7 Things Every Yoga Teacher Needs to Know About Chair Yoga

As a yoga teacher, I’ve noticed that perhaps one of the most straightforward yet misunderstood forms of the practice is chair yoga. Maybe you’ve seen photos of people practicing arm balances on the seat or even on the back of the chair. Or maybe you think of chair yoga as being only for sedentary or older adults. There are many misconceptions about chair yoga. But the reality is everyone can benefit from learning how to practice chair yoga—and every yoga teacher can benefit from learning how to teach it.

Although you might not think of chair yoga as that way, it’s an incredibly versatile practice. Many teachers lead classes without specific chair yoga training, yet it can be beneficial to students when teachers are aware of essential guidelines. These enable you to offer your students a safe and effective practice and perhaps even expose your mat students to the advantages—and surprises—of chair yoga.

7 Things to Know Before Teaching Chair Yoga

Following are some of the essential insights on leading others through a yoga practice in a chair that I’ve collected during the 30 years I’ve been teaching.

1. Think of a Chair as an Everyday Yoga Prop

There are many ways to integrate a chair into yoga classes, ranging from physically intense practices in which the chair is used in certain poses to fully seated classes. The fact is, a chair is an essential prop, just like other everyday props including yoga mats, blocks, straps, blankets, etc.

If you’re teaching in person at a studio, try to arrange chairs around the perimeter of the room so they’re available for all your students. Making sure everyone has access to the same props can be an equalizing force that minimizes the likelihood of students feeling alienated during a group practice.

In an ideal world, all yoga studios would have enough folding chairs available for all students. Although this is a financial and space-consuming commitment to accessibility, it also expands the studio’s potential student base!

If you’re teaching elsewhere, chairs are typically available, whether you’re in an office, school, prison, or community center. This makes it easier to organize chair yoga than in a mat-based studio, which is another reason why learning to teach chair yoga is such a useful skill. However, you will need to confirm in advance the number of chairs available. You’ll also need to pay attention to the type of chair. (See “Not All Chairs Are Created Equal.”)

Allow extra time before class so you can set up your practice space. Also, consider the stability of the chairs and whether it would be helpful to position the chair backs against a wall or the chair legs on a yoga mat for extra traction. For a fully seated class, it can be helpful to practice in a semi-circle to create a sense of connection and community.

2. Not All Chairs Are Created Equal

If you lead a class in which students are practicing fully seated chair yoga, they would probably prefer to have chairs with backs they can lean against, including more active poses as well as during Savasana.

Folding chairs are useful since they can be easily stored when not in use and are usually more portable. Also, folding chairs usually don’t have arms, which makes them easier to use in creative ways, such as sitting sideways or taking the legs wide apart. It’s important to find chairs that have a high weight capacity. Some chairs are rather flimsy and can break, which presents a danger for students. I prefer to teach with folding metal chairs with padded seats for extra comfort.

If you teach corporate yoga, standard office chairs aren’t ideal because they have arms and wheels. If you do use them, you’ll also need to help students understand how to lock the wheels.

Similarly, if students are practicing in wheelchairs, remind them to lock the wheels and ask them if they want to remove their foot rests or make any other adjustments. Keep in mind, you shouldn’t touch someone’s wheelchair, or any mobility device, without consent.

If you have access only to Iyengar chairs, which offer less back support, you can make them more comfortable by instructing students to place a folded blanket, pillow, or bolster behind their back.

3. The Pelvis is the Grounding Point in Chair Yoga

Unlike a traditional mat practice in which students often start standing or reclined, in chair yoga, the pelvis is the grounding point. That means the bottom of the pelvis, commonly called the “sit bones,” remains stable as it supports most of the weight of the body. The pelvis doesn’t move very easily during sitting, which can add both benefits and challenges to a number of poses.

As a result of the stability of the pelvis in chair yoga, there tends to be a lot of movement in the lower back and sacroiliac joints to compensate. Extra care needs to be taken with your cueing and with students’ actions to engage or move the pelvis in poses where that’s essential and also not to overdo movement in the lower back. This comes up when we teach poses such as Seated Twists or Triangle in a chair. Since the pelvis doesn’t move easily there can be extra movement in the low back.

Also, poses that focus on moving the pelvis, such as Cat-Cow, can be challenging to find in a chair. But with creativity, anything is possible. For example, you can focus students’ attention on the top of the pelvis, even bringing the hands to the hips to help rock the top of the pelvis forward for Cow and backward for Cat.

4. Students Are Automatically In a Forward Bend

The starting position in chair yoga is a tall seated posture with the feet planted on the floor. This is already a forward bend since the hips are flexed and there is a forward tilt to the top of the pelvis.

Since students effectively remain in this forward bend throughout much of class, adding additional forward bends might not be useful. This is especially relevant for people with conditions such as osteoporosis, for which intense forward bending is contraindicated.

Consciously working on backbends and opening the front of the body are essential in chair yoga. This not only counteracts the forward bend but can help with slouching, which tends to happen when sitting.

I also like to focus on creating hip extension as much as possible and include side bends, twists, and slow flows that engage the breath and the mind. These practices help build strength and stability that in turn support posture.

5. Students Need to Consciously Engage the Lower Body

Since the pelvis is the grounding point, and not the feet, there can be a tendency to ignore the lower body in chair yoga poses. In particular, it’s important to include strengthening practices for the legs and hips to help support bone and muscle strength.

Rather than try to create complicated movements that bring awareness to the legs and feet, you can simply instruct students to engage the legs and press the feet into the floor during versions of standing postures, such as Tree Pose or Warrior Two. Additional strengthening strategies include calf lifts and a chair yoga version of Chair Pose.

6. There’s a Lack of Resistance in Chair Yoga

When practicing yoga on a mat, students are working against gravity and finding resistance through pressing the various parts of the body against the mat. One of the biggest challenges with chair yoga is the lack of resistance, or something to push against. So it can be helpful to integrate additional props, such as straps to pull on or bolsters to hug or lean against. The chair itself can also be used in this way.

For example, if students are practicing Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana) in a chair, they can reach back and hold the back of the chair with their hands as they lean forward. The chair creates resistance, which can intensify the backbend because it provides something to pull away from.

Similarly, to add pressure to the abdomen similar to what students experience practicing Cobra on a mat, you can suggest they rest a bolster or firm cushion on their lap and gently press the belly into it as they come forward in the chair yoga version of the pose.

7. You Can Teach A Complete Practice in a Chair

All aspects of yoga are available in a chair, although it can take some creativity and collaboration with your students to find it. It can help to focus on the intended benefits of each pose and then consider how to reverse engineer that in ways that can be taught in a chair version.

For example, if you’re teaching a pose such as Seated Tree Pose, you’ve removed the element of balance by sitting. So you might consider challenging students’ balance in some other way, such as placing a foam block on the head or sitting far forward in the chair which can be destabilizing and force them to actively work on their balance.

Also, many people are much more comfortable sitting in a chair than sitting on the mat. So yoga’s subtle practices of pranayama (breathwork) and meditation can be more accessible and effective in a chair than on the mat.

In the end, chair yoga is a powerful practice that can help to make the magic of yoga accessible to so many people. Equipping yourself with essential knowledge about chair yoga can help you create the most supportive environment for your students, and allow you to expand your teaching into so many places in which people are already sitting.

Learn more about leading others through a chair practice with Jivana Heyman and special guest teachers in the upcoming course, The Art of Teaching Chair Yoga, which begins with a free workshop.