Feet / Elderly Yogis

The feet will give trouble to elderly yogis, just as they do to elderly persons who do no yoga. I noticed that as some yogis endure the elderly years, their hatha yoga practice consisting of asana postures and pranayama breath infusion becomes reduced. In fact, some elderly yogis are encouraged to relax and not practice, except for practicing meditation and entering trance consciousness phase-outs.

The image below is supposed to be the feet of a yogi who lived 125+ years. He may or may not be alive today. The point is that there are signs of decay. There is surely a look of not getting fresh blood circulation. There are signs of arthritis and osteoporosis.

A yogi should not be superstitious where he/she feels that due to doing asana postures, the body will not deteriorate as the years proceed. It certainly will. Hence one should do the best at caring it. The toes are the most extreme places in the body. They are like a dead-end junction at Land’s End. Whatever goes there must either turn back or park as is.

The problems arise when the transportation gates which allow polluted blood to return to the lung for poisonous gas expulsion, no longer operate in an efficient way. They no long hold the polluted blood which is pump above them. The result is that this polluted liquid falls back to the toes which eventually become gangrene and infected.

It begs the question:

What can yoga not do to an aged body? Are the claims about yoga, mostly hype?