15 min Chair Yoga Class for Seniors & Beginners

Hi everyone, welcome to my channel. My name is Cassandra and today I'm going to guide you through this chair yoga sequence. So this is a gentle yoga class, wonderful for seniors, for anyone who has a limited range of motion, or even just for anyone working in an office who wants to give themselves a little bit of a stretch break. So a simple gentle sequence that anyone can do. You'll want to make sure that you have a chair that is very sturdy and stable. Mine does not have any arm rests, but it's totally fine to use one that does. So as long as you're stable, it's not wobbly, you're good to go with whatever it is that you have. And we're going to kind of sit ourselves a little bit more forward on the chair. So I'm not leaning my back. I'm just sitting right on my sit bones. I'm going to let my hands rest down on my thighs. Feel the crown of your head lengthen up towards the sky. Shrug your shoulders down and away from your ears and maybe just close your eyes here. Feel your feet flat on the floor with a 90 degree bend in both knees. And just take some deep breaths in and out through your nose, sending it all the way down to your belly. This will be a full body sequence to stretch and strengthen. And we're just going to bring our hands and the fingertips to the tops of our shoulders, making some big circles with the elbows. So reaching forward, side and down. And even as you're doing these circles, try to resist the urge to lift your shoulders up towards your ears. Keep them pressing down and just notice what the range of motion here is like. And you can reverse, moving to the other direction. Try not to clench through your jaw or tighten up your neck muscles as you do this. Keep breathing in and out through your nose. Take one more big circle. And we'll bring our hands down to the tops of the knees, a seated cat and cow sequence. So as you inhale, think of lifting your chest up, squeeze your shoulder blades behind you, arch through your back and look up. And as you exhale, round and contract, reversing this motion. So this is why we want to be away from the back of our chair, so that you're not bumping into it. And keep going through these two poses. Inhale, a little back bend as you arch. Exhale, round and contract. And you can use the pull of your hands on your knees to get a deeper sensation along the spine. Three more cycles. Inhale and exhale. Twice more. Even get those stretches through your neck and all the way down to your lower back. Last one, inhale and exhale, round and contract. Come back to a neutral spine. So you're simply lifting up nice and tall. And we're just going to drop our right ear towards the right shoulder and make some little half moon circles. So you can do this slowly and mindfully until you get your left ear to the left shoulder and then just reverse and go to the other side. I tend not to bring my head all the way back. I find it's a little safer if I just do these half circles from side to side. But really feel the sensation. Take one more on each side or in each direction, I should say. And you can bring your head back through to centre and lift it all the way up. Next, let's add a spinal twist. You're going to extend your arms out in front of you and you can press your hands together. So inhale, lengthen and maintain this even as you twist. The next time you breathe in, go ahead and open your right arm out to the side. Twist open to the right. Try to keep both hips shining forward so you're really just rotating through your torso. And as you exhale, come back through to centre. Inhale, twist over to the left, reach your left arm back as far as it can go and return back through to centre. Do a few more at your own pace with your breath. Breathing to expand and exhale to come back to neutral. Really try to isolate your mid and upper back, feeling this through your shoulders. Pull the lower belly in towards your lower back so that you're engaging your core. Last one here, opening and exhale, closing. Just interlace your fingers, flip the palms and stretch up. Might feel good just to kind of wiggle side to side here. Tiny little side bends as you reach and then we'll release. Hands on your hips or you can bring your hands on armrests if that's what you have. You can also just grab a hold of your chair. I'm going to straighten my right leg. So this is also where it becomes important to make sure that you're sitting kind of at the tip of the chair. Straighten your right leg and flex your right foot. Think of lifting your chest up and see if you can start to tilt forward until you find a hamstring stretch here. So I'm already feeling it just from going this far. You really don't need to be going too far into this pose. Think of maintaining a flat back so you're leaning and tilting forward like a plank and really flex that right foot. Try to curl those right toes back in. Roll your shoulders away from your ears and inhale. Come all the way back up. Point through your right toes this time and see if you can lift the right leg off the mat and then tap it down. We're going to do four more of those toe taps. So inhale, lift. This is hip flexor and core strength and lower down. Three more. Try not to round and contract through your spine as you do this. Last one. Inhale, point and lift and release. Maybe shake out that leg. Bring it back to neutral and we'll switch sides. So we're going to straighten our left leg. Flex the left foot. Curl those left toes back. Try to keep that left leg straight without