Yoga is available to all of us
Yoga is available to all of us, even the asana or postures of a yoga practice by including the use of props like a chair. Using a chair offers an opportunity to practice safely, to focus on the deeper muscles and inner connections and as a starting point to gain strength and flexibility to make a standing practice more fun and effective.
Now don’t scoff - just because you are sitting down or holding onto a chair, doesn’t mean you are not practicing yoga or that you can not work hard enough to get the physical as well as the mental, emotional and spiritual benefits of the practice. If are like me, you are targeting bone density and osteoporosis with your yoga practice. You might even say that you can work harder because you are sitting down or using the chair for support and therefore, see and feel improvements in your strength, flexibility and balance sooner.
Using the chair for support might look like one finger touching the chair or grasping the chair, but in both cases that gives you what is called a tactile cue. This cue tells your body where you are in space, if you are upright or tipping over. and is also known as proprioception. Proprioception is one of three key element to maintaining your balance.
When I learned and certified to teach Dr. Fishman’s yoga vs osteoporosis, I had not been one to use props except blocks to reach the floor with my tight hamstrings.
But that changed when we did tree pose with our foot on the chair rather than against the standing leg.
Suddenly, I was not fighting to stay balanced. I was better able to focus and fine tune or refine the pose. I was able to access more muscles which according to Dr. Fishman provides an opportunity to stimulate more bone remodeling. I was able to find the deep hip rotators which is exactly what you want when you are doing yoga to strengthen your bones, improve bone density and fight osteoporosis.
Yes, tree pose is standing on one leg which has been shown to improve bone density in the leg and to improve core strength and posture. But if you finesse the pose by finding and intentionally using the deep hip rotators, you have the potential for greater gains.
In case you are curious Body in Tune would love to collaborate with you to find your perfect movement practice.
Why is this deep hip strength important?
When we take the time to focus on the deeper muscles and inner connections, we improve the coordination of the deep stabilizing muscles and the large (global) stabilizing muscles. Our mobility and balance are best when these muscles work together efficiently. An added bonus is decreased incidence of outer hip pain.
Many women in our post menopause years experience outer hip pain often called gluteal tendonitis or bursitis. It is often because you are using the global muscles instead of the deep stabilizers. Global stabilizers tend to be muscles that are bigger and longer muscles that move us through space. The deeper or segmental muscles are shorter and stabilize the proper alignment of the joints they surround. Together the deeper and global muscles improve the mechanics and efficiency of the joint and our motion. This can also slow he development of arthritis in our joints.
After menopause the deeper muscles seem to get lazy if we don’t keep after them. If we miss using the deeper muscles, the global muscles try to do it all. The result is one or more angry, overworked muscles and constant soreness and stiffness and often the outer hip pain. Balancing the use of these muscles is one thing we are looking for when doing yoga for osteoporosis.
More importantly these deeper muscles create the torque through the bones needed to stimulate bone remodeling. They help prevent arthritis, stimulate bone growth in the hip and are the root of our balancing muscles.
Good news! Body in Tune would love to collaborate with you to teach and support you with a yoga practice so you can enjoy your life off the mat with confidence.
So what does this have to do with chair yoga? Allow me to take a moment to explain.
The use of props, like a chair, takes balancing out of the equation. So if you are practicing yoga to maintain strength, agility and to improve bone density, the chair allows you to focus on the muscles. The we first learn yoga, many of us rely on on the joints and ligaments and global stabilizers. But the more we practice, the more awareness and sensation we might feel. Such that when you place your foot on the seat of a chair rather than against your leg, you recognize that when you are not fighting to keep your balance, you can feel for the deeper muscles and focus on the other energetics of the pose. This means more muscles working together, improved strength, coordination, and more stimulation of bone growth. All of these are better for someone with osteoporosis.
There are times when the chair is recommended as a starting point for the yoga vs osteoporosis poses. That is when you have osteoporosis or have had a previous fracture and therefore, are more likely to suffer another fracture. The chair minimizes the risk of a fall from loss of balance. For example a seated warrior II or extended side angle allows you again to refine and target the deeper hip rotators, focus on your trunk alignment, knee positions and your breath because we took balance out of the equation.
Similarly, it also makes it easier to maintain a tall spine when doing the seated twist poses. When we sit on the floor and have tight hamstrings, that has a tendency to cause us to round our spine. When seated in a chair, there is less tension on the hamstrings such that we can keep the spine tall and straight to get the appropriate forces through the spine to build bone without risk of compression with the twist. Not only is this better practice of the postures, but remember the osteoporosis precaution of avoiding twisting and bending at the same time? Yoga once again is more accessible if you can keep your spine safe.
But you might counter that you need balance to avoid falls. And then ask why shouldn’t I do these standing? Well, there are cases for both.
So long as you are working hard in the seated pose, chair yoga offers you a way to gain strength and flexibility in the muscles and awareness of your joint position and alignment in space. Similarly using the chair for your hand instead of the block or the floor in twisted triangle, you are more likely to keep your spine extended and straight.
The other side of balance is flexibility.
You need flexibility around the joints to allow for good alignment but also for balance.
The seated poses allow you to use reciprocal inhibition to improve your flexibility. Those are big fancy words that mean when you contract a muscle the nervous system tell the opposing or antagonistic muscle to relax and lengthen. An example is when you tighten your quadriceps or front of thigh muscle, your nervous system tells your brain to relax and lengthen the hamstrings, the back of the thigh muscles.
You might even begin to notice how you can move deeper into a pose when you are not stretching to your limit in your hamstrings and hips. In fact you might find that you gain flexibility by not working at your edge of flexibility all the time because you activate surrounding and antagonistic muscles. This in turn allows the tighter muscles to relax and not fight the stretch, resulting in more length or flexibility.
We can start with the focus on avoiding falls, keeping good alignment, gaining strength and flexibility in more muscles and improving our agility and bone density. But know that there are many more benefits than we have discussed here. I would love to challenge you to give a few chair yoga poses a try and if you can find ways to challenge yourself and deepen your yoga practice. I practice yoga for my bones and my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. What about you?
Body in Tune, LLC was born from a belief that quality of life matters; both life and physical balance matters.
We would welcome the opportunity to be part of your support team with regards to your muscles, joints, bones and osteoporosis. The goal is, after all, to help you feel confident in your body so you can play with your grand children, take that long-dreamed of vacation and get outside and enjoy a walk with friends.