Pictures of witches, ghosts, black cats, zombies and skeletons abound this month. These iconic photographs are supposed to be scary, and a few of them are—though I’ve to say that having lived with just a few black cats in my life, they’re under no circumstances scary. Halloween photographs are nonetheless meant to evoke a little bit of worry and apprehension.

While you see a picture of a skeleton, the very first thing that involves thoughts might be not osteoporosis. Nonetheless, in line with the Nationwide Osteoporosis Basis, 10 million of us are at the moment dwelling with osteoporosis, and 34 million are at the moment in danger for the illness.

How Can Yoga Assist?

There are various easy issues you can begin doing now, at any age, to forestall the illness:  Eat loads of vegetables and fruit, get common train, improve your Vitamin D and Calcium/Magnesium consumption. However if you happen to’re studying this weblog in any respect, you most likely apply yoga. Does yoga rely as an train that may assist maintain your bones robust?

Dr. Loren Fishman says sure. On this interview (learn the entire thing—it’s very informative), he explains why yoga helps maintain our bones robust:

“Yoga helps develop bone mass, however as a result of yoga poses pull and stretch the bones from each conceivable angle, yoga additionally might stimulate the formation of a bone construction that’s in a position to withstand better quantities of strain, in addition to many several types of challenges.

“…there are quite a few different necessary methods through which yoga advantages individuals with osteoporosis, reminiscent of enhancing steadiness, muscular power, vary of movement and coordination, whereas lessening anxiousness.  These are different necessary advantages of yoga for individuals with osteoporosis as a result of they every assist scale back the danger of falling.”

Yoga for Osteoporosis

Listed here are my concepts about yoga for osteoporosis, particularly, how totally different lessons of poses assist maintain your bones wholesome:

Standing Poses and Stability Poses:  Promote steadiness, use weight bearing to strengthen bones, stretching leg muscle tissue alongside bones pulls and stretches the bones.

Backbends:  Counteract the tendency to hunch ahead as  your bones weaken.

Twists and Lateral Stretches:  Preserve the thoracic area (higher again) cell.

Ahead Bends:  Scale back stress, stretching muscle tissue alongside bones pulls and stretches the bones. Ensure that whenever you bend ahead that you just all the time bend out of your hip joints, and never out of your waist. If essential, bend your knees so as to accomplish this.

So don’t let your personal skeleton scare you. Dive into your apply, realizing that not solely does yoga make you are feeling good now, it’s going to seemingly make your life happier—and far much less scary—sooner or later.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and folks sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.