EPISODE 53: Chair Yoga for Seniors - Build Strength, Prevent Falls, and Reclaim Your Life

In this episode, Jamie sits down with Bernadette Anderson, owner of Wholesome Warrior and a personal trainer and functional medicine practitioner with over 20 years of experience. Bernadette brings a refreshingly holistic approach to senior health — combining nutrition, fitness, and mindset — and today she's sharing why chair yoga might be one of the most powerful tools available to seniors who want to stay strong, mobile, and independent.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• Why chair yoga is about so much more than stretching — it builds real, functional strength
• How strengthening the muscles around your joints can dramatically reduce your risk of falling
• Why ankle strength is the foundation of fall prevention and balance
• The surprising connection between yoga, cognitive health, and proprioception
• How chair yoga is helping seniors in Southern Oregon sleep better, move better, and feel more capable
• Why the Club 60 Senior Yoga class has grown from fewer than 10 participants to as many as 35-40

Whether you're dealing with chronic pain, limited mobility, or just looking for a welcoming place to start moving again, Bernadette's message is clear: it's never too late, and you start right where you are.

At Team Senior™, our mission is to guide you and support you through the maze of Southern Oregon Long-Term Care.

📞 For Team Senior resources, call: 541-295-8230

Or visit our website for more information: https://www.teamsenior.org/

Transcript

Episode 53: Chair Yoga for Seniors - Build Strength, Prevent Falls, and Reclaim Your Life

Host: Jamie Callahan
Guest: Bernadette Anderson, Owner, Wholesome Warrior

JAMIE CALLAHAN: Hi, this is Jamie Callahan with the Team Senior Podcast. Our goal is to simplify aging. Society grooms us to plan for retirement, but what about life beyond retirement, where the rubber meets the road? Perhaps you've had a stroke, or you've been diagnosed with cancer, or maybe you're forgetting things and now you have dementia. That's our area of expertise, and we are here to share our insight.

And now, the Team Senior Podcast.

Hi, this is Jamie Callahan, and we are in the studio today with Bernadette Anderson. Bernadette is a personal friend of mine. She's also a personal trainer and several other things. I'm very excited to introduce her to you and all of the incredible things that she's doing. Today, we're going to talk about chair yoga. Bernadette, I want you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company and all the things that you do.

BERNADETTE ANDERSON: I am Bernadette Anderson. I am the owner of my health coaching company, Wholesome Warrior. I'm a personal trainer and a functional medicine practitioner that incorporates everything from nutrition, fitness, and mindset. And I've been in business for over 20 years, and I specialize in working with anybody who is struggling with their health and feeling overwhelmed and need to get them on the right track focused on better lifestyle changes.

JAMIE: What led you to combine these disciplines? And why, from your perspective, is this approach so important as we age?

BERNADETTE: Oh, so many reasons. I, 40 years ago, was in the pharmaceutical industry, and I watched people not get well. That was not the answer to wellness, and I watched people suffer, and I knew there had to be a better way to create joy and longevity in people's lives and understanding that the best gift that we could give the people that we love and care about is our self-care so that we can be better humans, better wives, better daughters, better mothers, better everything. Once we take care of ourselves and we are healthy, then we give the best gift that we could possibly give the people we love and care about.

JAMIE: That's a really excellent point. What's interesting is I don't think that very many people think of it like that. But that is an excellent point. I want to jump right into chair yoga and how that helps someone sustain quality of life. But first, I want to talk a little bit about how chair yoga is different than regular yoga.

BERNADETTE: Okay. So everyone thinks that yoga or chair yoga is just about flexibility and stretching, and it's really not. That's just one component of yoga—is the stretching—but there's so much more about it than strength. Now, in regards to the floor yoga versus the chair yoga, obviously there's a lot more standing in the floor mat yoga, and there's also a lot more on the floor. And of course, once you get into a certain age—or not even age, a lot of times it can be just an injury—that you're not able to get on the floor and get back up. So we can start with chair yoga, and you actually get a pretty strong and profound training and strength and flexibility by doing it on the chair. And for a lot of the clients, once they start with the chair yoga, that strengthening creates the ability for them to be able to get back on the floor and get back up again, because that is—especially as we get into seniors and getting older—is to be able to get on the floor and get back up.

JAMIE: That's something I know is important to you because I have trained with you, and I know that you have had me do exercises that get me down and then back up again without using my hands. I know that as we age, especially those folks that are over the age of 60 or 70, we commonly see clients with the same set of hurdles that really equate to strength. How does strength impact your balance and fall prevention?

