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I just had my birthday and I’m feeling acutely aware of how quickly the years pass. In fact, over the last few months, I started pushing myself to do even more physical activity by practicing yoga, biking, walking, and lifting weights more frequently and with more intensity. The result is that I’m feeling very sore and slightly defeated!
That’s one of the challenges of aging—we need to keep the body active, but it responds differently than in the past. After teaching accessible yoga for three decades, I’ve found that many of my older students can’t, or don’t want to, get on the floor, but are comfortable sitting in a chair. That’s where chair yoga comes in.
Chair yoga offers almost all the benefits of a mat practice in a much more accessible manner, and complements an active lifestyle in older adults for a number of reasons. (By the way, there’s a movement away from calling older adults “seniors” or “elderly,” which are terms that can be associated with stereotypical ideas about aging.)
Of course, people of any age can benefit from chair yoga, including if you have a disability, are recovering from an injury, want to practice yoga at work, or simply would like to try it.
5 Benefits of Chair Yoga for Everyone
In chair yoga, we work on balance, strength, and nervous system regulation in a single format that is easily accessible and doesn’t require anything other than a chair.
And it’s not all or nothing. Chair yoga can be integrated with a mat practice, which can be an effective combination. Following are some of the other health benefits of chair yoga.
1. Boost Mental Health
The fundamental teaching of yoga is that we are already complete. The practice is designed to help remove the obstacles to that realization. These obstacles, according to ancient yoga philosophy, are in our minds. This is why yoga, whether it’s done on a mat or in a chair, is so effective at supporting our mental health, a fact that’s supported by contemporary research.
Chair yoga can be especially useful for those of us who face loss or grief, which becomes increasingly unavoidable as we age. This may be in part because yoga is often practiced in community, and connecting with others can help with the isolation that so often comes with aging. In related research, yoga has been shown to support older adults who are experiencing anxiety and depression.
Yoga also increases our general awareness and sensitivity to the body and its needs. This is essential when making decisions about how we move and act. In simple terms, increased awareness helps us avoid injury and pay more attention to the body’s signals. This can be understood as increased proprioception, which is knowing where the body is in space, as well as increased interoception, which is attention to sensations such as breathing, hunger, and emotions.
2. Improve Posture & Expand the Breath
One way practicing yoga can support anyone as they age is an increased awareness of posture. It’s considered a normal part of aging to develop rounding in the upper back (kyphosis). But the negative effect of the spine’s curvature isn’t limited to posture. It can also diminish lung capacity.
Yoga poses, even when practiced in a chair, support expanding the chest, strengthening the back, and creating space for the lungs. Yoga’s breathing practices, or pranayama, can also train the body to breathe more efficiently and effectively by engaging the diaphragm muscle rather than rely on chest breathing. Yoga also teaches us to breathe more slowly and with greater control, which has a positive effect on the nervous system and our mental health.
3. Address Muscle & Bone Loss
Research shows that we may lose as much as eight percent of our muscle mass each decade. This age-related muscle loss, known as sarcopenia, can be prevented and potentially reversed through strength training, which is also part of a chair yoga practice.
There is also a strong connection between muscle loss and bone loss. Osteoporosis makes us more susceptible to broken bones, which is a major factor in aging-related challenges. In the past few years, women over age 50 appear to be increasingly diagnosed with osteoporosis, which now occurs in close to 20 percent of that population.
Strengthening happens during yoga through movement (isotonic strengthening), such as in Sun Salutations. It also takes place through holding poses (isometric strengthening), such as in Warrior 2, Cobra, or Tree Pose. When practicing in a chair, it’s important to purposefully challenge muscles by consciously engaging them and, potentially, holding poses longer.
4. Help You Calm Down
One area where yoga excels is in nervous system regulation, a term that’s tossed around a lot these days. It basically means building the resilience to respond quickly to stress and return to balance after being stimulated.
It’s that recovery that is key. We often hear that stress is bad, but it’s actually our inability to return to balance after a stressful reaction that is a factor in so many health conditions, including cardiovascular disease (including high blood pressure), diabetes, arthritis, and more. In fact, if you’ve ever found yourself ruminating on a problem and clenching your jaw, you probably know what I mean.
Yoga is especially useful in this regard. Yoga practices help us stimulate the relaxation response so we can come back to balance after being stressed. A combination of movement (asana), breathing (pranayama), relaxation, and meditation can support a balanced nervous system that’s more resilient to stress—and, as a result, more resistant to certain diseases.
5. Improve Balance
Our ability to balance seems to decline with age for many reasons, including muscle loss. This is important to keep in mind as falls are exceptionally dangerous for older adults by reducing independence and leading to bigger issues such as infections. This is part of why there is so much attention put on fall prevention.
Balance is a surprisingly complicated subject that includes the vestibular system, as well as a host of other factors, including focus and strength. From the little research that has been done, it’s clear that yoga is beneficial for improving balance.
In chair yoga, it’s important to find ways to safely challenge our stability since a seated position is much more stable than a standing one and generally doesn’t require much balancing. This can include balancing something on your head or in your hands, shifting your weight on the chair, or adding movement.
How to Begin Practicing Chair Yoga
Finding a safe and effective yoga practice is essential in order to reap the benefits of chair yoga. There is some debate in the yoga world as to whether certain poses or movements are dangerous for older adults. It can be difficult to make generalizations about such a diverse population, especially when the human body is incredibly resilient and responds when challenged. But it’s also essential to be sensitive to individuals’ need and recognize that older adults may not recover from injuries as quickly as younger people.
For example, if you have an existing back problem, it’s important to create a practice that supports rather than exacerbates the issue. That can be challenging for teachers to do in group yoga classes. Research tells us that anywhere from 21 to 75 percent of older adults aged 60 and over experience back pain. So it’s clear that we need to carefully consider which practices are safe for this population.
It’s also important to find a style of chair yoga that you actually like so that you’ll keep practicing it. Working with a yoga therapist or yoga teacher trained to make yoga accessible can help you find a balance of safe and challenging. There are also books and YouTube videos with chair yoga practices designed for older adults.
Generally, it’s helpful to start slowly and focus on building an inner awareness rather than focusing on the external appearance of the practice. Notice how you feel after each practice, including the next day. With time and practice, you’ll hopefully notice these benefits in your life.
RELATED: A Simple Chair Yoga Practice for Beginners
To learn more about practicing and teaching chair yoga, please join Jivana Heyman and special guests, Rodrigo Souza, Melissa Shah, Karen James, and Jaquie Sunny Barbee, for a live online training through Accessible Yoga: Chair Yoga for Everyone: Learn to Practice & Teach.
