Community vs. institutional elders' evaluations of and preferences for yoga exercises

Abstract

Aims: To evaluate and compare the appropriateness of the Silver Yoga exercise programme for community and institutional elders and to determine their preferences towards yoga exercises.

Background: Yoga has been used to promote the health of elders. The Silver Yoga was developed to accommodate the physical tolerance and body flexibility of elders and applied to community and institutional elders with positive health promotion benefits.

Design: Descriptive design with quantitative programme evaluation and semi-structured interviews.

Method: A convenience sample of 97 participants (64 community elders; 33 institutional elders) was interviewed individually after six months of Silver Yoga exercises. Participants rated the level of difficulty, acceptability, feasibility and helpfulness of the Silver Yoga programme (four phases: warm-up, hatha yoga, relaxation and guided-imagery meditation) and the abdominal breathing technique, based on a 10-point Cantril ladder scale. Further, participants expressed their preferences of yoga exercises based on four open-ended questions.

Results: The programme was fairly acceptable, feasible and helpful for community and institutional elders (means ranged from 8·33-9·70). The warm-up, relaxation, guided-imagery meditation and abdominal breathing are fairly easy to follow and perform (means ranged from 0·20-0·94). However, the postures in hatha yoga phase were relatively challenging but still manageable for the institutional elders (mean = 1·97, SD 2·33). Further, community elders preferred to practise yoga 61-90 minutes everyday in a group of 11-20, while the institutional elders preferred to practise yoga 31-60 minutes three times per week, in a group of <10.

Conclusions: The Silver Yoga exercise programme is acceptable, feasible, helpful and manageable for community and institutional elders. However, different exercise protocols, such as practice intensity and group size, could be applied to different older populations.

Relevance to clinical practice: The Silver Yoga exercise programme could be applied to both community and institutional elders to promote their health.