chair yoga version 2

Hello and welcome. This is a brief chair yoga routine. We're gonna start in a simple meditation. So find a comfortable place on your chair and have your feet firmly grounded into the earth. I'm actually gonna move back a little bit. Have your palms resting on your knees or thighs, and just gently close your eyes or gaze softly on the floor in front of you. Begin to drop into your breath, just noticing the texture and the rhythm without trying to change it. And notice if there's a coolness in your nostrils on the inhale and a warmth on the exhale. We're going to draw attention to the chakras, which are energy centers in the body. Draw your attention to the crown center of your head. See the glowing light color white. This is your crown chakra, your higher self, saarishvaha. Draw your attention down to your third eye center. See the color violet, your third eye chakra. Ajna chakra. Draw your attention down to your throat center. See the color blue. Vishuddha. Draw your attention to your heart center. See the color green. Anahata. Draw your attention down to your sacrum, your sacral center, and see the color yellow Manipura. Draw your attention about 2 inches below your belly button. Svadhisthana. See the color orange. Finally, draw your attention down to the pelvic floor. See the color red. Muladhara. And then you can begin to deepen your breath and open your eyes as we prepare for our practice. And let's just begin with some movement guided by our breath. So inhale and let the inhale guide your arms up. And then exhale, allowing the arms to come down. So we inhale, and on the inhale, my palms are facing up, and on the exhale, I flip them so that my palms are facing down. Let's do that once more. Inhale up and exhale down. We're gonna warm up our spine with some seated cat cow. I'm gonna sit to the side so that you can see the way that I do this. So on the inhale, we're gonna arch our back and just sort of open up our heart center. On the exhale, I'm gonna round my back, bring in my belly, and tuck my chin. So inhale and exhale. So on the inhale, you wanna just open up your chest and don't lean your head too far back. Just bring your chin up a little bit. And then the exhale, get a nice stretch in your upper back throughout your back and bring your chin in. We'll do that a few more times. You can do this on your own breath. And this should feel really good. Let's do one more. Good. Now we're gonna do a lateral stretch so we can stretch the thigh. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna keep one leg on and bring the other leg to the side. So got my left leg planted at 90 degrees. My right leg is out at an angle and my heel is sort of planted in the floor so I have balance. I'm gonna bring my right hand down on my right leg, and then I'm gonna inhale and stretch my left arm up, and I'm gonna stretch over towards the right, bringing my right hand down any amount, whatever feels comfortable in stretching any amount. I'm gonna be careful to keep my left shoulder in the shoulder socket and breathe. And also, I'm not collapsing forward. And I'm not going backwards. I'm just staying in line with my leg. And you can bring your neck down or your face down to look towards your right leg. You can look straight forward or you can look up if you have a happy neck. I'm gonna look down and just breathe. And you wanna keep a micro bend Actually, I was straightening my leg, so I'm correcting myself here. Wanna keep a micro bend in your right leg. Couple more breaths here. And on an exhale, we'll come back up. And let's switch over to the other side. So right leg is at 90 degrees, kicking out the left leg, keeping that micro bend. And then we'll inhale and stretch to the left. And it's important to keep breathing. And then exhale, we'll come up. Excellent. Now we're gonna twist so that we get the other way stretching with our back. So this time we're gonna do twist a little bit differently. We're going to cross our right leg over the left, and then we're gonna lean forward a little bit. And actually, we're going to place our left hand on our right— left knee here. And then we're gonna use that as leverage and we're going to put our right hand behind us on the chair. And on an inhale, we're gonna straighten our spine. Exhale, we're gonna twist. And then on an inhale, you can slightly unwind, straighten your spine, and then exhale, Twist again. And one more time, inhale, slightly unwind and straighten your spine, and exhale, twist. And this time we're going to hold the twist. Twisting is really good for digestion and just wringing out any impurities in your body.. And if you can, you wanna have your head kind of follow in line with the twist, but not go beyond it. One more breath and slowly unwind. And you can uncross. And then let's put our left leg over our right and repeat on the other side. So we're placing our right palm over on your knee, and our left hand behind us. We'll inhale, straighten the spine. Exhale and twist. Inhale, slightly unwind and straighten. Exhale and twist. Once more, inhaling and straightening, and then exhale and twist as much as you can comfortably. And recognize that both sides may be different because we are asymmetrical. So you'll notice throughout yoga that your sides are going to be different, have different ranges of motion, and that's totally normal. One more breath here, and then we'll unwind. Good. Now we're going to do something called Star Pose, and then we'll follow that with Goddess Pose, which is one of my favorites. So for Star Pose, you're going to extend both legs out, planting your heel for, uh, balance, and then keeping a slight micro bend in the knees. And then you just bring your arms out. Open up your fingers and you're basically a star. Now, if you want to have some