Senior Fitness: Benefits of Meditation, Plus How to Start

If you work with senior clients, you understand some of their special needs as compared to younger people. Older adults are more likely to live with chronic pain, to experience loneliness, and to have symptoms of cognitive decline, like memory loss. 

Meditation is an easy and accessible way to combat many of the issues that affect older adults. As a trainer, you can recommend starting a regular meditation practice. Help your clients learn more about what meditation is, how it can benefit them, and how to get started. 

About Meditation

Meditation is a practice designed to achieve heightened awareness, greater focus, and greater attention. It can be spiritual, but this is not required. Meditation can also be conscious altering. It is an ancient practice that many modern adherents find useful for reducing stress, boosting mood, clearing the mind, and more. 

How Does Meditation Work? 

For anyone who has never done it, meditation can seem like a mystical practice out of reach to the average person. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meditation takes practice, but it’s easy to get started and accessible to just about anyone. 

Best Types of Meditation for Seniors

If you have senior clients interested in meditation, any type will do. Just getting started is the most important thing. However, there are some kinds of meditation that might particularly benefit your clients: 

• Guided meditations. Great for beginners who feel overwhelmed by the idea of meditating, guided sessions are led by a soothing voice on an app or an in-person instructor. 

• Mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is simple but powerful and is often the subject of meditation studies. It involves focusing on the present moment, typically on breathing or physical sensations. 

• Yoga. Yoga by itself is not meditation, but the two readily go together. This is a great choice for older adults because they get the benefits of gentle exercise and meditation in one session. 

• Tai chi. Tai chi is another type of movement meditation that older adults can benefit from both physically and mentally. 

Learn more: Yoga is a great practice for building muscle. 

How Does Meditation for Seniors Benefit Health? 

Meditation is good for people of all ages. It boosts mood, improves mental health, and can even lower blood pressure. While anyone can get these benefits, older adults are particularly vulnerable to certain mental and physical health problems that meditation improves: 

Boost Mood and Mental Health

One of the biggest reasons people of all ages turn to meditation is for its ability to combat stress. The evidence from research is clear that meditation can help practitioners moderate stress, cope with stress, reduce anxiety, reduce depression, and generally improve overall mood and mental well-being (1) (2). 

Improve Sleep

Many factors contribute to poor sleep, including age and some of the chronic conditions more common in older adults. Meditation, according to studies, improves sleep quality in older adults who struggle to get enough sleep each night (3). Meditation also improves daytime functioning in this population. 

Lower Blood Pressure

Many older adults have cardiovascular health issues, including hypertension. Exercise and diet can help, but so can meditation. A study of patients taking blood pressure medications tried meditation (4). Most were able to reduce their dosage as a result of adding meditation to their routines. Meditation triggers a relaxation response, which has physical effects, like lowered blood pressure. 

Combat Cognitive Decline

Everyone experiences some decline in cognitive function—reduced memory, slower thinking, lower attention, reduced information retention—as they age. The degree of decline varies, but regular meditation can minimize it. 

Multiple studies have examined this phenomenon (5). Researchers have found that various types of meditation have positive affects on memory, attention, thinking speed, decision making, and overall cognitive function in healthy older adults. 

Reduce Dementia Risk

Some cognitive decline is normal with age, but dementia is not. Dementia is a set of cognitive symptoms, like memory loss, losing words, confusion, and mood and behavioral changes. Alzheimer's disease is a common cause but not the only one. 

There are many risk factors for Alzheimer's and dementia, including age. A study of 60 older adults recently found that daily meditation can be a protective factor (6). The experimental group in the study practiced meditation for 12 minutes per day for three months, while the control group listened to music. 

The participants who meditated had significantly fewer Alzheimer's biomarkers in their blood after the three months than those in the control group. This means that meditating could reduce the risk of developing dementia symptoms. 

Combat Loneliness

Loneliness affects many older adults. Grown children move away, friends and family pass on, and retirement often leaves people with fewer social opportunities. In one study, participants used an eight-week program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (7). 

Compared to a control group, they felt less lonely by the end of the program. While there was no socializing involved, meditation seemed to reduce a person’s perception of being lonely. 

