15 min chair yoga from Jill Harris Yoga (aka The Harlan Yoga Studio)

Transcript

hi my name is jill harris i'm a member of the mary hillen united methodist church in harlan kentucky and i was asked to come on today and give you all a few yoga poses stretches to sort of center yourself relax get you moving a little bit as part of this program today so i've decided that the best thing to do since most of you are probably just sitting in front of your computer would be that to try to center the things we do around uh being able to sit in a chair so today to start out i want you to sit i want you to sit straight up nice long spine and have your feet flat on the floor and you're going to put your hands maybe even spread your feet maybe just a little wider than hips width apart so you're going to have your hands arms straight out hands on your knees and we're gonna go through some cat and cow poses uh while we're seated so for a cat pose uh you exhale and you're gonna arch your back so you'll arch your back you can even scoot up a little bit on your chair so you have room to arch your back tuck your chin and then on the cow pose you inhale and bring your stomach and chest out lift your gaze and then exhale again cat pose and inhale cow pose cat pose cow and just flow through a few of these on your own you don't have to go super far if you have some back issues you might just want to make a little curve with your back as you arch tuck the chin just a little and then as you bring yourself your gaze up and you bring your kind of arching your back inward you're going to maybe do just a little less of that so that you're not really straining anything now once we've kind of awakened our spine we will now bring our feet out in front of us so their heels are on the floor our toes are up feet are flexed and kind of be on the edge of your seat and you can stay right here or you can take an inhale bring your arms up and then bring your hands to heart center and stay here or another option would be that you can raise your hands inhaling up reaching up towards the sky and then fold forward and bring your hands to your shins to your thighs and maybe even down to your toes it's not like the old days of pe where you're trying to curve your back and get yourself laying flat against your legs you want to keep your spine long and strong so you would kind of just want to bring yourself forward and keep that gaze looking forward so that your back and your spine or your spine and your neck are both in alignment so again exhale as you reach forward in a forward fold then you can bring yourself up we're going to put our feet back on the ground and we're going to go into what's called reclined pigeon but instead of reclining back and laying on our backs to do this we're just going to take our left leg and bring it here laying the left ankle on the left on the right knee keep the foot flexed and this may be all you do this may be as far as you go you may not even feel like going that far you might just feel like holding your leg up and that's fine but if you're going to go into the reclined pigeon pose you're going to keep your foot flexed left ankle on the right knee and this left hand is going to go on the side of the left knee or maybe even on the side of the left thigh and the right hand can go you can brace that on that left ankle or on the right thigh as well and then you're just going to lean ever carefully forward keeping the spawn and neck straight gaze forward and you're going to stretch this hip it band hamstring all that area is going to get a nice good stretch which if you've been sitting in front of a computer for a while that's going to probably feel pretty good and while you're doing these poses you want to focus on your breath so you want to inhale through your nose and maybe do that to a count of three like one two three and then exhale one two three four and maybe do that maybe give yourself three breaths three inhales and exhales so that you can then switch legs and complete the same stretch same pose on the other leg now as you can see this knee is a little higher than the left was but your both sides of your body are going to be different i can't bend nearly as much on my right side as i can my left side my right hip is a lot tighter so again you may see a little different bend from me on this side so again your hand can go your right hand is going to go on the right thigh the left hand can go on the left thigh keep those arms close to your body and just bring yourself forward again and feel that stretch as well again count your breaths you're going to go inhale hold it and exhale and that's one breath do that three times and you can raise up and take that right leg right foot and bring it down to the mat next we have a little different position a different pose you may do this pose or you can say yeah that one's not for me i'm not doing that one and that's fine so what we'll do in this pose is your hands will go on the sides of the chair you're going to let your legs come out in front of you feet flat on the ground and you're just going to inch yourself forward and let yourself stretch holding yourself with your arms on the chair and then bring yourself back down and you may look at me and say that is not going to happen i'm not doing that and that's fine you can just do the part where you stretch