resistance here, you can engage your muscles and just hold. From here, we're going to go into Goddess Pose, which basically all you do is bring your elbows into a bend. And then if you'd like, you can bring your hands into a mudra, flip them backwards, keeping your fingers splayed. Now let's bring a little bit of back exercise into this. On an inhale, straighten your arms. Exhale, pull them down. Creating resistance. Inhale up, exhale down. I'm going to bring my fingers back to neutral, hands facing each other. Inhale up, exhale down. A few more times. Inhale up, exhale down. Good job. Up. And down. Once more, up and down. And then another arm exercise and shoulder. Extend your arms long and then go ahead and twist in and out. So bringing your wrists in and then twisting them out. You should feel this pretty quickly. And now, just for a mind game, twist one arm in while the other is out and go opposite. It's good to play with our mind a little bit, keep it guessing. Now switch. Basically, you're doing the same thing. You just pause and switch. Your shoulders might be feeling it by now. Just a few more. Good. And arms down. And you can bring your knees in. And we're gonna do a little bit of a shoulder stretch and back stretch after that. So again, bring your arms out. Bring the right arm underneath. Left arm is gonna go over. And then you're gonna cross like this. And then Twist them around any amount. So if you're here, that's great. If you want to keep going, perfect. If you can, you can twist them all the way around so that your hands flat. And then at this point, this is just fine to stay right here. If you'd like, you can try bringing your hands forward. And this should be a nice stretch for you. If you wanna go even further, you can try bringing your arms up off your chest and just hold and breathe. These are called eagle arms. Now we can do eagle legs with this. So you take the opposite knee from the one that's from the arm that's underneath and cross it over the other knee. And if you want, you can create a bind by bringing that foot underneath. And if you want even more of a challenge, you can bring, go up on your tippy toes And then more, you can try to bring them off the floor. And this becomes an ab workout. So we'll just hold here for a few more. Okay, and release. Shake your arms out. That's enough of that. Okay. But we have to do the other side. So arms out. And this time we're going to have the left arm below, right? Yeah. And the right arm up. And then we twist them around any amount. If you're here, that's perfect. And here we go. And then remember, if you'd like, you can bring the hands forward. And then another place to go. Would be to lift your arms up. And we're holding and breathing. Then if you'd like, you can cross your right leg over the left. And if you wanna create a bind, go ahead and bring that right ankle around. And then if you want the extra challenge, just for fun, you can either come up on your tippy toes or you can lift your legs. And don't forget to breathe. Okay, another breath here. And release. Great job. Shake out your arms. Okay. We're gonna come into Warrior 1. So what I'd like you to do, come up off your chair and then we're gonna put your right leg over. What we're gonna do is basically sit down and then you're gonna extend your left leg long and have your right leg at a 90-degree angle.. And you do want to have a micro bend in that back leg. And you're up on your tippy toes. And your foot is about at a 45-degree angle. And then once you're here, you want to square your hips so that they're facing forward. And you want to have your foot, your right foot firmly grounded in, it's all 4 points of your foot. And once you feel stable here, inhale and go ahead and bring your arms up. This is Warrior 1, Virabhadrasana 1. And just breathe. We're gonna do humble warriors. So bring your arms behind your back, clasp your hands, and then on an exhale, go ahead and fold forward any amount. Right here is great. If you have the flexibility and you wanna keep going, that's just fine. And breathe. My back foot. Oh, is— never mind. Okay. And then we'll come back all the way up. And then we're going to do a twist here. So let's bring our arms back up. And then inhale, exhale, bring your left arm forward and your right arm back. Breathing here. And come on back up. And then we'll twist the other way. Right arm forward, left arm back. And arms back up, and then you can bring them by your side. Excellent job. Okay, we're gonna come to the middle and we'll do a version of child's pose. So let's inhale up and then just fold forward, just resting. And anytime when you're doing yoga, you can always come back to a resting pose. Nothing wrong with that. And let's inhale and exhale, come on up, arms overhead, and exhale, reach down. Let's go ahead and do Urvajrasana 1 on the other side. So we'll come up and we'll kind of adjust ourselves. And now we have our left leg at 90 degrees, and now our right leg is back straight with the microband. And once we're settled here with our hips square towards the front, inhale, exhale, inhale, and then the arms are up. And just fold and breathe. Now let's bring our arms behind our back and clasp our hands. Inhale, and then exhale, fold forward any amount, and just breathe. Exhale, come on back up. Inhale, arms up. And exhale. Great job. Now we'll come to center and we'll do that child's pose once more. Inhale. Exhale, fold forward. Inhale up. Exhale, arms down. We're gonna come up off our chair now. Do some leg stretches. So bring your left— I'm sorry, your right leg up. And Actually, let's do a twist first. So with your right leg at a 90-degree angle, bring your arms up and then come into a twist with your right arm behind you and left arm in front. And then extend forward and