Chair yoga

Chair yoga is a complete practice of postures, breathing and relaxation carried out sitting on a chair, or standing while holding one, so that the chair takes over the job of balancing and staying upright and the practice can get on with everything else.

The first thing to correct is the assumption. Chair yoga is described almost everywhere as yoga for seniors, and that framing has kept it away from most of the people it would help. It is for any age. It is for the software engineer whose neck has stopped turning properly by four in the afternoon, for the person with a knee that will not kneel, for anybody who cannot get up and down off a floor without planning it, for somebody recovering from illness or surgery, for a pregnant woman in the third trimester, and for a fifteen year old studying for exams who has not stood up since breakfast. It is also for people in their eighties, and it is not only for them.

The second thing to say is what it is not. It is not a diluted class, and it is not a shortened one. What it removes is the floor and the balance, and what it keeps is the spine, the shoulders, the breath and the attention. The postures are real postures done at a different height.

Five minutes is a real practice, and twenty five is a full one. Both run in the same order.

• Sitting, one minute. Both feet flat, weight even, spine long without being braced. This is Tadasana done sitting, and it is the whole practice in miniature: everything else is built on being able to sit up without gripping.
• Joints, three to five minutes. Neck turns and tilts, shoulder circles, wrists, ankles. Slowly, and never into pain. This is the part that does the most for anybody at a desk.
• Spine, five minutes. Flexing and extending, which is Marjariasana done in a chair, then a seated twist, then a side bend with one arm overhead in the shape of Urdhva Hastasana.
• Legs and standing work, five to ten minutes. Seated leg extensions, then, if you are able, standing behind the chair holding the back of it: heel raises, a supported version of Vrikshasana, and a supported Trikonasana with one hand on the seat. This is the part people skip and it is the part that matters most.
• Forward fold, two minutes. Folding over the thighs, which is Uttanasana at chair height and far kinder to a lower back.
• Breathing, three to five minutes. Sitting upright. Anulom Vilom works perfectly well on a chair, and Bhramari is the one to use if you are tense rather than tired.
• Rest, two minutes. Sitting back, eyes closed, hands in the lap. Not Savasana, but doing the same job.

Use a dining chair. No arms, so the elbows can move, and no wheels or swivel, which is the only genuine hazard in the whole practice. If your feet do not reach the floor comfortably, put a book under them.

Chair yoga has been studied more carefully than most of the gentle practices, mostly in older adults with painful knees and hips, and the results are a good example of why it is worth reading a trial rather than a headline.

A randomised trial of 112 community dwelling older adults with lower extremity osteoarthritis, average age 75, compared twice weekly 45 minute chair yoga sessions for eight weeks against a health education programme. On frailty, the primary outcome, chair yoga did no better than the control: the authors concluded plainly that eight weeks of chair yoga did not reduce the severity of frailty. On pain, the picture was better. Analyses from the same trial found reductions in pain and in pain interference associated with the chair yoga programme, with the largest reductions in the participants who were most frail to begin with. So: a real effect on how much the pain intrudes, and no effect on the underlying frailty in two months.

That combination is exactly what I would have predicted from the practice, and it is why I am careful about how I recommend it. Sitting and moving your joints every day reliably makes an achy body more comfortable and more willing. It does not, on its own, make a weak body strong, because strength needs load and a chair removes it. If your reason for reading this is a painful knee or hip, yoga for back pain and yoga for beginners over 40 both cover what to add and what to leave out.

The other honest use of chair yoga has no trial attached and I will say so: it is the only practice most desk workers will actually do during a working day, because it requires no mat, no change of clothes and no privacy. The desk sequence is that version, written for a chair at work.

Chair yoga is rarely the whole answer and it is very often the right first answer.

• You sit at a desk and something in your neck or shoulders has started to complain. Chair yoga, twice a day, five minutes. Start with the desk sequence and yoga for neck and shoulder pain.
• You cannot get down to a floor and back up again without planning it. Chair yoga now, and standing work holding the chair as soon as you can manage it. Getting off the floor is a skill you can rebuild, and the chair is the route.
• You have knee or hip arthritis. Chair yoga is the best supported option here, and the trial evidence is about pain rather than about cure.
• You are recovering from illness or surgery, or you are very tired. Chair yoga, and restorative in the evening.
• You are eighty and perfectly steady on your feet. Do not let anybody put you in a chair. Take a slow held class and use the chair only for the balances.
• You want to get stronger or fitter. Chair yoga will not do it. It has to be supplemented with walking and with standing work.

My verdict. I use a chair in class more than any other prop and I have stopped presenting it as an adaptation, because the moment a chair is offered as a concession, half the room refuses it in front of the other half. Now it is simply there. My honest position is that chair yoga is the most useful practice on this site for the largest number of people and the easiest one to do badly. Done badly it is twenty minutes of slumping while somebody counts. Done properly it is a genuine practice, and the part that makes it properly is the standing work holding the back of the chair. If you take one thing from this page: sit for the joints and the breath, then stand up and hold the chair for the legs. That second half is what keeps you able to stand up at all.

Chair yoga is not a named class here, and no style here is. The classes are one teacher, about forty years of teaching, one hall at the residents' association in MSR Nagar in north Bangalore, in person there or live online, all ages and all levels, and the hour is asana, pranayama and relaxation taught slowly.

What is true, and it is the reason this page exists rather than a marketing reason, is that chairs are in the hall and get used without any ceremony. Somebody who cannot come down to the floor does the floor sequence sitting. Somebody whose balance is not what it was does the standing postures with a hand on a chair back. The chair is offered before anybody struggles, not after they have failed in front of the room, and it is not announced as a special arrangement for a particular person.

The class is not a chair class, though. If getting on and off a floor is currently impossible for you, say so before you come, in person or for the live online class, so that the hour is arranged around a chair from the start rather than adapted halfway through. The first class is free, which makes it an easy way to find out whether the room works for you, and the classes page has the timings and the costs.

Every posture below has a page of its own on this site, described standing or on the floor, and each one has a chair version that keeps what matters.

Vajrasana is the most useful comparison of the lot, because sitting upright on a chair with the feet flat and the weight even is doing the same job as the kneeling seat and is available to a knee that will never kneel again. Dandasana is the seated version of standing well, and the chair version of it is where a chair practice begins and ends. Marjariasana becomes a seated spinal flex. Uttanasana becomes a fold over the thighs. Trikonasana and Vrikshasana are done standing behind the chair with a hand on it, which is the only way most people should be learning either of them in the first month.

The breathing does not need adapting at all, which is worth knowing: Anulom Vilom, Bhramari and Yoga Nidra are all perfectly practicable sitting in a chair, and the last of those can be done in an office at lunchtime. For the working day, the desk sequence is the ready made version. For the mornings, the ten minute morning routine can be done almost entirely from a chair. How to start yoga at home explains how to build the habit, and restorative yoga is the other practice that asks nothing of your balance.