Energizing Chair Yoga

Hi, my name is Angelica and this is chair yoga. Hi, I'm Angelica from Yoga Liberty and this chair yoga class is made just for you. All you need today is a chair, any kind of simple chair. It's better if your chair does not have arms because because when you're doing chair yoga, you want to be able to move around a lot without the arms. So if you don't have arms on your chair, that's perfect. If you only have a chair with arms, then I would rather that you do the class than not do it at all. Again, my name is Angelica. I teach online yoga teacher training, so if you're interested in becoming a yoga teacher, you can click in the description below. I teach one-on-one and I only teach people individually. Your whole training is focused entirely on you. Whatever your dreams, your goals, your hopes, your whatever you want to accomplish, we're going to focus entirely on you in teacher training. But today we're just going to do a chair yoga class. This class is great for anybody who's just getting back to yoga. Maybe you're working with some injuries that make sitting down easier. Maybe you just want a general class. Maybe you work in an office and you have to sit down and this is the best that you can do to get some exercise. Or maybe you're chair-bound for whatever reason, and I'm glad that you're here. So let's go ahead and get started. Go ahead and sit on kind of the edge of your chair and lengthen your spine as you relax down through the shoulders. Good. If it feels good, go Go ahead and begin to close your eyes and breathe in and out through the nose. Maybe bring your hands onto your knees and just begin to breathe in and out. You might hear the rain in the background because it's raining here in beautiful Colorado. So as we breathe in through the nose, we want that breath to come all the way from the base of our spine and work up to the crown of our head. And then we breathe out through the nose and we let it just release down. A really nice active breath. We're going to just slow down our nervous system and bring our energy into this space, allowing ourselves to be completely focused on our yoga practice. You're doing great. I'm so glad that you're here. Good. So let's just take a moment to bring our hands into prayer position at our heart center and maybe tuck your chin and just take anything that you'd like to dedicate your class to today. Let that come into your mind. Maybe you want to finish the entire class. Maybe you want to focus on your mental health and bringing more peace into your mind. Maybe you want to send out love and radiate energy to someone who's not here. Just take that intention into your mind and we bring it into our practice today. We began our class with the sound of Om, taking a deep inhale. Om. Good. Gently opening your eyes and coming into the space. We're going to start with some gentle chair sun salutations. So bringing your hands in front of you, inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale, bring your arms down. Good. We'll do this a few more times. Inhale. Exhale. Good. You're doing really great. Inhale. Exhale. Just a few more times. Inhale, remembering to breathe in and out through the nose. Exhale, no breathing through the mouth, all through the nose. Inhale. Good job. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Nice. Last one. Inhale. And exhale out. Good. You did really great on your first Sun Salutation. Now we're going to do Sun Salutations with folds. So go ahead and bring your feet just a few inches apart. The rain is really starting to kick up now. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale and fold. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale and fold. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Good. Exhale and fold. Inhale, reach up. Exhale and fold. Inhale, reach up. Exhale and fold. Inhale, reach up. Exhale and fold. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Last time, exhale and fold. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale, bring your hands onto your knees. Good. We're going to transition now into a Sun Salutation with a twist. So inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale, bringing yourself to the side. As you twist, keep the spine nice and long. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Good. Exhale and twist. Keep the spine nice and long. Woo, it's really raining now. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Good job. Exhale and twist. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale and twist. Good. Inhale, reach your arms to the sky. Exhale and twist. Good. Inhale, reach up. You're doing so good. I'm so glad that you're here. Exhale and twist. Inhale, reach up. And exhale, twist. Doing so great. Inhale, reach up. Exhale and twist. Just letting yourself flow with the breath. Remember, we're breathing in and out through the nose. Inhale, reach up. Exhale and twist. I feel like I'm channeling my deep inner Denise Austin. One last time, inhale, reach up. If you know who Denise Austin is, exhale, twist. She was my favorite in high school. Inhale, reach up, and exhale, bring your hands to the heart center. Take a moment here to center. And come back to your intention for the practice. We're going to continue our Sun Salutations, and this time we're going to do some lateral bending in our Sun Salutations. That means on the side of our body. So inhale, reach the arms up. Exhale, grab onto the side of your chair and reach over Look up to the sky and keep the spine really nice and long. Inhale back to center. Exhale to the other side. Grab onto the side of your chair and reach over. You're doing great. Keep both hips on the ground— or on