Yoga for all

Chair yoga can show you how to improve balance, flexibility, mood, and overall strength.

Benefits of Yoga

Yoga is a series of poses (called postures) and respiratory techniques that include a component of meditation. Asanas are helpful in some ways. They help reduce muscle tension, construct flexibility and strength, increase bone strength, and improve balance.

In addition, the meditative quality of yoga triggers a well-studied physiological change generally known as the comfort response, which can assist lower your blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen consumption, adrenaline levels, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol. “And it boosts your mood, reduces anxiety and depression, and improves sleep,” Malloy says.

A modified approach

Chair yoga includes lots of the asanas utilized in traditional yoga, but in chair yoga the chairs are replaced by sitting or standing next to the chair. “Instead of stretching your legs on the floor, you can do them sitting. Or if it's a simple standing posture, you can hold onto a chair,” says Malloy. For example, the normal technique to do “downward dog” is to put your hands and feet on the ground to form an upside-down V shape along with your body. In chair yoga, you may modify this by placing your feet on the ground, then bending on the hips and placing your hands on the seat of the chair as a substitute of the ground.

Do you get the identical advantages with editing? “Absolutely,” Malloy says, “because you're still focusing on your breath and being in the moment, so you're relaxing, and you're also getting a stretch and strength.”

Chair yoga class

Like traditional yoga, chair yoga is taught in school. In a typical class, participants might start with quarter-hour of respiratory and stretching exercises, similar to “sun breathing”: inhale and extend your arms out to the perimeters and up, then exhale and lower your arms. This may be done sitting down.

After respiratory and stretching time, participants spend about half-hour strengthening balance and posture. Tree Pose, great for balance, is completed while holding the back of a chair for support: Start along with your feet flat on the ground, then bend your left knee and place your left foot in your right inner leg, as in case you're making the letter P. You can proceed to carry the chair or raise one or each of your arms. Then you hold this asana for 3 to 6 breaths.

After balance and strengthening, participants spend the last quarter-hour of sophistication doing guided leisure.

to start

You'll find chair yoga classes at senior centers, yoga studios, local YMCAs, and even hospitals. You won't have to buy any equipment. You can wear loose clothing, similar to a t-shirt and shorts. The costs are frequently not covered by insurance. Malloy says you'll be able to expect to pay $10 to $20 per class.

And one other tip: Look for a yoga instructor trained to work with older adults, preferably one with no less than a 200-hour certification. Be sure to let the trainer find out about any physical limitations you could have so that they can higher assist you.