Chair Yoga vs Regular Yoga: A Real Review by Experts

Chair Yoga vs Regular Yoga: Which Practice Suits You Best?

The ancient practice of yoga has been helping people improve their health. Utilize poses and postures, it improves mobility, flexibility, and strength while improving mental health.

However, newcomers compare two common forms of yoga: chair and regular. Both performed with similar goals, but their subtle difference leaves many wondering which type of yoga is right for them.

This article discusses chair yoga vs regular yoga, covering the similarities, key differences, and benefits to help you decide which form of yoga is best for your needs.

What Is Chair Yoga?

Chair yoga is a form of yoga performed in the seated position. This increases accessibility, allowing those with reduced mobility to gain the benefits of yoga without placing additional strain on the body.

Created by Lakshmi Voelker in 1982, it was developed when she noticed some students experiencing arthritic aggravation, stopping them from practicing on the floor. After months, her prescription of chair yoga would help restore function, enabling them to return to the mat.

Chair yoga shares the same principles as traditional yoga, offering modified movements to accommodate individuals with physical limitations. This inclusive form of yoga allows everyone to improve their flexibility, mobility, and overall wellness.

What Is Regular Yoga?

Regular yoga or yoga is a gentle form of exercise that uses poses and postures to improve flexibility, mobility, and vitality. Using relaxation and deep breathing techniques, participants perform movements that lengthen muscle tissue, and mobility joints, and calm the mind.

Originating in ancient India over 5,000 years ago, it focuses on traditional practices including:

• Disciplined lifestyle (Yama and Niyama)
• Cleansing procedures (Kriya)
• Physical postures (Asana)
• Breath regulation (Pranayama)
• Concentration (Dharana)
• Meditation (Dhyana)

These practices help to improve muscular strength, flexibility, mental health, and heart and lung function. These benefits can help reduce chronic pain and improve sleep and quality of life.

Furthermore, yoga is about cultivating community, friendliness, compassion, calmness, and well-being; factors that provide perspective, and self-awareness, and create a healthy synergy between the mind and body.

Chair Yoga vs Regular Yoga: Key Differences

Chair yoga and regular yoga share many similarities including their core beliefs and principles. However, several differences make each of them better suited to different individuals. Below, we highlight the key differences to help you determine the correct form of yoga.

Physical Requirements and Accessibility

The biggest defining factor between chair yoga and regular yoga is accessibility. Below, detail the difference to help you discover your ideal form of yoga.

For Individuals with Limited Mobility (Chair Yoga)

Chair yoga is suitable for individuals with physical and mobility limitations. The seated position provides a safe means of performing yoga poses, reducing stability and balancing requirements. However, this doesn’t mean chair yoga is exclusively upper body focused, but rather that movements are performed with the support of a chair.

For individuals with significantly limited leg and hip strength and mobility, movements can be performed in a complete seated position. Those with minor limitations who may be nursing an injury can explore partially seated movements to gradually load recovering muscles and joints to progress back to mat yoga.

For Individuals Without Limitations (Regular Yoga)

Regular yoga is accessible for any body type and experience level regardless of fitness or flexibility. Its principles of community, friendliness, and calmness welcome anyone wanting to learn, while its poses and postures can be scaled to guide toward improving your flexibility, mobility, and mindfulness.

Furthermore, it is accessible for individuals nursing minor injuries. While staying off our feet can be beneficial to reduce the loading of damaged muscles and joints, there is no hard line that says you should be doing chair yoga or regular yoga.

For example, minor injuries may cause nothing more than a niggle. These may benefit from the strengthening, lengthening, and pain management yoga can bring. These decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis.

If you are currently experiencing pain, speak to your physical therapist. They will be able to give you advise you on whether yoga is suitable to manage your injury.

Range of Motion and Pose Adaptations

The most noticeable difference between chair yoga and regular yoga is the modification of movements. Below we discuss how each impacts your yoga practice.

Chair Yoga

As mentioned, chair yoga isn’t exclusively used to eliminate lower body movement, but rather to support those with less lower body strength and mobility.

Many full and lower body exercises can be performed in the seated position, however, poses may need to be adapted which may reduce the range of motion.

For example, the forward bend is a common yoga movement that lengthen the muscles of the back, hips, and legs. It can still be performed in the seated position, however, because the hips are planted, the ability to lengthen the hamstring is reduced.

Chair yoga exercises that mimic traditional yoga poses also have similar effects. The seated warrior's poses 1 and 2 require the participant to sit across the chair, with the chair supporting the forward lunging leg.

However, this shouldn’t be viewed negatively, but rather as a positive and accessible way to help every experience which can help people achieve higher levels of functional fitness and quality of life.

Regular Yoga

The enhancement of strength, flexibility, and function that comes with regular yoga is due to its challenging, weight-bearing poses. Movements such as the downward-facing dog, warrior pose, and triangle pose are just a few examples where the body is simultaneously moving and holding a specific stance.

These poses and posture combine holds and gentle movement which strengthen muscles through their full range of motion. This additional movement makes a major difference when it comes to enhancing balance, flexibility, and overall function which can be carried over into daily life.

Settings and Equipment

The equipment and setting are other key differences that set these two forms of yoga apart. Below we discuss how they differ.

Chair and Supportive Space (Chair Yoga)

As the name suggests chair yoga uses a chair to perform movements. For many participants, the enrolment in chair yoga is due to physical limitations. Because of this, classes and sessions are often performed in a supportive space. These classes can contain fewer participants, with additional care taken to monitor and accommodate limitations.

Mat and Open Area (Regular Yoga)

Regular yoga is often more relaxed and performed on mats in an open area. While care is still taken to monitor technique and possible limitations, participants tend to be more capable, requiring less individual support.

