Chair Stability and Mobility

Hello, everyone. I'm so glad you here for a little practice with me today. Today, I'd like to share with you a chair yoga practice. And what you need is any kind of chair that doesn't have side arms. So it doesn't have to be a specific yoga chair. Although you might get excited to add this as a new prop in your yoga space after class.

Alright. So what I want to encourage you to do once you've got your right chair is to sit to the front of the chair so your feet are flat on the floor. And we're gonna rest the hands on the knees and maybe rock your pelvis a little bit back and forth, just getting used to your spot here on your chair. And as we rock a little bit more into a neutral position, try to align yourself to look to the horizon easily, ears lined up with shoulders, chin, parallel to the floor, and then maybe a little softening of your facial muscles. K. Take comfortable breath in and out here. K. As we're suddenly, we'll do a little movement for the neck with your right ear toward your right shoulder. Chin towards your chest and then left ear toward left shoulder.

Had a tiny bit back. Let me just make a few more of those circles. It's listening to how your neck feels right now. Kind of feedback you're getting. And then we'll lift the head back up on top of your spine.

It was bring your fingertips to the tops of your shoulders and move your arms in this way. You have taken some of my classes. You know, I love these joint warm ups. So let's get into the shoulders a tiny bit. And then after moving that direction, go in your opposite direction with your arms.

Just notice what feels different here in this joint. K. Now to get her hands ready, let's bring her hands together, lace your fingers, and you're just moving between your wrist and your elbows. No single popping cracking sounds in the wrist. And hopefully, that goes away. And as that starts to go away, let's take your left hand to your right knee and reach to touch the back of your chair for a lower spinal rotation.

Come back to neutral, right hand to your left knee, touch the back of your chair, spinal rotation. And let's come back to center. Alright. Now let's bring your legs a little bit closer together, and we're gonna do what almost kinda mimics walking where you lift your left leg, and then you might reach out with your right arm. Gonna pull back and have your right leg forward, left arm out, left leg forward, right arm outs, right leg forward, left arm out. And then we're just gonna do a little bit more what might feel natural for you of stretching the leg out.

While reaching the opposite arm forward. You get a hamstring stretch, and then you're engaging the front of your leg, your quadricep here. K. Couple more stretching out the leg. Reaching out, keeping good posture awareness. Email is go ahead and keep both feet on the floor.

So separate your feeds and knees a little bit wider, and we're gonna do our first lift off the chair. So if you have your arms out in front of you, we're gonna lift off the chair and come to our straddle position. And then we'll pull the elbows back and open up the chest. When the arms go back out, find your way back to your seats. So we'll come up, pull the hands back, and then slowly ease back to your seats.

Come up, pull back. Slowly easing to your seats. Couple more times. Come up. Open the chest. Sit on down.

Come on up. Open chest. And then sits. Let's do one more. Come on up, and then sits. Let's bring your hands to your knees and wiggle your legs together so the knees are pointing forward. Again, we're still at the front of our seat.

Have your arms sweep out to the sides, and as far up as you can reach, maybe with bent elbows, and then we're gonna bring your arms up to the side and lean forward and touch the ground by your feet. Inhale sweep back up. Doing our forward fold here as we exhale. I mean, over the legs, touch the ground look down, inhale circle up, and exhale down. And let's do two more.

Little circle up. And exhale doing our forward fold in the chair. Inhale up. And those just keep your arms at your side. So let's use your hands on your thighs to help you come all the way up to stands.

Let's get a hold of the top of your chair, and I'm gonna have that turned, so that I have access to the tall part of the chair and have the seat facing away from me for a moment. K. So if I hold on to my tall heart. If you had a wall, you could always put your chair up against a wall. Otherwise, I really recommend having the legs on a yoga mat. So we're gonna walk back. And one of my favorite ways to do downward dog is with the feet.

