Yoga & Aging

Yoga, Somatics, & Aging
This is an essay from my days at Sonoma State University that still rings true… ENJOY!
Erika Bauernschmitt
Gerontology 300
May 1996

“I am convinced that a program of early training in personal sensory awareness and motor control would cause, within the span of one generation, a reversal of the major public health problems–cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental illness.”

- Thomas Hanna (1988)

Our society is influenced by a big myth. The misconception has to do with “a fact” that our bodies degenerate as we age. For centuries, man has tried to find a miracle to reverse the effects of aging on our lives and bodies. For the majority of people, this hard work and research has itself taken a toll on our systems. In our modern society, we are living in a way that is counter-productive to “successful aging”. We are stressed from overwork, lack of rest, unhealthy lifestyles, and unconscious detachment from our sacred selves. In this paper, I will give an overview of both somatics and yoga. As two correlated techniques of reversing the effects of aging in the body, I will describe their spiritual principles and physiological modalities. Each method can be used as preventive medicine, as well as therapy for the elderly.

I realize the existence of a large amount of skepticism from the scientific and traditional Western medical fields. To understand the profound healing that occurs in yoga, one must put aside the logical and analytical left hemisphere thinking. This is important to clearly see the impact of the spiritual practices on one’s well-being. Of course, definite physiological changes occur in the body itself. But, it is the philosophy of the mind/body connection that explains such phenomenon. Personally, as I become more aware of myself through yoga, I observe the changes to be mere common knowledge. Deep down inside all of us, we know what is intrinsically good for our mental, physical, and emotional selves. Tapping into our inner wisdom is the personal “training” we receive from yogic and somatic practice. Insight, therefore, is within us. We each have the power to remedy ourselves. Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word, yug, which means yoke or union. It is the discipline and training of the human’s embodied being so that it evolves toward what it is capable of becoming. Yoga seeks to provide physical and mental training experiences to further refine the soma (unified mind-body). There are enough types of yoga to suit everyone who practices it. This is because no two people can duplicate the yogic orientation exactly; each style may have the common goal of self-realization, but the underlying notion is that each of us has an intimate process and unique path which reflects our inner being.

Somatics, in a similar sense, are physiological exercises which bring inner knowledge to the body. Soma is a Greek word that means “living body”; it is the internalized view of a person’s individual body. This perception is radically different from what physiologists see from their externalized, third-person viewpoint. The somatic philosophy doesn’t believe that this is wrong, just incomplete. Somatic educators stress the importance of looking at the person as a whole, and as a unique human being. To them, health care today is deceptive and needs to acknowledge that people require more than a diagnosis.

From the philosophy of Yoga and Somatics, there is an understanding involving the elderly population in the world. Maintaining that the individual is using yoga as a preventive measure, there is a substantial increase in vitality, a significant decrease in numerous types of age-related pain, and an immense slowing of bodily deterioration. If we recognize that physiological diseases arise from psychological causes (such as stress), then a solution can be drawn to avoid the causes of stress, therefore eliminating much of the dis-ease. In reality, we all deal with stress on a regular basis. To counteract the bodily damage that is implemented by our lifestyles, we can choose to provide yoga and/or somatics for the aging community to reverse the effects of destructive behavior. Many people decide to learn to live with their pain. What many don’t know or haven’t thought of, is how effective healing practices have on our physical selves. There is a multitude of therapeutic effects from movement, meditation, and relaxation. These techniques have something profound to offer. Even more gratifying to the elderly, it is a program that, once learned, can be practiced at any time of day, alone or with others, in the home or at the local community center. It gives the person the power from the inside. To further explain the background of how yoga and somatics work directly, I will explain the causes of distress to our systems, how physically we “handle” the distress, and how it connects to the well-being of the individual. Later, I will explain different means of yoga and somatics; including postures, movements, meditation, and relaxation techniques. All of the exercises can be modified for the young or the old, yet I will concentrate solely on the older person, since this is the purpose of this paper.