BERNADETTE: Strength, especially strength in the muscle tissue itself—the stronger the muscle is and the more dense the muscle is, the more stability they have in the joint. So the goal is to make the muscle around the knee, make the muscle around the ankle—most importantly because the ankle and the foot is the foundation to the house, right? So when they have instability in the muscle, they have instability in the joint, and that's where that gives out. So if we can make sure that the muscle is strong, even if you have an injury, for instance, arthritis in the knee or a weakness, then once I can strengthen the muscle around the joint, I can stop the fall or the give out.

JAMIE: Sure. Absolutely. That leads perfectly into my next question, which is that mobility is radically impacted by strength.

BERNADETTE: Absolutely. And so when I'm speaking to the clients that are coming to the senior yoga, chair yoga, obviously I always say to them, "I don't want you to fall." But the ability is that the fall might just start to happen—can you stop the fall? And that all is based in the ankle strength, most importantly. But if they do, we don't want anything to break, right? We don't want the broken hip because—I think the statistic is right now, if any woman over 50 falls, she has a 50% chance of fracturing her hip. And if she does, she has a 50% chance of ever walking again, which is a huge statistic.

JAMIE: 50%. That is really scary.

BERNADETTE: Very scary. So I always say we want to be strong enough that if the fall happens, first of all, you can get up to get help, but that you can get up and have your mobility back.

JAMIE: Absolutely. When those things happen, we know that someone sometimes lives in chronic pain. Reflecting on the incident of falling itself probably sometimes leads folks to recognizing that they need to build that strength. How would someone do chair yoga that is in chronic pain right now?

BERNADETTE: Starting small. My motto is do what you can and can the rest. Just show up first. Believe that you can. Have a mindset and belief that you're never too old, you're never too injured, it's never too late. You start with where you're at and progress. I think that the biggest thing that stops people is the overwhelm. For any one of us, we feel like we have to get to the top of the mountain, and that's not the goal. We have to realize that you're going to climb 10 steps of the mountain today, and we're going to get to the top of the mountain in a year or two, and that's okay.

JAMIE: Yeah, that's true of anything. If you want to run marathons, you're not going to do that the next day.

BERNADETTE: No.

JAMIE: Or box, or anything.

BERNADETTE: So we look at what ability do we have, and then the key is when I'm coaching them and helping them, we don't take it past the tipping point. It's always about understanding not taking us past the tipping point.

JAMIE: So not going too far.

BERNADETTE: Not going too far.

JAMIE: So we know that yoga builds strength and can also build some flexibility. How does yoga impact memory, focus, overall cognitive health?

BERNADETTE: It depends obviously on the age, but for most of the seniors, where yoga comes into play is what we—I'm going to say the word wrong—proprioception. So our ability to understand where we are in the room. And what starts to happen as we age is we move in only one direction, which is walking forward. So teaching the body and the mind and the neurological nerves even behind our eyes—like where we see ourselves in the room—and training ourselves to work and have our body move in multiple directions. So there's a big cognitive part of that and a muscular part of that where people—I actually will ask some of the seniors sometimes when they're not in yoga, when they're home every day, "Walk sideways down your hallway two or three times a day. Learn to teach your neurological, your nervous system, and your cognitive health to understand that you're safe in a room moving in multiple directions."

JAMIE: That makes great sense. Why is Wholesome Warrior such a resource here in Southern Oregon? I know that there are so many people that work with you. Your chair yoga class at Club 60 is the absolute largest class that we have. You are such a blessing because your knowledge base is so vast that you're able to help people with so many different things. But I just want to hear from you, how is Wholesome Warrior making a difference in Southern Oregon?

BERNADETTE: Whew, that is such a loaded question. It depends obviously on the audience in front of me. When it comes to the people—I'm going to just speak from experience. We've been doing this chair yoga, I've been doing it for a little over a year and a half now. It's really at the core for the seniors to get them to believe that they have wellness, that there's not— Trying to put deep emotion into words, which is difficult to do, but it's not even about the stretching or the strength. It's getting them to understand and believe that their body wants to be whole. And a lot of these seniors are lonely, and when you're lonely, fear sets in. And I believe—I think the biggest component is the mindset of understanding that they're capable, that they can do this.