That's why it is the shoulders hands on that tall part of your chair and stretch your hips back as your head rests for a moment between your arms. So more access for a lot of us to have straighter legs and a really good stretch for the shoulders here. Now let's lift your heels and tip yourself forward and come into kind of a beginning of an up dog with the chest lifted heels up. And then again, hips back head down. Tuning into the legs, arms, torso, and then heels up as we come maybe just a tiny bit more forward with our hips.

Going back as you exhale, head down. And again, coming forward with the chest a little bit up. Now as we swing the hips back, let's bring your feet side by side. And as you hold on to your chair, stretch your left leg back so you're mimicking kind of your warrior three and then have your left foot to the floor. And think of it kind of as a warm up, so it might not be the biggest stretch ever.

Or the highest warrior three with your back, like, up version you've ever done, which is kinda getting used to the idea of stretching back, engaging the glute and back muscles. It's alternating at a pace that feels good for you, stretch back. Other leg goes back. Let's visit each leg one more time. It's a good stretch back.

Minimal twisting in the hips. Okay. Feed together, walk your feet forward towards your chair. So as we turn, so we have the chair available for maybe your right hands. Okay. We'll stand for a moment here. Let's take a step back with your left foot.

So you're in a high lunge with your back heel lifted, and it's so great to have the chair here for support. So when we drop your left knee down and swing your left arm up, we're going in and out of our lunge. With the assist of our chair. So we're going down as you reach up. It's spine nice and neutral.

Going down as you reach up. The legs take you up. Coming down and up. Let's do a couple more. Going down and up. And maybe one more going down.

And up. Right. Now as you bring your feet back underneath your hips, we'll stay with the side for a moment. Spin your left knee out and bring your foot somewhere up your inner leg line without grabbing your foot. So just slide it up. Now let's take our left arm up for our tree. So sometimes it could just build a little more confidence when we're holding the chair and can stay a little bit longer, which then starts to strengthen that right ankle and right hip. In this case, by staying longer because we've got this chair here. Now let's say you wanna try challenge your balance, you, of course, might bring your arm up by your ear, and you might have a preference to have your hand on the chair or up.

You try both. See what works for you. I'm gonna come back down and hold the chair. One more moment. I'm holding my chair. I'm reaching up.

Now if you take your left arm down and do hold your chair, wiggle one foot one inch or two away from your chair. Ban your right knee, and let's hang our left ankle over that right knee. So we can, from here, tip our hips back and lean forward and do that great stretch or the pose, it gives us a great stretch in our left hip as we look down. So our figure four forward bend. One more moment just noticing the stretch in that left hip and then come on up. Okay.

Feed on the ground. K. Let's see how the other side feels. And in between, might take a moment and just do a few little hula hoop circles since we are on one side for a decent amount of time. And then we'll come back to recenter yourself. So if you step back with your right leg and the back heel is up in your lunge, drop your right knee whenever you're ready and swing your right arm up by your ear.

We're doing our drop knee lunge, come up, and again going down. And use the legs to take you up, looking out to your horizon line, come down, and up. And again, down, and up. Let's do one more. Drop knee lunge, and then go ahead and come out. Okay. So we find enough space here where you're standing on your left leg and turn your right knee out.

And without grabbing your foot, just slide it up your leg. See where it lands. Let's take your right arm up by your ear and just kind of feel your whole left foot pushing into the floor. Get a little taller through your spine all the way up through the crown of your head and kind of feel the benefit of using this chair. So you might not be wobbly or distracted in that way.

And we're just focusing a little bit more on building strength by holding longer, building their confidence today in our balance pose. K. So maybe you're rested. Balance feels really good today, and it would feel incomplete without both arms up, please take both arms up, see how that feels, or bring yourself back to that place where we have maybe a different focus today, which is more on building strength and confidence. We'll take your right arm down in just a moment and just wiggle your left foot a tiny bit to the left. So you have a little more space for our figure four.

Hold your right knee. Hold your chair. I'm gonna tip our hips back as you lean a little bit forward and see how different this side feels compared to the first side. So we're bending left ankle. We're dropping the hips down. So we look toward the floor.

