Chair Yoga for Seniors

Welcome to chair yoga for seniors. I developed this program for a community center where the students were often coming in with walkers, wheelchairs, crutches, and canes. Most people think about a senior being someone in their older years. My definition of a senior is someone who has difficulty getting down to the floor and back up again. It's more about their level of fitness and function.

This class is for you if you feel that you have difficulty getting down to the yoga mat for a traditional class. The props that you'll need for today are a sturdy chair to sit in that doesn't move back and forth when you are using it for support. So it needs to be either on a yoga mat or a carpeted surface or maybe even against a wall. The other important prop that you'll need is either a broomstick, a mop handle, or a 48 inch dowel that we'll be using for spine alignment and for balance. So I have that off to the side, and we'll get that in the middle of the class.

The other items that you'll be needing are a shoebox to put your supplies in that keeps the props concisely placed so that they don't create a trip hazard. You'll first need a ball that is either a children's ball that you can find at toy store or a girdy ball that you can blow up with a straw could be a basketball or soccer ball, which are quite hard, but you need to take some of the air out of them. Or a fancy massage ball. Usually about an 8 inch diameter works great. And then you'll need a tennis ball A yoga strap could be a dog leash, a bathrobe belt, or a necktie, and then a resistance band.

If you don't have one of those, you can use the yoga strap instead. Alright. Let's place these to the side. So they're out of the way and not creating a trip hazard. Mindfully bending forward at your hips, place the blocks to the side. And let's get started.

Place yourself in the chair so that you're perched in the chair. So we're gonna walk our hips forward. And then see if your feet can fit on the floor. And I'm very short, so most chairs don't really fit me right that well. Luckily, this one's low enough and sturdy enough to where I feel comfortable in it and can keep my hips and knees at ninety degree angles very easily. So let's start by lifting the toes, breathe in, and breathe out, put the toes back down. Breathe in, lift the toes and the shoulders, and breathe out, place them down.

One more time. Alright. Now we're gonna lift the heels. And place them down. And again, inhale to lift the heels, exhale to place them down. Let's add the arms.

Gonna inhale reach, exhale to lower. Palms down. Inhale palms up, exhale palms down. Now place your hands on your thighs, hinge at your hip joints, and then let's find the tennis ball in your box, and we're gonna place it on the floor. Place one of your feet on the tennis ball, and I want you to place it right under the ball of your foot between your first and second toe.

Now roll forward all the way to your heel gently and roll back. Again, roll forward, feeling like you're separating those little bones in your foot. Now go between the second and third toes, roll forward, and roll back. And again, This is so great for waking up the proprioceptors of your feet, stimulating your feet, especially if you have peripheral neuropathy, any tension in your feet. Very good for preparing for weight bearing.

And then move to the 4th and 5th toes. And then finally, back to the ball of your foot. So you want your toes over the edge of the ball, and the the tennis ball will be right under the ball of your foot more towards the arch. Heal is down and then wrap your toes around. Want you to notice these five knuckles here showing They may not be showing in your foot if you have some stiffness.

A lot of times, hammer toes will create some stiffness in those joints where they kind of disappear. So your goal is to try to get those joints to reappear. And this is really great for people that have stiffness in the arch of the foot or gripping in the feet, which happens a lot when your balance is challenged. So you'll want to start to work those joints so that they don't get kinda stuck in that, what we call, hammer toe position where where your foot is gripping the floor. Let's change sides, and we'll start with the massage. So we're doing 2 different things with the tennis ball.

The first thing that we're doing is massaging and breading the foot out, which may not be the best thing for somebody that has weakness in the arch and and pronation or a collapsed arch. The second thing that we're doing with the tennis ball is to wrap those toes around, which actually helps to strengthen the arch of the foot. And so that would be for someone that has tension in their feet and is gripping the floor to maintain their balance. So you can choose which one of these is best for you and do that one. So you're going between the first and second toe, moving to the second and third toe, and separating the bones between the 4th and 5th toe.

And even if you don't have issues with the you know, pronation of your foot or stiffness, it still feels good to massage your feet. Alright. Let's place the heel down on the mat. And then place the ball underneath the middle of the arch of the foot and make sure you can still get your heel down. Tows are not in contact with the ball. And then wrap the toes around and come up. I always like to do this with my hands too because it just makes it better for all of those joints.

They tend to work together. So we're wrapping around, and we're trying to see if we can see all those knuckles. And if you have one that disappears, sometimes the 4th one will disappear more easily, you can move the ball so it's right under that 4th knuckle and try to get it to show and then lift up and wrap around. Alright. Now hinge at the hips, mindful movement here.

