A place to begin
A quiet start
Open three complete guides: Seated Mountain, Anjali, and Natural Breath Awareness. Choose any one, or explore them in order.
Try a quiet startChoose your starting point
Movement · Breath · Mudras · Contemplation · PlayChair Yoga
Seated and supported movements for strength, balance, and mobility. Clear steps, comfortable variations, and a place to begin.
Explore Chair YogaPranayama
Start with the natural breath. Explore gentle breathing practices, with guidance on what to learn with a teacher.
Explore PranayamaMudras
Bring a simple hand gesture into your practice. Follow seven guides with clear steps, comfortable options, and attention to the breath; explore the classical sources when you wish.
Try a hand gestureChakras
Read the traditional symbols of the subtle body, with classical sources and modern interpretations clearly distinguished.
Explore the ChakrasPlay & Learn
Identify a story, recognize a speaker, explore a word in context, or match a term to its meaning. Five games with English questions, explanations, and links back to reading.
Choose a game
Make room for movement, breath, and attention. Begin where you are, with a chair and a little time.
Begin with Chair YogaA practice that meets you where you are
Start small.
Stay attentive.
You do not need to complete every movement. Choose a comfortable seated practice, keep the breath easy, and leave room to rest.
Before you begin, read the chair setup and guidance for adapting the practice to your needs.
Set up your practiceComing back is a skill of its own
Patanjali sets two words side by side when he speaks of practice: abhyasa, the steady return to the work, and vairagya, the willingness to let go of what the work is supposed to yield. Keep the first and you keep showing up. Keep the second and you stop demanding a particular result from each sitting. A short daily session lives on exactly that pairing. The range of movement that comes easily today is the practice, and it does not need to be measured against whatever you managed yesterday.
Steady, without stiffness
For posture the Yoga Sutras give a two-word measure, steady and at ease, and leave it there. The chair forms that follow are modern adaptations, and they make no claim to be the seated method that sutra had in view. Bring one small question to each of them: with the chair taking some of the weight, can the body soften a little, and can attention come a little clearer? When the answer is yes, the form is doing what it is for.
Whichever road draws you
Begin with gentle movement of the body, or stay close to the breath as it comes and goes, or go down into what the chakras mean. The three roads do not have to be settled in a single day, and none of them is the one proper place to start. What matters is that a little space stays open in your day to come back to, whichever road you took last time.
Text reference: Yoga Sutra 1.12 to 14 and 2.46. The thoughts on daily practice above are an editorial application of these sutras. Source text · Read the Yoga Sutras
Keep a copy nearby
The Practice Guide
The original English guide to Chair Yoga, introductory breathing, and Chakras. The expanded breathing and mudra collections are available on these web pages.