Intro to Chair Yoga

Transcript

hello my name is Melissa Goldberg I am an RN who loves teaching and I love yoga so I decided to become a certified yoga instructor I work at Sweet peace Yoga Studio in Cramerton inside the sacred corner store it's a lovely little yoga studio so um I'm here today just to talk about a class that I teach there chair yoga maybe you know or have had heard about chair yoga in the past or maybe you've never heard about it before maybe you've wondered if it's something that you should do or get into so I'm just going to talk a little bit about that there are different types of reasons why somebody would take a chair yoga class versus a regular vinyasa flow or slow flow so chair yoga is good for people with limited Mobility that can be a variety of different reasons that you have limited Mobility but for example one would be if you just recently recently had um total knee replacement or some kind of a hip surgery and as long as you have gotten the doctors okay in a green light to go this is a great way to introduce your body back to moving so that's also good something another reason why you would do share yoga would be is if you're sitting in an office all day and you're behind the desk and you have limited time a limited space 10 to 15 minutes of just some cherry yoga stretching is a beautiful thing with yoga breathing is very important so we take long in-house and exhales and we do them slowly so as we do that we're bringing a lot of oxygen to our blood to our cells to our muscles it helps our mind our body our soul is happy that we're doing it so it's just a great thing to do for yourself and you will understand when we're done the next couple of stretches that I'm going to show you how it can make you feel invigorated and good so you'll be relaxed but at the same time ready to face the day so we'll start with breathing I just want to go a little bit into how your breath should look when you're breathing through yoga stretches or yoga poses so we'll go ahead and just find a comfortable seat I'll be back in your chair you can be sitting up as long as you are safe and secure in your chair go ahead and close your eyes and just relax into this pose you're going to inhale as you inhale you're going to fill your lungs completely all the way up and exhale all the way out relaxing your shoulders relaxing your whole body as you exhale so you're inhaling all the way up exhale all the way out inhale up and exhale so continue those three those types of breaths as I just kind of talk a little bit so with breathing like I said it's important to move with your breath so you're going to flow with your breath as we do some stretches now so we'll go ahead and get ready when you're writing on your next inhale we're going to inhale both arms all the way up bringing them to prayer hands at the top exhale down Center of your body inhale up exhale down exhale down now from here we're going to change direction so we're inhaling keeping our hands together the prayer at top exhale really stretch those arms back up one more time inhale up stretch stretch stretch and as you come down bring your hands behind your back interlace your fingers inhale here bring your shoulder blades together chest out exhale as you lead with your heart as you fold forward keeping your hands on your lower back unclasp your fingers bringing your arms down grab opposite elbows with hands as you hang down and ragdoll so here your knees can be together and you can be resting your torso on your thighs or if you want a more stretch go ahead and bring your feet about hip width and you'll see your body comes in between your legs and you're able to stretch a little bit further so find what feels good for you and that's the one thing about yoga you always just want to listen to your body what does it tell you what it wants to do it'll tell you if it doesn't feel good then don't do it we're going to inhale as we slowly come up back to a seat now we're going to do some lateral side stretches using our breath so we're going to inhale arm up exhale lean over to your left keeping both hips on the chair inhale up exhale down so other side inhale up exhale over exhale down one more time each side inhale up exhale over inhale up exhale down one two more time this left side inhale up exhale over feel that side body stretch inhale up good a little bit of a shake some movement here here so now we're going to do spinal twist so we're going to inhale both arms up exhale twist to your right so you can use the back of your chair to kind of anchor you in to help you twist a little bit more inhale up exhale twist to the left moving with our breath inhale up exhale over inhale one more time exhale to the left let's inhale both arms up from here take some half angel wings you're going to bring your elbows out your shoulder blades are coming together your chest is sticking out and Just Breathe Here feel that stretch across your chest and when you're ready what's up exhale forward just for a breath inhaling yourself slowly back up to an easy seat so those are just some quick examples of what you can do in chair yoga we can the class itself is about 45 minutes so there's a lot more stretches and exercises um modifications if you need it so I hope that this video gave you an idea of what to expect with chair yoga and I hope to see you at Sweet Pea shoulder studio for my chariotic list thank you very much for spending your time with me no mistake