We don't wanna round our back like this to try to get up. Right? We want to hinge forward, place the tennis ball into the box. And while you're there, go ahead and take out your yoga strap. So, again, this could be a dog leash or any kind of strap, like a necktie or a bathrobe belt works just great. Okay. So the strap doesn't stretch. So it's important that you get something that's very stiff, and you're gonna place it around your rib cage.

And pull as tightly as you can and try to get your thumbs to touch together. So you wouldn't wanna cross it over because you won't be able to measure the breathing that we're gonna be doing. So I like to take a tape measure sometimes and measure breathing And you can see whether or not you're really good at inhalation or exhalation and which is better for you to practice. Alright. So we're gonna pull the thumbs together and now take a breath in. And just notice where the breath goes.

Maybe the strap doesn't move at all and your shoulders lifted. Usually, when I cue people to take a deep breath, they'll often do shoulder lifting. Right? You also might know about diaphragmatic breathing, which is more of a belly breath. If you do that, the belly expands and tilts forward. Because the diaphragm presses it down, and then you won't get any rib cage movement. So what we wanna practice during this series is active costal breath.

And costal means rib cage or rib, and we wanna get that rib cage moving so that we can maintain core control or abdominal wall firmness as we do our practice. This is gonna help support the bones of our spine. And the joints of our spine as well. Breathe in, expanding outward, and breathe out continue your breath out. Doing that as long as you can.

And notice if your thumbs tend to cross over. So say you're measuring your rib cage and maybe it's 34 inches. At this point. When you breathe in, the rib cage should expand to about 2 inches greater or 36 inches. And then when you exhale, if you were to measure that circumference, the rib cage should decrease to about 32 inches. So that means you've expanded from 32 inches on the exhalation to 36 inches on the inhalation.

That would be ideal breathing. So if you're limited in 1 or the other or both, you can emphasize that inhale or exhale during your yoga practice. Alright. So let's place this down, and we'll place it into the box. Remember your mindful movement. And then I'm gonna turn the chair to the side so that you can see a little bit better, but you can keep your chair the same.

Alright. So And notice when I moved that chair, I kept my hip hinge. I kept my spine alignment there. Now I'm gonna hinge forward, and I'm gonna place the ball against my back. Now this is a chair that does not really have a back, so I'm gonna balance it against this upper rung. And if you have a chair back that's more solid, that's gonna be much better for this movement. And you wanna take the ball as high as possible on the chair.

And then notice how just putting the ball behind your back inspires better posture. You'll make sure that you're not sitting all the way back in the chair so you're getting pushed forward. So you will have to come forward to about the center of a chair and then place the chair. Or the ball against the back of the chair again. Now from here, I'm just gonna start doing a little breast bone lift.

I want you to imagine that you have a headlight shining straight ahead. We're gonna inhale and then exhale. And inhale and exhale. One more time like that, just attempting to get the breast bone to shine as high as possible. Imagine that you have eyes under your collar bones, and they're gonna look in the same direction as the eyes of your head.

So that I'm not doing this looking up at the ceiling when my breastbone is still looking at the wall in front of me. Now let's take a hand behind the head and put it under your skull. And I like to put my thumbs right under the goal and the suboccipital muscles. Give yourself a little length and see if you can pull upward. If you can take both hands behind the head, try to do that.

Lengthening up. And then I'll just take this hand down so you can see more of what I'm doing. Inhale to take it back, wrapping your spine around the ball. And usually with support of your head, you will feel a lot more mobility in that thoracic spine or that mid back. Again, inhale to take it back.

Point that headlight of your breastbone as high as you can. And exhale forward. Let's do one more like that. And then exhale return to vertical. Notice I'm not pulling my head forward to return.

I'm just staying in my optimal posture. Alright. We'll place the ball back into the box, performing your hip hinge. Alright. Now let's mindfully move our box under the chair. You can put a hand on your thigh. Keep that hip hinge that we're gonna be working on in just a moment. And Place the box under the chair so it's not gonna be something that you'll trip over.

Place your hands on your thighs. Hinge at the hips. Think of lifting up your tailbone first. Keep your chest lifted. Take a breath in.

And breathe out to push yourself up to standing. If you need that assistance to get to standing, please feel free to use that. I'll come off to the side and Get my dowel. This is the 48 inch dowel that I mentioned at the beginning of class that you'll be using for alignment of your spine and for balance. So now sit back down in the chair, place the dowel on your back, So that it touches, ideally, the tailbone and the mid back and the back of the head.

Place your thumb in between the dow and your low back and see if you're able to get your head to touch the stick with your eyes looking forward. So this is actually a test that we do in physical therapy called the occiput to wall distance test. This is the occipital bone. And this is my portable wall here. So if I was stiff or rounded in my upper back, then it would require that I'm looking up at the ceiling in order to get my head to the stick. So from here, I need to lift my breast bone, reduce that curve in my back in order to get my head to the stick and still keep my eyes looking forward.

