Yoga with a Chair

Saturday, August 15

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

$50

I have come to believe that chairs are hazardous to our health." - Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design, p. 95

Galen Cranz, a professor of architecture, specializing in the sociology of that profession, doesn’t think highly of the design of most chairs. Among other ailments, she attributes much of the back and neck problems so widespread in Western culture to misaligned sitting for long stretches in poorly designed chairs.

Well, chairs might not be great for sitting, but they are great as a yoga prop. Here’s the irony: the piece of furniture that can potentially cause us so much discomfort can actually be used to relieve some of that discomfort. There are so many things we can do with what’s come to be called a “yoga chair,” a common metal folding chair with its back knocked off. Chairs, like other props (e.g. blocks and straps), help us in our asana practice in two ways: To refine what we can do well, and improve what we can’t. In particular, a chair helps us hold certain poses–back bends, inversions, and bent-knee standing poses–much longer than we normally can. This allows us much more time than usual to experience the pose and understand our strengths and weaknesses when performing it.

In this workshop we’ll go through a range of poses, starting with simple warm-ups, then moving through series of standing poses, sitting forward bends and twists, inversions (yes, it’s perfectly safe for beginners to experience head and shoulder stand with a chair), and finally back bends. The Nest will supply the chairs, and you’ll supply the asanas. Open to all levels.

RICHARD ROSEN learned all about chairs during his teacher training at the SF Iyengar Institute from 1982-1985.

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