the chair. Inhale back to center. Exhale, switching sides. Good. You're doing so awesome. I'm so glad that you're here today. I hope that you're subscribed to my YouTube channel, Yoga Liberty, and if you're not, hit that button so that you can get more classes with me because I love seeing you here. And make sure that you leave a comment so that I can get to know you even more. If there's any special requests that you have I absolutely love to honor those, so please do make a comment and I will make a class dedicated to you. Leave your name and I'll be like, hey, this class is dedicated to Susan, or maybe this class is dedicated to my friend Angel over on TikTok. All right, bringing it back to center. Last time, lateral movement, bring it back. And hands to the heart center. Next, we're gonna do some shoulder stretches. So inhale, reach your arm straight in front, bring your right arm over, and your left arm can help your right arm pull to the side. So we're feeling this all along the right arm. Good, you're doing great. If that's too much for you, You can extend that arm out and just use your hand, whatever feels good to you. If you want to go deeper than I am, that's okay too. I'm just going somewhere in the middle. Good. Bring it back to center. Good job. Just holding on to that stretch. Really nice shoulder stretch. Back to center, and we'll do the right side again. Good. Back to center. And we'll do the left side. I got a little bit confused there for a second. It's like, what am I doing? Back to center, doing the right side again. And you can move during the poses. You don't have to do it exactly the same way every time. Last time on the right side. And last time on the left side. Good. And that is perfect. We're gonna go ahead and start to do some shoulder rolls. So just rolling the shoulders, maybe an exaggerated movement for you. Really getting the whole upper body into the movement. We're going to roll backwards now. That feels so great to just really get the shoulders open. We're doing a whole body workout today, a full body chair— chair practice. We're doing a full body chair practice today, so we're really getting a good workout for our whole body. If anything that I'm doing doesn't fit and you want to do something different, let's switch and do opposites. Then definitely do whatever makes you feel good. I can't be there with you, so I don't know what feels good in your body. Even if I was there with you, I still wouldn't be inside of your body, and I don't know what feels good to you. So it's important you take responsibility for your own health and do what feels really great for you. Awesome. All right, bringing it back to center. Next, we're going to do some wrist pulls. So go ahead and just extend your right hand out and pull your fingertips towards you. Should feel that right here underneath of the right wrist. Good. Just pull back as feels comfortable to you. Switch sides. You're doing awesome! Switching again. And switching. You're doing so great. Thank you so much for coming to class with me today. Thank you so much, TikTok people, for being here too. Switching again. Good. And then bringing it back to center. Okay, we're gonna do some lateral extension, and then we're gonna add a wrist pull into that. So first you want to grab onto the side of your chair. We're just gonna reach over on an inhale and exhale, bend, looking up to the sky. Again, make sure that both of your bum cheeks stay on the chair. You don't want to lift off, you want to stay right there grounded on your chair. Maybe look up to the sky. You're doing really great. And then back to center and switch. Switch sides. And back to center. This time we're gonna reach over and grab onto our wrist and just pull so that we begin to really feel that in the shoulder socket. Good. And back to center. Switch sides. Reach up and hold, maybe looking up to the sky. Remember to keep both bum cheeks on the ground, feet firmly on the ground. And then back to center. That felt really good. Let's do some twisting now. You're going to want to twist on to your right hand onto your left knee first, so that might be opposite of what you see me on the screen. Inhale, reach your right arm up. Exhale, right arm comes to the left knee, right hand onto the left knee. Inhale, left arm comes up, reaches back and grabs onto the chair wherever it feels good. Now the reason why we want to twist with this compression this way first is because we're helping move through our intestines in the digestive tract. We don't want it to come back the other way. That's for sure. We want it to go out. Bring it back to center and switch. Left hand onto the right knee. Inhale, lengthen. Grab onto the back of your chair with your right hand and exhale, twist. Good. You should feel that in your upper middle back, not in your low back. The spine is nice and long, and now we're just sending all the digestion down the tube Breathe deep here, in and out through the nose. Excellent. Go ahead and bring it back to center. You're doing such a great job. I'm so glad that you're here. Let's move down and do some lower body. We're going to move into a really fun move that I really like called Extended Side Angle, Utthita Parsvakonasana. So you go ahead and turn kind of to the side on your chair. You're going to let your left knee or your right knee— you start with your right, you do your right side, I'm going to do my left side because we're opposite. Okay, bringing your right foot to the side, keeping the knee bent, extend the left leg back, and you just want to be on to your back foot. You might come a little bit forward on the chair in order to get into the pose. Go ahead and bring your right arm