Total Body Efficiency Workout – Full Body Seated Chair Yoga with Sara Sinclair from Yoga Vista

Hi, my name is Sarah and I am here to invite you to join me in my mobility, balance, and strength training program. It's a series of workouts that I'm going to title Upping Your Game. Why? Because I believe we can put in the work focusing on those three modalities, linking them together, and actually improve our physical and our mental health. So not just necessarily status quo, but improve, level up. I love the word efficiency. We're going to have an efficient workout today. Hi, my name is Sarah. I'm so glad that you are with me. Finding a way for us to use our whole body in some compound movements while focusing on specifics of mobility, strength, and balance. And oftentimes those also weave in together. We're going to have fun. And the word efficient also means it's not going to take too, too long. Work this into your whenever and how often that you can. Speaking of cans, I have a couple of, I'll call them props, canned mandarin oranges, canned soup. A book will work the same way. And if you have neither, it doesn't matter. But there's a little bit of weight to this, a little heaviness. So when we use them or a book or nothing, you're going to get the benefit no matter what. But something that you can hold that's a little bit heavy, give us a little bit more value in the strength department. I like the cans or the books as well, because we can use them to step up on a bit and get a little extra leg or foot impact as well. But we'll start today with those props, whatever you have, just down by your side. Take a big breath in. Take another one. I want you to lift up these trapezius muscles and your shoulders. Ready? Yeah. Now put them down. And this is really important as we work, no matter what we do with our arms, this is what we do not want. Yeah. So we're going to talk about keeping those shoulder blades down. The shoulder blades are down, neither the shoulders or those traps can be elevated. And squeeze them together. Pop the chest open. That's the other thing. We got to keep our upper back really strong and our chin down and back to get the back of the neck long as well. It should feel really comfortable when we're there. The stronger we get in good posture, the more comfortable we will be in good posture. All efficient workouts, all workouts start in a warm-up. Lift. Good. Lift. And relax the hand on the legs. Extend. Extend. That's the knee. Extending the leg. Extending and down and down. Let's do that again. We're going to reach as high as possible with good posture. Shoulders are down. Shoulder blades are down. Keep them down and back together as we lower and lower. Extend. Extend. Flex. Put the foot down on the other one again. Up. Up. Down. Down. Out. Out. Return again. Up. Up. Down. Down. Okay. It's faster. Up. Up. Down. Down. Leg. Leg. Back to the floor. Up. Up. Down. Down. If it's too fast, slow it down. We're going to do this and then one more full round. Up. Up. Down. Down. Extend. And come back center. That was a forward-backward direction. Let's go sideways. Yeah. And then the other one. Sideways. Warming up the body in every, they call them planes of motion. The front-back, that's one. The side-to-side, that's another. Slow these down if you would like to. Yeah. I don't want them to be strong. I don't want them to be forceful. We're just doing a little movement now. What's another plane of motion? Well, it's this. Rotate. Yep. Now, in rotation, we need to sit up really tall to be effective. There is one other way our spine moves. Not just front-back, not just side-side, and not just twisting. But in this twist, did you hear me say we need to sit up tall in order to twist efficiently, which means we'll go farther and do better. Bring your hands down. I'm going to show you what that final spinal movement is. If we have collapsed and all we do is extend up, that's one of our spinal movements. It's called spinal extension. This was leg extension. Give me a slump. Give me spinal extension. Shoulder blades back and down. Open those arms. And wow, that's a lot of work already, isn't it? This is a compound, complex movement. Lots of things are going on all at once. Slowly put the legs down. Slowly put the arms down. Beautiful. That slow release is movement using muscle. If you release by just letting it go, then that would be gravity taking your body, putting it down slow as you putting it somewhere. Now, what's this? Well, there's a little momentum here and sometimes that's okay. This is getting us some blood flow through not only our arms, but look at the trunk of the body. Feel it move side to side. Let's slow this one down. Taking out the momentum. Yeah. You just do what you can. I'm going to ask you to do one more here and leg lengthens, leg lengthens. Notice that it got slower. It got more challenging because no momentum and no gravity. Ah, complex movement. Your whole body is working here. Legs, the hips, the entire trunk, the arms, the shoulders. Yes. How about one more each side and then relax. Give your shoulders a little roll just to soften them up and notice if you're breathing a little heavier. If you are, that's a bit of cardiovascular work that happens when our whole body is working together. Big muscles moving. Here's more. We're going to open and close. Bring the hand on the knee, the knee and the foot all the way out. Sit up off the back of your chair. Yeah. And by the way, I kind of like chairs that have a little substance to them so they're not sitting in a nice cushy recliner. It'll be much more difficult to move if so. All right. The arm goes up in just a little cactus. What's a cactus? We love our yoga. Cactus is just an arm that comes up with a bent elbow. Comfortable, but feel your shoulder blade moving into your back as you feel your knee and your foot moving out and they're moving together, right? And by together, I mean your hand and your foot. Yeah. Your elbow and your knee. But also, you're moving your whole leg out together, not just the knee, not just the foot with the knee in. I want it all lined up and we've got four, three, two, and one. Nice job. Next up, even a more, we might get a little winded. You can stop, slow down anytime. Off the back of your chair as possible. Okay. Both legs up and out. So, did you notice I leaned back a little bit? That's going to help the balance and help us get the legs up. That's why we start off the back of the chair. Lean back slightly. Whoa. Spinal extension, no collapse. Why? This is good posture, but when we lean back and open and close the legs like this and we stay super long in the front of the body, you are working your core. If you're working your core, which means your abs and