hyperextending through your knee. Lift and lengthen up tall through your spine and maintain this flat back as you hinge from the hips into this variation of a forward fold. So working on your left hamstrings this time. You might feel it all the way down into your calf and deep into the ankle. Try not to hold your breath even when the pose feels a little intense. The next time you inhale you come all the way back up and we're going to point through the toes and we're going to lift that left leg up. Maybe just at the same height so your thighs are parallel. It doesn't have to go too high up. Do four more here. Lift and lower. Lift and lower. Twice more. Stay strong. Pull the lower belly in. Last one and release. Shake it out to let it go. Let's open our legs up wide, kind of like in a wide squat, what we would call goddess or temple pose in yoga. I'm aligning my knees over that second and third toe and I'm bringing my hands over the top of my thighs. If you'd like you might just stay here and work with your hands to push the knees open a little wider or you can add a twist by dropping your right shoulder down and now my right hand is able to push my knee open a little bit more. If this is too much, just stay centered. Just a big inner thigh stretch. If you were in the twist, come back to neutral and we'll go to the other side. So this time your left shoulder would drop down and coming all the way back up and let's release from this pose. Let's find a low lunge or a lunge variation with our chair. So I'm going to bring my right knee out, my right toes are pointing forward and I'm rotating so that my chest and my hips are now facing over towards my right thigh and I'm going to step my left foot back. So you'll notice my left knee is bent here. So it's as if I'm doing a lunge but I'm sitting on the chair. I have the support. You're welcome to hold on to the armrest or hold on to the back of the chair but really see if you can get a nice stretch through your hip flexors. Some of you might be able to straighten the back leg but I find that's just a little bit too much. I like to keep that back knee in, tailbone reaching down and then maybe reach your left arm up towards the sky. So this is where it's important to have a very stable chair. Think of lifting up nice and tall. Pull your lower belly in and let's bring our left hand back down onto our right thigh and slowly release and we'll go do the same thing over to the left. So this time I'm going to rotate my chest, my hips, my thigh all the way over to the left. I want my left knee to be over that second and third toe and I'm going to drop my right knee down. So both hips are shining forward in this variation of my low lunge or of my lunge. Try to keep your shoulders directly over the top of your hips. Grab a hold of the chair in any way that helps you feel more stable and supported and maybe go ahead and extend your right arm up. Keep trying to pull the lower belly in so that you're not flaring out through your rib cage and swaying too much in your lower back. So really strong and activating through this pose and let's release coming back through to center. From here we're going to come into a variation of gate pose. So you can keep your left foot and left knee bent and go ahead and extend and straighten your right leg as much as is possible. It might be a little bent which is perfectly fine but see if you can point through your toes and get your foot flat to the floor. You're going to reach your left arm all the way up and then find a side bend as you lean a little deeper into that stretch and I'm just letting my right hand slide down my leg to get me a little bit more stable. Try to relax your head, relax your neck and we lift all the way back up through to center ready to take on the second side. So my right foot is now going to be flat on the floor helping me ground down and stay anchored and I'm going to open my left thigh up. I'm going to straighten my left leg as much as I can. You might need to readjust based on the kind of chair that you're in. Trying to point through my toes and then I'm going to reach my right arm up to the sky and then lean over to the side, big side body stretch. Relax your head, big breath in here and come all the way back up to stand and now let yourself sit back into the chair so that you're resting your spine fully supported and you can just rest your hands on your lap or down on your thighs. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths just to observe how you feel now as opposed to when we first began this practice. Noticing what has changed and shifted for you, what feels different in your body. Hopefully you're able to notice some positive changes, sending yourself lots of gratitude even if there was struggle and challenge throughout the practice. You still made it all the way to the end and things get easier the more we practice them. This is why it is called a yoga practice. Let's bring our hands together at the heart. If you'd like you can join me by chanting Aum one time so we can close our session together. I'm Thank you so very much everyone for doing this chair yoga practice with me. I hope you feel a difference in your body. I have one other chair yoga class here on my channel. I will post a link to it down below if you wanted to give that one a try and let me know if you would like to see more of these chair practices here on my channel as well as in my mobile app. Do leave me a comment before you go. Please subscribe and hopefully we will practice again together very soon.