When my father visited Darwin from Melbourne, he would insist we went to the airport at 6pm … for a midnight departure!
He suffered the anxiety that is felt by so many … but it gets worse with age.
I saw the same thing with both my parents trying far too hard to plan everything in advance.
If they were going from their home near Geelong, into Melbourne, it became a huge logistical event.
For a mere hour and a quarter drive, it became an exercise in ticking off lists, planning for a week ahead, and endless stress.
When it came to the drive itself, Dad would not go on the new freeway. He preferred to go on the much slower old roads that he already knew.
Both Mum and Dad always suffered from anxiety. It was already in their constitution. They had a nervier disposition than some.
Getting older made it much worse… because they never learned to manage or reduce it… at a time when they could have done things to get control of it.
For Dad, constipation was another part of the awful drama of getting older… made worse by anxiety.
Anxiety causes people not to relax enough to be able to go to the toilet.
Hardness in the abdomen and butterflies in the stomach, which are aspects of anxiety, in turn lead to constipation.
It got worse again when my father stopped drinking enough water… because he had developed an increasingly weak bladder.
Such urinary issues are largely due to untoned pelvic floor, or at least that is a very significant part of the issue.
Not drinking enough water therefore meant my father got dehydrated, and this of course makes you a bit crazed or dazed.
Even though my father ate well, the constipation problem persisted.
With constipation, and full bowels, you also get lower back problems… because the lower back is not relaxed.
With constipation, one spends too much time gripping the buttocks inwards…and this is all part of lower back problems.
The ability to relax does have be learned learned…so you can relax from both a physical and mental point of view.
In turn, such relaxation, plus the type of pelvic and other toning my father could have gotten from yoga, would have avoided the type of escalating horror story I saw with him.
Some of the poses shown with this post will start you on the journey to relaxing… and managing or reducing anxiety… so you avoid that horrid escalation… or numerous other health and discomfort conditions that we all see around us everyday.
The poses shown in the pictures are easy, and can be done by people at any age. If necessary, your teacher will modify the poses further, so you can manage them.
The poses you see are done in two of the beginner course classes that are designed especially for people who think that yoga, and physical activity of any kind, is beyond them.
Flametree also has a large selection of yoga props and equipment. They make it even easier to get into and out of positions that give you many benefits.
Flametree’s yoga equipment includes the rope wall that you can see in some of these pictures. Among other things, a wall with ropes on the bars gives you an easy way to do inversions.
In the inverted poses, the blood supply to the brain, head, and neck is increased with no extra effort on the heart.
Better circulation improves the functioning not only of the brain but of the endocrine glands located in the head and neck—the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus, the pineal and thyroid gland—and of the sensory organs in the head.
In turn, these glands beneficially impact many of your mental and physical functions.
You can also keep using the ropes when you are at a very advanced age… like the 80’s and 90’s.
If you are worried about whether you can manage yoga, try our special focus beginner classes, like the Fifty Plus class on Fridays at 10.15am, and Easy Restorative at 4pm on Saturdays.
The classes are part of Flametree’s Beginner Yoga Course. If you’re still not convinced, let me finish with this quote from “You: The Owner’s Manual”:
“Maybe you’re not terribly worried about your mental state, bones, joints, and muscles right now,
but they’re hugely important to the way we age, if for no other reason than this:
Having an athlete’s heart or Albert Einstein’s brain doesn’t mean a darn thing if you can’t lift yourself off the toilet.”