Benefits of Both Chair Yoga and Regular Yoga

Yoga is incredible for our health with benefits including improved physical fitness and mental health. Below we discuss these benefits to highlight why you need to start doing yoga.

Stress Reduction and Mindfulness

Chair yoga and regular yoga are both excellent for reducing stress and developing mindfulness. Stress management requires improvement of mental, emotional, and physical health. This can be achieved through regular exercise, correct nutrition, and mindfulness practices.

Regular yoga and chair yoga are gentle and meditative allowing mindfulness practice which can improve emotional regulation and stress response. This is because they focus on quieting the mind and concentrating on the present moment. This has been shown to lower heart rate, depression, and anxiety while decreasing the risk of chronic illnesses such as obesity and coronary disease.

Increase Muscle Mass

Chair yoga and regular yoga can improve strength and flexibility. Increasing muscle mass requires mechanical tension and muscle damage. This can be achieved by overloading muscle tissue through resistance training and body weight.

Chair yoga and regular yoga overload the body using body weight. Poses and posture require holding a position where muscles isometrically contract, where they contract but do not change in length. This helps to promote muscle hypertrophy (growth) and improve tendon structure and function.

While these movements build muscle mass, they do so with far less size than traditional resistance training. This enables us to improve muscle quality without additional bulk.

Enhance Strength

Enhancing strength requires the production of maximum force against an external resistance. This can be brought about through resistance and bodyweight training.

Chair yoga and regular yoga’s use of body weight can contribute to increased strength. Increased muscle mass is a major factor in strength enhancement. However, it is less effective than traditional strength training which uses heavy loads and high repetitions to promote strength adaptations.

While yoga’s movement is far from the heavily loaded sets of strength training, its ability to stimulate muscle growth still provides a viable method of increasing strength.

Improve Flexibility and Mobility

Improving flexibility and mobility requires lengthening muscle tissue through a full range of motion. This can be done by performing dynamic and static stretches.

Regular yoga and chair yoga use posture and poses that statically and dynamically lengthen muscle tissue. Holds utilizes a combination of muscle contractions and stretches to sustain position. This helps improve the flexibility of muscle tissue surrounding joints, allowing for greater passive joint mobility.

Furthermore, the slow and controlled movements help actively take muscles and joints to end ranges of motion. This develops strength in end ranges of motion, improving active mobility.

Accessibility for Diverse Needs

Accessibility to exercise requires the removal of barriers, such as providing adequate facilities, and modifiable physical activities. This is reached by altering exercise programming, supervision, participant education, and social support.

Chair yoga and regular yoga are accessible for diverse needs. Both are performed in a calm, friendly, controlled, and educational environment, they reduce many of the barriers that come with traditional unsupervised resistance training.

Chair yoga in particular removes major barriers for individuals with less mobility, presenting an opportunity for wheelchair-bound and injured participants. Furthermore, yoga as a whole offers a gentle, careful, and mindful form of exercise that allows for greater supervision, making it better for those struggling with physical or mental limitations.

Choosing Between Chair Yoga and Regular Yoga

Chair yoga and regular yoga are evenly matched. Below, we discuss other areas to help you decide which is best for you.

Evaluating Your Mobility

The biggest determining factor is mobility. If you have problems with lower body mobility due to injury or disability, then chair yoga is an easy choice.

Performing your yoga chair from the seated position removes the need to support your lower body and allows you to fully relax into the flow of your sessions.

Furthermore, chair yoga is great for individuals who have difficulty getting down to the floor. It can help improve flexibility, mobility, and strength. This will allow you to improve and restore function, and help you gradually progress to performing regular yoga on the mat.

Considering Your Goals (Relaxation vs Physical Challenge)

When choosing between chair yoga and regular yoga it is important to consider your training goals. Yoga is a physical practice, however, its ability to practice mindfulness makes it for practicing relaxation and mindfulness.

For those looking for a physical challenge, regular yoga and its variations such as Ashtanga yoga, power yoga, and Bikram yoga may be suitable.

However, for relaxation and to improve your mindfulness consider Hatha yoga, Anusara yoga, or Kundalini yoga.

If you are unsure which style to try, join a beginner class. These are typically Hatha yoga which offers a combination of breathing exercises and postures. This will give you an example of what to expect from your yoga session, enabling you to make an informed decision.

Exploring Both Practices to Decide

After comparing the key differences and accounting for your mobility and goals you still can’t decide, the best way to determine which is the correct style for you is to try both. This will help you understand the movements, flow, and level of supervision firsthand.

From here, you can practically assess the session, how you performed, if you need more support, and your post-session soreness and energy levels. Keep in mind that if you have not tried yoga, you will feel discomfort during or after your first session. However, it is important to discern whether it is bad pain or muscle soreness.

We recommend performing finding a trial class for each. This will help you get the full experience, helping you make your decision.

Recap: Chair Yoga vs Regular Yoga

Chair yoga and regular yoga are both incredible forms of exercise. Between their gentle poses, postures, and flowing movements, they are incredible for improving your mind-body connection.

For those experiencing injury and reduced mobility, consider chair yoga as it has the following benefits:

• Suitable for individuals with limited mobility
• Performed in support space
• Additional guidance if necessary

However, if you are mobile, healthy, and looking for a challenge, consider regular yoga for:

• Engages upper and lower body
• Strengthens muscles and joints through a full range of motion
• Supportive environment

Yoga is an amazing exercise for our health and wellbeing. Regardless of which form you choose, just know that when you step into your first class you will be making major positive steps toward improving physical and mental health.

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