So if that is an issue for you, this is definitely the class for you. So stay with me. And then if you're rounding your back to get there and you find it difficult to reach the stick, it's fine. You can just try using the two points of contact for now and keep queuing yourself to lift your breast bone as much as you can. So it might look like this for someone that has roundness in the back. Then you're just continuously trying to keep that breastbone forward, but you don't wanna keep looking up at the ceiling because that's gonna be compressive for your neck. So let's lengthen back as much as we can.

If you can reach the stick out above your head, please do that. And then imagine that your pelvis is like a wheel rolling forward. So like this and a wheel rolling back, And that can sometimes facilitate better movement because what you wanna avoid is rounding your back to get up and flexing your spine because that's gonna be compressive to the ver vertebral bodies that stack up at the front of your spine. So we wanna keep those vertebrae stacked up. And then what we wanna attempt to do here is to get nose over toes, right, hard lifted, feet wide and then see if we can stand up. Now it's perfectly fine if you need assistance for that.

So let's step back for a safe transition to make sure you can feel the chair behind you. And then you know it's there and you sit back down. Now if you have armrests on your chair, that might be better for this class because you could actually press into the armrests of the chair to come up. So imagine that I am using an armrest of a chair here. I hinge forward. I press up, and that assists me with the lift. So you're thinking more about your spine alignment at this point.

You can also, if you don't have armrests on your chair, you can press onto your leg. And help yourself up. And our goal is to be able to get up in good alignment without using our hand to press up. Alright. Now I'm gonna take the dow off the back.

And show you another technique that's really helpful for learning this skill. Arms are gonna be straight out in front of you. Stacking your hands up on the dowel. And then I want you to think of looking at the top of your dowel, and bring your head towards the Dow. Sometimes when we're challenged in our balance, And we we feel a bit fearful.

If we had a fall and that induces a little bit of fear of falling, then we don't actually get our nose over our toes enough to be able to get up. So what it results in is getting up like this, rolling out of the chair to come up. And then rounding your back to get down because we don't feel confident about bring in our head that far forward over our feet. So doing this little activity is sometimes really helpful. To see if you can get your head to come forward over your feet.

The other way to help yourself coming up out of the chair is to take the down forward Try to keep your arms straight as you start and then hinge at the hips and press up to standing. So that's also another really nice way to work on sitting to standing. Take your hands to the top of the dowel now. Make sure you can feel the chair behind your legs and you know it's there. And then try sitting with your arms straight.

And that way you don't drop your chest Right? So keep your elbows straight and press up. And you get a little bit of assistance, but it protects your spine from going into that rounded shape. Alright. Now we're gonna look at another aspect of the sit to stand. And I'm gonna move the chair. You don't have to move your chair at home.

So I'm gonna move the chair facing forward so that you can see what we'll be doing in the leg alignment. So I'm gonna press my box back so I don't trip over it. Stand in front of the chair. Remember to feel the chair behind your legs, and you wanna think of keeping your feet planted and your knees apart as you sit. So it would look like that.

A lot of times, if you feel like you're losing strength in your legs, and did you know that we lose about 1% of our leg strength every year after age fifty, if we don't do strength training to keep our legs strong, they insidiously get weaker. And we sometimes have this movement pattern where we're bracing our knees against each other to get up. And that's a sign that the legs are decreasing in their strength. So try that a few times and see, do your knees come together when you stand up, or are you able to keep them apart? Another thing is to think of lifting the big toe, keeping the weight on the outside of your foot more than the inside.

Then place your toes back down. Use your dowel if you'd like, hinge at the hips. Stand all the way up. And then sit back, keeping the knees apart. So I often think of aiming my knees toward my 4th and 5th toe if I had that pattern.

And then you've addressed both the spine and the knees, and you can start working on your strength. Alright. We're gonna come to standing with your mindful transition, and then we'll need to turn the chair Now you might not need to turn your chair, but you do wanna make sure that you're facing the screen and that you're not having to turn too much to the side to work on your balance. So you do need to face your screen. Alright. Placing the feet together. It is important where you stand in relation to your chair.

So if you're too far forward, you're gonna end up reaching back behind you, which is not gonna be great for your shoulder and not really a steady position for yourself. So stepping to the back of your chair would be better so that you can reach to a forward position on the chair and have your dowel match where you're reaching that, that hand that's on the chair. So from here, we're placing the feet together And then we're gonna work on bone stacking. So I'd like you to start by rolling your heels apart from each other and then rolling the arches of your feet together. Now maybe you can't get your feet together because your knees tend to bump into each other.

