Customer Reviews

The New Yoga for Healthy Aging: Living Longer, Living Stronger and Loving Every Day

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Suza Francina's book "The New Yoga for Healthing Aging" is a must-have for anyone over 50 as well as for those of us who work with the aging baby boomer population. This book is chock full of inspiring photos of seniors in different asanas, sage advice and some sample routines. I can't believe that some of these people are over 90! Wow!

Francina is Iyengar-based, so many of the poses are shown with props and there is good information on how to use the props safely. In this book you can also find medical research and advice on using yoga for a variety of conditions including arthritis, osteoporosis, hip replacements, alzheimer's and parkinsons. Many of the seniors in the book share their stories on how yoga has helped them with their issues, and this can be very encouraging for people who may be fearful of trying yoga.

Especially helpful are the suggestions for getting up and down from the floor and the section on teaching seniors. Any teacher who works with the aging population will find these parts invaluable! I hope that this book can not only help me to be mindful of my teaching skills but also about my own aging body.

I will be 60 in May and was inspired by this book. I have been doing yoga for about 30 years....It was very difficult to find a class thirty years ago in the small town where I lived. I watched "Lilias, Yoga and You" and did it along with Lilias. I hope to get certified this year, just to say "it is never too late". I have large yoga room in my home and have a free weekly class for anyone to come. We have a donation basket and each of us likes to put money in , to give back for what yoga is doing for us. Each time we have 50.00, one of the group takes to donate to a local need. I am sharing some of the inspiring messages from the book and postures with my group. I hope to be doing yoga for another 30 years! Namaste, Dana Happel

As a 60-year-old beginning yoga student, I'm happy to have Suza Francina's new book. It is full of both inspiration and useful practical information. As I struggle alongside the 20-somethings in my yoga class, I sometimes wonder just what this or that pose is supposed to do for me. This book explains in detail the physiological benefits of groups of poses and individual poses. As it's become obvious that a once a week class is not enough to progress in yoga, I also appreciate Francina's clear instructions for practicing at home with the help of readily available props such as chairs and walls. I love the prescription for a "daily yoga vitamin," and it's encouraging to know that this simple sequence is enough to be beneficial. I also love the real stories of people practicing yoga in their 60's and even into their 90's.

"The New Yoga for Healthy Aging is one of the most exciting yoga books ever published. Its promise is one that millions of baby boomers will find comforting--that yoga is a natural prescription for reversing the aging process. The proof is in the lovely and inspiring photographs of yoga students in their later years in poses of beauty and strength. This outstanding resource addresses the common ailments of aging and is as encouraging as it is informative and practical. Suza Francina shows how even challenging yoga poses become "do-able" through the use of props and modifications. Her extensive knowledge and experience teaching yoga is evident and her wisdom and deep caring shine through her words and stories. "

---Peggy Cappy
Author, Yoga for All of Us, and creator of the popular video series Yoga for the Rest of Us, as seen on public television, and the guided relaxation audio CD series Deep Relaxation for the Rest of Your Life. www.peggycappy.com

I am a Yoga Teacher and I have used Suza's other book (New Yoga for People Over 50) in my class every week as a learning tool. I read something out of this book to my students every week before the class starts. All of my students went out and bought the book so that they will have their own copy.
When I heard that Suza was writing another book, I could not wait. I pre-ordered the book from Amazon.com so that it would be delivered to my door as soon as it was published.
I could not put the book down it was so good. I really like how Suza uses "real" people in her bookswith their picture and how she interviews them so that I can learn their "secrets."
This book has a lot of pictures too of real people doing yoga and using props as necessary. The pictures along with written instruction make it very easy to follow. I also ordered her Yoga and the Wisdom of Menopause and am loving it too.

Suza Francina is an extraordinary yoga teacher, deeply knowledgeable of the field and so skilled in passing on the joy of yoga. Her new book leads students safely and comfortably through a wide variety of poses. She knows the idiosyncrasies of the older population--I am seventy, myself--and describes appropriate props and pose variations to be used when needed. We are privileged to have Suza Francina's expert guidance available in this book!

With the innumerable yoga books on the market and the attempts of companies trying to make a buck of the yoga boom I am leary of buying any products, including books, marketed for yoga. Also, from my own experiences I feel many reviews give an exaggerated view of the books.

However, this book is truly a good book. I am 49 yrs old and have been practicing yoga for almost 5 years, two to four times a day. I am constantly trying to find out more about books, DVDs, websites etc on yoga related items in order to improve and deepen my practice. I am glad I bought this one.

For someone who recovered from a severe and incapacitating lower back injury with the practice of yoga asanas, this book is a reaffirmation of my own experiences. Had I not taken to an asana pracitce, I know for a fact that my injury would have made a "cash cow" out of me for the "medical professionals" in our health care system. More importantly the book offers tremendous inspiration, hope and encouragement to the aging -- which includes all -- and people recovering from chronic pain. It does this by sketching the lives of those who have been practicing yoga asanas.

I assure you that if you are serious about your mental, physical and emotional health, and if you have had a year of yoga and want to give your practice a boost then this book will not let you down. It will confirm your realizations and build on them regarding the healing potential of yoga asanas. I have already bought two copies and will be buying numerous more to give to everyone I know. This will save them a lot of pain and suffering as they grow older, not to mention the expenses of a medical system that is absolutely out of control. In my opinion and experiences medical science itself is shallow and flawed despite the many sincere practitioners. People suffering from chronic ailments are a testimony to this claim.

The writer has done a very good job of writing this book. Thank you Suza.

Any seniors taking yoga classes or wanting to try yoga, should read this book first. It's inspiring and will alert them to any possible problems they might encounter in class that could injure them. I am over 55 and have been doing yoga for about 10 years and I am ready to ease into a more senior style of practice. This is the perfect book for that. Our teacher just read the book and was inspired to get us up in the headstand she saw in Suza's book using two chairs which makes it so doable for us! Suza's book is a must read for any teacher working with older students, new or experienced, and especially younger teachers. I refer to it often.

Suza Francina goes beyond inspiring once again with her newest book The New Yoga for Healthy Aging. As a yoga teacher of senior adults I really like the organization of the chapters, the mixture of instructional information and heartfelt stories I associate with Suza's writing style; offering practical guidance and personal anecdotes to help motivate older students. I read the section on Suza's mom, how she had this very emotional family emergency during the writing of this book. I'm sure she worried at times about losing her. Suza too shared a very personal story. I read from this book to my students as I find the stories uplifting and recently taught from the sequence for heart health.
www.yogamudra.com

The New Yoga For Healthy Aging is so good I wish I wrote it. I'm especially jazzed on the fact that it's written for those who are putting on the years and those coping with serious ailments. The older folk have not been forgotten; they are front and center.
The writing lifts you right up--it reads effortlessly. You just want to start doing Yoga, again, or for the first time. There's no dryness or drudgery in sight.
The photos are clear and the models sock it to you. Check out the form on these men and women, and they haven't been teen-agers for a l-o-n-g time.