down onto your right knee, then inhale, reach the arm over on the left side. Good. Breathing here deep in and out through the nose as you look up. Good. And then just bringing that back to Center, we're going to go ahead and switch sides. So now your left knee is bent, right leg is extended, left arm comes onto the left knee, and reach the top arm over, looking to the sky, breathing deep here in and out through the nose. Try to keep your spine nice and long as if you're extending straight to the side. Good, that's a hard one. And then bring it back to center. Bring both feet to the center. Next we're going to do some leg lifts. So You want to grab onto the side of your chair for stability, and we'll just lift the right leg and bring it down. Lift the left leg and bring it down. Good. Right leg, down. Left leg, down. Keep the spine extended, breathing in and out through the nose. Inhale. Exhale. Bring it down. Inhale. Exhale, bring it down. I'm going to sit a little bit further back in the chair. Inhale. Good, you're doing great. Just keep moving the legs, lifting up and down. Remember to keep the spine nice and straight. Really good posture here. We don't want to slouch lump. We want to keep it really nice and straight in our chair pose. Good. It's like extended Utkatasana. Whoo! Good. All right, now that we got that warmed up, let's see if we can do both legs at the same time. Good. Bring it down. Awesome. So just lift as high as it feels comfortable to you. It's sometimes easier on the edge of the mat because you can bring your core into it. So, woo, and extend the legs out and then bring them back in and down. Good. Try that one more time. Lift up, extend the legs, and down. Good, you did great! That was really awesome. That was a little bit more challenging than the rest of the stuff that we've done, and I'm glad that you did it. All right, let's move to the next pose. We're going to move into a goddess series, which is a whole lot of fun. So just go ahead and bring your feet nice and wide. We're going to bring our hands onto our knees and we're going to stir and do some goddess stirs. Good. Breathing in and out through the nose here. As you rotate and move through the poses. Good. Remember that in and out breath. Really get into the stirr as deep as you feel comfortable, maybe even going really deep and around, or maybe not. Whatever feels good to you, however much you want to move, that's what you want to do today. You're doing so good. I'm so glad that you're still here with me. I'm so proud of you. Like, honestly, you could be doing a million other things that are not great for you, but instead you decided to do something that is great for you. And I hope that when you end this class, you feel better than when you started, because that's the whole point. The whole point is that our lives be filled with joy and happiness, and yoga is just the conduit through which we find that. Honestly, I wake up every morning really early and I do a nice long hour-long meditation, and it just puts me in a really good space of gratitude, and that makes me think that I'm So grateful that you're here. Thanks for coming to class. Let's switch directions. Woo! And maybe bringing the arms into it, however it feels good to you and organic to you to move. Whatever you would like to do in your practice today. Maybe you want to not add so much movement in your stirr Maybe you do. It's really up to you and whatever your body is singing to you and speaking to you. Now, I'm so glad that you're here, y'all. All right, let's bring it back to center. I feel a little bit dizzy right now. All right, we're gonna do some twisting, so I want you I'm gonna get my hair out of my mouth. I want you to bring your hands, interlace your fingers, and bring them behind your back. Inhale. Exhale, twist to the left first. Inhale, lengthen the spine. Exhale, twist to the right. Good. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Good, you're doing so great. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Thank you so much for joining me today. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Good, keep it moving. All right, let's go a little bit faster now. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. Back to center. Oh, good job! Just close your eyes and sit Sit with that for a moment. Let the prana, life force energy, in your body start to calm. We're gonna move into a forward fold. So inhale, reaching the arms to the sky. Exhale, folding forward. And as you fold here, you should feel this on the inner thighs. If your hands have a hard time reaching the ground, you can grab on to a couple of blocks and use those for your hands. If you don't have any blocks, books work just as good. Too bad we don't all have phone books anymore. Those were really great. They were nice and thick. It's a whole new world now. Go ahead and just fold here and release down into your forward fold. Really feel that in your inner groin area. Just breathing in and out through the nose, letting go of any expectations you had on yourself, allowing yourself to release. Coming into a space of gratitude for your body for being able to do this class today. Not everyone in the world can do this, so, so grateful that you are one of those people who can. Remembering to breathe in and out through the nose. Maybe you can hear the sounds of the rain. And then just bringing one hand and then the other onto your knee, slowly rolling up. Whoo! Good. We're gonna do some side bending here. Now you could just bring your right forearm onto your right leg and then bring the left arm to the sky. Or if you want to bring that deeper, you could take your block, set it next to you, and reach up that