You can certainly separate your feet if you'd like. Roll the feet together and then roll the ankles apart, and you're moving from what we call pronation which is a flat foot to supination, which is a high arch. And then find that position where you have about 60% of your weight on the outside of the foot and 40% to the inside. If you can get your feet together, go ahead and do that. Rise up on your tiptoes and down.

Let's breathe out as we lift and lower and see if you can keep your heels together. And then progress by either lifting one hand off the chair and see if you can still balance And then as you feel more and more confident, lift the towel up and see if you can stay balanced. Squeeze the heels together a little bit to provide a little bit more support. It's amazing how that helps. You wanna avoid letting your ankles play apart.

And keeping those heels together will provide that great ankle alignment. You'll wanna work on in your balance. Now let's shift the weight to one leg and notice what happens with the pelvis. And you're just gonna shift it from side to side, putting a little more weight on each leg, and then separate your feet. Do that again.

You can see how much more play you have in the pelvis and hips and then bring the feet back together again. And, again, try that shift again. Not as much movement. It's gonna turn on a lot more of your balance musculature. Now take your hands to your rib cage and then think of stacking your rib cage over your pelvis. And then imagine that your collar bones and shoulder blades are placed on top of your rib cage, like a coat on a hanger.

Think of drawing your throat back. And then the crown of your head toward the sky. So as you practice your balance, you wanna get taller and longer, not shrink down. Because sometimes when our balance is challenged, we try to make ourselves smaller. And that actually, in increases the likelihood of falling because we're not in alignment anymore. Right? So we wanna stay in that right alignment and practice this in a safe environment.

Now let's take one foot off the floor and see if we can lift and balance on one leg and then rise up. And 2, and 3, do that a few times. Did you know that you need to be able to do 25 heel raises to score a normal score in calf strength if you're over age sixty five. And so that's how we test the calf strength is to stand on one leg and see if we can actually push our own body weight upward. So if this is challenging for you, you can just put one foot down and put more weight on the back leg and a little bit of weight on the front leg to take some of the body weight off of that back leg. So it's a great way to get stronger if you're having a hard time with doing the single leg stance.

Okay. Now bring your feet back together again. Let's lift the toes, lift the shoulders, and lower down. One more time. Lift up. And down. If you might be familiar with the tree pose, if you're interested in yoga, and I like to think of the tree being mostly about the standing leg and what's happening there.

So now let's lift the leg up and then if you want to make this look a little bit more like the tree pose, you can turn the knee outward and then place your foot against your shin. Just make sure you don't put it against your knee and press against that knee. So pressing the foot into the shin and then lengthening off of that standing leg. This is a beautiful tree. Right? I always think that this leg is just about decoration. Right? These are just the branches.

They're not that root structure, which is so important. And then if you feel confident, you can raise one arm. Lengthening up using your dowel for support. If you'd like to do that the other way, you can lift the dowel And then lifting up with your doll, if you feel confident with that and you feel better about holding the back of the chair. And then eventually, when you feel more confident, you can try lifting both if that feels good to you.

Breathe and focus and take it down. And then we'll step to the other side. I'm gonna take the dial out a little bit because that's gonna help me with that transition to the other leg. And always hold the dowel on the same side of the leg that you're standing on if you're only using the dowel. Now let's lift this leg up.

And then if this is your tree today, that's perfect. And then if you want to try to lift one arm in this position, Wonderful. Progressing at your own pace. Then you can try turning the foot out or the knee out place the foot against the shin below the knee, and then lift up a little bit more in that standing leg. And feel free to lift one arm if that feels good to you.

And then if you wanna add the other arm, Try that. And then taking it back down. And you can progress to having your foot up higher if you need to. That's, again, for me, it's just decoration. I just wanna see what's happening on that standing leg. Now we'll come to sitting.

Take a little break and do some sitting poses. Alright. For the next movement, we'll need to turn the chair Again, you don't have to, unless you need to orient yourself toward the screen. Alright. Placing my dowel in front here, and I'm gonna go ahead and sit, even though I'm gonna turn to the side in the chair, I wanna be mindful about the way I sit in the chair and not just willy Nilly come over here and try to sit sideways. Right? So feet apart, practice that mindful movement, hinging back, and then you turn to the side. So what we're gonna do is a wonderful warrior preparation. This is also known as a hip flexor or sew a stretch.

That I just love for promoting better hip extension. So I'm gonna place the dowel in one hand, and I can actually hold on to the chair back with the other hand. You'll want one cheek on the chair and one cheek off, and then start to lower your knee down and walk your foot back. The first position we wanna try to get in is a ninety degree angle at the front knee and then a ninety degree angle at the back knee. It does depend on how high your chair is and how mobile your hip is.

