working together for better balance
A regular yoga practice will wake up, strengthen and help muscles work together as a team to support your safe spinal alignment for all your activities and help you regain your balance if you catch your foot or slip on loose gravel or ice.
By holding poses for 12-30 sec we generate more muscle force that creates the tension, torsion, and compression we need to stimulate bone regeneration and growth. We force ourselves to find, wake up and to use our deeper core muscles, which are more than just the muscles that get sore from sit ups. These pull on the vertebrae, the bones of the spine.
A regular yoga practice repeatedly encourages the 3 gluteal muscles to work together and teaches our body how to bend or hinge at the hips and shift and rotate using the legs so that we “lift with our knees” without having to think about it. This in turn keeps our spine in a long line avoiding bending through the spine and decreasing the risk of too much compression on the vertebrae and broken bone. Win! Win!
As an example, years ago I had a clinic patient doing back, core, and glut strengthening for spine rehab. At the end of the session, the client moved in perfect alignment squatting down to pick her purse and water bottle from the floor. We had not even discussed or practiced the mechanics of this movement during that particular session. It was the complete opposite of when she arrived and bent over legs straight to put her belongings on the floor. I love this example and see it in myself when reaching down for pots and pans in the kitchen on days where I have taken the time to do a focused yoga practice.
In case you are curious Body in Tune would love to collaborate with you to find your perfect movement practice.
Wrap it up with a bow!
Yoga has so many benefits. I’ve discussed 3 benefits for osteoporosis, but you can apply this to many of us and to many of the body’s aches and pains. If you are looking for more support around an osteoporosis diagnosis to get started on an exercise program and feel confident, strong, and agile, then check out my offerings. Join the Yoga for Your Bones online yoga class or one of my upcoming Yoga & Osteoporosis Workshops.
Body in Tune, LLC was born from a belief that quality of life matters; both life and physical balance matters.
I would welcome the opportunity to be part of your support team with regards to women’s health, your muscles, joints, bones and osteoporosis. The goal is, after all, to help you feel confident in your body so you can play with your grand children, take that long-dreamed of vacation and get outside and enjoy a walk with friends.
