While you may have become interested in yoga because you felt the need to keep your bones strong and muscles in shape, I’ve learned from experience that we miss a lot when we pay attention only to our physical selves. In order to practice the postures of yoga to their fullest effect, we need to be aware of our whole selves—inside and out. So we’re taking a journey inward. Introduction to Chapter four “Lilias! Yoga Gets Better With Age”

• Yoga provides you with survival techniques to handle many aspects of today’s “high-pressured world, while maintaining calm control
• Yoga will soothe and strengthen the back and firm, tone and sculpt the entire body, top to bottom
• Yoga can soften, slow down, even aid in reversing the aging process, helping mature adults feel their best
• Yoga is a superior form of weight-bearing exercise that can help prevent osteoporosis and improve posture in both men and women
• Yoga is a conscious, intelligent, non-mechanical approach to exercise that involves the entire being - body, mind and spirit
• Yoga boosts endurance and sports performance
• Yoga provides useful techniques for breathing and movement that remove tension, restore vitality and delight, strength and stamina, and improve balance coordination
• Yoga movements and poses such as inversion (turning the body upside down through bending forward, placing the head below the heart, or resting the legs up on a wall) help to improve circulation to the internal organs as well as the brain as it rests the heart
• Yoga relaxation helps to remove fatigue, lowers blood pressure and soothes the nervous system
• Yoga can help release emotions that burrow in the muscles of our body, which contributes to greater calmness, fluidity, balance and emotional well being