Any Activity is Better than None

by Nina

A recent article in the New York Times "Aging Well Through Exercise"  (see here) cited several studies on exercise and aging that confirm, once again, that through exercise you can preserve your muscle mass and your strength, and thereby avoid declining from vitality to frailty as you age. Here's a brief quote from the article:

“We think these are very encouraging results,” said Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who oversaw the study. “They suggest strongly that people don’t have to lose muscle mass and function as they grow older. The changes that we’ve assumed were due to aging and therefore were unstoppable seem actually to be caused by inactivity. And that can be changed.”

Yeah, well, we've pretty much all heard that by now. So what really struck me about the article, was the fact that all those scientists still haven't figured out what kinds of exercise are best for healthy aging, how much you need to do, or how intense the exercise needs to be. They're still researching questions such as: Is endurance exercise necessary for muscle sparing? Or weight training? 

In the end, the article concluded rather lamely: “What we can say with certainty is that any activity is better than none,” Dr. Wright says, “and more is probably better than less."

From Yoga: The Poetry of the Body by Yee with Zolotow

I pondered this for a couple of days, wondering how it applied to all us yoga practitioners. And I realized that the good news for us is that if any activity is better than none, we get to do whatever we want! So if you're thinking of starting a home yoga practice, go ahead and just do whichever poses make you happy. Or whichever poses intrigue you. Or whichever poses calm you down. Or whichever poses you want to learn to love. Or all the poses with animal names (I once did a practice like that with some children).