Yoga Practice:
Chair Pose
Overview:
The chair pose is a yoga posture that has the potential to strengthen the muscles of the legs, seat, abdomen, back and shoulders. This pose can also stabilize the ankles, knees, hips, and spine and can cultivate strength and endurance.
With relatively little stretching involved, but a great deal of potential strengthening, students often experience. Chair Pose as an endurance contest, counting the seconds on the clock until it’s over. In Sanskrit, this pose is utkatasana. Its root word, utkata, does not mean chair but “extraordinary” or “beyond the norm.” And one definition of the suffix asana is “seat” or “sitting with.” In that light, one way of thinking about utkatasana is learning to sit with sensations that are extraordinary. Rather than looking for maximum challenge until collapsing or giving up, encourage students to consciously and continually adjust the posture so that they sit with and focus deeply on the sensations in the body. By adjusting this posture, they can build a structure with sensations strong enough to gather attention, but moderate enough to sustain it. Practicing in this way builds awareness, discernment, and agency.
Potential Effects:
Strengthening muscles of the legs, seat, abdomen, back and shoulders.
Stabilizes ankles, knees, hips, and spine.
Instructions:
1. From Mountain Pose, bend your knees and sit your hips back and down, keeping feet parallel and hip-width apart.
2. Engage the legs to sustain balanced space in the ankles, knees and hips, taking care not to let the knees drift too far forward.
3. Reach your arms up overhead, turning the palms to face one another, allowing the shoulder blades to spread and rotate upward. For less intensity, brace the hands on top of the thighs to support the torso.
4. Keep the spine stabilized by gathering and engaging the abdominal muscles while reaching back and down through the tail, and lifting and reaching forward through the sternum and the top of the head.
5. To release, press with the legs and lift through the top of the head to stand. Lower the arms and return to Mountain Pose. Rest and integrate.
Chair Pose, Side View
Chair Pose, Side View
Chair Pose, Side View
Precautions:
Sensitive or weak knees: practice with care and moderation; use repetition to strengthen
Heart or circulatory conditions: practice with care and moderation; avoid long holds
Contraindications:
Recent surgery or acute injury to any key muscles or joints
Chronic or recent injury, pain, or inflammation to any key muscles or joints
Helpful Hints:
Never overdo or force any yoga movement. If you begin to experience discomfort or pain, release the posture. Find a variation of the posture that serves your body and practice best.
Practice with self-compassion and non-judgement
Chair pose can be done standing or using a chair as a prop.
Content from NYCDOE YMTP² curricular materials