Movement – specifically, yoga – serves bone health by keeping bones strong (i.e., tough, hard, solid with elasticity) through the application of non-threatening weight-bearing.
This results in BMD, or Bone Mineral Density. (Healthy adult bones will exhibit a ratio of 33.3% organic matter to 66.7% inorganic matter. The organic parts provide elasticity and toughness – the inorganic parts provide hardness and solidity.)
In a New York Times article titled 12 Minutes of Yoga for Bone Health[1], Dr. Loren M Fishman, a physiatrist at Columbia University who specializes in rehabilitative medicine, cites that weight-bearing activity is often recommended to patients with bone loss.
Dr. Fishman, arguing that certain yoga positions fit [this] bill, states “Yoga puts more pressure on bone than gravity does. By opposing one group of muscles against another, it stimulates osteocytes, the bone-making cells.”
[1] Jane Brody (December, 2015).