Chair yoga sequence

This chair yoga sequence is twenty five minutes, thirteen positions, all of them done sitting on an ordinary chair or standing with one hand on it. It is a complete practice in its own right and not a watered down version of something better. Nine of the thirteen items are performed seated. The other four use the chair as a rail, which is what makes standing balance work available to somebody who would not attempt it in the middle of a room.

It is written for all ages, and that is a deliberate correction. Chair yoga is sold almost everywhere as a practice for the very old and the very unwell, and the result is that people who would benefit most from it will not touch it. In the hall I have taught this to a 34 year old software engineer with a disc problem, a 52 year old woman six weeks after a knee operation, and a 79 year old man who could no longer get down to the floor and back up again without help. All three did the same thirteen items, and the reasons for wanting the floor out of the equation are set out further in yoga for beginners over 40.

You need the chair to be the right kind. A dining chair or a steel folding chair with a flat seat and no arms. Not a sofa, not an office chair with wheels, and not a chair with a cushion so soft that your hips sink below your knees. If your feet do not reach the floor comfortably, put a book under them. If the seat is deep enough that you cannot sit forward with a long back, sit on a folded blanket at the front edge.

Two metres of clear space in front of the chair and half a metre behind it is enough for everything here. You want no rug that can slide, and if the floor is polished stone, which most halls and most Indian homes have, put the chair on a mat so that it cannot travel while you are standing up out of it.

The order is not decorative and it is not the order in which the positions are easiest to photograph. It runs seated, then seated with the arms working, then seated with the spine turning, then standing with support, then seated again to finish, and each of those groups exists for a reason.

The first three items warm the spine before anything asks it to turn. A twist done on a cold back is the commonest way anyone hurts themselves in a gentle class, so the chair twist is deliberately sixth and not second. The two arm items before it, Gomukhasana arms and the seated triangle, open the ribs and the shoulder girdle so that the turn comes from the middle of the back rather than from the neck and the shoulder, which is also the first thing I look at in anybody with neck and shoulder pain.

The standing group is placed at item nine, not at item one, because standing up is the hardest thing in this sequence for the people who need it most. By minute fifteen the hips have moved, the ankles have woken up, and the sit to stand that opens the standing group is a much smaller event than it would have been cold. Putting the sit to stand first would mean testing the weakest link before anything had prepared it.

The forward fold with the hands on the seat comes last of the standing items because it is the only one where the head goes below the heart. Anyone who feels light headed there is already at the end of the standing work and has only to sit down, which is one step away rather than four positions away. That is a sequencing decision about safety, and it is why the fold is not where a book would put it.

Finally, the practice ends where it started, sitting still. A routine that finishes on the last stretch teaches the body that this was exercise. A routine that finishes with eighteen counted exhales teaches it something else, and that difference is most of the reason people report sleeping better in the second week.

This is the asset. Print this page or copy the list onto a card, and keep it on the chair itself rather than on your phone. Twenty five minutes, thirteen items, in this order.

1. Sukhasana, seated, 2 minutes. Sit forward, feet flat, twelve slow breaths.
2. Urdhva Hastasana, seated, 90 seconds. Eight arm raises, shoulders down.
3. Marjariasana, seated, 2 minutes. Twelve rounds of cat and cow, hands on knees.
4. Gomukhasana arms, 2 minutes. One minute a side, belt between the hands.
5. Trikonasana, seated, 2 minutes. Two side bends of thirty seconds each way.
6. Ardha Matsyendrasana, chair twist, 2 minutes. One minute a side, turn from the ribs.
7. Garudasana arms, 90 seconds. Forty five seconds a side, elbows lifted.
8. Janu Sirsasana, chair version, 2 minutes. One minute a side, heel on the floor.
9. Utkatasana, sit to stand, 2 minutes. Eight repetitions, no hands, lower slowly.
10. Virabhadrasana 2, hand on the chair, 2 minutes 30. Seventy five seconds a side.
11. Vrikshasana, fingertips on the chair, 2 minutes. One minute a side, toes down is fine.
12. Uttanasana, hands on the seat, 90 seconds. Two holds of six breaths.
13. Savasana, seated, 2 minutes. Palms up, eighteen counted exhales.

Three optional minutes if you have them, added at the end and not in the middle: nine rounds of anulom vilom, which needs nothing but the same chair and the same upright sitting you have just spent twenty five minutes earning. On a day when you have ten minutes rather than twenty five, do items one, three, six, nine and thirteen and call it done.