way. Maybe coming on to the fingertips if that feels good, or if you want to bring it even deeper than that, you can bring your hand all the way to the ground if that feels comfortable for you. If it doesn't, this is really wonderful and totally fantastic. I used to marathon all the time, and I would think about how I was out there at 3 o'clock in the morning doing 20-mile runs. This was like in my early 30s, and I think about how all my friends were at home, probably hungover, and I was out doing exercise. And I want you to think about that right now because this is like your marathon. You are out here exercising and doing something fabulous when maybe the people around you aren't doing that. Maybe they're not doing this for their bodies. And I want you to be so proud of yourself and just so grateful that you decided to do this because you made a decision to do something good for you. And I'm really glad that you're here. Thank you so much for caring about yourself because when you care about yourself, the whole world starts to care about— you can bring your hand onto your hip if you want, or you can keep the arm extended. The whole world starts to care about themselves more. It starts with the individual. All right, let's go ahead and slowly come up. Really good. We're just going to lengthen the spine and switch to the other side. Good job, guys, are doing great. I'm so glad you're here. Again, any level of this that feels really accessible to you and feels like where you want to be today, don't force yourself. That's the thing about yoga is that it's about understanding your body and having this communication with your body that is really genuine and loving and being like, listen, I love my body, and so this is where my body's at today. This is what is going to feel good today. That is the whole point of yoga. So yoga is never about pushing ourselves in the way that people do in sports. Yoga is about finding a connection deep within ourselves and understanding and making friends with our body. Good. I'm glad that you're here. Again, breathing. All right, let's go ahead and just slowly bring that up. We're gonna inhale, reach the right arm to the sky. Exhale, right hand comes onto the left knee. Maybe grab on to the chair behind you. Lengthen the spine and exhale, Twist, looking behind you, moving into our final postures today. You're doing so good. Just stick with me a few more moments, not that much longer. The juiciest part of our practice is coming. Ah, the rain is starting to stop. Nice. Maybe close your eyes here and let yourself become a little bit more meditative. And we're going to bring it back to center and slowly twist to the other side. Lengthen the spine and twist. Really good. So glad that you're here. You're doing great. Never feel bad for taking care of yourself and putting yourself first, because when we put ourselves first in a loving, kind way, then we are also going to put others into a loving, kind space. Good. Go ahead and bring it back to center. If you have any props, you can just move them out of the way. Good. Woo! That was a great practice. We're going to move into our final meditation now. So lengthening your spine and relaxing down through the shoulders. If you have a blanket that you'd like to use today for warmth, if you're out in the cold rain of Colorado like me, Oh my, it's July and it's like sometimes it snows. Oh, it's crazy here. I'm from Vegas, I don't know what this is about, but I'm getting used to it. Lengthen the spine, relax down through the shoulders, and let your eyes close. Start to breathe slowly in and out through the nose. Let every part of your body relax down. Let your shoulders release. Let your eyes again close. Feel the energy just dripping from the top of your body, moving slowly down your spine, down your shoulders, down your arms. Feel that energy releasing down through your hips, letting the relaxation move all the way down your legs, feeling it move down to your toes. Good, you're doing really great. Maybe take a big inhale through the nose, exhale out the mouth. Ah, good. Really do it with me this time. Let go of all of that crap that you've been holding on to, anything that's telling you you're not good enough. We're gonna release it now. We're gonna inhale through the nose. Let it go out the mouth. Ha! Good. Just take a few moments of silence here. Very slowly begin to wiggle your toes and your fingers, gently letting your awareness come back into your space. Keeping the eyes closed as you inhale, reach your arms to the sky and grab on the opposite elbows, reaching. And release. Bring your hands to the heart center, eyes still closed. Take a moment to come back to that intention that you set for your practice today. What was it that you wanted to cultivate? Honoring it with gratitude that you made it here all the way to the end. I hope you subscribe and come to another class. The light within me honors the divine and beautiful light within each and every one of you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Again, my name is Angelica. You did a great job. This was a good class. Namaste. Thank you so much. Please do hit that subscribe button, like this video, comment. It helps me to grow and share with more people just like you so that we could get the word out about happiness and yoga. If you're looking to become a yoga teacher, click in the link below because I do one-on-one online yoga teacher training. You can do it from anywhere and it's completely tailored to your individual needs. So if you have anything special that you want to learn, then that's what we can focus on. Again, thank you so much for joining me. Mwah! I'll see you in the next class.