And tune into that right hip. Alright. Let's come on up and both feet back on the floor. K. Let's take that chair. I'm gonna turn it back around to the short end of your mat. As you're holding to the tall part, turn your toes out, right to the edge, bend your knees. I'm gonna start to lower a bit into a squat, and your hands would slide down the chair.

You're not pulling it. You're just holding it and looking forwards. K. We come back up. We might release the chair. Hold your chair, bend your knees, slide your hands down the sides as you find your version of a squat, which might be easier with holding the chair.

Come up, let go of the chair. One more time. Hold your chair. Slides your hands down the side. Find your squat.

When you come up, hold the top part of your chair, turn your feet forward and walk your feet back again, find your downward dog. It wiggled the hips back, head down between your arms, and I like to point my fingertips forward. So I'm actively pressing my hands into the chair seats as I stretch my hips back. Take another moment here. Alright. Now let's walk your feet back up towards your chair.

Okay. So we're gonna spin the chair around now. So you've got the seats available and facing your knees. K. Now we we take a that back a little bit away from the chair, so maybe a foot away from your chair. And let's put your left foot up on the seat chair and maybe do a little hop back with your right foot. So Once we're here, let's reach your arms in front of you and then lace your fingers together.

Press your hands towards the sky, and then we're gonna deepen the lunge through the front leg. And Since we're up a little bit higher with our foot, maybe the knee goes a little bit over the ankle. If that feels okay for you, we're not putting as much weight on it as if we were standing. You can also move back and take one more hot back if you like with your back foots. So make sure it's good in your back knee. We're gonna lunge forward as you're pressing up through your hands.

Move yourself back. And one more time, let yourself linger here and maybe lift your gaze a little bit more up as you're pressing your palms towards the ceiling. So you get that wonderful stretch through the right side of your body. As you move back, let's bring your hands to your hips and move your hips far enough back that you can point your left foot towards the ceiling. Let's feel the movement of the hips a little bit back in space as you tip forward.

If you want a little bit more challenging work for the back, you would have your arms open out to your sides. Okay. We're keeping long from head to tail as your arms open wide. As you come up, let's bend your front knee one more time, lunge forward, arms at 90 degrees, and let's do a little rotation to your left, and then face forward. Little rotation to your left, face forward one more time. We'll do a little rotation to your left, face forward, and then arms down, and step back, have both feet on the floor.

Again, you might do a little hula hoop circle since we stay on one side for a decent amount of time, you can erase, hopefully, some stiffness here. K. Bring your feet maybe a little bit closer to your chair. Right foot ends up on top and then usually we need to do a little hop back or sometimes two to find the right position. Now when your arms go up and your fingers laced, maybe you consider lacing your fingers your non habitual way for our second side, and we're pushing up as we deepen our lunge. K. So you feel that stretch all the way down that left side of your body, move your hips a little bit back, kind of reengage your arms, and then do your lunge forward. Move yourself back and you're making sure you're comfortable in your back, knee, and foot. So now as we stay with our lunge and we press the hands up, we might even take the gaze a little more up towards the ceiling.

And just appreciating that lunge with a lift under your right foot to go deeper into your left side body stretch. K. Now when you move your body back, bring your hands to your hip area, and move back enough that you can point your right toes towards the ceiling. And then you can feel with your hands, your hips moving a tiny bit back in space might not be very much. So we can stay here looking down long from head to tail. Little bit more back work, we would open our arms out to the sides. So we're trying to keep this lift through your chest as you go forward and experience your hamstrings on this sides. Alright. Let's lift on up if you're ready.

Hands back to your hips as you bend your front knee a little bit again. Spring your arms to our 90 degree angle and do a little rotation to your right. And then face forward, a little rotation to your right, and face forward, and again a little rotation to your right. And face forward. Now as you put both feet down on the floor, feet about hip distance apart, bend your knees as you hold the top of the chair or some of you might like to grab the side of your chair as you walk back and come into basically a plank pose.

