Health. Physical fitness. Wellness. Looking good. Feeling good. Healing. Cute pants. Maybe simply needing an hour to yourself. Why did you start yoga?

It could have been any one of these things, or maybe a little bit of all of them. When I started practicing yoga in my 20s, I wanted to feel good, but let’s be honest, I wanted to look good too. I wanted to be strong and fit, and I thought yoga would be another way to take care of my body.

What I found on my mat was so much more.

And as time has marched on, the reasons I keep coming back to my mat have shifted too. Do I still want to feel good and look good? Absolutely. But these days, I want a little more from that hour and from the effort I’m putting into it. I want to know that what I’m doing today is helping me stay strong, mobile, capable and healthy for the years ahead.

I want my muscles to stay strong. I want my joints to keep moving. I want good balance and coordination. I want a healthy heart and lungs. I want to be able to get myself off the floor, reach overhead, twist, bend, travel, play, and keep doing the things I love. And yes, I want strong bones.

First, let’s talk about our bones.

Bone isn’t a hard, lifeless structure that we build when we’re young and slowly lose as we age. It is living tissue that is continually remodeling itself. Old bone is broken down, and new bone is formed, and one of the important signals involved in that process is mechanical loading. When muscles contract and pull against bone, when we support our weight against gravity, and when our skeleton experiences appropriate stress, we’re giving our bones a reason to remain strong.

This is one reason weight training has such good research behind it. Adding progressively heavier resistance creates an obvious and measurable load. But here’s where I think the conversation about yoga sometimes becomes too simplistic: a dumbbell isn’t the only form of resistance. Your body is resistance, too.

Hold yourself in Plank and your arms and shoulders are supporting a substantial portion of your body weight. Lower slowly through Chaturanga and your muscles have to control that weight against gravity. Stand in Warrior III and one leg and hip are stabilizing nearly your entire body. Rise repeatedly from Chair Pose, move through lunges, hold Side Plank, balance, twist and invert, and we are continually changing where and how the skeleton is being loaded.

That is not passive stretching. That’s muscular work, resistance, and weight-bearing movement.

So can yoga actually build bone density?

This is where we need to be clear and realistic, because the research tells two stories at once.

The most well-known study on yoga and bone density was led by Dr. Loren Fishman and published in 2016. The study began with 741 participants using a specific 12-pose yoga sequence practiced for about 12 minutes a day. Among the compliant participants with comparable before-and-after DEXA scans, bone mineral density improved significantly in the spine and femur. The researchers also reported no serious yoga-related injuries over more than 100,000 documented hours of practice.

That’s pretty exciting for twelve minutes of yoga.

On the other hand, a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis published in PLOS ONE examined eleven Yoga and Pilates studies involving 591 women between 45 and 78. When the results were pooled together, Yoga and Pilates did not significantly increase bone mineral density compared with control groups. Interestingly, the researchers also pointed out that simply maintaining bone density may be meaningful for postmenopausal women, because this is a stage of life when bone density would otherwise be expected to decline.

So which study do we believe? Both.

Targeted and consistent yoga appears capable of creating meaningful mechanical loading, and there is some evidence suggesting it may support bone density. At the same time, the overall research isn’t strong enough yet to say that yoga reliably increases BMD or prevents osteoporosis.

But there’s another really important problem with the research. What exactly do we mean when we say “yoga”? This is where I think we need much better studies. We take those results and make statements about yoga as though all yoga creates the same physical demand.

It doesn’t.

I’d love to see researchers take a group of women practicing a challenging 60-minute Vinyasa class three or four times a week for several years and measure their bone density, muscle strength, balance, cardiovascular fitness, mobility, and fall risk.

As far as I can find, we don’t have that study. And twelve poses practiced for twelve minutes simply aren’t an apples-to-apples comparison with what happens during an hour-long Vinyasa class.

So what are we doing in our yoga classes?

This is where I think our practice gets really interesting, because different styles of yoga challenge our bodies in different ways. That’s one of the things I love most about yoga. It isn’t one thing.

Vinyasa Yoga is our strongest example. For 60 minutes, we keep the body moving. We Plank, Chaturanga, squat, lunge, balance, twist, stabilize, sometimes invert, and repeatedly move ourselves from the floor to standing and back again. Our legs support our body weight, our upper body becomes weight-bearing, our core stabilizes us through transitions, and our muscles repeatedly contract against gravity.

