Hi and Welcome to your Journey into Yoga! I’m Avery Rich and I am so happy to have you along for the ride!

Back to another chair adventure!

I hope you are enjoying these chair episodes - I wanted to give you a little tool box of yoga poses that you can use when you need them. They are designed to be quick and easy and to do virtually anywhere you have a seated surface.

Side bending while sitting on a chair can help to bring length and space to our side bodies, as well as to stretch and open our necks, shoulders, back muscles and spines.

When we are working we may often find ourselves sitting for many hours on end. Yes, getting up and taking a walk around is good, but sometimes we don’t even have the time for that. So what can we do while we are seated? These seated side stretches can be done while you continue to sit barely interfering with your busy work day, and can bring a lot of relief to the body.

I have found through the years that sometimes if I can just sneak in one or two yoga poses in a busy day, that they can bring a lot of relief to the body. And sometimes, the easier the pose is the more likely we are to return to it. When we find ourselves sitting for prolonged periods of time, for whatever reason, one of the most common postural misalignments is what I will call the forward shift. Consider this example for a moment:

Casey has been working in her office for most of the day with most of this work being on her computer. As she types and reads away, possibly taking a call or two or 3, what position do her shoulders end up being in? If you answered rotating forward, you would be correct. This is just what happens when we are doing things such as working, being on our phones, driving or even writing…our shoulders rotate forward. After long periods of time, or even sometimes short periods of time, our body begins to feel the effects of this forward rotation - our necks don’t feel that good, our shoulders start pulling the shoulder blades up and forward which effects our back bodies, and our heads can often end up forward shifting as well which can effect the entire spine. The spine ends up shortening and feeling like a closed accordion - no space no freedom.

Yoga and each and every one of its postures encourages the spine to lengthen, and when we allow the spine to stretch our entire bodies feel the positive effects. We want our spines to feel like open accordions with space, freedom and flexibility.

The posture we are going to examine today is one that helps to bring this length into the entire spine. So without further ado, let’s move into seated (on a chair) side bends.

Our first move is to position ourselves seated on our chair in a way that allows our feet to be flat on the floor. We should be able to sit tall, so if using the back of the chair doesn’t allow this to happen, sit at the front edge of the chair. Depending on the chair you are using, there may be somewhere on the side of the seat of the chair that allows you to hold onto - if not no worries I have other ideas as well.

If you do have this hang on space, take your right hand down and hold onto that side of the chair. Nowhere to hold? No problem, you are simply going to slide your right hand underneath your right thigh. With that hand secured, reach your left arm up towards the ceiling, take a moment to take an extra sip up with that left hand, meaning reach way up lengthening the side body here. Once you have lengthened, now you are going to side bend to the right allowing that left arm to extend over your head towards the right. You are welcome to even rest that arm on the top of your head. Try to keep your left sit bone in place, allowing the side bend to come completely from the side body.

Let’s hold for 5 breaths.

Inhale and sweep the left arm back up towards the ceiling as you rise back up releasing the left arm down by your side. Pause upright for a breath or two.

Now let’s move to the second side. Either securing the left hand to somewhere on the chair seat or placing the left hand underneath your left thigh, inhale to sweep your right arm up towards the ceiling, take an extra sip up and then side bend to the left, with the right arm either simply extending over your head towards the left or resting that arm on top of your head. Keeping the right sit bone down onto the chair seat lets hold for 5 breaths. As you inhale rise back up and then exhale allow the right arm to release by your side as you come top sit upright for a breath or two.

As you sit upright take a moment to let your body settle and also notice how the two sides of the body feel now that they have been lengthened and stretched. From the neck to the hip you may feel open!

As always, if a short shavasana makes sense move into one now- it may not if you are in the middle of your work day at the office or home - but always an option if it does make sense. I hope the rest of your day benefits from this little sweet stretch - enjoy your open accordions! See you next time