Chair position made easy

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In Yoga diaryIn the Archives series, we share a curated collection of articles originally published in back issues dating back to 1975. These stories offer a glimpse into how yoga has been interpreted, written about, and practiced over the years. This article first appeared in Yoga diary in February 2012. Find more from our archives here.

Some yoga poses can come to you quickly and relatively easily. Other poses can feel like they require every ounce of your endurance, even after years of practice. And then there is the Chair Pose. For most of us, it falls into a category of its own: poses that look deceptively simple, yet require tremendous endurance in the body and mind.

Another challenge of Chair Pose is that its simple shape offers little glory. Despite all the effort it takes, you won’t end up with your leg wrapped behind your head or in some other fancy position. And that’s largely the point.

In Sanskrit, the word for devotional practice is abhyasa. It is the act of making continuous efforts to achieve a goal. In your yoga practice this implies discipline, but it is also a movement towards effortlessness that comes from letting go of the outcome. If you remain interested in the exercise itself and not the goal, at least some movement toward effortlessness will occur.

It can be frustrating while you’re in it, but ultimately it teaches you the determination you need to take on a challenge and the perseverance to return to it repeatedly over time. Perhaps no other position causes more frowns and even groans among the students, but when I encourage them to persevere, they say they are glad they did.

Benefits of chair posture

Like other types of squats you might practice at a gym, Chair Pose (Utkatasana) is a full-body exercise that teaches you to handle many different demands at once for what feels like far too long. Your effort will be rewarded with numerous benefits, including:

• Strengthens your quadriceps and stabilizes your knee joints
• Engages your ankle muscles
• Activates your arm and shoulder muscles
• Helps increase your breathing capacity by stretching the muscles between your ribs
• Strengthens your core muscles
• Improves posture
• Teaches you discernment regarding your current needs

Challenging poses, such as a chair, draw your attention to the places where you need to strengthen the parts of your body that require strength, endurance, or both.

How to make chair pose easier

By isolating the different demands of chair pose and exercising only the upper or lower body at a time, you can learn safe alignment and make the pose more doable.

Although Chair Pose requires a certain amount of flexibility in the shoulders, as well as stability in the core and strength in the legs. If you work on developing these, you can make your experience with Chair Pose entirely less frustrating.

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

1. Practice chair pose with your lower body

First, work on bending your knees and shifting your weight to your heels.

The instructions below will help you do just that by practicing the pose against a wall, which takes some of the intensity off your legs, although you can rely on the same cues and technique as when practicing it away from the wall on the mat.

How:

1. Stand with your back against a wall and your hands on your hips.
2. Place your feet about two feet from the wall and bend your knees, as if you were sitting in a chair with your ankles stacked under your knees.
3. As you exhale, press your heels forcefully into the floor until you feel your calves and hamstrings engage. Maintain strength in your legs and observe the parts of your body that contact the wall. The backs of your sit bones, your ribs, your shoulders and your head will touch the wall. Your lower back and neck will tend to arch away from it.
4. If you feel your hips tilting forward, away from the wall, exaggerating the curve in your lower back, use your hands to bring your hip points into a more neutral alignment. Use just the right amount of effort. Don’t go so far as to tuck your tailbone, which flattens your lower back.
5. Your thighs are probably burning right now, but try to stay strong and hold this position for a few breaths. Then inhale as you straighten your legs and stand back up.

2. Practice chair pose with your upper body

Next, become more familiar with the arm position of chair pose. When you reach up and back with your arms past your ears, there may be a tendency to exaggerate the arch of the spine. You can train yourself to tighten your core muscles and resist the compensatory arch in the back by remembering what it felt like to practice Chair Pose against the Wall.

How:

1. Stand with your back against a wall. Place your feet together or keep them a few inches apart.
2. Notice that your shoulders and upper back touch the wall. Your lower back and neck are not; these are places where your spine naturally curves toward the front of the body.
3. Try to maintain, but not exaggerate, these natural curves as you lift your arms past your ears and shoulder-width apart. Notice that when you reach your arms, your ribs and spine will want to follow the arms, protruding forward and causing discomfort in the lower back. Engage your core muscles to stabilize yourself as you pull your lower ribs back toward the wall. Experiment with how high you can raise your arms above your head while keeping your ribs in contact with the wall behind you.
4. Take at least five deep breaths here, expanding your chest and moving down through your legs. As you exhale, lower your arms and relax.

3. Come into chair pose with your whole body

Finally, unite the upper and lower body parts in a coherent and powerful pose. Again, you can practice this against the wall or away from it. The deeper you bend your legs, the more you need to lift your abdomen to prevent your lower back from arching.

How:

1. Stand with your weight evenly distributed between your feet. Lift your arms above your head and shoulder-width apart.
2. Bend your knees and keep your weight in your heels. Recreate the feeling you experienced with your back against the wall, pulling your belly button toward your spine and reaching through your arms. Press your heels firmly into the floor. Look at a fixed point on the floor a few feet in front of you. Breathe here.
3. As you inhale, press your feet to stand up. Straighten your legs and lower your arms. Pause and feel the effects of this powerful pose.

Tips for chair posture

Utkata means “powerful” or “fierce,” and while this pose requires physical strength in the body, it also requires you to be aware of subtle details. The following adjustments can make Chair Pose feel even more manageable:

• Feet
  Exercising with your feet together can help you tighten your inner thigh muscles. If you feel unsteady, place your feet hip-width apart for more stability.
• Poor
  If you feel out of breath or your shoulders hurt, try exercising with your arms straight in front of you or at your sides, rather than above your head.
• Knees
  Shift your weight back to your heels to keep your knees safe.
• Chest
  Lift your chest away from your thighs. When exercising against a wall, it helps to imagine that you are leaning your upper back against the wall behind you.
• Neck
  Instead of tilting your head back to look up, keep your cervical spine fairly straight. Try to rest your gaze on the ground a few feet in front of you.
• Jaw
  Notice if you’re frowning or clenching your jaw. If so, relax them.
• Breath
  If your breathing becomes labored, lengthen your exhalations to help calm your body and mind.

This article has been updated. Originally published on February 15, 2012.