I just got an email promoting a webinar: Strength Training After 50: Is Your Yoga Practice Missing This Crucial Element? It argues that most yoga classes fall short when it comes to building muscle and bone density.
As someone over 50, my response is: No kidding?! If you want to build muscle and bone density at any age, lift weights.
Can yoga be physically challenging? Absolutely. But is exercise the point of yoga? That depends on who you ask and which era of yoga history you’re looking at. (Asana has, at times, been used to train warriors.) What I can tell you is that every expert yoga teacher trainer I know also recommends strength training, because certain movements essential to physical strength, like push-pull patterns in the shoulder, simply aren’t addressed adequately by yoga poses.
My yoga LLC is named “Outside-In” because of the way the koshas are described: as layers of the self moving from the outermost (anamaya kosha, the physical body) to the innermost (anandamaya kosha, the layer of the soul). Viewing yoga purely as exercise leaves out this beautiful concept and the real potential a practice has to help you move through all those layers.
Yoga has tremendous benefits for healthy aging. So does lifting weights. The two are a terrific combination. One of my favorite teacher training assignments is a sequence I designed called “After Leg Day,” built to help legs, hips, and glutes recover. And as my trainer likes to say, “lifting pretty” (meaning weight that isn’t truly challenging your body) isn’t going to build much strength.
It’s all about your goals. For your whole self, and all its layers.
(Photo collage by Joy Panos Stauber using images by Amanda Regh and Get Illustrations from Unsplash)
outside-in.studio 
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