Elderly people are only suitable for sitting on this chair

In many people’s impressions, yoga represents twisting movements and strong body flexibility, and only young people can do it. But now, American seniors are also doing yoga easily—however, this kind of yoga requires the assistance of a chair.

The Josephine Senior Center in California is the birthplace of chair yoga. Its founder Lakshmi wrote on the ABC website that chair yoga classes are usually one hour long and the movements are all done with the help of a chair. For example, the classic pose in traditional yoga is to stand with your legs straight, then bend over and touch the ground with your hands. Chair yoga requires placing two chairs facing each other. The elderly sit on one and put their legs flat on the other, then use their hands to reach the back of the chair instead of their feet.

"This reduces the degree of body bending and prevents the elderly from tilting their heads downward, which can easily cause cerebral hemorrhage. In addition to handstands, we have basically all the traditional yoga movements in chair yoga."

Lakshmi's students all said that it was only after practicing chair yoga that they discovered that they had deficiencies in their balance abilities. Through exercise, their muscle strength and toughness have been enhanced, and their "whole body is full of vitality"! "Many elderly people are getting more and more excited with exercise, and they keep asking me if they can try more difficult movements."

Lakshmi invented chair yoga in 1980. At the time, there was a student in the traditional yoga class she was teaching who had rheumatoid arthritis. His condition was so serious that he could not dress himself or open the door, let alone do those difficult yoga moves.

After understanding her predicament, Lakshmi tried to let the students practice yoga while sitting on a chair and made adjustments to various movements. "With a chair as a backing, students become more courageous and can try various movements in a relaxed manner. So I think chair yoga is particularly suitable for the elderly to exercise their ligaments and muscles."

Currently, there are about 1.6 million middle-aged and elderly people over the age of 55 in the United States who practice yoga. Lakshmi believes that chair yoga will be accepted by middle-aged and elderly people.