Take into consideration that during the course of our lives, our sensory-motor systems continually respond to daily stresses and traumas with specific muscular reflexes. These reflexes, repeatedly triggered, create habitual muscular contractions, which cannot be voluntarily relaxed. The muscular contractions become so deeply involuntary and unconscious that, eventually, a person can no longer remember how to move about freely. The result is a restrictive range of movement. Somatic educator,Thomas Hanna, calls the habituated state of forgetfulness sensory-motor amnesia. It is a memory loss of how certain muscle groups feel and how to control them. And, because this occurs within the central nervous system, we are not aware of it, yet it effects us to our very core. Our image of who we are, what we can experience, and what we can do is profoundly diminished by sensory-motor amnesia. This event and its secondary effects is what we inaccurately think of as “growing older”. It has nothing to do with age! Sensor-motor amnesia can occur at any time in a person’s history. It stems from all kinds of situations like a fall, dysfunctional or disturbed family atmospheres, fearful environments (such as war), traumatic accidents, or serious surgery. Thankfully, the body can unlearn the adaptive reflex responses and remember the healthful movements which have been forgotten.

Putting a “handle” on the distress is simple. There is no miracle cure or treatment. Sensing and feeling from “within” through various movements is an educational procedure, done by active participation. If we can see ourselves as self-aware, we take responsibility, which in turn, helps us to recognize the external causes of bodily trauma. This is the perception of both yoga and somatics teachers around the world. But, how does this exactly happen? What, in these movements, has such an effective impact on the aging body? In what physical manner do the exercises help?

It is vital for me to look at the objective, third-person perspective to answer these important questions. To somatics and yoga philosophies, most aging pain and illness is caused by a single, lower-brain reflex. Hanna calls it the Red Light Reflex. In yoga, they say “you forgot how to breathe!” Really, it is the same thing. For decades, neurobiologists have been fascinated by a withdrawal reflex that occurs throughout the entire animal kingdom. It has been called the “startle response”, “escape response”, and is a primitive reflex of survival. For example, a woman is walking down the street and hears a car backfire:
“…within 14 milliseconds the muscles of her jaw begin to contract; this is immediately followed about 20 milli- seconds later by a contraction of her eye and brow. But, before her eyes have squeezed shut, her shoulder and neck muscles (the trapezium) have received a neural impulse at 25 milliseconds to contract, raising her shoulders and bringing her head down. At 60 milliseconds, her elbows bend, and her hands begin to turn palms-downward. These descending neural impulses continue by contracting the abdominal muscle, which brings her trunk forward, simultaneously pulling down her rib cage and stopping her breathing. And, immediately after that, her knees bend and point inward, while her ankles roll her feet inward. The muscles of the crotch tighten, and the toes lift upward” (Eaton, 1984).

This sums up the Red Light Reflex, a cascade of neural impulses that begin in the face, go down the neck, then to the arms and trunk, and finally, to the legs and toes. This sequence starts in the hind brain and travels down the spinal column into the nerves of the body. It happens before we can consciously perceive it or inhibit it. What needs to be realized, then, is that over a certain amount of time, we accumulate the effects to negative stress; a stooped posture, shallow breathing, and even visceral function problems such as frequent urination, impotence, hemorrhoids, constipation, and digestive disorders. Though these problems are found at any age, they are frequented to the elderly population. It is the tension (from stress and anxiety) that build up in our muscles and produce functional problems. Besides our breathing being effected by the withdrawal response, the heart is also effected. Consider the heart and lungs are the same organ; “Venous blood entering the right chambers of the heart flow directly through the filtering and oxygenating tissues of the lungs before entering the heart’s left chambers. The right side of the heart is linked to the left side via its passages through the pulmonary vessels…one cannot even cough, sigh, gasp, or hold one’s breath without an immediate change in coronary activities” (Hanna, 1988). As we slow down the respiratory pattern and increase depth of respiration, we decrease the heart rate and cardiac output, reduce peripheral systolic blood pressure, and regulate the cardiovascular system by parasympathetic functions of the autonomic nervous system as well as the heartbeat by the ebb and flow of respiratory sinus arrhythmia. The yogis call it the “Three Part Yogic Breath” and somatics educators call it controlled breathing; both are therapies to counteract the Red Light reflex.

