How to exercise indoors: Chair Yoga

Related Categories: Lunchtime Learning, Wellbeing
Related Tags: , , , ,

If you can’t get outside to exercise we have the perfect alternative – chair yoga!

 

Yoga twists are some of the best things you can do for your spine and core. We use the twisting motion in life so often (getting something out of the backseat of a car; swinging a golf club, tennis racket, or baseball bat; placing things to the side of us; and so on), it’s important to twist correctly and keep our bodies safe. Yoga helps us focus on the breath and initiate the twist from the core.

One of our favourite yoga routines is the Sun Salutation with Twists. You do this sitting down and so it can be done anywhere from your desk at work to the doctor’s waiting room!

 

 

 

Works Your: Abdominals, spine, lower and upper back, arms, hips, and waist

 

Try This: When you feel sluggish in your digestion, want to keep your back healthy, feel stuck in your mood or thinking, have a kink in your back or shoulders, or want to wring it all out

  1. Sit tall with your feet hip-width apart and firmly on the floor, and with your hips toward the edge of the chair and your back straight. Inhale, reaching the arms up overhead to press the palms.
  2. As you exhale, drop your arms down and around as you twist to your left, bringing the right hand onto the left knee and the left arm behind you to the top of the chair.
  3. Inhale back to centre with arms up.
  4. Exhale and twist to the right.
  5. Continue this flow for a series of 8 to 10 cycles. On your last set, stop and hold the twist on each side for 5 to 8 breaths.

Twists have multiple physical and mental health benefits. If you feel stuck in any way, twists really help get things moving. Twisting is really good for digestion and detoxification and for seeing things from a new perspective. Twists are also extremely good for the back and waist. You can tone and tighten your oblique muscles and massage the vertebrae of the spine with this flow.

 

So start combating those winter blues by twisting today!