Imagine a chair, now sit on it :)
I love this pose! Chair pose is one of my favourites and I keep repeating it during warm up.
It immediately bring us into balance and strength! Through our legs.
It is important to bring the buttocks far backward, have a straight back, seeing your toes and keeping shoulders away from ears. Like most of the alignments this one also will ask you to firm your abdomen while breathing naturally. Keep the legs in a hip distance apart.
You can integrate this pose everywhere during the lesson it is really great, but what I love most about it, is that you can take it to A LOT of fun variations !
Let’s see a few:
Chair twist
From sitting in chair, open your chest to the side, over one knee. You can open arms to the sides or place them in prayer position.
While you are in the twist keep the shoulders and chest strong, firm your abdomen.
You can also lift one leg.
Chair with arms backward
This Variation will strengthen your legs, shoulders and arms.
Chair with pigeon
Bring one leg up, place it on top of the standing leg, both bent. The upper leg is opening your hip and stretching the thigh. This pose is sort of a hybrid between pigeon pose and chair; It is a challenge to sit low here, try it if you are advanced.
Chair pose on your toes
Energizing, balancing, powerful variation. Bring the arms to the front and lift your feet to stay on the toes. You can also come up and down here, challenging your balance.
Chair – freestyle
The last variation – I don’t know how to name, so I call it free style. It combine a little bit of dance moves :) Are you ready?
Sit in chair pose, now instead of raising your arms up, you can raise them and move them as much as you want – where you want, keep them strong all the time.
Chest, shoulders, upper back – strong, in any movement you chose.
With your pelvis you can make small movements to the sides, And here also, keep the core engaged and strong, legs rooted firmly in the ground. So you can move some parts of your body, while the others are still.
You can also Add cat/cow while you are in chair pose, arch and extend your back with the breath (like in cat/cow on all fores). You can also transition to Eagle pose.
For all variations, remember the longer you stay, the better for the muscle :) And of course repeat both sides.
Enjoy practicing and diversifying your Yoga.