Seniors in Fine Position to Start Practicing Yoga

Malchia Olshan took her first yoga class in 1967, when she was raising a family in White Plains, N.Y., and recalls needing “something to help me keep my head on straight.” Over the years, she says, yoga became her “secret weapon,” turning her hot flashes into “cool breezes,” keeping her aging body strong and supple and even improving her swimming so that she clocks faster times today than she did in high school.

Olshan is one of a growing number of older adults who credit yoga with helping them stay healthy as they age. As the popularity of the 4,000-year-old discipline has boomed in this country--attracting celebrities such as Madonna and Jerry Seinfeld--more seniors are taking classes to combat the effects of aging.

“The accepted view of aging is that it’s a process of stiffening, rigidity and closing down,” says yoga instructor Suza Francina, who specializes in classes and workshops for people over 50 at her Ojai Yoga Center. “But that’s because most Americans don’t get proper exercise, so their bodies contract with age and they lose height, strength and flexibility.”

Yoga exercises move “each joint in the body through its full range of motion--stretching, strengthening and balancing each part,” she says. “A regular yoga practice can help prevent and relieve . . . health problems associated with age.”

Francina, 48, has been working with seniors since she was 14, when she began assisting elderly neighbors with errands, cooking and other chores so they could remain independent.

“I befriended and cared for many of these same people until they died, some for as long as 25 years,” she says. “I often spent 24 hours a day with people who were in wheelchairs and bedridden, so I was directly exposed to what happens when people stopped being active.” In the early 1970s, Francina began studying yoga with a 65-year-old neighbor and a variety of older teachers (including an 84-year-old man) who were “considered back then eccentric senior citizen types,” she recalls. “Here were these vital people with beautiful posture, who were the same age as some of the frail people I took care of.

“The contrast was striking. It made me realize that we live in a chair-and-car culture, and the cold reality is that people who don’t use their legs lose them.”

When one of her teachers moved away, Francina took over teaching her yoga class at a retirement home and discovered that, over time, even students in their 80s and 90s could grow stronger and more flexible.

“As a teacher, I find it a continual revelation to see how the bodies of people of all ages respond to yoga and proper exercise,” she writes in her book, “The New Yoga for People Over 50” (Health Communications Inc., 1997).

A prime example is Frank White, who could barely reach down and touch his knees from a standing position when he walked into his first yoga class in 1988. Today, the 78-year-old former actor can place both palms on the floor without bending his knees and teaches about 12 to 15 yoga classes a week to people of all ages near his home in Los Angeles.

“Before I started doing yoga, I could hardly get out of bed from arthritis, I was taking lots of medication for my heart, my blood pressure was 210 over 120 and my cholesterol was 400,” recalls White, who says he also smoked four packs of cigarettes and drank a quart of “booze” a day. Alcoholics Anonymous “saved my life,” he says, “and yoga gave me a new way to go.” This “new way” included daily yoga practice, quitting smoking, stopping drinking and becoming a vegetarian.

Today, White takes no medication, his blood pressure is 118 over 76 and his cholesterol is 150.

“I still have arthritis,” he says, “but it doesn’t bother me” because yoga helps alleviate the pain.

Seniors who practice yoga are often in much better shape than sedentary people who are decades younger, says Susan Winter Ward, a Colorado-based yoga instructor who travels the country teaching yoga classes for seniors.

“Just because someone’s in a senior body doesn’t mean they can’t do physically challenging yoga poses,” says Ward, whose “Yoga for the Young at Heart” (Capra Press, 1994) book, retreats, and audio and video tapes are geared to beginners, baby boomers and seniors.

“I teach the same thing to beginners of any age, because learning yoga has less to do with age and more to do with the body you live in,” she says. However, older people are more likely to have conditions such as high blood pressure, glaucoma or osteoporosis, which could make certain yoga poses inadvisable, Ward notes. She encourages new students of any age who have chronic diseases to discuss their exercise plans with their physician.

“It’s important to start where you are, then progress with baby steps. Even if all you can do is just sit and breathe, that can be an excellent exercise,” she says. “Try raising your arms slowly on inhale and lowering them slowly on exhale. Let your body move in harmony with your breath, and that’s a wonderful start.”

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Fitness runs Monday in Health.