FALL WARNING! BIFOCALS ARE DEADLY!

 

Since last November I have been teaching yoga via Zoom to a group of about a dozen women I've known for years.  Attendance varies, but many are very faithful to our weekly class.  When I started to teach I asked what they'd like to focus on....they said, "knees", "hips", "balance".  Can you guess we are an older group?  But at any age, keeping every part of the body strong, flexible, and in balance serves us well.  

(Mandatory teaching moment: Of course, yoga isn't really about the body.  It's about calming the fluctuations of the mind.  The ancient yogis addressed the body as a way to get the body in shape and keep it healthy and strong (and not distracting) so one could sit in meditation with ease.  Here in the West yoga has become just another physical exercise to try, like Zumba or Jazzercise.  That's not the purpose of yoga, but OK, a healthy, stronger body is a "perk" of the practice.)  

Each week I lead us through an asana practice (the poses) to help us get stronger, more flexible, and more balanced.  For older folks in particular this triad is essential to helping us stay independent.  One fall can be the end of living independently should a severe injury result.  And as we get older, for many reasons, falls are more common.  

Actually, ask me about falls.  

One year, heading up the escalator at the Hawaiian resort where we'd been staying I was trying to wrestle my suitcase onto the tread, with a heavy backpack on my back and a purse slung across my chest.  The suitcase slipped and twirled in front of me, tripping me as the stairway took off upward and somehow, by some miracle, in spite of what had to be a comical (to others) dance of avoiding disaster, I righted myself and did not tumble down the upward moving staircase.  I credited the muscle memory of balance in my yoga practice.  

Also one night, some years ago,  I took a careless slide down our flight of wooden stairs at home in my socks.  Duh!  I was in a hurry with my mind in ten different places and took one step, sock to slick wood, and down I went....All. The. Way. Down. 14 steps.  I was VERY fortunate I didn't seriously injure myself as my right buttock/hip hit each step before I landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.  All I ended up with was a big bruise and sore knee.  I credited yoga for allowing me to tumble with injury-saving flexibility.

Then on our maiden trip to Great Britain two years ago I tripped over Hadrian's Wall in England -- or at least a chunk of the ruins that are little more than rocks in a field.  Down I went, but bounced right back up, again feeling my yoga practice kept me from splaying down face-first.  Also on that vacation I tripped over a shallow single step-up at the entrance of a pub in Inverness, Scotland and down I went, just to my knees (thankfully), but embarrassingly so.  (One would think most people fall OUT of the bar.)

Given my experiences, you might assume my yoga students will start to doubt me touting our practice as being beneficial to staying upright.  But I have begun to see a pattern that is causing my falling down habit.  I'm always looking down in these instances, to ensure I don't fall!  But my bifocals create a sense of "flatness" where I lose the 3-D depth perception so essential to seeing clearly the obstacle at my feet!

This happened again yesterday.  We were at the waterfront with our 6-year-old granddaughter where she was searching for "crystal rocks".  (There are none, of course.  Wrong geology, but whatever.)  I had head down, desperately trying to spy anything I could pass off to her as a "crystal" and tripped over a protruding chunk of breakwater rock and boom!  Down I went on hands and knees in the rocks, coming up with a classic "kid injury" of a scraped hand and knee, skin pulled away and slightly bleeding.  I started laughing about this silly injury and said I'd need a Barbie bandaid.  But this was also the moment I realized -- IT'S THE BIFOCALS AGAIN!

When I go for my annual physical I guess I'll have to confess a fall this year, but I'll know it's not my strength, flexibility, or balance causing the issue -- it's my glasses!  Does that count?  Well, I fear it does.  Bifocals are also an older age thing, so they present the same hazard as a throw rug or an electrical cord stretched across the floor, or clutter in the path to the bathroom -- all those things they warn us about.

But I'm still crediting my yoga practice for being able to take these falls and still come up swinging!  Fingers crossed that strength, flexibility, and the ability to right myself back into balance, even during a fall, is benefitting me.  I think it could be worse.  

I'm also wondering if I should go back to having reading glasses instead of the two-fer of a bifocal...  

At least that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit: www.pixabay.com