Awakening abs in a senior yoga practice can be gentle and safe. Help your clients to understand the importance of keeping the core strong. I like to use the image of a starfish. The starfish radiates all movement from its center. In the human body, the core protects the back, is involved in almost every movement of the body and is the center of our breathing organ, the diaphragm. Keeping this area strong encourages the whole body to function more gracefully.

The following is a safe warm-up sequence that will allow your clients to awaken their abs, without creating undo strain to their spines.

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In a recent AARP Bulletin, yoga was praised for its many benefits and recent rise among older adults. AARP cites a recent study stating that 18.4 percent of practitioners are now over 55. What the article doesn’t state is how many are over 80. While it may seem preposterous to start yoga at the age of 80, it’s never too late to bring vitality back to the body, tranquility to the mind and compassion to the soul. I introduce several of my students to you who started yoga for the first time in their 80′s.

Ruth E. - Age 85

“It’s been a year now, and I’m doing things today that I was afraid to do back then-like balance on one foot, reach up high for something, or bend over to pick up an object that has fallen out of reach. I’m stronger and more limber than I’ve been in a long time, and I have more confidence too.”

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When you find your senior yoga clients already moving into a perceived pose as if it were second nature, it’s time to challenge them with subtle changes that can also challenge their brain. Every time we move our body, our brain initiates its own muscle memory, so allow yoga to actively work the body, the breath and the brain in a well coordinated practice.

Make sure to work both sides of their brain, as well. With the left side of the brain active in coordination of movement, invite the right brain to participate in the practice through the use of visualizations.

Recently, I challenged my class with the following simple supine warm-up. It involves visualization and targeted slow movement coordinated with breath. While it appears simple, test it on your clients and have them observe if they feel the brain working out as actively as the rest of the body.

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Build a walking yoga practice with your seniors, get them outdoors and let them experience the impact of their toes, feet, ankles, knees, hips and overall body motion while walking on the uneven earth.

I recently read a wonderful book by Ila and Garrett Sarley, Walking Yoga. There was a quote in this book that I have always felt important no matter what your yoga practice, “Believe nothing about yoga that you don’t directly experience yourself.”

I had been working for almost two years helping my senior yoga students in understanding the importance of sensing what the body was feeling, how the body is connected, how all the muscles work together and the importance of good posture and continued motion of the foot.

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Hand mudras are a key component of every chair yoga class I teach. Aside from their ability to improve dexterity in the joints of the fingers and hands, static mudras can come alive to help seniors concentrate on breath with movement. An adaptable mudra to introduce into a senior chair yoga class is Garuda (Eagle) mudra. 

Garuda mudra activates the circulation and blood flow of our body and helps to balance our energy. During the opening of our chair yoga class, we hold the pose static, close our eyes and begin our centering. The mudra is then put into motion to help clients focus on breath with movement, while simultaneously opening the joints of the fingers and keeping the mind engaged.

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As a communications major, I know the importance of being able to use words to create an engaging yoga practice for my senior yoga students. If you have ever felt like your clients are lost, falling asleep or seem uninterested, consider crafting a new communication strategy in the classroom.

Start with a headline. Great writers and communicators know the importance of a headline. A headline conveys what the story is all about. Have a headline for each of your classes or what is commonly referred to as a theme. Each senior or chair yoga class I teach starts with a theme, something that will grab my students attention. For instance, Uncorking the Joints. Your headline then unfolds to develop the whole story of your class. The intention, mudras, pranayama, postures and the meditation all work to support your theme, just like the body of a story helps support the headline.

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Today, I had the privilege of training over thirty Occupational and Physical Therapists of Life Care of Colorado in, “Chair Yoga for Optimal Health.” The intention behind the curriculum and training was to introduce Life Care therapists to the ancient art of yoga for use with their clients.

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If you are working with senior yoga clients, you will invariably run across clients with disabilities. Disabilities can prohibit your client from performing a certain task by themselves. I work with senior yoga clients who have Lupus, Osteoporosis, MS, Alzheimer’s, Polio, stroke, depression and extreme fatigue. I also have clients who are recovering from an injury or are no longer able to perform a function with a certain part of their body, like flexion of the ankles.These issues should in no way prohibit you from teaching yoga to these clients you just need to be more in touch with their disabilities or abilities.

Focus on the client’s abilities, not their disability. Take your awareness away from the client’s disability.

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There will be times when your senior yoga clients will come up to you and say, “I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress with yoga?” I love this question and have to help remind my students that they have made tremendous progress.

As the teacher, I can observe the nuances and changes that have occurred in my students over time. From their first child’s pose with their heads stacked on several blocks to their present calmness as their forehead touches the ground and from their first diaphragmatic breath in what may have been forty years, to the smooth, calm and silk like breath they employ today, I see how they have improved. But, being their witness isn’t the best tool for helping your students gauge their own progress.

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This week I arrived early to set up one of my senior yoga class. I positioned all the mats around the perimeter of the room, folded each blanket into a roll for a soft backbend, placed a block and strap near the mat and then left the room for ten minutes. When I returned, I found the clients had moved every single prop, unrolled their blankets, and were lying in Savasana.

As a teacher, we have to have an appreciation for where are students are on any given day. Usually when I intake a new client, I spend quality time getting a good sense of where they are physically, emotionally and mentally. Having a good sense of their physical, emotionally and mental capabilities allows me to work with the client from their starting point, not mine.

Each client in the room may be in the same posture, or hearing the same meditation, but the practice translates into twenty individual versions of their own experience.  So on this particular day, they were in Savasana. That’s where they wanted to be and that’s where I left them. As a teacher, we can help our students and ourselves grow by holding an appreciation for where they are.