Sage Rountree - Lifelong Yoga Maximizing Your Balance, Flexibility, and Core Strength in Your 50s, 60s, and Beyond

Ive 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! Sages 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 Im 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 Ive 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

Ive 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

Copyright 2017 by Sage Rountree and Alexandra DeSiato. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover photo by Tammy Lamoureux

Cover and book design by Jasmine Hromjak

Composition by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

All interior photos by Tammy Lamoureux

Lifelong Yoga: Maximizing Your Balance, Flexibility, and Core Strength in Your 50s, 60s, and Beyond is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

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MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rountree, Sage Hamilton, author. | Desiato, Alexandra, 1979- author.

Title: Lifelong yoga : maximizing your balance, flexibility, and core

strength in your 50s, 60s, and beyond / Sage Rountree and Alexandra

DeSiato.

Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books,[2017.tif]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016053525| ISBN 9781623171438 (paperback) | ISBN

9781623171445 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Hatha yoga. | Exercise for older people. | Exercise for

middle-aged persons. | BISAC: HEALTH & FITNESS / Yoga. | SELF-HELP / Aging.

Classification: LCC RA781.7 .R69 2017 | DDC 613.7/046dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053525

North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We partner with FSC-certified printers using soy-based inks and print on recycled paper whenever possible.

To partnership, which more than halves the load and more than doubles the fun.

More and more aging athletes, baby boomers, parents, and grandparents are flocking to yoga as support for their changing bodies and as a complement to their already active lifestyles. By recent estimates, at least fourteen million adults fifty and older practice yogaand that number is only growing. If youve been curious about yoga but considered it to be the purview of the young, rest assured thats simply not true anymore. Yoga is most definitely for everyone, and the gifts of yoga are especially plentiful as we enter later years in life. Thats probably why you picked this book up: youve either heard that yoga is a good tool for aging, or youve already done enough yoga to have experienced the benefits firsthand.

Our approach to yoga is to see it as a complement to the lifestyle we hope to continue as we age. We both run, hike, and enjoy the outdoors. We like to move our bodies dancing, in the gym, on the trails, and with our children. If youre active in your midlife and youre hoping to continue healthy movement, competitive sports, or exercise as you age, this is the perfect book for you. With the right approach, yoga is an important toolmaybe even the most important toolfor healthy aging and a long life.

And right approach is key. Thats what we aim to offer here. In the last twenty years theres been a massive shift in the styles of yoga availableand for each of us, a smaller-scale shift in our own bodies ability to handle these styles. As American yoga moved out of community centers and into gyms and fitness-oriented, often heated, yoga studios, its pace and physical intensity have ramped up considerably. Many young people come to yoga for a workout. This is a fine entry point, but it isnt the only approach, nor is it the best one for not-so-young people. The right yoga for us in midlife and beyond is slower, personalized, and focuses on more than simply the physical.

As we say in our Yoga for Athletes and Yoga for Healthy Aging classes, what we offer is not athletic yoga, nor is it gentle yoga for the very old. Its realistic yoga that fosters balance within the body, balance of the body in space, and balance between body, breath, and mind. While we envision the yoga we offer here as a complement to an active life, you do not have to be an athlete to benefit from Lifelong Yoga. Nor do you need to be in any particular shape. You dont even have to be over forty! You simply need a desire to find better balance and connection, compassion, and an open mind toward the changes that will occur in your body over time.

In our collective three decades of practicing yoga, weve undergone great physical change: pregnancies and deliveries; training for and running marathons, ultramarathons, and long-course triathlons; long-distance backpacking; managing athletic injuries; and a collective three decades of aging! The contortionist poses and glamorous inversions that may appeal to millennial yogis dont interest us. We know fancy shapes arent always appropriate for supporting our goals of maintaining core strength and balance to complement the other ways wed like to use our bodies through the years. Thats why what we present in Lifelong Yoga is different, unique, and immediately helpful for you. It meets you where you are, offers tools for use today, and helps you see how yoga can be a supportive, lifelong practice, inclusive of all circumstances.