Another response triggered by our industrial society is what Thomas Hanna calls The Green Light Reflex. The yogis say, “you have forgotten the importance of the spine!” Again, they are both correct. Chronic back pain is suffered by 80% of the adult population in our American culture and is the most common disorder for which people seek medical help. It is the leading contributor to work absenteeism and pharmaceutical profits. The majority of the elderly population complains of skull, neck, shoulder, and especially back pain. The cause of it starts at a very young age, five to six months, when a new gravitational response springs into being. It is called the Landau reaction and, though crucial to development, it is the beginning of The Green Light reflex. An infant, at this time, arches its back, straightens out its bent knees, and pushes against the floor while thrusting its head forward. The contraction of the lower back muscles inaugurates the Landau reaction. When the lumbar muscles connecting the back of the pelvis to the vertebrae contract, the infant has two simultaneous sensations: going up, and going forward. It is a delicious feeling (Hanna, 1988). Thus, we begin the “Type A” lifestyle, the function of action. Through adolescence, we are motivated to perform, take on responsibility, and learn to accept chores. By adulthood, we master the muscles of the back (forward progress) and continue to habitually contract for deadlines, quotas, and alarm clocks (all a matter of time). Though our technology lets us live a long life, we are condemned by that same virtue (?) to live out those years in discomfort and fatigue. It, too, is part of our sensory-motor amnesia.

Both the Red and Green Light Reflexes are fundamental to adapting to our surroundings. They serve, respectively, to protect us from danger in the world and to move us toward opportunity. But, the typical problems that occur during human aging are due to the combined effect of the withdrawal and action responses. If you compare the two, it can be seen that they oppose each other. Most importantly, there is a feeling and set of sensations that accompany the muscular and neural movement. As you can see, we are unconsciously and involuntarily expending a lot of energy, which leads to another common complaint among the elderly - chronic fatigue. The lack of energy and tiredness is coupled with the constant contractions. This has a domino effect on one other incredibly important aspect of our well-being: self-esteem.
“When individuals reach a stage in life when (1) they can no longer do what they once did, (2) they are always in pain, (3) they are tired and without energy, and (4) their oxygen supply is restricted, these individuals usually develop a negative self-image . This may happen if, despite all their efforts, they cannot reverse the loss of their youthful functions, and they are told, ‘That’s the inevitable effect of aging.’ This state of affairs has its own disastrous consequences, because according to the somatic law, what you expect is usually what you get” (Hanna, 1988).

We do know as a fact that, as one becomes older, physical activity becomes more necessary, not less. A Duke University study of 268 people over the age of 60, conducted over ten years by E. Palmer (1974), reported that the physically inactive were four times more apt to rate their health as poor as those who were active and were twice as likely to report failing health when they appeared for their regular medical exam. Other research studies are more specific on the effects of regular physical activities. The Journal of Gerontology (1966) reported on the physiological effects of a month-long program of endurance training conducted with a group whose average age was 70. The results were inspiring; reduction in circulatory stress, affirmed by decreases in work pulse, in systolic blood pressure after exercise, and in blood lactate concentration. Those who carried out this experiment found that the work load limit increased by 76% in one month! Smith and Reddan reported in the American Journal of Roentgenology (1976) that women in nursing homes have slowed bone loss and promoted bone accretion when regular physical exercises are integrated into their daily routines.