So we're holding on to the back of the chair, so we keep ourselves safe on the chair. And then as you get more mobile in your hip, you're gonna start to sneak that foot back walking that foot back further and further and keep working it back. Now there is a moment where some people have stiffness in the great toes or any of the toes bending backwards like that, and that may be difficult for you. So you could actually point your toes and slide your foot back, or you could put a shoe on to help give you some support and minimize that bending backwards of the toes. So I'm gonna keep my toes flexed under, and then it's it might be a while before you're able to straighten that back leg because in the chair, you're usually pretty low more so than you would be in a standing warrior pose.

So get that leg as straight as you can behind you and then straighten the arm in front of you as well. What I like about that is that if you bend your arm, it tends to make you collapse forward. If you keep your arms straight, You'll actually connect in to the armpit and the abdominal wall here, connecting through the core of your body, and giving that extra support. And so keeping that elbow straights important and trying to get that back leg straight Now we're gonna breathe and take it in and out. Practicing your UJai breath, if you're aware of that. Keeping the mouth closed, lifting through the throat, restricting the air as it comes in and out is helpful for strengthening your diaphragm. Them.

Alright. Now slowly bending the knee. Taking your foot forward, and then returning to your forward facing position. And now we're gonna turn to the other side. Remember one cheek on, one cheek off, front knee bent to ninety degree angle, feeling good support from your chair, extend the leg back. And the first position is here.

And if this is challenging for you, this is a great place to be. Because you're getting that stretch through the front of the hip. You're stretching the hip flexor, the quadriceps muscles, and This can help promote better walking ability, increasing your stride length, so important to maintain that hip extension, because we only have about maybe 20 degrees of hip extension at best. And this gets very limited, the more we sit and the more sedentary we are. So working this position is so great.

So anytime you're sitting at your dining room table, you can start working on hip extension. Alright. Now we're gonna straighten that front arm press into the armpit with the elbow straight, feeling that connection of your shoulder to your body, feeling that lift of the front of your pelvis, and then try not to let your back arch. Right? So you keep lifting up through the pubic bone and then keep trying to straighten that back leg, which you may or may not be able to do. So That's quite a lot of extension for your leg to be straight in this low position. Breathing here, once you get to your maximum position, Breathe in. And you can as you inhale, you can bend the knee.

And then as you exhale, you can straightness. You kinda let off some of the tension, if that feels good to you. And you just keep trying to tuck the tail and keep trying to lift up through the low belly. And one more time, inhale. And exhale.

Alright. Bring that leg forward and then turn to the front And let's prepare for the SUNS salutation series. Alright. Now I'll place the Dow off to the side. You wanna get it out of your way so that you don't trip over it. And then I'll turn my chair sideways. So that you can see what we're doing. Because I'm gonna be moving the chair back and forth a few times, I'm gonna take the box and also move it off to the side as well.

I wanna have enough space on my mat that I can move my chair back and forth for our yoga practice. So we're, we're trying to prepare for the sun salutation series that includes several different poses. So I'll take you individually through those poses, and then we will try a more flowing practice. Alright. So first thing you wanna do is line yourself up with the chair so that you can place your hands on the chair and make sure the chair is wide enough that you can feel that you're about shoulder width apart. And then notice if your spine is in that neutral position.

So you don't wanna bend like this to get into position, you wanna be in a neutral or optimal spine position. From here, knees are bent, And we're just gonna do a sync and a press. So this is just like we would be in all fours. And then Let's step back a little bit if that feels good to you and take a wide stance and then just hinge at the hip joints and see if you can straighten your knees here. So this might be what your downward dog looks like.

If you're more flexible, you might be able to take it back a little further. And let's breathe here. You have a bird's eye view of your toes. So you can see are your toes gripping on the mat? Are you able to relax and lengthen the toes?

Can you lift your toes up off the mat? And then place them back down. It's interesting. Just focusing on your toes. Did you notice how that your hamstrings released a little bit?

Alright. Now let's take it forward, and we're gonna go into another posture, which was We call dundasana or plank pose, or you're taking your legs back. Inviting more weight bearing through the shoulders and through the arms. Now notice if your elbows are locked, Or are they in that slightly bent position? You wanna find that parenthesis shape of the arms, think of pulling the chair apart, and hold there. If this doesn't feel good to you, then you can put one foot forward and try what we call a half plank. And then maintain that position for a moment, then you would switch sides.

If you're not ready for that much weight bearing on your arms. Alright. Next position would be the upward facing dog. And I'm just gonna take a small chest lift. So notice that we didn't just drop to get into it. We lifted to get into it.

And, again, if this doesn't feel good to you, just take one foot forward and do it with support of that front leg. You can still lift through the chest. And I want you to harken back too when we were having the ball behind the back, and working that thoracic extension. And we're thinking of that breast bone lifting up and then take it back. So if you took one foot forward, switch that.

