Summer Series: Building a Chair Yoga Practice with Lily
3 Tuesdays, 6-8 pm EST
June 28 Ignite: Core, Arm Balances, and Inversions with the Chair
July 26 Unfold: Backbends with the Chair
August 9 Soothe: Forward lengthening and Twists with the Chair
$50 each session or $120 for all 3. Drop in for one or build one into another and develop a body of knowledge on the chair.
The backless yoga chair is a unique prop unlike any other. It can offer great insights to your practice. Come join me for a Strong Intermediate Yoga practice with the chair.
This training is for teachers and practitioners alike. If you teach private sessions a chair is an incredible tool to learn how to work with properly to support your students. If you are a practitioner, the chair is hands down the best prop I have ever worked with to illuminate blindspots in my own practice and connect missing pieces to build a bridge of continuity and connect the dots structurally in asana. You can develop an entire full length practice on the chair or pull it out to deepen or workshop a singular peak posture.
A backless yoga chair offers handles to leverage, traction, lift, and spread the body in the posture. It offers platforms to support body weight so that active poses like a side plank, for example, become sumptuously passive, allowing more advanced leg variations to be explored with ease. It takes the strain off of overused areas of the body so that a shoulderstand, for example, can be held with the weight of the pelvis supported by the chair seat so that there is no added strain to the delicate vertebrae of the neck and the posture can be held longer. It offers a boundary to articulate more precise alignment, press against for isometric engagement and “active” stretching, and rein in blindspots in our body awareness. And it feels fantastic!
Some people look to the chair as a prop for senior citizens, or total beginners. It can be that. However, in this workshop we will explore the use of the chair for the strong intermediate student. How can the chair be used to help you work more clearly, more intelligently, more actively? How can the chair reveal new depths to a pose like Parivrtta Upavistha Konasana so that the breath can flow with ease and illuminate bound areas in the psoas/diaphragm structures for greater healing? How can the chair be used as a training wheel for arm balances, for press handstand? The possibilities are limitless!
We will begin by using the chair to traction, articulate the hinges of the body, and flush the spaces around them with breath and meditative awareness. We will practice core work and several rounds of sun sals to warm the body and generate Tapas to facilitate deeper purification in our postures. Though each workshop focuses on a different category of poses, we will explore safe, smart, and smooth entry and exit strategies from the chair in twists, heart openers, backbends, arm balances, seated postures, inversions and finally the most heavenly slow set of chair restoratives. You will leave feeling taller, more spacious, and inspired by the new possibilities and sensations unearthed in your practice.
Each session is conducted as a workshop.
You will be taught specific entry and exit strategies for each posture working safely with the chair for your body proportions, flexibility, and technical level.
Before each session, you will receive a PDF with all the postures taught. After each session you will receive 2 week access to a video recording of the session. This makes the workshop possible for those who cannot attend live but wish to catch up on the material afterwards. Those who attend all three sessions will have a space with Lily for deepening, questions and answers, and follow up as our material accumulates.