K. So back heel heels are up. Let's tip yourself a little forward and open up through the front of your body, and you can adjust your hands if you didn't like the way they're placed now. Swing your hips back and we're in our downward dog with their hands in the lower position. So it might feel a little bit of a stronger stretch or work in your shoulders. Come forward tipping into your plank into a little bit of up dog, and then hips back with your head down.

Let's roll two more times coming forward on your inhale into a back band with strong legs, strong arms, exhale back. One more time coming forward on your inhale. Maybe a lift of the chest. Exhale back. K. Now walk your feet forward so they're more under your hips.

And we've got our hands more or less under our shoulders. So it's kind of a half forward folds. You might bring your feet just a tiny bit closer together. We're gonna put our right hand at the top of the chair and swing your left leg back. So a version of hunting dog where we've got a strong press through your back heel, and now maybe we float your right arm up toward the height of your ear.

Take one more moment, steadying yourself and hunting dog. Let's bring our foot down and our hand back down to neutral. May start by swinging your right leg back and your left hand might rest on the top of your chair for a moment as you find more energy for that back leg. And then reach out in front of you with your left hands. K. So it's a really dynamic reach from right to left.

And then take hand down and foot down back to our neutral positioned a half forward fold. Let's go ahead, bend your knees, turn your toes out as you're bending your knees, and let's grab the side of your chair seat and try one more time coming down towards your squats, which I think are so great when you've got something in front of you. Makes it a little easier to access. Okay. We can let go of the chair. See this, we come up to stand and turn so your feet face forward, heel, toe legs, and feet towards each other.

So now as we face the long side of the mat, everyone has different height chairs and different sized bodies. So one safe way that we can do a half moon, which I'm gonna show you two ways, is where our knee, let's say our right knee is pointing toward the chair seat. So I would bend my knee, and I'd put my hand on the chair seats, left hand to the hip, and then we'd lean towards your chair and lift up. And oftentimes, it's a really wonderful place to work on balance. You can send the top arm towards the ceiling. And oftentimes, you can be here longer because you've got the chair.

So I hope we can celebrate that. Now drop your back foot and come back to center. If it works out with your height and your chair, my favorite way to do this is with the tall part of the chair by my right leg, by my right hip. So that I lean over the chair and put my hand on the seat of the chair. And this kind of presses into my my leg or my hip in a way that helps me kinda lean a little bit more out to the right, in this case.

Left arm in the air. K. So I'll give you time to explore again your ch your half moon pose with your chair. I'll just stay here another moment. Really let yourself open up through that back leg and top hand. Everything in between, and then drop your back, leg, drop your arm, and we'll wrap up that half moon on that side.

K. Let's see what side two feels like, and we're gonna start with the chair closest to your leg because most of us can do that where your knee is pointing to the chair. I'm gonna put my left hand on the chair right hand at the hip as I lean over this chair. It's still a fair amount of work, and you still have to balance, but things are usually a tad bit easier. At some point, your right arm might reach up towards the ceiling just an opportunity to maybe stay longer as you open up. If you're curious and it worked for you on the other side, come out, turn your chair around. And if it's the hip height and the chair height work for you, you're gonna lean over the tall part of the chair and put your hand down on the seat so that kind of grounding the chair down.

I know for me, helps me really lift up that back leg. K? So feeling solid as you find one more time your half moon. Let yourself shine bright here. Could even maybe turn your gaze and see what it's like to look up towards the ceiling. As you lower your leg, you might grab your chair and come out of our big exploration.

That was our peak pose today. And then I'm gonna have you face again the long side of your mat. So let's have a seat. And as you have a seat, let your hands for a moment hold the side of the chair, and you're just gonna wiggle your bottom forward until you can slide right off your chair for a moment. We're gonna go down and up a couple times.

A little bit of a tricep push up going down and up down and up one more time. Doing a little dip down and up. Alright. Now let's scoot yourself to the front of your seats. So stretch your left leg out to the left and your right leg to the right. And this bent almost like you're doing warrior two.

