We’ve talked a lot about helping provide access to yoga for under-served and at-risk youth. But there’s another population equally in need of yoga’s healing and meditative benefits: the elderly. Physically and economically challenged older people often can’t affird £10 a class–or keep up with the vigorous vinyasa flow.

Frank Isak knows this. The 78-year-old yoga teacher and founder of Silver Age Yoga has made it his life’s mission to get older people on the mat. He goes to them (in senior centers, libraries, and churches), keeps it simple, and tailors his classes to help offset some of their common health issues: osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, weight gain, and poor circulation.

Best of all, his classes are totally free. Iszak, who escaped to the U.S. from forced labor camp in communist Hungary in 1958, lives for seva, tirelessly working to improve the lives of others.

“Our basic goal is to make their lives better–for whatever years they have left on planet Earth,” he says of his students. Sangha, too, is an important part of the Silver Age formula: Lonely elderly people get a chance to connect physically, mentally, and spiritually with a community
focused on feeling better in the world.”