Yoga: the fountain of youth

“Recently I have had the strange experience of being told I’m an inspiration, doing Yoga as I do ’at my age’. Mostly I just feel like ‘me’, not my age. Yoga is and has been so much a part of my life’s journey, including all the changes and challenges of being in a body.
I’m stronger than ever, finding that it’s easy to do challenging poses when rather than moving through resistance, you move from the inner core. I’ve been teaching Yoga over half my life. What and how I teach has changed, transformed and come back to basics.
‘Inversion reverses the ageing process’, I joke teaching an introduction to Yoga Class. ‘Of course that doesn’t mean you won’t get lines on your face. Sorry’. Yoga keeps the body supple, the nervous system functioning and the mind growing, as practice deepens and changes over the years. Having started with a flexible body, strength was the first edge of awareness. Then came learning to soften within the strength, giving up some of the hyper-flexibility that made for a good show but not much awareness. A flexible body can often mask a rigid mind with an appearance of openness. I still love back bends but as so many before me have noted, it now takes longer to move into Urdva Dhanurasana, the Wheel, and I’ve less interest in jumping from pose to pose even though it can be fun sometimes. Yoga is hard work without effort. Effort is always ego and gets in the way, trying to get it right rather than just doing the pose, being in the moment. I must admit that there was a certain subtle edge of ego when I spoke of Yoga keeping us young. With my small stature and freckled pixie face, I’d always looked far younger that I was. However, there comes a time when even pixies with their long lives begin to age....”

Written by Jane Ralston Pahr, the article continues to consider ageing and the part Yoga can play in accepting it and the joy of existence here and now.