I'm gonna have you hold the chair side with your right hand and take your left arm in front of you. And I do this a lot in my class on the ground. So we're gonna bend this back left knee as we pivot, lift your back heel and reach to your right. And then pull back, this knee is bent, and you reach again and let that back foot move with you as you pivot around right to left. So we look out over the right left fingertips. Pull back. One more time, reaching over to your rights.

Now as we pull back, let's go ahead and anchor ourselves here with your left leg straight, and the foot is in front of the line of your chair seats. As we hold on to our right knee, try to press down into your feet, both of them, as you engage your legs, and then stretch your left arm up by your ear as you tip over and rest your forearm on your thigh. Hey, let's use this as an opportunity to stretch that left arm forward down to the left and up and around a few times. I'm playing with our side angle going up and around. K? And just hold for a moment, your arm by your ear as you slide your right hand down your leg and rotate your body open to the long side of your mat.

One more breath here. Let's lift up, bend the knees, pull them a little bit closer together and then slide your right leg out and forward of the line of your chair. Hold on to the chair with your left hand right arm in front of you And we bend that right knee as we pivot and reach to your left. And then the leg stays bent as you open up through the right side of your chest. K? Follow your right hand to the left.

Your back leg and foot are moving with you, open chest, pivot and reach to your left and pull back. K. Now anchor yourself so the right leg goes straight or right at the front of the chair press down into both feet and start to tip so that your left forearm ends up on your thigh. And let's send the right arm up and around a few times, clearing any stiffness in that upper chest and shoulder. Opening. And then let's go ahead and keep this right arm up by your ear for a moment and dig a little deeper into the grounding of the feet, stretch a little longer through your right side.

And then come back around to center. K. Let's bring your legs in, legs in, legs in with your knees pointing straight ahead. Let's reach your arms forward and lift up into chair in front of a chair. Lower your arms slowly sit back down. K. Slowly come up and be really mindful of slowly easing back into your seats.

Rising up, chair, sitting down chair. Let's come to chair and stay here and then work up to straight legs, arms down. I'm gonna take that chair and turn it one more time. So the chair seat faces your knees. We're gonna come down to the floor and enjoy as we come to meet the floor, putting the heels up on your seat chair.

Okay. So you wanna lay back. And maybe come to that place where you have your heels about the middle of your chair seat area and knees, parallel with your hips. Arms down. And go ahead now with your toes pointing to the ceiling, heels pushing down, lift your hips and buttocks off the floor, and then lower down. So you're doing kind of a little warm up for bridge.

Heels, press down, hips come up. And lower. Couple more. Last hard work for class going up and down, using the chair to help us in the little bridge. Let's do one more up. And down.

K. Now we might go a little closer to the chair depending on your height. So the back of the chair or the chair is in the back of your knees. I used to get on the knees a little bit wider apart here. And maybe we come to a resting place now where you've got your heels on the chair, back of the knee supported, we can let the arms open out to your side. Wonderful to do legs up on the chair to finish a yoga practice.

Especially if you don't have a wall to put your legs up. It's nice to grab a chair just for this, if nothing else. To when you're ready, just keep feeling again. More and more of your body sinking back into the floor. As you feel the sturdiness of all your props, maybe we feel that front body gets softer and softer. Facial muscles become more and more relaxed.

And maybe over the next five breaths, you let yourself just settle and relax as much as you can into our reclined posture. Well, I hope this gives you a little taste now of how great it feels to add a chair to your yoga practice space. For building strength and confidence, and also to help us go into some restorative poses, maybe more deeply. K. At some point, when you're ready, we'll slide the feet off your chair and maybe roll over to a side. And when you come up to sit, I always like to, for a moment, when I've got that chair around to use it behind me, to just lightly let it touch my upper mid back shoulder area.

So whether I keep my legs straight, this just gives me a little feedback to keep lifting through that upper back, or if you end up in cross legged, again, just a little something to keep you from rounding your back, just a little nudge to sit up tall. Perhaps create your intention for this new day, what you wish for a little bit more of, and keeping that in your heart mind. Nava Stay. Thanks so much for joining me.