An accessible illustrated guide for practicing yoga as you age, featuring simple poses and routines for balance, core strength, hip flexibility, and recovery

With over 125 instructive photos and sequences to keep you active into your 50s, 60s, and beyond


Yoga gives active people vital tools for healthy aging: strength, flexibility, balance, and focus. In this one-of-a-kind book, the authors explain how common activities for aging active people (running, swimming, golf, gardening, travel, caring for grandchildren) can be better supported with yoga.

Inside you’ll find easy, doable poses and routines that help keep older people fit and injury-free. Other key topics include:

·Core and leg strength for stability and healthy aging, needed for autonomous living and enjoyable movement
·A practical approach to flexibility
·Balance and how it translates to staying safer during activity and avoiding falls
·Ways to incorporate yoga in daily routines to receive benefits with minimal time commitment
·Meditation, mindfulness, breathing practices, and the physical practice of yoga can help with both mental flexibility and relaxation
 
Each sequence is introduced with a brief overview of the benefits of the movements along with modifications and options suited to individual requirements.

From the practical to the philosophical, Lifelong Yoga is a user-friendly handbook for staying active and healthy in a changing body over the course of a long life.

Yoga offers vital tools for healthy aging: strength, flexibility, balance, and peace of mind. In this one-of-a-kind book, Sage Rountree and Alexandra DeSiato describe the poses and routines that can help keep people of any age fit and injury free. In addition to demonstrating simple ways to maintain and even increase our ability to be active into our 50s, 60s, and beyond, the authors-both yoga teachers with decades of experience-offer poses and routines aimed toward specific goals, such as improving balance, maintaining strength and flexibility, and recovering properly between workouts. Each fully illustrated sequence is introduced with a brief overview of its benefits, along with modifications and options suited to individual requirements. Rountree and DeSiato also offer sequences that help support specific activities such as running, swimming, or golf, as well as yard work, travel, and caring for grandchildren. An essential and easy-to-follow guide, Lifelong Yoga offers key practices for maintaining and improving physical and mental well-being throughout a lifetime.

“In this wise, compassionate, and skillfully written book, Sage Rountree and Alexandra DeSiato draw upon their decades-long experience as athletes and yoginis to offer guidance into how your practice will and should change as you age. With poetic insights from yogic philosophy, Lifelong Yoga is much more just than a posture book—it’s a blueprint for healthy aging.”
—Carol Krucoff, C-IAYT, E-RYT, yoga therapist at Duke Integrative Medicine and coauthor of Relax into Yoga for Seniors
 
“Sage and Alexandra have made an important contribution to the yoga literature with their splendid Lifelong Yoga. A strong, active asana practice, with mindful awareness of alignment and breath, is a powerful ally for enhancing longevity and maintaining balance, agility, suppleness, strength, and vital health.”
—Beryl Bender Birch, author of Power Yoga and Boomer Yoga and director/founder of The Hard & The Soft Yoga Institute and the Give Back Yoga Foundation 

“Sage Rountree and Alexandra DeSiato offer a friendly introduction to yoga. You will improve your flexibility and your balance. You will learn breathing and relaxation techniques. Practice Lifelong Yoga and feel better, whether you’re playing golf or playing with the grandkids.”
—from the foreword by Roy Williams, University of North Carolina men’s basketball coach

“I’ve been an athlete for forty-two years. Since turning fifty, I feel my limiters are lack of ability to recover, joint stiffness, impaired range of movement, chronic repetitive injury, and fatigue. Yoga is the answer for me now more than ever! Sage’s gentle but specific approach points me in the direction of improving all of these challenges. But most importantly, she has shown me how to relax, something highly competitive athletes have difficulty truly achieving.”
—Kristin Villopoto, 2016 USAT Athlete of the Year
 
“Part Two of Lifelong Yoga, Solving Problems with Yoga, is especially helpful for me as I’m always looking for ways to proactively address the tweaks and twinges that come with intense training by improving balance, core strength, and stability, especially now that age fifty is just around the corner. In doing so I’ve been able to continue to swim, bike, and run at a high level, but also feel good in my daily life activities, especially the ones that require lifting, bending, and balance. Thanks to Sage and Alexandra for another great resource for athletes and nonathletes alike.”
—JoAnna Younts, founder of Kids Tri NC and two-time finisher of the Ironman World Championship
 
“I’ve worked with Sage and Alexandra many years now and seen their work with other folks firsthand. They have a great way of applying their years of combined experience to help people bring out the best in themselves. You will not only be able to work harder, you will work smarter and more safely as well.”
—Donnie Barnes, Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race finisher