I was chatting to a personal trainer this week who specialises in coaching the military. Naturally, I asked him what exercise we should all be doing for optimal health.  His answer surprised me:

‘Walking, yoga and swimming,’ he said. ‘That’s the holy trinity of exercise and that’s what I always recommend.’

‘What about weights and resistance training and jumping and high intensity interval training,’ I spluttered into my coffee.

‘Fine, if that’s what you like, ‘ he answered.  ‘But a combination of walking, yoga and swimming will give you the strength, balance, fitness and flexibility that we need as we get older.’

As it happens, I’ve been investigating research into yoga for the last couple of months.

I returned to yoga in January after a few years of not doing it.  Why did I return? Because I read about an experiment that set out to find the most effective form of exercise for improving sleep.  I assumed that running or something very intense (like hours of squatting or skipping)  would be the most effective. Surely the physical exhaustion would lull you into deep and instant sleep?

But no.  That’s not what the researchers found.  Instead they found that regular yoga resulted in the best sleep.  Within minutes of reading this, I had my yoga mat out.   For five months I’ve been doing yoga every single day (with my favourite YouTube yogis – Kassandra, Charlie and Sarah Beth).  My sleep has been transformed. As many of you know, I’ve struggled with my sleep for a long time!

More importantly, I’ve come to love my daily yoga sessions. Not as much as my daily walk, of course.  But a close second.  Needless to say, I kept wondering if my time would be better spent doing something a little more… well, hardcore.  My yoga practice often felt hardcore, but it rarely appeared in studies of exercise.  It was time to dig a little deeper.

My scrutinising eye fell first on a 2022 study that found Yoga reduces falls more than any other form of exercise (including aerobic and strength training.). As the researchers said: ‘These results suggest that yoga may be preferable for older adults seeking to reduce their risk of falls.’

So yoga will help us from falling over. That gets a tick from me as my Mum fell back in January, was in hospital for seven weeks, and is still recovering.

What about keeping our bones strong? Well, it turns out that while yoga doesn’t match weight training for building bone mineral density (BMD), it can and does maintain BMD.  So if you’ve been doing yoga (I mean power yoga – like vinyasa yoga with dynamic, shifting poses) all your life, your bones should be as strong as they ever were.

What about fitness?  Well, yoga (even power yoga) doesn’t appear to significantly increase our cardio fitness. But it does cause the body to produce powerful anti-inflammatory molecules.  A mere six weeks of power yoga (60 minutes once a week)  ‘significantly increased’ levels of anti-inflammatory proteins known as ApoA1 and adiponectin, in the blood of participants. And in case you’re wondering what these proteins do, other than being anti-inflammatory, they remove cholesterol from the blood helping prevent plaque build-up in the arteries. In other words, yoga is good for the heart (and might help if you have high cholesterol). Read the study here.

As for reducing stress and improving mood and serenity, yoga often wins hands down.  And for those of you worried that doing yoga online won’t have the same effects, a 2026 study found that online yoga appeared to deliver the same results in terms of stress reduction and sleep improvement.

But when to do yoga?  Is there a perfect time?

Interestingly, a study of morning and evening yoga groups found that Morning Yoga showed significant benefits over Evening Yoga.  While both groups displayed improved quality of life, better psychological health and better sleep, the morning yogis had both more energy and even better sleep.  As the researchers concluded: ‘Morning yoga yields superior benefits for sleep, chronotype, sattva traits, and dietary choices.’ Sattva traits are those traits associated with traditional yogis – serenity, clarity of thinking, calmness, compassion, kindness.

But to this, I say – do yoga whenever you can fit it in!

The optimum scenario appears to be exactly as my trainer-to-the-military decreed: add yoga into your mix of activities. A 2025 study found that adding yoga as an extra activity reduced mortality risk by 51%.

This study suggested that yoga makes the perfect complement to aerobic movement like walking, and to resistance movement like swimming or working with weights. As the authors pithily put it: ‘Yoga participation and meeting the combined [cardio and strength] guidelines may provide additional and independent protective mortality benefits compared with meeting exercise guidelines without yoga.’

Do you regularly practice yoga? Has it helped?  We’d love to know.  Yoga continues to be understudied so I’ll be watching this space carefully.

I’ve got several more public events coming up – both talks and walking masterclasses – including some new ones.  I’ll be in conversation with Susan this Thursday (17 June) in Putney, London, and then at the following places at the following times. I’d love to see you there. And a huge thank you to every Age Weller who’s turned out to one of my events so far – it was an absolute joy to meet you!

Kings Cross, London 18 June, 5.30-7 pm, at the London Book Barge. Ticket here

Wimbledon, London 20 June, 10.30-11.30 am  https://www.waterstones.com/events/a-wimbledon-walking-tour-with-annabel-streets/london-wimbledon

Fulham, London, Nomad Books, 2.30 – 3.30 pm. Ticket here.

Covent Garden, London, Stanford Books, 1.00-1.45 pm. Ticket here.

Newark Book Festival, 10 July, 7.30-8.30 pm. Ticket here.

Marlborough Literary Festival, 25 September https://www.marlboroughlitfest.org/tickets/

Annabel