A printable one page PDF of this plan is being prepared. It is not linked yet, and when it exists it will be a plain download rather than something hidden behind a popup.

Chair yoga looks so mild that nobody warns you about anything, which is exactly why the same four things go wrong.

• Do not use a chair with wheels or arms. Wheels are obvious once said and not before. Arms are the subtler problem: they stop the elbows travelling and they turn the seated twist into a neck movement.
• Do not pull yourself round in the twist with the hand on the chair back. The arm is there to rest, not to lever. If your shoulders end up further round than your ribs, you have used the arm, and the lower back pays for it a day later.
• Do not hold the breath in the sit to stand. Almost everybody does on the first day. Breathe out as you rise. Holding the breath while pushing up is a straining pattern and it is the reason a small number of people feel a thump in the head on the third repetition.
• Do not do the standing items on a chair that is not against something. Put the chair back against a wall, or at least check that it does not slide when you lean on it, before item nine and not after.

Skip or modify the whole standing group if you have had a fall in the last three months, if you are dizzy on standing up, or if you are on medication that lowers blood pressure and you have not yet learned how your own body responds. The seated nine items are a legitimate twenty minute practice on their own.

Two positions come out entirely for particular people. The chair twist comes out in pregnancy after the first trimester and after any recent abdominal surgery, and the forward fold with the hands on the seat comes out for anyone with uncontrolled high blood pressure, glaucoma or a recent eye operation, because the head goes below the heart. Replace the fold with another minute of seated cat and cow and the sequence still works.

Nothing here should produce sharp pain, pins and needles down an arm or a leg, or pain that is worse the next morning than it was on the day. Any of those three means stop and be looked at, by a doctor first and by a teacher second.

The routine has a smaller version and a larger one, and both are the same thirteen items.

To make it smaller. Keep both hands on the chair for every standing item instead of one. Take the sit to stand down to four repetitions and use the hands on the thighs to help. In the chair forward fold, keep the hands on the thigh rather than reaching towards the foot, and stop the moment the back begins to round. Use a folded towel between the hands in the Gomukhasana arms, and if the lower arm will not come up behind the back at all, hold the belt and leave a gap of thirty centimetres. Everything works with a gap.

To make it larger. Take the hand off the chair in Virabhadrasana 2 and hold both arms out level, then off the chair in Vrikshasana with the foot at the ankle, then at the calf. Increase the sit to stand to twelve repetitions and slow the lowering to a count of four, which is the single most useful strength progression in this sequence and the one that transfers to real life. Hold the seated triangle and the chair twist for ninety seconds a side instead of sixty.

If you cannot get out of the chair at all today, because of a recent operation, a plaster cast or genuine weakness, do the nine seated items, hold each for a little longer, and add the breath work. That is twenty two minutes of real practice and it is not a consolation prize. It is also the version I would give a hospital ward.

If you sit at a desk all day rather than needing the chair for support, the shorter desk yoga sequence is written for eight minutes between meetings, and the fuller chair yoga style page explains where the practice came from and how a class using it is run.

Honest expectations, from watching people do exactly this five days a week.

In the first fortnight almost nothing changes in the body and something changes in the mood. Students report that the twenty five minutes is the part of the day they are not being asked anything by anybody. That is not a small finding and it arrives before any measurable flexibility does.

By week three the sit to stand is the item that has moved. People who needed both hands on the thighs are using one, or none. This matters more than it sounds: rising from a chair without the hands is the movement that decides whether somebody can use a public toilet, get out of an autorickshaw, or stand up from a floor mat at a wedding.

By week five or six the shoulders have usually changed enough that reaching a high shelf or fastening something behind the back is easier, and the seated twist reaches noticeably further with the same effort. Balance in Vrikshasana is the slowest of the lot and the one people are most impatient about. Fingertip contact for six weeks is normal and it is not failure.

What does not change in a month: pain from an arthritic knee will fluctuate for its own reasons, and the sequence has no effect on the weather, which in Bangalore is what most of my students' knees actually respond to. Anybody promising you that a month of chair yoga will settle an old joint is selling you something.

Chair yoga is unusual among gentle practices in having been tested properly, and the results are more mixed than the marketing suggests. It is worth knowing where you stand.