The somatic and the yoga practices create a safe way for the elderly to benefit from regular physical activity. But, even more importantly, it is therapeutic. The basis of Somatic Exercises, Yoga Postures, Pranayama (Controlled Breathing), Relaxation, and Meditation is focusing your attention on the internal sensations of movement and breath. Each stresses the importance of moving slowly and gently, patience and unconditional positive regard for the self, and freedom from pain. In the next few paragraphs I will give an overview of the movements designed to reverse the effects of the Green and Red Light Reflexes, the yogic postures to stretch and sooth the body, and some techniques for relaxation and meditation. All of these exercises will help to regain sensory-motor control. In each instance, I will do my best to illustrate what parts of the body are directly affected and what the training does for the aging person. Again, all these maintenance movements should be done in an easygoing, gentle manner, and with maximum awareness.

Somatics

The daily “cat stretch” can be done for fifteen minutes every day, preferably in the evening because it seems to promote a sound sleep. It can instantly relieve tension in tight and fatigued lower back muscles. This also helps the vertebrae align, which, in turn, gives more support to the trunk area. There will be a greater control and awareness of the muscles in the entire body; the extensors in the back, flexors in the abdomen, and laterals in the waist. All three muscle groups are simultaneously lengthened and the pelvis, spine, and rib cage will move about more freely. Legs, hips, and feet stiffness will be lessened greatly. Right and left hemispheres will balance each side of the body. The slow, methodical breathing leads to parasympathetic nervous system dominance. Breathing will improve because the lungs will be open from the exercises; it will take less effort for a deep breath.

(From Somatics by Thomas Hanna, page 99)

Lying on your back, arch and flatten your lower back, inhaling while going up, and exhaling while going down. Repeat five times over thirty seconds.
Lying on your back with both hands interlaced behind your head, lift your head while exhaling and flattening your back. Lower your head while inhaling and arching your back. Repeat five times over thirty seconds.
Lying on your stomach with your left cheek on the back of your right hand, lift your head, hand, and right elbow while simultaneously lifting your left leg. Do this two times, then do the same for the other side of your body. Inhale slowly while lifting; exhale slowly while coming down. This will take about thirty seconds.
Lying on your back with your left knee held by your right hand, lift your head and right elbow to your left knee while exhaling and flattening your back. As your head comes down, inhale, arching your back up. Repeat three times. Do the same for the other side of your body three times. This will take sixty seconds.
Lying on your back, roll your arms in opposite directions on the floor, alternately dropping your knees each time to the side of the arm rolling down on the floor. Turn your head in the direction opposite your knees to make a full spinal twist. Move slowly and lazily, so s to enjoy the stretch. Repeat six times over sixty seconds.
Lying on your back, twist your right foot, leg, and hip in and out five times, being sure to lift and arch each side of your back alternately without lifting your shoulders. Do the same with your left side. Move both legs simultaneously in alternating bow-legged and knock-kneed positions five times, then together in skiing motions five times.
Sitting with your right hand on your left shoulder and with both knees bent and facing left, rotate your trunk to the left three times. Holding your trunk motionless at full left turn, turn your head to the right and back three times. Turn both your head and your trunk in alternate directions three times for a full spinal twist. Still holding your trunk to the left, lift your face to the ceiling while dropping your eyes to the floor and visa versa three times. Do the same for the other side of your body. This will take sixty seconds.
Yoga

Yoga is a path, a way, a lifestyle. Through yoga you can normalize the functions of your entire organism. Body, mind, and emotions are brought into harmony and balance. There is a return to homeostasis. Yogic practices - physical movements, mental exercises, breathing patterns - provide an ongoing level of equilibrium or momentary rebalancing measures. Yoga is for life.

- Eleanor Criswell (1989)

I will be discussing three different types of yoga practice; Pranayama (Breathing Exercises), Asanas (Yoga Postures), and Savasana (Relaxation). Although yoga is best used as preventive medicine, some of its practices also have great therapeutic value. It can help the elderly suffering from various physical conditions, like back pain, scoliosis, and arthritis. It can improve immune system responses and prevent degenerative diseases. According to the yoga philosophy, we fall ill when our body-mind is out of balance, when the life force fails to circulate freely within us. Mary Pullig Schatz, M.D. points out that people with an internal locus of control can exert a definite influence on events in their life (Feuerstein, 1993). Through active participation and conscious choices, feelings of helplessness decrease, the stress response lessens, and the immune system flourishes. Yoga also affects the limbic system. People have reported changes in emotional states: increased calmness, decreased worry, or pleasant emotions. Learning and memory may also be enhanced.