Reduce Chronic Pain

People can suffer from chronic pain at any age, but older adults are more likely to have ongoing conditions that cause pain. Studies prove that regular meditation changes the perception of pain, effectively reducing it and improving quality of life. One study included both yoga and meditation with excellent results for participants (8). 

Learn more: 7 Lesser-Known Health Benefits of Meditation 

How to Help Senior Clients Get Started with Meditation

Starting and sticking with a regular meditation practice isn’t easy. It takes commitment and practice. Most people struggle initially with sitting still and focusing for several minutes and tend to give up. Here are some tips you can use to get your clients going and help them keep at it for the long-term. 

• Add short meditation sessions to the end of your workouts. Spend just five minutes winding down in a quiet corner of the gym to demonstrate to your clients how to meditate and how easy it is. 

• Create a plan or schedule for your clients to give them direction. You can even pick out specific meditations for them to try. This is helpful for anyone who feels a little lost with the idea of starting a new practice. 

• Suggest adding daily meditation to daily habits they already have, like brushing their teeth. This is a proven way to create new habits. The existing habit reminds you to do the new one. Before long, it becomes a habit too. 

• Recommend apps your clients can use that help track healthy habits. Recording a daily meditation is a good motivating tool to start and keep a streak going. 

• Also recommend apps that have guided meditations. These are great for beginners who aren’t sure how to meditate. 

• Remind your clients that it takes practice to get good at meditating. They should expect to struggle at first. Their minds will wander, and sustained focus will be challenging. Encourage them to stick with it to see the most results. 

Are your senior clients ready for meditation? Discuss it with them and explain all the many benefits they could get from a regular practice. The evidence is there, and it is compelling. It’s just another tool you can use to help your clients live their best lives and be as healthy as possible. 

Senior Fitness is just one of the many specialty certifications offered by the ISSA. With it, you’ll learn the strategies to create programs that meet the unique needs of the ever-growing population of senior fitness clients. Expand your personal training business with ISSA’s Senior Fitness Certification!

References

1. Goyal, M., Singh, S., Sibinga, E. M., Gould, N. F., Rowland-Seymour, A., Sharma, R., Berger, Z., Sleicher, D., Maron, D. D., Shihab, H. M., Ranasinghe, P. D., Linn, S., Saha, S., Bass, E. B., & Haythornthwaite, J. A. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(3), 357–368. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13018

2. Hoge, E., Bui, E., Marques, L., Metcalf, C., Morris, L., & Robinaugh, D. et al. (2013). Randomized Controlled Trial of Mindfulness Meditation for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The Journal Of Clinical Psychiatry, 74(08), 786-792. https://doi.org/10.4088/jcp.12m08083

3. Black, D., O’Reilly, G., Olmstead, R., Breen, E., & Irwin, M. (2015). Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances. JAMA Internal Medicine, 175(4), 494. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8081

4. Aubrey, A. (2008). To Lower Blood Pressure, Open Up And Say 'Om'. NPR.org. Retrieved 7 September 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2008/08/21/93796200/to-lower-blood-pressure-open-up-and-say-om.

5. Gard, T., Hölzel, B., & Lazar, S. (2014). The potential effects of meditation on age-related cognitive decline: a systematic review. Annals Of The New York Academy Of Sciences, 1307(1), 89-103. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12348

6. Innes, K., Selfe, T., Brundage, K., Montgomery, C., Wen, S., & Kandati, S. et al. (2018). Effects of Meditation and Music-Listening on Blood Biomarkers of Cellular Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease in Adults with Subjective Cognitive Decline: An Exploratory Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal Of Alzheimer's Disease, 66(3), 947-970. https://doi.org/10.3233/jad-180164

7. Creswell, J., Irwin, M., Burklund, L., Lieberman, M., Arevalo, J., & Ma, J. et al. (2012). Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training reduces loneliness and pro-inflammatory gene expression in older adults: A small randomized controlled trial. Brain, Behavior, And Immunity, 26(7), 1095-1101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2012.07.006

8. Study finds yoga and meditation reduce chronic pain. American Osteopathic Association. (2020). Retrieved 7 September 2022, from https://osteopathic.org/2020/10/01/study-finds-yoga-and-meditation-reduce-chronic-pain/.