Chair Yoga has many benefits and it's easy to practice in your own space
With love from Erin Madron!
Chair Yoga - features
Chair yoga adapts traditional yoga poses for those seated in a chair, making it a versatile practice for anyone. It’s ideal for people who have difficulty standing or moving from standing to sitting and lying down positions. This form of yoga is also perfect for office workers needing a quick energy boost or a break from their desks.
It offers numerous benefits, particularly for the elderly and individuals carrying extra weight, by providing a low-impact way to exercise that minimizes stress on the joints. Despite the modifications, the fundamental aspects of yoga poses, such as twists, hip stretches, forward bends, and gentle backbends, remain intact, ensuring a comprehensive yoga experience from the comfort of a chair.
What Are the Benefits of Chair Yoga?
What Is Chair Yoga?
When most people first think of yoga, they imagine a practitioner in a pretzel-like, contorted shape, perhaps balancing on their arms with their feet behind their head. Most of us don’t consider sitting in a chair to count as yoga practice.
But yoga in a chair changes this perspective. Yoga can be practiced fully without ever leaving your seat, which can be especially useful for practitioners struggling with balance issues, mobility issues, and/or stiffness and pain.
Although it can be frustrating when age, illness, or injury restricts your movements or ability to exercise as you used to, chair yoga can be a beautiful practice to fill the gap so that you’re still able to benefit from exercise in a more gentle, supported, and controlled way.
Chair yoga is simply yoga practiced with the support of a chair. Most (if not all) traditional yoga postures can be practiced seated, using the assistance of a chair to support some or all of your body weight to lessen the load on your joints and muscles and limit the range of motion necessary to practice certain asanas.
It’s a wonderfully supportive practice that can accommodate all body types, ability levels, injuries, conditions, ages, and more. And while you might assume that chair yoga is an “easy” practice or not a “real” exercise, you may be pleasantly surprised by the long list of amazing benefits of chair yoga.
What Are The Benefits Of Chair Yoga?
Yoga In A Chair Improves Flexibility And Strength
It’s considered to be common knowledge that yoga improves flexibility, and chair yoga is no exception. Not only does chair yoga help improve range of motion through its movement of joints and gentle tugs on fascial and muscular lines, but a study found chair yoga may be beneficial in improving mobility and reducing fear of falling.
Reduces Pain
Chair Yoga at the office counteracts too much sitting while also increasing strength and flexibility that can help reduce pain.
Yoga is known for its mindfulness elements, and this mindful awareness is important in pain tolerance. Pain science knows the importance of movement and awareness to improve the brain’s perception of pain, so it makes sense that chair yoga could help to improve pain sensation.
Elicits The Relaxation Response
The relaxation response is essentially the counterpart to the body’s stress response. It helps to shift the body from the fight-or-flight side of the nervous system (the sympathetic branch) to the rest-and-digest side of the nervous system (the parasympathetic branch).
Reduces Stress And Anxiety
Of course, less pain leads to less stress and anxiety. And a parasympathetic-dominant autonomic nervous system also physiologically reduces stress and anxiety significantly.
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