Healthy Aging and Chronic Disease Prevention

Alongside our Ageless Grace – Essentials class offerings, we also provide Ageless Grace – Parkinson’s Edition which is a brain health fitness program tailored for people with Parkinson’s and their care people. These exercises, based on everyday movements that are natural and organic, focus on the healthy longevity of the body and brain. 

Practicing Ageless Grace for 10 minutes every day can improve your brain health. Ageless Grace activates all 5 functions of the brain:

• strategic planning
• memory and recall
• analytical thinking
• creativity and imagination
• kinesthetic learning. 

A Parkinson’s disease patient can enhance attention span, increase levels of working memory, speed up the brain’s processing power and thereby stimulate healing and improve poor balance and other movement disorders.

POWER THROUGH PARKINSON’S

Tuesdays from 2:45-3:45 pm at the South Y

This class is tailored specifically for individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD), focusing on improving flexibility, strength, coordination, and cardiovascular health. It incorporates PWR! Moves and engaging boxing drills, all designed to address the unique symptoms of PD. Above all, the class is structured to be fun, motivating, and uplifting, ensuring a positive and supportive experience for all participants. This class is facilitated in collaboration with the Michigan Parkinson Foundation.

PWR! MOVES

Thursdays from 2-3pm at the Central Y

This class is designed to improve mobility, strength, and balance. It targets key movement patterns to help counteract symptoms like rigidity and slowness. Suitable for all stages of Parkinson’s, the class helps participants maintain independence, enhance movement, and improve overall quality of life in a supportive group setting. Free community class.

Have you turned down a chance to go out with family or friends because you were concerned about falling? Have you cut down on a favorite activity because you might fall? If so, A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls is a program for you. 

Fear of falling can be just as dangerous as falling itself. People who develop this fear often limit their activities, which can result in severe physical weakness, making the risk of falling even greater. Many older adults also experience increased isolation and depression when they limit their interactions with family and friends. 

A Matter of Balance is designed to reduce the fear of falling and increase activity levels among older adults. Participants learn to set realistic goals to increase activity, change their environment to reduce fall risk factors, and learn simple exercises to increase strength and balance.

YMCA Diabetes Prevention Program is based on the landmark Diabetes Prevention Program funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which showed that by eating healthier, increasing physical activity, and losing a small amount of weight, a person with pre-diabetes can prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes by 58%.

Meeting either in person or online, a trained lifestyle coach helps program participants change their lifestyles by learning about healthy eating, physical activity, and other behavior changes over the course of 16 one-hour sessions. Topics covered include nutrition, getting started with physical activity, overcoming stress, staying motivated, and more. After the initial core sessions, participants will meet monthly for up to a year for added support to help them maintain their progress.

The program is ideal for adults (18+) who:

• Have a BMI of 25 or more
• Had diabetes during pregnancy OR
• Have certain lab values

LIVE STRONG at the YMCA is a small-group physical activity and well-being cancer survivorship program that meets at the YMCA twice a week for 90-minutes each session. The program is designed for those living with, through or beyond cancer. 

The programs offers people affected by cancer a safe, supportive environment to participate in physical and social activities focused on strengthening the whole person. Participants work with Y staff trained in supportive cancer care to achieve such goals as:

• Building muscle mass and strength
• Increasing flexibility and endurance
• Improving balance
• Improving confidence and self-esteem
• Improving emotional well-being of survivors and their families
• Connecting with other survivors during treatment and beyond

LIVE STRONG at the YMCA is an evidence-based program that is offered hundreds of Ys across the nation. The program has proven to help survivors meet or exceed the recommended amount of physical activity, significantly increase their cardiovascular endurance and improve their overall quality of life while decreasing their cancer-related fatigue.