Grey Hairs Get a Golden Hour

Why I take yoga therapy into the living rooms of people who've been told to slow down — and why there's nowhere I'd rather be.

I was raised by my grandma and grandpa.

That sentence explains most of what follows. I grew up inside tradition, whimsy and unconditional love, and inside a quiet respect for a life lived on an ever-changing timeline. My grandparents weren't "the elderly." They were the people who knew things. Who had been through things. Who laughed at things the rest of us were still afraid of.

So when I tell you I love working with grey hairs, I don't mean it the way a brochure means it. I mean I was raised by them, and I've been looking for them in every room since.

My grandmother played guitar, made ceramics, and never allowed a jar or a plastic container on the dining table. She never got her hair wet when we swam, and she always smelled of Chanel No. 5. She taught me how to be a lady with standards. My grandpa was a powerful swimmer and hockey player into his 80s, and a devout Detroit Tigers fan, even though he was Canadian. He taught me the art of eating ice cream before dinner.

The red lipstick

Years later I worked as a nursing assistant at Foothills Hospital. The charts said one thing about the people in those beds. The people said something else entirely.

My favourite part of every shift was the stories. There was a woman who told me about wearing red lipstick to a dance, back when that was a courageous, bold thing to do. She was frail by then. Her body had been reduced, on paper, to a list of conditions. But when she told me about that lipstick, she sat up straighter. Her eyes changed. For a minute, the woman who walked into that dance was back in the room.

That's when I learned the thing I still work from: the story is in the body. And the body doesn't stop being able to change just because somebody wrote a number on a file.

Tom was a patient on my ward at Foothills. He taught me that a youthful spirit is a mind strategy. He had a set of reps he did in his wheelchair, and he insisted on Brylcreem in his hair before dinner. Feeling snazzy was paramount to Tom. I still have his bomber jacket in my closet, a gift from him to me, for recognizing his spirit and making sure his coiffure had support.

Every one of them knew something the charts didn't: how you show up is a strategy, not a vanity.

The decline story

Here's what most people over seventy have been told, in a hundred polite ways: this is just what getting older feels like.

Be careful on the stairs. Don't reach for that. Sit down, I'll get it.

Every one of those "be careful"s is kind. And every one of them gets filed away in the tissue as this is how we stay safe now. The body braces. It compensates. It gets on with it. And the world gets smaller, one careful inch at a time.

The knee you negotiate with on the stairs. The top shelf you quietly gave up. The way you've started watching yourself get up from a chair.

That isn't age. Stiff isn't old. Stiff is a body nobody has been listening to.

What the mat taught me about the living room

I hold Kaiden Shihan Kogyoku in KoKoDo JuJutsu. Thirty years on the mat taught me to read a body under pressure: where it braces, where it compensates, the split second where it tells you it's about to fall.

That skill is worth more in a living room than it ever was in a dojo.

Because here's the thing the decline story leaves out. Balance is a skill. So is getting up off the floor. So is a long, easy stride. Skills are perishable, like lettuce in your fridge. Stop drilling them and they fade, at any age. But drill them, gently and often, and they come back. The fascia that wraps every muscle dries and binds when it isn't moved, and gets its glide back when it is. Mechanics, not magic.

So "slow down and be careful" is only half the advice. The other half is: train it.

Susie

Susie started therapeutic yoga with me at 79. She was skeptical that anyone could do anything with what she called "this old body."

She's 86 now. Her flexibility, strength and stamina have all come up. Most days she lives in a body without pain. When people ask her about it, she says: "I have no age on the mat."

Truth be told, Susie didn't come to me on her own. Her daughter gifted her first Golden Hour, and Susie was certain yoga therapy was something she didn't like and didn't want. When we finished, she said she didn't know yoga could be like this. I was able to bring her back to her flexible, youthful self because every session is tailor-made for her. Seven years later, she still has a fixed spot on my calendar.

Why I go to them

The Golden Hour happens in your own home, and that's deliberate.

The stairs that scare you are in your house, not in a studio. The shelf is in your kitchen. The floor you want to get down on with your grandchildren is your floor. So that's where we work. A sturdy chair and a little floor space. No gym, no class of twenty-somethings, no mat you can't get up from.

And plainly: this is not home care. Home care makes a decline comfortable. I'm there to go to work on the stiffness, the bracing, and the story underneath them.

For the sons and daughters

Many of my clients come to me through a son or daughter. If that's you, I know the knot in your chest. The smaller world. The "I'm fine" that isn't.

You don't want someone who confirms the decline. You want someone who believes there's more in there.

There usually is.

What I love about them

People with grey hair have stopped performing. They tell you the truth about their bodies, and about you. They've earned their opinions and they're not shy with them. They have patience for slow work and no patience at all for nonsense. They laugh harder, because they know exactly what it costs to get to a good laugh.

And every single one of them has a red-lipstick story in them somewhere.

I was taught to respect my elders, and it's a value worth keeping. The timeline plays out for all of us. I don't subscribe to ageism, and I don't believe the march of the timeline has to bring decline. I've seen it in my clients and in my own body.

To avoid movement is to accept decline. Learn how to modify movement, and the practice stays achievable. You move along the timeline with space and grace.

My job is to help that story keep moving. Not to manage anyone gently toward less. To hand them back their stairs, their reach, their walk, their floor. You are the sovereign carrier of your own health. I'm just the one who can see where it's been stuck.

Grey hairs get a golden hour. Not as a consolation. As a training hour.

The Golden Hour is private, in-home yoga therapy for seniors across Vancouver, Burnaby, the North Shore, Port Moody and Salt Spring Island. I take on two new clients a month. It starts with a free 10-minute call — for you, your parent, or both of you. Request your free call →