Our Chair Yoga focus today is on the breath. And compassion for ourselves and for others.

Our movements explore joint mobility for our shoulders, fingers, hands, toes, etc. Coordinating our breath, we work the spine in forward and back bends, side bends and twists. We find power and strength in our seated warrior pose and extended side angle pose. With a strap or without we extend our legs allowing our hamstrings to stretch and our hips to externally rotate.

Our reading is from the late Vanda Scaravelli who was a student of Iyengar and the inventor of a breathcentred yoga technique she codifies in Awakening the Spine. Her book is quite beautiful and a worthwhile read. She writes:

"Goethe said that he could understand the falling of the apple which gave Newton the idea of gravity, but he could not understand how a tree could grow in two opposite directions. This inexplicable cosmic interconnection of dynamic movements, following the law of gravity, also keeps the planets moving and hold the different worlds together.

Gravity attracts a planet and it is this very attraction which creates the lightness that gives it the ability to rotate in its spiral “revolution."

Each of the yoga poses is accompanied by breathing and it is during the process of exhalation that the spine can stretch and elongate without effort. We learn to elongate and extend, rather than to pull and push. Elongation and extension can only occur when the pulling and pushing have come to an end. This is the revolution.

For this revolution to occur, the muscles must not be activated through tension or effort but only through the much more powerful wave of extension, which is produced by gravity and breathing. We make use of the force of “antiforce,” which gives us a new flow of energy — a sort of antigravity reflex, like the rebounding spring of a ball bouncing on the ground."

Vanda Scaravalli. Awakening the Spine: Yoga for Health, Vitality and Energy. (Rev. 2nd ed.) 2015: 6.