As a practice, yoga has many benefits that could make your life better, healthier and more fulfilling. Unfortunately, the media tends to bombard us with some of the most impressive poses that make this practice look a little intimidating.
If you’ve ever wished to practice yoga but then looked at yogis online and flinched at the impossible flexibility and contortionist poses, then perhaps sitting yoga postures could be more your speed.
Unlike the images you see online, seated yoga poses do not require expert level flexibility to accomplish. Read on to learn more about seated yoga poses for beginners, how to do them and how they can improve your health and life.
The definition of seated yoga is right there in the name. It is a gentle form of yoga that is done while sitting down either on a chair or on a mat on the floor. While seated yoga – also sometimes referred to as chair yoga – might not be the standard practice, it helps make this practice more accessible.
As stated above, most popular yoga poses demand incredible flexibility to perform, something that most beginners, persons with mobility issues from injury or disability or seniors cannot do. Seated yoga stretches for beginners and seniors offer a more gentle and easier starting point.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of doing seated yoga stretches as opposed to traditional yoga stretches is better balance.
A lot of yoga asanas are usually done standing up and if you do not have a lot of core strength or if you are an older adult with balance problems, you can find said poses to be intimidating. The use of a chair – or sitting directly on the ground – eliminates the fear of falling, thus helping you accomplish the moves easily.
Aside from the decreased risk of falling over, seated yoga stretches have the same mental, physical and therapeutic benefits as traditional yoga. Research on this practice shows that those who engage in this practice report (1, 2)
Uncover the surprising benefits of chair yoga for men in our past article.
There are tens of seated yoga poses that you can do, all requiring your body to be in different positions to correctly complete them. However, two main things you should know before getting into yoga chair exercises for seniors or beginners are these:
Be sure to place the chair on a stable surface like carpet or exercise mat to keep it from slipping
Once this is figured out, you can move on to doing some sitting yoga poses for better flexibility and the potential for improved mental health.
If you’re curious about seated yoga poses for glutes, check out our earlier article
There are definitely more than five sitting asanas in yoga. However, for a beginner, starting off with just five simple poses is a good way to familiarize yourself and your body with this practice.
Below are some yoga sitting poses with names in romanized Sanskrit and instructions on how to do each one. These can be taken as seated yoga poses for seniors and for other beginners to yoga regardless of age.
Read more: Beginner Friendly Seated Yoga Poses To Try Today
Like the name suggests, this is the easiest of the poses. Sukhasana is a pose that is often seen and used in meditation practices. It acts as a hip opener and can also enhance flexibility, posture and relaxation.
Here’s how to do it
Like the easy pose, the Baddha Konasana asana is super easy to do. Also known as the ‘bound angle pose’ or the ‘cobbler pose’, this is a classic hip opener that is recommended to anyone with tight hips. It is especially important for those who spend a lot of time seated or anyone warming up for some high intensity workouts.
Here’s how to do it
If you were in easy pose, simply remove your feet from under the legs, bring them forward while widening your hips till the soles of the feet touch. Don’f forget to drop the knees out to the sides
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Also known as half lord of the fishes, this pose is said to help open the chest and shoulders, strengthen the spine and increase flexibility by stretching the outer hips and thighs.
Here’s how to do it
This asana is said to help open up the hips, improve spinal mobility and stretch the obliques, lats and shoulders.
How to do it
This is also known as a seated fold or a seated forward bend. Here’s how to do it
Ps. If you cannot hold on to the legs because you aren’t flexible enough, use a yoga strap or some resistance bands. Place the strap around the bottoms of your feet and hold on to an end with each hand.
This is a good stretch for the back of the body, specifically the hamstrings, calves, glutes and back muscles.
Ps. If you are looking for seated yoga stretches using an actual chair, the BetterMe App is a great chair yoga app to use. The app offers not only seated yoga stretches for beginners and seniors, but also a 28 day chair yoga challenge that will do wonders for your mental health and flexibility.
Read more: Chair Yoga Benefits: 8 Reasons Why You Should Do Seated Exercises
This is also known as the seated side bend or Parsva Sukhasana and steps for doing it have been described above.
There are dozens of seated yoga poses to choose from. If you are unsure where to start, we suggest starting with the above five. Once you’ve mastered these, try looking up some basic beginner seated yoga with pictures of asanas. This can help you determine which poses are easy for you and you can try them out as you build up your flexibility to do more advanced asanas.
Yoga is a practice that has been around for over 5000 years and has gone through many changes with many yogis being touted as experts of the practice so it can be hard to say who is the father of the traditional practice (3, 4).
However, the Hindu author, mystic and philosopher Maharishi Patanjali is touted as the father of modern yoga as he is the one who compiled and refined various aspects of Yoga that we see and use in this practice today (5).
There are no scientific studies that state whether sitting ‘yoga style’ is good or bad for you. If you find sitting like this to be comfortable, then there is likely nothing wrong with doing so. But if you feel some discomfort, it is best to change your sitting style.
For years, research has shown that yoga is great for the treatment and management of sleep problems among people of all ages (6, 7, 8). But which poses work best for sleep? According to Harvard Health, restorative yoga poses like child’s pose, reclining bound eagle pose, legs up the wall and corpse pose could do the trick (9).
As demonstrated above, seated yoga stretches are among the easiest asanas in this practice. If you are a beginner or in charge of an older adult and you’d like them to be more active, try some sitting yoga postures. As always, remember not to push too much beyond your limits. It’s good to challenge yourself, but overdoing it will only lead to harm. Be careful and have fun!
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