Yoga and Aging
A Yoga Perspective On How The Body Changes
As We Grow Older ... And What To Do About It
Introduction:
Everyone ages differently depending upon a multitude of different factors. Among them are genetics, extrinsic environmental factors such as the air we breathe and the food we eat, the wear and tear from from the multitude of life's accidents both big and small, and even intrinsic factors such as how we feel about work, family, and finances.
The human body undeniably changes as we age and eventually, the body dies. Notwithstanding the principles of normal aging, the average human body goes through what I call, Ages and Stages.
Although certainly anecdotal, I've interviewed many hundreds of yoga students and therapy clients through the years, and the Ages and Stages Theory has always held true ... including the conversations and concurrence with the large number of doctors and physical therapists I've discussed this with through the years. After reading this material, you might ask yourself if the Ages and Stages Theory also applies to you.
Your body has a nifty little mechanism that helps to facilitate your healing process. When ill, and especially when injured, your body tightens up in order to protect itself from further injury. This mechanism contracts the fascia of your body; which is basically, the connective tissue surrounding your entire body from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. Fascia lays directly under your skin and also surrounds and encapsulates virtually every muscle and muscle group, along with every organ and every gland in your body.
When you were a child and young adult, your body was fairly resilient. When you were injured or ill, your body healed quickly and you were soon able to resume your daily activities and get on with the business of life. But things changed as you grew older. As your body went through its first "transition" somewhere between the age of 28-32, and about every ten years past that, you discovered that your body became less resilient and you found that it took increasingly longer to recover.
This is because about every ten years past ages of about 28-32, there is a natural contraction of your overall fascia. The “bag that holds your body together” begins to tighten up. It becomes less resilient and basically interferes with your normal healing process. Normal aging of fascia along with its natural contraction also affects the circulation of fluids and nutrients.
Did you notice that as you passed through your first “transition” (that is, as you passed through the age of 28-32), you began to “re-experience” injuries you thought were long-ago healed? As you went through subsequent ten-year thresholds, did you notice that you experienced more and more of these older injuries. Not withstanding old injuries, have you noticed that as you pass through each of these Ages and Stages, your body responds less quickly or not nearly as lithely as it did before that last ten-year “transition?”
The very same mechanism that protects you when you are injured is the very same mechanism that causes you to re-experience your old injuries as you age. Notwithstanding actual injury or illness, about every ten years after the age of 28-32, your fascia contracts even more. Stress, be it physical or emotional, contributes to fascia contraction.
Here is another way to look at this phenomenon. When an animal in nature is injured, it simply looks for a dark and quiet place in which to lie quietly and it allows nature to take its course; it will heal or die. Another thing about animals in nature; they are always stretching. They stretch when they first arise from sleeping and they stretch often during the day.
Overall, animals in nature take pretty good care of themselves. Basically, with the exception of some higher primate species including humans, animals live pretty much “in the present,” seemingly striving to avoid personal and extraneous environmental stress. 
Not so with us humans. When injured or ill, we almost always prematurely resume our active and busy lifestyles before we fully recover. And in so doing, fascia will continue to contract in order to protect us from further damage. In addition to illness and injury, the stress from our daily lives also causes our fascia to contract. In other words, aging and life's responsibilities with its multitude of physical and emotional trauma, causes fascia to contract.
It's when we can both understand and appreciate fascia's contraction when it is stimulated; be it from injury, illness, stress, or from the natural process of living and aging, that we can begin to appreciate why yoga can have such a profound affect upon our body and mind ... and even more so when yoga is "appropriately" practiced.
When we recognize that over-stimulation will only contract soft tissue, it makes absolutely no sense to force our yoga, or to “try” to get our body to become flexible; especially if our body is injured, ill, or after it has gone through one or more of the age transitions. (Elsewhere in this e-book, we learn that fascia is a soft tissue that responds to stimulation and will contract, in part due to Hilton's Law).
If you were ill or injured, or if you have gone through one or more of the "age thresholds described above; then even the slightest "forcing" or "trying" would most probably further contract your fascia causing you additional contraction (like what you experience the day after a yoga class). Therefore, when you do yoga in a way that exacerbates your tightness, even just a little bit, I'm compelled to ask you: "Where is the 'yoga' in that?"
This is not to say an "appropriate" yoga must be always be passively or softly practiced. Far from it, but an appropriate practice must be performed in such a way that it appropriately challenges a person's "current" or "present" physiology without significantly causing over stimulation. Obviously then, an appropriate yoga practice would be considerably different for a physically fit person as compared to that of a chronically ill, injured, or aging student.
If you are a yoga teacher and offer a student a yoga exercise or routine, the operative questions must be: What is yoga and How does it feel? The logic and principles of ExTension and Recovery Yoga present how to appropriately practice and teach in a way that supports changing physiology; be it through illness, injury, or just the natural process of growing older.
Appropriate practice and teaching should not done by rote, but by applying the knowledge and application of these neuromuscular principles and laws that moves a person toward strength, endurance, and flexibility in a balanced, harmonious way. And as a result of that harmonious balance, you will also move toward enhanced spirituality.