Ageless Energy: How Hot Yoga Can Inspire a Vibrant Life
71-year-old Sharon Schulte Kelly credits her regular hot yoga practice
for her ability to live a youthful life in this month’s Thrive Student Spotlight.
Maintaining vitality and energy becomes both a challenge and a choice as we age.
For Sharon Schulte Kelly, a longtime yoga student and active member of the Thrive community, the journey toward a healthy lifestyle stems from her hot yoga practice. Sharon attributes her strong body, mind, and spirit to her dedication and regular practice.
“I actually started yoga in the year 2000 because I was in a bowling league, and I was terrible,” laughs Sharon. “I started doing a different kind of yoga, which I did for about eight or nine years. Then I moved to Key West, and I was taking Spanish classes, sitting next to a gal who was a Bikram yoga teacher. There was a studio right in Key West. And so I said, I'm coming. I mean, I liked her, and I'd kind of been wanting to do it, so I went a couple of days later and, honestly, never looked back.”
Finding Inspiration In Others
Sharon got a glimpse of her future aspirations by noticing how active some seniors were in her community. “There were a couple of women in the studio in Key West who are still there practicing, and one is the mother of a student here in Michigan. Sophie Crawford and her daughter, Lynn Crawford,” says Sharon. “So when I met Sophie, who's in her 80s now and still practicing, I loved her. She's the nicest person ever, and she is so inspiring.”
“Even though you may not be thinking specifically about your stress, it releases as you do the postures.”
Being around the older women taught Sharon so much about who she was and who she wanted to be as she aged. “These women would ride their bikes across the island in Key West in their late 70s and early 80s. Their minds were sharp,” remembers Sharon. “And I am getting up there now. I recently turned 71. I have to stay active. I can't not do these things—I don't want to just shrivel up.”
And stay active, she does. Sharon rides her bike on the Paint Creek Trail three or four times a week, upwards of 20 miles. She also walks up to six miles in Birmingham each week. Seeing all these other women inspired her to do the same. “They come in, and they're smiling and happy. I mean, nobody's walking in like something horrible happened. They come in happy to be getting what they need.”
Giving The Body What It Craves
Like anyone in their 70s, Sharon does battle some ongoing health issues, but instead of seeing it as a hindrance, she uses it as motivation to keep moving. Sharon suffers from chronic scoliosis pain. “If I pick up my grandkids a lot when I babysit, it hurts,” says Sharon, and she notices it tends to also flare up when she doesn’t practice. “It is a no-brainer. I know when I'm out of whack, and I get back in that studio.”
Many of us bottle up as much as we can until it comes out sideways in the form of a health problem. The beauty of hot yoga is that in addition to a physical release, you also get emotional, mental, and stress release. It's not just sweating. You're also releasing tension. So, even though you may not be thinking specifically about your stress, it releases as you do the postures. “I could just feel it improving my skeleton, my structure, and it just felt so good,” says Sharon.
Have Mat, Will Travel
Hot yoga has also gotten Sharon through many hard times emotionally, too. For example, “In 2014, my former husband was diagnosed with an intermediary spinal cord tumor and given six months to live. Thankfully, he is still alive, but we had to go to MD Anderson in Houston for treatment and surgeries. We got an apartment down there, and there were two hot yoga studios within probably three miles of MD Anderson that I started going to immediately. I went to class almost every day down there, and that mentally got me through the challenges we were going through there. I met good friends that I'm still friends with today.”
Recognizing how comprehensive the benefits of hot yoga were encouraged Sharon to participate in Thrive’s Breakaways. She spent a week with us in Urbino, Italy, this past summer and is already signed up for next summer’s trip to Greece. “It just took my breath away,” says Sharon. “We were all kind of on our little missions of where we were going, but it was a safe community. Everything about it was great.” Sharon went three days before the retreat began and stayed three days after, hanging out with some of the new friends she met on her trip.
“That entire trip was so cumulative—every day kept getting better and better,” Sharon says. ”It's like, how can anything top what just happened? And it kept happening, between the food and beauty. Every morning, I was taking pictures of the exact same thing because it was just so breathtaking.”
“I Love the Community.”
Thrive’s Breakaways only seemed to enhance Sharon’s experience at the studio. “The community,” she says. “I love the community—the people in the studio that I whisper with or talk to in the lobby. I’ve met a lot of really good friends. The trip helped a ton, but that's what I love about it: it’s a community of like-minded people.”
Whether you become best friends with them or not, having that connection of hot yoga, health consciousness, and prioritization of yourself and your health is comforting and motivational. It’s a feeling that lends itself to vitality and longevity,
Parting Wisdom
For those who practice, especially in their later years, hot yoga offers more than just a workout—it’s a transformative ritual that inspires mental clarity, fosters physical strength and helps sustain a vibrant, fulfilling life at any age.
“I tell everyone they have to try it one time just to be able to say they tried it,” Sharon says, adding her most important piece of advice: “Listen to the teacher’s cues.” What she means is that there's a rhythm to hot yoga. One posture builds on the next, on the next, on the next, and then there’s a synergy of doing it all in one session. It helps when you pay close attention. Sit down if you're tired, but also know that the provided sequence allows for amazing benefits.
“I feel so lucky that I have this available to me,” Sharon says. “I don't want to change a thing. Whatever comes along, whatever Thrive has in store for us next is what it's going to be, and I'll adapt and go with the flow—just keep that studio open!”
About the photos in this blog post
“I love some of the photos from Italy so much. it really represents not only what I’ve learned over the past many years from my classes at Thrive but the community, that whole tribe thing! There’s a photo of me and my sister-in-law with our grandkids, which is what it’s all about, being able to move and pick up these little girls and have fun and enjoy my life outside the studio in a way that only the movement I get from Thrive provides. I also have to find this photo of [Thrive Hot Yoga instructor] Shannon and me from a couple of years ago which I totally love because she really helped take my practice to a whole next level.”