Americans of all ages are trying out mindfulness practices—and it’s high time seniors did, too. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health reports that around 14.2% of Americans are starting to practice mindfulness or spiritual meditation to improve their mental and physical well-being. There’s even an uptick of kids practicing meditation since some schools have integrated mindfulness training into their curricula to help students and educators improve wellness.
Likewise, you could experience several benefits from trying out senior yoga, meditation, and other mindfulness practices. You can start with the basics of mindfulness and look forward to these amazing benefits of meditation for older adults.
Meditation Can Strengthen Your Immunity
Your immune system gets weaker as you age, which means it becomes harder to fight off infections, cancers, and other illnesses. A weaker immunity can be alarming in old age, especially if you’re already battling another medical condition. Fortunately, there are several strategies that you can do to improve your immune system.
For example, our article entitled ‘How Adding Yoga and Meditation Will Enrich Your Life’ explains that mindfulness practices effectively boost your immune and nervous systems. Practicing meditation and gentle yoga for seniors can reduce inflammation, maintain the length of your telomeres, and lower your cancer risk. This could significantly help reduce your consultations, medications, and chances of hospitalization.
Mindfulness Can Improve Your Mental Health
It’s crucial to pay attention to your physical and mental health due to the extreme life experiences one can go through at this age, such as chronic illnesses and situations like elder abuse. Maryville University’s guide to recognizing elder abuse reports that around 10% of older adults experience different forms of physical, psychological, sexual, and financial maltreatment. Emotional abuse or even simple neglect can cause older adults to become withdrawn, agitated, and irritable, so assessing your situation and working on your mental well-being is essential.
If you’re dealing with heavy emotions from a painful experience, meditation is a simple and fast method that can soothe your mind. This mindfulness practice teaches you to manage your emotions to feel more at peace after a stressful situation.
Yoga and Meditation Sharpen Your Cognitive Functions
The gradual decline of cognitive abilities is a natural part of the aging process. Many older adults experience difficulties with short-term working memory, information retrieval, processing speed, and attention span. However, slowing down or even preventing these cognitive declines is not impossible.
A study conducted by the University of California Santa Barbara and Leopold Franzens University revealed that meditation and gentle yoga for seniors could improve their memory and cognitive functioning. The study even cited that senior yoga and meditation can improve one’s self-control, social cognition, motor function, and more. By doing these mindfulness practices, you can keep your mind young and healthy.
The Practice Can Increase Your Life Satisfaction
After many life experiences, many older adults simply want to learn how to be satisfied with their own lives. Fortunately, regular mindfulness exercises can be the key to achieving peace of mind and happiness.
Flinders University researchers discovered that thirty days of regular meditation practice resulted in increased levels of positive affect and life satisfaction. Meditation invites people to act with awareness and nonjudgement. Mindfulness lets you shift your perspective and see things without getting entangled in emotions. As a result, meditators experienced a better disposition after constant practice.
Getting used to mindfulness practices like meditation and yoga can be challenging for seniors. However, it’s important to integrate these practices into your everyday life because they can do wonders for both your mind and your body.
Article was specially written for https://yogasanamats.com/ by Amanda Pearl