We’re developing strength, stamina, balance, agility, mobility and coordination while loading our bones from multiple directions. We’re also asking the cardiovascular system to keep up with continuous movement while learning to control our breathing when things get challenging.

And then there’s the part that makes yoga yoga. We’re not just exercising our bodies. We’re practicing concentration, breath awareness, and the ability to remain present when something becomes uncomfortable. We’re learning to regulate rather than immediately react. The physical challenge becomes a place to practice what happens inside our minds.

That combination is powerful.

Deep Hatha Yoga gives us many of those same benefits with a softer approach. We use foundational standing postures, balance, twists, and mobility work without the Planks, Chaturangas, and more demanding transitions of Vinyasa. We still strengthen the legs, challenge balance, move the spine, work the hips and shoulders, and practice getting ourselves down to the floor and back up again.

That may not sound as exciting as lifting something heavy, but think about what we actually want our bodies to be able to do as we get older. We want to bend, reach, rotate, balance, stand up, sit down, and confidently move through the world. Hatha keeps practicing those abilities over and over again.

Yin, Nidra & Sound takes us somewhere completely different. Instead of asking the muscles to continuously contract, we slow everything down and use longer, supported holds to gently stress connective tissues and work with range of motion. Fascia, joint capsules, and other connective tissues all contribute to how freely and comfortably we move. Yin can help us work with stiffness and areas of long-held tension while encouraging the body to become more comfortable within its available range.

Then we stop moving altogether.

Yoga Nidra and sound give the nervous system an opportunity to shift toward rest and recovery. And if we’re talking about longevity, I don’t think we can separate our physical health from our ability to recover. Chronic stress, poor sleep and constantly living in “go mode” affect the whole person. Learning how to intentionally become still, breathe, and rest is part of taking care of our bodies as well.

And then we have Aerial Yoga, where yoga meets strength, proprioception and a little bit of courage. The hammock creates an entirely different relationship with gravity. Pulling, stabilizing, and maneuvering around the fabric challenge the upper body, grip, and core while the moving surface constantly asks the brain to figure out where the body is in space.

That’s proprioception, and it becomes incredibly important as we age. Add inversions, balance, coordination, and the mental challenge of learning unfamiliar movements, and aerial becomes a wonderful example of how yoga can continue asking both our bodies and our brains to adapt.

Plus, it’s fun. I refuse to believe that play has an expiration date.

Maybe longevity is what yoga has been teaching us all along.

The more I read about aging well, the more I come back to the same conclusion: I don’t simply want a good number on a DEXA scan. I want a body that works.

I want strong bones and muscles capable of supporting them. I want mobile joints and enough balance to catch myself when I stumble. I want the strength to get myself off the floor and the stamina to keep moving when life asks me to. I want to maintain coordination and body awareness, and I want a nervous system that knows how to work hard and also knows how to rest.

Yoga gives us an extraordinary number of those things within one practice. The question is: what do you want? Your hour of effort can be anything you want it to be…

Does that mean every yoga class will build bone density? Of course not. A gentle restorative class and a strong 60-minute Vinyasa class create very different physical demands, which is exactly why lumping everything together under the word “yoga” makes this research so difficult to interpret.

Does it mean yoga guarantees we won’t develop osteoporosis? No. Every body is different. Genetics, age, hormones, nutrition, protein intake, calcium, vitamin D, medications, sleep and lifestyle all play roles in bone health and longevity. No single form of exercise can override all of those factors.

But I also don’t think we should underestimate what a consistent yoga practice is doing for us simply because we aren’t holding a dumbbell. (*I really do like practicing with my 1lb wrist and ankle weights)

For sixty minutes in Vinyasa, we’re strengthening and loading. In Hatha, we’re maintaining mobility, strength, and balance. In Yin, we’re giving our connective tissues time and attention. In Nidra, we’re practicing recovery. In Aerial, we’re developing upper-body strength, proprioception, coordination and courage.

And woven through all of it are the breath, the mind and the practice of being present inside this body.

Because maybe the goal isn’t just living longer.

Maybe it’s being able to keep moving, exploring, playing, breathing, bending, balancing, getting upside down and getting ourselves back up again for as many of those years as possible.

That’s the kind of longevity I’m interested in.

And that’s a whole lot more than stretching.