JAMIE: That's an excellent point, and I think that really speaks volumes in consideration of how you have grown the chair yoga class at Club 60. We went from a former instructor where we had maybe six to eight people, never more than 10, and I know recently you've had as many as 35 or 40 people in the Club 60 class. It's unbelievable.

BERNADETTE: I do my best to remind them—especially at the end of every class, I always have them set an intention of what they want to heal, release, let go before class, and after, reminding them of who they really are. And it sets such a calmness. It's more than anything—and this is the case whether you're a senior or not, all humans—we really need to calm our central nervous system, and our central nervous system is on fire all the time just living life. And once you can calm the central nervous system, you can get centered. And when you get centered, you get your power back. And when you get your power back, you know that you're capable.

JAMIE: Let's stay with that thought process for a minute, because I want to hear from you—what do you hear most often from your clients and families about how chair yoga is impacting their life?

BERNADETTE: So many things. Every single class I have somebody say to me, "I feel so much better when I go home. I sleep so much better. I'm so much more relaxed. My body is so much calmer." The second thing I've heard pretty consistently—I don't hear it every week—but, "I lost my footing on a walk and I didn't fall. I tripped over a hose in the garden and I didn't fall." "I did fall, but nothing broke. I got up."

JAMIE: That's huge.

BERNADETTE: I had two clients in the last year say to me, "I fell and went to the doctor, but I didn't go by ambulance to the hospital, and I know if I wasn't doing this yoga, I would have spent the night in the hospital last night."

JAMIE: Yeah, that's remarkable success for sure. Can you tell us a personal story that really gets to the heart of why you think this work is important? Maybe somebody that you've worked with where this type of yoga—where it's easier for seniors, right? You're not getting on the floor and having to get up, although that is the objective, I think, in the end, is that you're able to do those things. But do you have a story that you can share with us where chair yoga has had a radical impact on their life?

BERNADETTE: Ooh, I think one in particular. There was a gal who she did fall at home. She wasn't able, when she started with us, she wasn't able to sit in the chair and touch her fingertips to the floor. And so I would tell the students, "When you get to a point that you've accomplished something really powerful, you want to—like you're a little kid in a candy store—'I did it!'" And I go, "But you're in a yoga class and you don't want to yell it, so you go like having a little parade in your heart—like I just did something." And this gal, she raised her hand in the middle of the class and she said, "I'm having a parade."

JAMIE: I love that.

BERNADETTE: Because she touched the floor. But that student also a month later did fall, and an ambulance did come to her house, but they didn't take her to the hospital that night. And not only emotionally and the stress of all of that and what it brings to a family and the children and worry, it was also the financial part of that, what that looks like for them.

JAMIE: Sure.

BERNADETTE: That she was so grateful. She was in tears the next time that she'd seen me, and I just about melted because it was just— You think it's the big things, but it's those little things, and they have a trickle effect. Because her daughter didn't have to come up from LA to come see her. Like all the things that—

JAMIE: Yeah, the work you're doing is genuinely changing lives.

BERNADETTE: Thank you.

JAMIE: Improving lives.

BERNADETTE: Thank you.

JAMIE: Absolutely. I want you to share with everyone—if they want to know more or they want to try a class, how do they reach out to you for the chair yoga class, or for anything for that matter?

BERNADETTE: So we do have a Facebook group that is Club 60 Senior Yoga, and it's public. You don't have to ask permission to join it. And if anybody's curious if it's the right one, the landscape picture on the back is a picture of me doing a yoga pose in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, so it's kind of hard to miss. And you can reach me there, message me there, ask any questions, ask when class is there. My website is wholesomewarrior.com, so you can reach me through my website. You can reach me through my own personal Facebook page, which is Wholesome Warrior Health Coach, and also my Instagram, which is wholesomewarrior.

JAMIE: Yeah, Bernadette has a very large online presence, and I will tell you, she has helped folks with so many things that are not just chair yoga, including myself. Yes. I just want to close with letting you know that if for any reason you can't remember the ways to contact Bernadette, you can always reach out to Team Senior. We are very accessible. Just call the main office line at 541-295-8230. Again, 541-295-8230. Thank you so much for being here today.

BERNADETTE: Absolutely. It was a pleasure.

JAMIE: Thank you for listening to the Team Senior Podcast. We're here every week sharing new and relevant information. Remember that we're just a phone call away. Team Senior can be reached at 541-295-8230. Again, 541-295-8230. Until next time, this is Jamie Callahan.