Look What I Found!

I started to do some research on my driving question: What are the benefits of doing yoga for middle-aged adults? I found a series of articles entitled, Advice on Practicing Yoga in Middle Age. There are three parts to this specific article and it can be found in the New York Times, which I consider to be a credible source and can trust using as part of my research. I simply searched "practicing yoga as a middle aged adult" and it was one of the links to appear. The fact that there were three separate articles to this one topic is what intrigued me as a reader. The format of the article began with a personal anecdote from Dr. Loren Fishman, the author of the article. He then continued by inserting a Q & A portion where adults over 40 were able to ask any yoga-related questions and inquiry. Additionally, I also stumbled upon another blog simply titled, Middle Aged Yoga, written by a 50 + year old man in pursuit of healthy living and lifestyle which includes practicing yoga. I thought his strengths came from his personal stories and pictures of him actually doing some yoga poses to illustrate his success.

The Driving Question

For my driving question, I chose to explore the advantages of yoga for middle-aged adults. Initially, I wanted to look into the benefits of dance for senior citizens but started to come across several barriers before the research even began. I thought the research was going to come to a quick stop because I could only think about the reasons why dance could potentially pose more of a risk to senior citizens than being advantageous. From there, I started thinking about my other passions and hobbies in life that I could spend 20% of the semester researching. Yoga is one of my top five favorite things to do. It's an activity that allows me to demonstrate certain skills I learned from dance including flexibility, grace and strength. Most importantly, yoga is one of the best ways to relieve yourself of stress and worry. I thought to focus on the specific age group of middle-aged adults because of a recent class I took. The class was called acro-yoga which combines acrobatics plus yoga, but the instructors looked as if they were in their late 30's, early 40's. The man and woman were extremely fit and able to do all these poses with ease. There's the origin of my driving question.