Putting your socks on: how I helped my 90-year-old mother keep moving

Some things aren’t in the book, because you don’t learn them from a book. This is one of them.

A few years ago, my mother was ninety. At that age the real enemy isn’t any one illness — it’s stopping moving. The body grows cautious, the floor starts to feel dangerous, and little by little a person stops bending down and getting up. And whatever you stop doing, you lose.

I didn’t want to give her a yoga routine — she’d have laughed at me. I wanted one single movement, so simple she could do it any day without thinking.

The movement was to bend down slowly, like someone setting a saucer of milk on the floor for a cat, and come back up. Again and again, gently, in no hurry.

We called it that because the image changes everything. If you tell an older person “touch your toes,” they tense up and force the back. But “put the saucer down for the cat” is a kind, everyday errand with no final grade — the body relaxes, and that’s when it moves better.

The key: soften the knees — the Pelvic Hug protects the back — hinge from the hips, and go only as far as doesn’t hurt. A little, often. My mother didn’t do yoga: she set out a saucer of milk. But underneath she was practising exactly what I teach in My Yoga Process.

It’s never too late to start, and you’re never too old to keep what you already have.