And let's do it with the opposite foot forward, lengthening up, and make sure you don't sag down. Gonna keep that parentheses shape of the arms, keep pulling apart, and lift up. Breathe in. So eyes of the collarbone look in the same direction as the eyes of the head. So you wanna avoid looking at the ceiling, right, because sometimes we We tend to drag our spine around from our head.

So we look up and think that our our mid back is falling, but sometimes it's not. I wanna really feel that mid back working. Alright. Let's take it back into the full pose. If you're okay with that. And then lift up. So your pelvis will come down a little bit, but it doesn't sag down. Right? So you're really always trying to lift up and out of the pose, slightly bending the elbows, open the collar bones, pulling up through the low belly. So this is definitely easier said than done.

Now our resting pose is supposed to be the downward facing dog, and sometimes it's not a resting pose for everyone, but Let's see if we can take it back and breathe here. And just remember to honor your body as you work and feel free to come out of any pose that doesn't feel right to you. It's all about self care. I do want you to push yourself to get stronger, but not so much that you injure yourself. Now walk yourself forward, come up to standing, and let's stretch the wrist for a moment.

If you had some difficulty with the weight bearing position or your wrist feel a little painful, it's good to try to get weight bearing in the wrist. And if you feel that it's painful, you'll definitely wanna increase the mobility of your wrist and also your strength for weight bearing positions. So good for the rotator cuff of the shoulder and so many other things. So we're gonna stretch the wrist by squeezing the little bones of the wrists. Taking your fingers around the wrist and squeeze.

Sometimes that gives a lot of relief of the tension. And then you can do a little wrist roll here. Alright. So we've done the extension of the hip preparation for what I call Warrior 1.5. I love this one. It's also called high lunge or runners lunge by many yoga teachers, but I love to call it Warrior 1.5.

So my favorite way to get into the pose is to place the hands on the chair. And then just step one foot forward to the front leg of the chair, to be right in front of it. And then step the leg back. And now you're in a similar position that you were before, but now we're gonna work a little bit more on trying to get upright in this position. So I'm gonna walk my hands back and then place my hands here. Now if you feel like you need more support or you can't get up far enough and still keep your hands on the chair, then you can either bend down a little bit more, which might be difficult.

Or you can step forward and then hold the back of the chair and step a little further back because this won't get in your way. And then you can be here. Press down on the back rest of the chair. Keep the arms straight, lift up. And here you is pointed straight ahead, and that leads to better hip mobility for long stride walking and functional movement.

Whereas if I was in warrior 2, my foot would be down here like this, which lovely pose, but it takes me out of that hip extension. I'm gonna show it from the back here like this, and that's gonna be what Warrior 2 looks like. So that might be familiar too. And then Warrior 1.5 is going to help you emphasize that hip extension. And then you can add an arm lift. Breathe in.

Switch sides. Add another arm lift on the other side. Keep lifting up without rising up. So you want that front knee bent, to about a ninety degree angle and try as much as possible to get the back knee straight. To come out of the pose, place your hands back onto the chair seat, step back, and you can do your Chaturanga Dundasana right here.

Take it into an upward facing dog. Back to your plank position, and then back to the downward facing dog, just as a rest between the postures. Now step forward. And again, if you want to step forward to the front part of the chair and just use the chair seat, You can do that, or you can step to the back of the chair hold on to the back rest of the chair so that you're up a little higher, if you're a little stronger, and then lift an arm. Lifting the arm helps to increase the stretch.

If you lift the arm of the same leg that you have in extension, you're gonna actually get more stretch through that so as muscle because that muscle attaches to the front of your spine. And if we sit too much and we don't really walk enough, we lose mobility in that muscle, and it pulls us forward. Now let's change sides, inhale, I always like to think of Zena the Warrior princess here. Right? It's such a great name for this pose. Alright. Now let's try the warrior 2 position, tend to turn the foot outwards, maybe come back out of it just a little bit so we can get our pelvis more vertical.

And then we're still on that diagonal because the hip has opened. So your pelvis won't be perfectly symmetrical in most cases. And then we can hold on to the back rest of the chair and then find our warrior 2 position, look toward the front arm, and balance here. And you still have that, that front knee that you can rest against the chair for additional balance. And then pull it away if you feel confident with that. Can you lift your back toes? That means your foot's not pronated or collapsing through the arch.

Breathe in. And breathe out. What is yoga, but breathing through pain. Right? Alright. And then take it down, bring yourself back to that dendasana position, lift through the heart, Find that upward facing dog. And then breathe as you bring it to downward facing dog.