your legs forward hold on to the sides of the chair and just open that chest and you'll get the same you'll get a good stretch in your back and a nice stretch in your legs all the same again you're going to do that for about three to five breaths then you can bring yourself back to a regular seated position and for this next stretch we're just going to do some arm stretching so we'll inhale our arms up and from here let's bring this right hand down as if we're reaching like we're reaching between our shoulder blades with the right hand the left hand can drop all the way down and then you're going to reach it towards the right hand now they may not touch and that's okay that's fine they don't have to touch you can just work on that stretch as far as opening the the chest and stretching your arms you may only be here you may just decide this arm is not going to do anything i'm going to leave this one and let it stretch above my head here and drop it between my shoulder blades and then we can bring that out and inhale up again and drop that left hand between the shoulder blades and bring the right hand around now if your elbows have to be way out here you don't need to try to clasp your hands just work on keeping your chest open and maybe just work on having this one hand reaching towards your shoulder blades and that next pose from there we will do a seated side bend so for this pose you're just going to inhale your arms up reaching up towards the sky up towards the heavens and then bring this right hand down to the side of the chair and you're going to take this left arm and as you bend your side you're reaching over your head with the left hand and keeping that right shoulder down it's all about keeping your chest open opening your heart keeping your heart open which really in this day and time is not a bad idea for all of us to keep in mind both physically and spiritually to keep our hearts open again you'll take three to five breaths here you want to keep your spine and your neck again in alignment so you don't want to have your neck and your head resting on your shoulder you want to keep your your shoulder and arm that's supporting you strong then you're going to bring your hands up on the inhale exhale ah you're going to bring that left hand down and lean bring a side bend you can bend that supporting elbow if that helps you make a little deeper bend just always keep the ear and shoulder away from each other and then we'll lift our hands up again and this time we're just going to do as we exhale a little bit of a twist so you're going to bring your left hand to the outside of the right knee and your right hand is either going to go on your hip or it can go on the side of the chair here and you're just going to turn your torso to the right side and that might mean that you go this far it might mean you go this far and it might mean you're just like yeah i'm just going to put my hand here on the outside of my knee and barely turn that's that's fine yoga is about what works for your body and honoring your body so you want to keep your neck and gaze in line with your sternum so you're going to be turned here so wherever your chest is pointed that's where your gaze should be on the inhales you can lengthen your spine and lengthen that twist lengthen that stretch and then on the exhale if you want to go a little deeper into the twist that's when to do it on the exhale then you're going to slowly bring yourself back to the center and we'll do that again on the left side so we'll inhale up and on the exhale bringing that right hand to the outside of the left knee and the right and the left hand goes behind you onto the back of the chair and go to the side of the chair just something that allows you to make a twist with your torso turning it towards the left side again lengthen on the inhale and go deeper into the stretch or the twist on the exhale then you can bring yourself back to the center and just face forward let you let's let's all scoot back into our seats feet on the floor hands on our lap and let's just let our shoulders drop and maybe even roll our shoulders a little bit let's lift our shoulders up to the ears roll the shoulders back and down once more shoulders up back and down and then let's leave our hands on our thighs keep the spine and neck long let's make our next long like we're trying to we have all this energy in focus and we're just trying to send that up through the tops of our heads and just take a few inhales slowly and exhale slowly sometimes it helps to clear your mind if you can focus on a particular verse or praise song that you enjoy that is comforting to you that's something that you can kind of repeat to yourself as you try to center yourself and bring yourself back into the moment and just allow yourselves if you have the time uh during this conference if you have the time to just give yourself maybe five minutes to just center and focus and be quiet and still and allow that energy to come to you to allow what god has for you to come into you and your mind instead of keeping your mind going going going you know as we all do 24 hours a day seven days a week try to slow it down and allow yourself to be open and quiet so that god can bring himself into you thank you guys so much for letting me be a part of your your program i appreciate it god bless thank you