The largest trial to date offered a twelve week group chair yoga programme to 454 people aged sixty five and over with two or more long term conditions across fifteen primary care practices in England and Wales. It found no statistically significant difference in health related quality of life against usual care, and no difference in depression, anxiety, loneliness or falls, but modest improvements in pain interference and pain intensity, with no serious adverse events and seven minor musculoskeletal pain events in the yoga group. A separate randomised trial of eight weeks of twice weekly chair yoga in 112 older adults with lower limb osteoarthritis, average age 75, found no reduction in the severity of frailty against a health education programme, and its authors concluded that a longer programme would be needed to tell.

Those are two null results on their primary outcomes and I would rather you read them here than find them later. What the wider evidence does support is narrower and still useful. A meta-analysis of randomised trials of yoga in older adults without a specific medical condition found improvements against inactive controls in balance, lower body flexibility and lower limb strength, and in sleep quality and mood, with moderate effect sizes throughout.

My reading of that, after forty years of watching this in a hall rather than in a trial, is that a chair practice reliably buys you strength in the legs, movement in the spine and shoulders, and a better hour of the day. What it does not do is reverse a long term condition, and a twelve week programme that never touched the floor was probably never going to. Practise it because getting out of a chair unaided is worth having, and treat everything beyond that as a bonus rather than a promise.

Each item below names the chair variation, because in a chair practice the variation is the pose. The floor version is described on the pose page it links to.

1. Sukhasana, seated upright, 2 minutes

Sukhasana on a chair means sitting forward on the seat with both feet flat, knees over ankles, hands on the thighs and the crown of the head the highest point. Twelve breaths, and the only instruction is that the shoulders stay behind the ears.

2. Urdhva Hastasana, seated arm raises, 90 seconds

Urdhva Hastasana seated. Eight raises, inhaling up and exhaling down. If the shoulders will not go overhead without the ribs lifting off the back, stop at the height where they still can.

3. Marjariasana, seated cat and cow, 2 minutes

Marjariasana becomes a chair movement with the hands on the knees. Twelve rounds, the pelvis tipping first. This is the item that does the most for a stiff mid back and it costs nothing.

4. Gomukhasana arms, 2 minutes

Gomukhasana from the waist up, legs left alone. One elbow up, one down, a belt between the hands, one minute each side. Two thirds of adults cannot link the fingers and it makes no difference to the effect.

5. Trikonasana, seated side bend, 2 minutes

The chair version of Trikonasana. Feet wide, one hand travels down the outside of the shin as the other reaches over the ear. Thirty seconds each way, twice. Both buttocks stay on the seat, which is what stops it becoming a twist.

6. Ardha Matsyendrasana, the chair twist, 2 minutes

Ardha Matsyendrasana in a chair. Feet flat and parallel, one hand outside the opposite knee, the other resting on the seat back. Turn on the exhale, hold on the inhale, and do not use the arms.

7. Garudasana arms, 90 seconds

Garudasana arms only, legs uncrossed and both feet down. Wrap one arm under the other, lift the elbows to chin height, and breathe into the space between the shoulder blades for forty five seconds a side.

8. Janu Sirsasana, chair forward fold, 2 minutes

The chair form of Janu Sirsasana. One leg straight with the heel on the floor, the other foot flat, folding forward over the straight leg with the back long rather than reaching for the toes. One minute a side.

9. Utkatasana, the sit to stand, 2 minutes

Utkatasana as a chair exercise: stand up and sit down eight times without the hands, exhaling on the way up and lowering to a count of three. This is the most valuable minute in the sequence.

10. Virabhadrasana 2, hand on the chair, 2 minutes 30

Virabhadrasana 2 standing behind or beside the chair with one hand on its back. Feet wide, front knee bending towards a right angle, hips level and both feet fully weighted. Seventy five seconds a side.

11. Vrikshasana, fingertips on the chair, 2 minutes

Vrikshasana with two fingertips resting on the chair back. Toes of the lifted foot on the floor beside the standing ankle is a full version of the pose for balance purposes. One minute a side.

12. Uttanasana, hands on the seat, 90 seconds

Uttanasana with both hands on the chair seat and the feet walked back until the spine is long and the hips are over the heels. Six breaths, twice. Come up slowly, and sit down if the head swims.

13. Savasana, seated, 2 minutes

Savasana without lying down. Sit back into the chair, palms up in the lap, chin a fraction down, and count eighteen exhales. Then get up and do something else, having actually finished.