“The chair is an underrated and underutilized prop in yoga — yet it can open up the door to help folks who might not be able to do traditional asana.”
My yoga journey began like many of yours – as a fitness class in college. Through the years I tried different yoga classes at the gym: yoga pump, yoga burn, etc., but somewhere in my late 20’s I decided to properly learn yoga poses. I purchased the Yoga for Dummies DVD with Sara Ivanhoe and then found a yoga teacher who transformed my yoga into a way of life, as it’s meant to be. I was hooked.
It wasn’t until a fall on the ice left me with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), along with numerous physical injuries, that I truly came to understand the full potential of yoga and how it can positively serve us.
I sustained a dislocated sternum and severe whiplash among the serious physical injuries. Combined with the crazy TBI symptoms including dizziness, lack of balance, depth perception issues, and numerous cognitive issues, I needed some helpful guidance. I met with my yoga teacher privately to figure out what poses I could actually do, and those ended up being reduced to five: tree pose holding onto a chair, cat cow, seated twists, eagle arms, and cobra.
My sternum injury left me only able to take shallow breaths — unable to get my breath down past my diaphragm. I began daily breath work along with my five poses, and as the days went on, I noticed my range of motion increasing. In addition, my balance became more stable, and my dizziness triggered less frequently.
Most importantly, yoga helped me turn inward, and it guided me to listen to my body in ways I had never done before.
My road to recovery was LONG. Nine years later, I’m still re-creating myself in some ways. I will never be the same person I was before my accident, and I have come to accept and embrace that fact. I looked for yoga teachers and classes to accommodate me with my modifications, and quickly found most studios have no idea how to modify classes other than to offer child’s pose (which is NOT actually a resting pose). Frustrated, I began my own journey of experimenting with yoga at home and figuring out how to make it work for me.
I still didn’t discover chair-based yoga for another few years. I completed my own teacher training in 2020, and while I had been shown how to use the chair as support for standing in tree pose, no one ever showed me how you could do poses while SEATED! This changed the game for me, and led me down a new path in my own classes.
My own experiences transformed the way I teach. My yoga students consist of mostly brain injury survivors and those with other neurological and cognitive conditions.
I genuinely understand that if you never modified your yoga due to an injury or illness, it’s not top of mind for you. Far too many teacher trainings guide us towards putting a student in child’s pose or mountain pose if they need a rest. We tend to think the modifications taught to us apply across the board to every student with different abilities or body types (hint: they don’t).
I believe every single yoga teacher should know how to instruct a student in a chair and help them navigate class in an accessible and compassionate way. Yoga is an individual journey, even though we often practice as a group.
There is already too much of a stigma around yoga: you must be skinny and bendy, able to get into impossible poses to participate. That is most certainly not true. Remember, asana is only one limb of yoga, and often the first way folks experience it. If we can make it more accessible to everyone, we have an opportunity to help individuals thrive in their practice and lives.
Amy Zellmer is Editor-in chief of Midwest YOGA + LIfe Magazine and author of The Chair Yoga Pocket Guide., With a mission to raise awareness about the devastating consequences of TBI, Amy has a passion to spread the message that yoga is for every BODY, regardless of size or ability. Amy has her 200RYT, and is certified in trauma-informed yoga, LoveYourBrain yoga, and the body positive Yoga For All. Additionally, she hosts a podcast series, “Creating Wellness From Within.”
Here are a few poses to help you get started with chair-based yoga:
1. Warrior I (Virabhadrasana I) – Come to the corner of your chair and place a bolster or pillow on the floor to support your knee. Bend the front knee and push your foot into the floor. You can either raise your hands overhead, bring them to cactus, or simply keep them on your hips.
2. Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II) – Come to the corner of your chair and bend your front knee while extending your back foot out. Lift your arms to the sides, or you may keep them on your hips.
3. Bird Dog (Dandayamana Bharmanasana) – Sitting to the front of your chair and keeping both sit bones equal on the seat, lift your right leg out in front while raising your left arm overhead (or to cactus). You may also simply lift your foot off the group and bring your knee up instead of extending your leg.
4. Camel (Utrasana)– Sitting to the front of your seat, bring your hands to the back of your chair while slowly coming into a backbend, only bending as far as it feels comfortable for you. You may also place a block behind you to make it easier to reach than the back of the chair.
5. Extended Hand-to-Big-Toe (Utthita Hasta Padangustasana) – Sitting to the front of your chair, place a strap around one foot. Make sure your sit bones stay equal on the seat as you raise your foot up off the floor (try holding the strap with just one hand if you can, so you’re not twisting your body). Then slowly bring your leg out to the side while again checking in with your sit bones.
