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KAREEN'S YOGA by Kareen Zebroff
Who better to give advice about yoga to seniors than six senior teachers who have taught yoga for a collective 170 years?
It is said that, “when the teacher is ready, the student appears.” Now that they themselves know exactly what it feels like to age, these teachers have learned one elementary truth about “senior” yoga: keep it simple!
Their advice comes to us from a vast pool of knowledge acquired by studying yoga for months or even years before beginning to teach it - and not just by studying it for a couple of weekends as can, alas, be the case with some few people teaching yoga these days. Indeed, each of our senior teachers have kept educating themselves with advanced workshops, extensive reading, update visits to their eminent teachers all over the world, and the input from their beloved students for over 35 years.
Pegge Gabbott, 84, is still teaching her coveted, free Yoga for You classes in college, community centres and seniors homes. Pegge likes to tailor her classes to the individuals she has within each class because she considers it of the greatest importance that seniors do yoga at this time of their lives. She advises her students to do whatever they can, to pick and choose what’s good for them, to decide on their own pace in class, and to modify the poses with simpler variations. If one is an older, more debilitated student, it is best to start out on a chair or on the floor, so that the spine is always supported. What is essential, says Pegge, is to look for an inspiring teacher who has lots of joie de vivre.
Jutta Wiedemann, 77, finished teaching her last popular senior yoga class only this spring. She stresses that seniors leave their ambition at home and listen even more to their bodies than to their teacher. Jutta recommends a deliberate stretching all day long, particularly after getting up from a sitting position. Her favourite poses for seniors are gentle side-bending ones (Triangle Pose); a standing forward bend variation with one leg up on a counter or low coffee-table (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana); a leg-stretching variation with both outstretched hands flat on a table-top while you bend at the hip, stretch your spine, and stick out your bottom (Uttanasan); any shoulder exercises (Cow Head Pose) with the use of a towel; and any easy twists on a chair or on the floor (Knees-to-Side). Remember to breathe into the poses, rather than forcing them.
Ingelise Nherlan, 64, is one of Canada’s six most advanced Iyengar teachers, and has taught this classic yoga style for 30 years. Having been back to India several times, she advises the use of a multitude of the right props for Westerners, with the help of a teacher. Ingelise likes teaching seniors, because they are sweet and wise. She gives them lots of yoga philosophy in class and asks them many questions about their body and state of mind, as older people tend to psyche themselves out about difficult-seeming poses.
Maria Kruse, 75, is one of the most extensively trained yoga teachers of Germany who still teaches several senior yoga classes per week. Her advice is to “pause in the midst of the flow of life and reestablish contact with Mother Earth and your connection with God.” To accomplish this, you need to create an antenna by first feeling your feet and “knowing” that you are standing there; next, comes a gentle rising-up of the body, a becoming erect from toe to head, as you straighten legs and spine, and stretch the neck and head into the heavens. It is particularly important, says Maria, for older people to free their shoulder-girdle (thoracic, pectoral), and consciously let all stress and fatigue drain off. At the end of your session, or your day, take the time to sit down and relax with your hands in your lap - just like an old farmer’s wife on the front porch at dusk.
At 63 myself, I like to emphasize the necessity of “balance in all things.” In my merry, common-sensical yoga lectures, I first encourage seniors to learn to stand properly in the Mountain Pose (Tadasana) and root. Only when they are steady there, may they begin to do the all-important balancing poses and others. For me, yoga is all about “allowing and unfolding.” I feel that seniors would be wise to muse inward and “be” in their bodies while following, in their mind’s eye, the energy that is beginning to flow within. And, to let their breath do its valuable work of pervading their whole being - because breath is the closest connection we have to spirit.
For, as seniors who are daily getting nearer to returning home to spirit, the practice of yoga helps you to acquire the only things you can indeed “take with you.”
Kareen Zebroff’s classic, revised book, The ABC of Yoga (Foulsham
title: A Gentle Introduction to Yoga), as well as her Yoga-Over-40
video, may be ordered from her website www.kareenzebroff.com
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