And now that feels like a resting pose. Right? Starts to feel a lot easier when you do the more difficult poses. Alright. Now let's step forward. A little bit, keeping your hands on the chair. And I want you to try lifting your back leg.

And see if you can keep those hips square so that you're not allowing the hip to open up and then hold here. And you can bend this standing leg. If you feel like you don't have enough mobility to keep it straight, it's okay to bend that standing leg. And I really want you to work on trying to get that leg lifted with the knee straight so that you work on those buttocks and glute strength. And then if you are able to, you can lift the opposite arm.

Some people call this bird dog but I like to call it a modified warrior 3, and you're gonna hold here. You wanna think of plugging in that shoulder. Lifting your shoulder from your back. So we tend to lift it from our neck a lot of times. And if we can really draw that shoulder down and lift from our back, so helpful.

Place the hand down, coming down, and you can take a little downward dog in between, lift the toes, place the toes down. Are your toes relaxed and lengthened? Alright. Let's try the other side. Step forward right under the chair. And then start to lift through that back leg.

Wanna try to keep the pelvis level not dropping too much and not lifting too much, but see if you can make make it level. Keep the back leg straight. We tend to wanna lift like that. Right? That's more of a hamstring lift. We wanna lift from the buttock muscle, and then adjust your hands if you need to. Bend the standing leg if you need to.

And if you want more of a challenge, you can take this arm forward and then find out where your 3 position. What is that supporting arm doing? Is that locked? Is it in that parenthesis shape? Are you lifted? Through the throat.

Make sure you're not dropping your head. Breathe. Keep that flow of breath. One more. Coming out of the post, place your hand down, step back to your downward facing dog, lengthening here, lift through the toes, and place the toes down.

Now step to the outside of your chair. Turn your back foot to a forty five degree angle. Place your front hand in the center of the chair. And now we're gonna open up to a triangle pose. So what you wanna imagine is that your back is against the wall.

You also can imagine that your stick is on your back. So I always love to teach this with the dowel on the back, and I'll demonstrate this after we've done both sides, we'll come back to it. And then you're really trying to get that hip to hinge in the back, but it's more of a side hinge trying to get the tailbone to face the wall and then pull the rib cage back into alignment with the pelvis. That you're not sagging down or arching in the pose. And then you, especially don't wanna round pose?

You wanna think of this like a back extension pose. And then what is that supporting hand doing? Could you actually come up and just do what I call spider position and hold your body in this alignment without support. Instead of just deadweight into that hand, you wanna be lifted as much as possible from arm to arm and from head to tail. Alright. Let's place the hand down.

Come out of it. Go into your plank. And then let's take a downward dog in between. And then let's bring it forward and change sides. Turning the back foot and placing it first and making sure your foot's not collapsing down, that you can see that your arch is lifted. You could possibly lift your big toe.

And then your front leg, you can start out with a bent knee, replace your hand on the chair if needed, and then open up And I want you to think of turning this into a backward bend so that you're lifting from the heart. Again, imagine that wall behind your back, and slowly straighten the front leg, if that's accessible to you, lengthening from hand to hand, lengthening from tailbone to the head and thinking of this being like a hip hinge of this hip and one of this hip. And smile through the pain. Alright. Not that it's painful. Wanna work in the pose, to support the spine.

And then let's see if we can come up on to the fingertips. And support our trunk with our own trunk muscles, right, instead of just being deadweight in the hand, we wanna lift up and out of it. Feeling energy in the pose and not necessarily relaxing in the pose. You're strong. You're long.

You're active. Your trunk muscles are working. And I like to think of connecting in sometimes instead of stretching too far out that you lose the integrity of your spine and your connection of your arms and legs. Alright. Let's go back and lift those toes again. I could feel my toes clenching the floor. Right?

So mindful movement. We go go to those body parts. That need a little extra attention. See what they're doing. Alright. Let's place the hand down.

Switch sides. Come to your plank position. Take it back. Breathe. Step 4.

Remember to hinge up. So bend your knees, lift your heart, and then take it up. So every move that you do, every transition that you do is mindful. So I promised that I was gonna show you the Dow with the triangle pose. I just love using the dowel with the triangle pose.

So I want you to see that the dowel is on my back here, and You don't necessarily have to do this now because you would have to hold on to it. So if you're not ready for it, you can just watch. And I have the three points of contact here. So you should always be able to do any of these poses that we just did. Triangle warrior poses with your Dow on your back.

So it's such a great tool to try to give you that awareness of your spine. So that's what it would look like. Whereas sometimes what I see is hinging like this and then coming away from the Dow and arching, or head coming forward to try to get to the foot and then you're compromising your spine. So using the dial is always that great check-in. To see how you're doing with your alignment.

