Joan Baez’s secrets to staying fit at age 77

At a time in life when many start to slow down, legendary singer Joan Baez remains a whirlwind of activity.

At 77, the folk music icon is promoting her new album Whistle Down the Wind and has extended her final concert tour, the Fare Thee Well Tour, into 2019. Last year, the silver-haired singer was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and her rendition of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was featured in the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Baez has also added painting to her resume, often showing her work at Mill Valley’s Seager Gray Gallery.

So what is Baez’s secret to aging with grace? She has some natural advantages, such as good genes from her mother, who lived to be 100. But she also takes pains to eat healthy, such as harvesting the eggs from her own backyard and she pursues a rigorous fitness schedule. She also has the courage to let go of the past, embracing the way her voice has shifted over time. But Baez says the real key to staying fit enough to pull off a worldwide tour at her age is a posture and movement system called the Gokhale Method that soothes her neck, shoulders and back. “People are always asking me how I stay in good shape,” says Baez, over the phone from her home in Woodside. “And I actually do a lot of things like yoga and Pilates and meditation, but for me, the posture work is at the base of all of it. It’s at the core of everything.”

Baez says perfecting her stance has been the key to conquering her neck problems, which flare up because of the time she spends holding a guitar for long stretches on stage. She has had to learn how to sleep and walk and move with the proper alignment to keep her body limber.

“Basically the whole thing is lengthening the body and depressing the spinal column,” says Baez.

“It’s a very hands-on discipline and you work with a mirror so you can see what you are doing.”

“People are always asking me how I stay in good shape.” JOAN BAEZ