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Yoga and Aging

My husband was listening to a podcast recently in which an older man was speaking to a group of high school kids. He was telling them that he and his wife worked hard all of their lives and did a good job of accumulating wealth. However, they lost most of it due to health care costs as they aged. He shared with them that some of this could have been avoided. The kids wondered how. And he responded, “By staying healthy.” But how could they have done that? He said that he now knew if they had focused on eating inexpensive foods like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, they could have avoided many of the lifestyle diseases that they now had to endure. 

 

Most younger people want to stay healthy because of beauty goals or energy needs. However, many may not consider how their accumulated lifestyle choices will affect their health and pocketbooks in the future. 

 

In addition to eating a simple, plant-based diet, practicing yoga also supports...

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Finding Yoga

My entry point into yoga came in 1996 when I was teaching English in Beijing, China. I was teaching Chinese graduate students at a medical school. In general, the students were amazing, hardworking, humble, brilliant, funny, and pure.

 

In my spare time, I was looking for “something.” I studied Tai Chi with a teacher at five in the morning, I took buses for hours to study Chinese medical massage, and I read many, many self-help books. To aid my inner quest, I had almost no distractions. When I turned on the TV in my flat, all I saw was Chinese news or dramas in Mandarin (which I did not understand); it was the time before the internet and cell phones. I was open to new information and experiences to come into my life. 

 

My first yoga teacher was my friend Barrie Risman. Barrie was also teaching English in China. She made a cassette recording of her yoga teaching for me, and I moved my body into yoga postures for the first time in my life, by myself, in my...

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