Alright. We're gonna put the dial aside and I want you to take your Thera band out of your box, and let's make sure that we use our mindful movement as we bend to get the Thera band out of the box. And you'll sit so that you are facing the screen and sit perched in your chair. So you don't wanna sit all the way back in your chair for this. You wanna be perched in the chair. I'd like you to hold the theraband like you're holding a serving tray. Grass the theraband with your fingers and keep your thumb loose. It does matter because if you grasp with your thumbs, you tend to rotate your shoulders in and forward.

If you grasp the fair band with your fingers, you rotate your shoulders back and down. Alright. So now from here, you're gonna pull apart. Now you might have different tension of Theraban, at home than I do. So you want to use a thicker fair band that's the heaviest one that you have, and it shouldn't move very much.

If you have a light Thera band, you can double it so that the Thera band doesn't move quite as much. Alright. Let's sit tall, shoulders, roll down, and back, and then pull. And pull. And pull. And what I want you to notice is when you pull the band, your shoulder rotates back and down.

And so it seats that humeral head in the socket and activates the back of the rotator cuff. So important before you start trying to lift overhead. Alright. Now we're gonna take the Therabance and use a wide grip with the fingers, not the thumb, and palms down. And I want you just to straighten your elbows and pull the band. And usually what happens is the wrist kinda what I call go wonky and then the elbows lock. And so that would not be a great position for your shoulders because it facilitates exactly what we don't want, which is internal rotation and moving forward of the shoulder.

So if you can keep your palms down, Imagine showing your rings to the front of the room and then pull apart. Remember that parenthesis shape of your elbows? Pulling apart gently. And it's not a big movement, so you're not trying to do this. You're mostly trying to do a small movement to generate that contraction of the rotator cuff muscles that support the humeral head in the socket.

Alright. Now let's see if we can do a little bit of tension on the band, take it overhead. So it may be that you don't have enough mobility to get the band overhead, and it's okay to be here if you need to be here. Let's take the band as far up as you can and then do some pulls apart. And what I want you to think about is drawing the shoulders down and wide as you pull apart And as I'm pulling, you'll notice that the shoulders roll down and out away from my ears. Eases the neck and makes it a lot easier to bring my arms overhead.

It gives you that little bit of support. Alright. So let's say that you're not able to get the band overhead, and it might not be a problem of your shoulders. It could be that you're rounded in your upper back and that the shoulder blade is sitting like this on your back. And so that means the socket is facing downward. So this might be as much as you can do, but it's not the shoulder that's the issue. It's the back.

Right? So if I take my arms all the way overhead, keep my shoulder exactly in the same position and then lean forward rounding my back? Well, I didn't change my shoulder joint at all. I only changed my upper back. So if you can't get your arms overhead, it's likely the thoracic spine that is limiting that movement overhead. So that would be so great for you to work on.

If you go back to the ball exercise and then even try the ball exercise on your your bed at home. You can get up on your bed and put the ball behind your back. And I did review this in our spine mobility class for safe spine mobility for low bone density. You can take a look at that one to see how to do that in supine position. Alright. So I'm gonna put this aside. Again, mindfully doing it.

And then let's sit all the way back in the chair for a moment. And I want you hold your hands on the armrests of the chair and then lean forward. And if you need to walk forward, if you have more mobility, you can shift your weight forward. I like to call this either the Titanic position or the camel pose modified. And then lengthening up, lifting, Again, chest, eyes of the collar bones looking up as much as you can, and then eyes of the head looking in the same direction. Big smile across your chest, across your collarbones, across your pelvis, and of course, across your face. And then take it out.

Breathe in. One more time. Lift. Take a breath in and breathe out. One more.

And breathe out. Come out of the posture, slide all the way back in your chair, And then just mold your back to the chair so that you feel supported by the chair. And if you're so inclined, you can stay in the per position for your final meditation to close the practice. Let's close the eyes. Just appreciate your body's ability to build strength, improve balance, and your posture at any age.

Your bones and muscles respond so well to what you do with them. I want you to visualize yourself being strong, being happy, being healthy, No matter what age you are. If you can hold that vision of your best self in your mind, you will become that best self. Just imagine bringing in healing, energy, as you breathe in. Take that healing energy throughout your bones.

Stimulating your osteoblasts along the way. Feel every cell of your being vibrating because you've brought them to life. Keep that vision in your mind. Imagining the possibilities, imagining your potential is limitless. Let's return your awareness to the room.

Knowing that you've just rebalanced your cortisol and serotonin levels. That meditation is so good for reducing your cortisol that tends to deplete bone density is associated with stress. Thank you so much for joining me. It was such a pleasure to guide you on this journey to better bone health. Let's take a breath in, bring all that light, all that energy in.

Thanks again. I look forward to seeing you in the next class.