Pranayama

This is a good way to warm up before the postures. The “prana” or breath that we inhale brings oxygen and life force to every cell in our bodies. There are many types of breath control exercises, but I will concentrate on a single type which gives a complete chest expansion; The Three Part Yogic Breath. This breath increases the oxygen content in the blood and clears out lactic acid from the muscles while combining it with oxygen. It also balances the nerves by decreasing heart rate and blood pressure. This breath is done with one, five second inhale.

Start by expelling all the air inside the lungs. Slowly begin to fill up the belly with air, like a balloon. Then continue to move the breath up through the diaphragm and sides, breathing laterally. Take in the last bit of air and fill up the chest. Exhale with a long, vocal sigh or “OM”. Do this three times seated with the back straight. Between each breath take a few regulatory breaths. Lastly, close the eyes and sense from within.

Asanas

These are postures which combine breathing with movement. The asanas invite greater flexibility, stimulate pituitary, pineal, and thyroid glands, strengthens muscles, massages internal organs, hydrates the spinal discs and ligaments, aids digestion and elimination, helps the body maintain balance, increases circulation, and encourages the blood and body energy to bathe the related muscles and organs with vitality and life. Postures also “send impulses along the lower motor neuron to cause the secretion of acetylcholine from the terminal buttons and the end plate potential” (Criswell, 1989). This neurotransmitter is located at the neuromuscular junctions, the ganglia of the autonomic nervous system and at the postganglionic neurons which affect the target organs of the parasympathetic nervous system. Acetylcholine is a natural energizing chemical in our brain and gives us a “pick-me-up” while at the same time, relaxes our nerves. There are a few particular postures that are considerably good for those people 60+. These are attached at the end of the paper.

Savasana

This is a simple and effective deep relaxation technique. It promotes increased circulation, spinal alignment, better posture, and overall balance. It quiets the mind, reduces fatigue, and rejuvenates the body and mind.

(From Yoga for the Young at Heart by Susan Winter Ward, page 88-9)

Release your entire body to the support of the floor, arms by your sides, palms facing up. Close your eyes.
Visualize each part of your body letting go as you mentally scan your body from your toes up through the top of your head.
Tell yourself to relax your feet and ankles, relax your calves and back of your knees. Release your lower back and so on up to your jaw, brow, scalp and the crown of your head.
Allow 10 minutes for relaxation. This is an important time for the body to balance itself, gather energy, and integrate the benefits of your practice.
It is important to come out of relaxation very slowly to avoid dizziness. Begin by bringing your knees to your chest and resting for a moment, then roll over to your right side and remain in the fetal position for two to three breaths.
Slowly push yourself up into a comfortable seated posture, eyes closed, and take five long, deep inhalations and exhalations.
Thank your body for its service to you and thank yourself for caring for your body.

Works Cited

Criswell, Eleanor (1988). How Yoga Works: An Introduction to Somatic Yoga. California: Freeperson Press.

Eaton, Robert C. (1984). Neural Mechanisms of Startle Behavior. New York: Plenum.

Feuerstein, G. and Bodian, S. (Ed.). (1993). Living Yoga. New York: G.P. Putnum’s Sons.

Hanna, Thomas (1988). Somatics. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Palmor, E. (Ed.). (1974). Normal Aging, Vol. II, Reports from the Duke Longitudinal Studies. North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Smith, E. L. and Reddan, W. (1976). “Proceedings–Physical Activity–A Modality for bone accretion in the aged.” American Journal of Roentgenology, 126, p. 1297.

Ward, Susan W. (1994). Yoga for the Young at Heart. California: Capra Press.