Approaching Eighty

I remember years ago our yoga instructor saying that she knew a woman in her 70’s who still practiced yoga every day. We all gasped. We could not fathom such a thing. Here am I, in my 80^th year, and still doing yoga every day--my own reduced practice, to be sure, and mainly stretches, wiggles, and twists; lots of isometric. One day a week, I do a guided audio 20-minute yoga session but I pick gentle ones. None of the hard core stuff; no head or shoulder stands (I already paid a chiropractor enough for that), no plow, crane, or frog; no Hot Power Fusion, Power Vinyasa, or Advanced Forrest yoga. I don’t think I could last out an hour class and certainly not 1½ hours like they do at Snowbird. But hey, I’m approaching 80 (as Eddy so often reminds me) and still doing Yoga!

Tree pose

Mountain

Warrior 2

 Extended Right Angle

Reverse Warrior

Warrior 1

A very poor Warrior 3 or Brave Warrior

Down Dog

Going into half-pigeon

Plank

Figure 4 - Hip opener.

We store a lot of stress and tension in our hips.

An anti-aging pose.

This is the one I do for my back - sway back and forth -

that my knees hate.

Each day I do 4 short kriyas for the brain.
This one clears away all the smut and crud in the air.
(I don't know how to rotate it.)

Cat and Cow are anti-aging poses.

These four short kriyas on the videos are designed to
wash the brain, balancing both the right and left hemispheres;
open up the blockage so the oxygen and blood can flow,
bringing mental clarity and blood to the brain.
They are designed to energize us, make us more alert, 
and our eyes brighter.
I think they might work.
I took the Facebook test where they
guess how much education you have.
Conclusion: A Doctorate Degree!

This is when I focus on the bird in the tree top across the street.

Child's pose

Corpse pose - my favorite. The only one I can do.

When I asked K’Leena to take the pictures, I told her I only had one requirement: To make me look NOT FAT.

I should have asked her to make to look NOT OLD too; but she would have failed at that as she did in not making me look fat.

The Wall Street Journal had an article stating that yoga injures far more than it helps. A noted teacher told the journalist:  “the vast majority of people should give up yoga altogether. It’s simply too likely to cause harm.”

“Not just students but celebrated teachers too,” Black said, “injure themselves in droves because most have underlying physical weaknesses or problems that make serious injury all but inevitable.” Instead of doing yoga, “they need to be doing a specific range of motions for articulation, for organ condition,” he said, to strengthen weak parts of the body. “Yoga is for people in good physical condition. Or it can be used therapeutically. It’s controversial to say, but it really shouldn’t be used for a general class.”

According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said.

So all my efforts are for naught. However, I don't think I'm in much danger of injury. . .

Thanks K'Leena, you did as well as humanly possible.
DeRay added a couple of pictures.