Memory, I salute you

I was very sad to hear the recent news of screen legend Bruce Willis being diagnosed with dementia.  This prompted an article in a national newspaper deliberating how rare it is that singers and stars of screen and stage develop this incredibly debilitating disease despite the statistics of it affecting a quarter of all men and a third of women.

Dementia is defined as a deterioration in cognitive function (i.e. the ability to process thought) beyond what might be expected from the usual consequences of ageing. It affects memory, judgement, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity and language, and at present there is no known cure. Considering that there are approximately 55 million people worldwide suffering from this condition, why is it so rare to hear about a celebrity developing dementia?

Apparently having vast wealth plays a huge part in keeping dementia at bay for celebrities – being able to pay for the best medical care, top fitness trainers and personal chefs enables the rich and famous to live longer and healthier lives than the rest of us mere mortals. This is a valid point, but is that really case closed? Could there be any other contributing factors to why actors and singers are rarely diagnosed with dementia?

I was recently watching the lovely Dame Judi Dench sitting on the sofa next to the equally lovely Hugh Jackman on The Graham Norton Show and telling him how she was having trouble learning her lines these days because of her failing eyesight. You would probably expect this considering that Dame Judi is 88 years old, but what I found really interesting is when she told Hugh that as soon as she had committed her lines to memory those words remained with her forever – apparently, she could easily recite the whole of Twelfth Night to him if he wanted!

This made me wonder whether regularly committing poems, song lyrics and movie scripts to memory is why movie stars and singers rarely succumb to the ravages of dementia. Could memorizing your shopping list, your local cafe’s menu or learning the words to The Owl and The Pussycat or a hymn such as Jerusalem give our grey cells a boost – enough to ward off any symptoms of mental deterioration? It’s certainly worth a try, but could this also apply to our yoga practice?  Could learning a sequence of postures have the same effect as learning a series of words or lyrics?

For regular yoga practitioners, learning a yoga sequence is definitely a good way of boosting brain cells as well as developing a strong body. The easiest routine to commit to memory is a Sun Salutation. This can begin with just a few elements such as mountain pose (Tadasana), forward bend (Uttanasana), downward facing dog (Adho Mukha Svasana) and Warrior I (Virabhadrasana I), working the sequence in reverse to come back into Tadasana and then repeat on the other side. Once we become accustomed to the routine, we can easily add more elements to our Sun Salute, maybe incorporating a backbend such as upward facing dog (Urdvha Mukha Svasana) or introducing a twist with Warrior I with the hands in prayer and the elbow against the outside of the leading thigh. You can customize your Sun Salutation to suit what feels good for you and your level of experience, plus you can either work quickly to generate heat for a more cardio-vascular exercise or you could slow it right down and hold each pose in your sequence for five breaths or whatever works best for you to build on strength and stamina.