bring your left elbow onto your knee. And if this isn't stable for you, you can just skip this one, or you can go like this and put your left hand on the chair and twist from here. If you want to do it with your elbow on the knee, then, and you can use this as leverage, then go ahead and put your right hand on your back and just twist from here. Otherwise, you're doing it like this. Either way, it's great. And keep a little micro bend in that back, in that left leg. And we'll just hold here. Again, you can either look down, look forward, or look up, whatever works best for you. Great. One more breath. And we'll come out of that pose. And then we're going to do tree pose, which is a balance pose. Not my favorite thing. Actually, I love them, but I'm just not very skilled at it, which is okay. Yoga is a practice. So there's no perfecting yoga. So for Tree Pose, we're gonna stand solidly on our left leg. So go ahead and pick up your feet and kind of get grounded on that left foot and engage the legs. So engage the inner thigh by sort of feeling, rolling it backwards if you can. And then the outer thigh, feel like you're rolling it the other way. And then Get solid in your glutes, engage the glute. Then we're going to lift up our right leg. We're going to start by just bringing our toes up on the tippy toes and having our heel on the left leg. We're going to bring our hands to Anjali Mudra, or prayer pose. And if this is where you stay for your tree pose, that's perfect. If you want more of a challenge, first find a place to gaze or a drishti so that this helps your balance. Find one place to gaze and keep your eyes there the whole time. Then go ahead and bring your foot up to either here, or if you're feeling extra, extra balanced today, then you can bring it all the way up to here. But you want to make sure that you don't bring it here, like right on your knee joint. So you want to bring it up all the way to here if you want that extra challenge. So not here. It can be here or here, just not right there. So let's see. I'm going to try to do it on the lower area here and breathe. Embrace the wobble. And if you fall out, just come right back in. And any noises that you make are perfectly acceptable. Okay. Good job. Now we're going to stretch our right leg. So come away from the chair a little bit. Put your right leg straight, micro bend, and we'll bring our arms up and let's fold forward any amount and just hold and breathe. Flexing that right foot so you get more of a stretch. And this, you'll find that you're more flexible on one side than the other too. So nothing wrong with that. Couple more breaths here. And you can come back on up and release that. Now we'll repeat all of that on the other side. So come on over here. And first we're gonna do that twist. So bring the left knee up. And remember, you can keep your right hand here, or you can bring it here and bring the elbow down. And then the left hand goes on the back. And we inhale, and then we exhale and we twist. You can look down. Forward or happy necks and look up. That's not for my neck, so I'm gonna look down. And just remember to keep breathing. Couple more breaths here. And gently come out of the twist first. Grab the chair and bring your leg down. Now we have the tree pose, so bring your hands down to the mudra. Get really grounded in that right leg first. Find your drishti, your gaze, and then bring the left leg first to your tippy toes. If you want to stay here, that's perfect, or you can bring it Bring it up here. Don't follow my lead and just keep your foot off your knee joint. Hold and breathe. Apparently this side, what, what's doing better? If you're feeling really crazy, you can grow your tree, expand your branches. My tree is unhappy about that today. And I don't know how you make the leaves fall. I suppose you can kind of go like this. This goes with Minnesota leaves. And we'll come out of that. Good job. And then standing here, we're gonna bring our left leg up to stretch. So bring the heel up. Oops. And we're gonna have a flexed foot. Remember to keep a micro bend in the leg. Inhale up and fold forward. Any amount. Remember, this leg may be quite different from the other leg when we stretch in terms of flexibility, and that's perfectly fine. Sometimes legs get a little shaky like mine, and that's good. That just means the muscle is working, stretching itself. That's a good sign. Couple more breaths here. Good. And carefully take the leg down. Excellent. Let's take a full body stretch. So inhale up and just grab one wrist, the left wrist with your right hand, and just kind of stretch. And stretch through the other side. Maybe just kinda roll around a little bit. Just let your body move the way it wants to. Swing around. Just kinda feeling good after all that work. And then we'll come back down to our chair for our final resting. So just get comfortable. Maybe sit back on your chair so you have some support in your back. Let's roll our ankle, ankle up a little bit. Maybe roll the wrist. Get some joint action in. And maybe roll the neck a little bit. Just roll forward. Don't roll back because sometimes that's hard on the neck. Some last movements. And then come to a comfortable stillness. And just sink and settle into your body. Feeling gratitude for all the wonderful and amazing things that your body can do. And everything that it does for you without you even having to ask. Breathing, digesting, regulating. Our bodies are so amazing and loyal. And today you did yourself a favor, and your body a favor, by practicing yoga. So thank yourself for taking the time to honor your body and yourself. Let's bring our hands into Anjali Mudra. The teacher and student in me honors the teacher and student in you. Namaste. Thank you all so, so much. See you next time. Bye-bye.