your trunk, your balance training. Because as we move through space, we need to negotiate our legs, how they're moving, our hips, and our back, which cannot be separated. So then, we're getting stronger as a whole body unit and relax. Take a notice. Take a notice. Yes. One leg out to the side, and I want you to lift your hips and slightly turn on your chair. One of the reasons I'm doing this is because we get a new angle, and if you're in a chair that's somewhat square like mine, it gives you a little space here, but lots of security. But I also want us to look at something. We're going to lean forward, and if you notice my back stays straight, and it's going to stay straight as we come back up. I'm going to move this arm a little so you can see. Where my hand is, wrist to fingers, are the bones of the lower back sacrum tailbone, and if I have a straight back and I lean forward, do you see how my fingers lift up and move straight back in a straight line from the crown of my head? Yeah. Well, if I lean forward using my spine and not, this is a hip joint that's helping me move, lifting those fingers up. Some people call them tail feathers. If those tail feathers stay down and I just go forward by moving my back, my hand didn't move at all. I got lower with my nose and my chest, but I didn't do it by bending my hips, and this is very stressful in this seated position for our back. So, tip out, keep the back straight, and let your hips lift up off the back of the chair. I love doing this. Lift your leg up and walk back a little. Lift your other leg up, walk your hips back a little. Lift up, walk your hips back, and as you do, they're going to more automatically shift where you want them to go, and from this position, we are strong. We are stable, and we're going to lift our abdominals into the body and take one arm out to the side and then the other one. You can always shift in your chair and do the same thing, not on the corner, but I hope what you can see here is a very straight flat back. My chin's pulling in and back to lengthen the back of the neck. Turn the thumbs to the ceiling, push your shoulder blades down your back towards your hips, and right here, we're working awfully hard, aren't we? And then lift your thumbs just a little more and push those shoulder blades together. Now, push your feet actively down into the floor. Make the muscles of your legs tighten. Your abs are up. Your back muscles are working, and then as you push your feet down, you're going to lift up the entire muscles along the backside of your body. The posterior chain just pulls you up. Take a breath. We're coming forward. What? And we're coming up again. We're going to do one more of those. Come forward, your entire body. Now, remember, push your feet actively into the floor, and up we go. Rest. Give it a little roll. Notice if that heart's beating a little bit more. It's because your whole body is having to be used. The blood is flowing. Yay. All right. Pick up the other leg. Let's go the other side. Roll it around, and this is a great way for us to practice. You can move forward just a smidge so that we keep the back straight, partly understanding we're getting the body to do what we want by lifting up and moving your hip back without moving your shoulders back. So, if we start walking forward, keep our shoulders here, even moving forward slightly, move up, I'm sorry, move back with the hip, and then lift the other heel up and move back the hip and just walk back, and you're in a fold. Here we are already in a fold. Feet are strong. Ankles, knees lined up. One or both arms out to the front. Pull in the rib. Pull in the belly muscles. If you have the ability to do both arms and keep the belly up and hold for just a moment, inhale, lift, and then let your arms come down, then you are strong in the back. But remember, we don't want to do it even with a little bit of flexion, extension. Yep. If you want to, you can use that hip walk to help. You don't have to. Walk back, walk back, walk back, walk back. Here we are. The tail is that way. The crown of the head is that way. Bellies are up. Feet are pushing down. Here's one arm. And if both arms is just not something you want to do today, take one out and just do one at a time. Pull the belly in. If you're just doing one at a time, change. Pull one in before the other one goes out. And wherever you are right now, pushing down through your feet and inhaling, lift the body all the way up. And down we go. Beautifully done. Thank you. Come back in. And let's find our prop if you do have a prop today. So, we're going to take a can or a book or something, maybe the little weight that you can hold. Just a little bit of strength training. Palm down or up doesn't really matter, okay? But I'm going to say if the palm is down, your arm is only going to lift as high as your chest. If you open your palm, because we're going to lift the arm this way, you can go a little higher safer. You ready? I'll do palm down with you first. Let's come up and stop. So, elbow and chest are in the same line and the elbow is slightly bent. Yeah, slightly bent. When you hold something heavy far away from you, is it heavier? Nope. But your muscles have to work harder to hold that same weight up because it's farther away. Yes, it's a physics thing. It's not heavier. It weighs the same. If I put it on the scale out here, I put it on the scale near my body. But when you, ooh, better come down, right? But we move something farther away from the fulcrum, it gets heavier. Turn the palm up. The reason for this is just shoulder joint safety. Now we're lifting. The elbow is still slightly bent. And if you want, you can come higher with the arm rolled out. You can come higher, higher, higher. If you don't have anything in your hand, it's okay. And then bend the elbow and lower the hand. Again, up, heavier feel, heavier feel, heavier feel, heavier feel. Then the shoulder is going to be taking over a lot of work here as we let it down and then lower the hand and bicep. Let's do that one more time. Up, up on this side, being the only side that we have so far done strength training with something a little heavier and farther away. I want you to rest and transfer. Think for just a moment, does this arm more tired than this one? Yeah, it should be. Here we go. Let's try the other side. Turn the palm down and we come out. And if you remember a little elbow bend, elbow, chest height. Yeah. And we held it a little longer instead of doing the movement pattern when the palm was up. This is just simply called time under tension. That time under tension is how we get stronger, doing things that challenge us a bit. You let it down when you need to. Otherwise, we're all going down in three. Are your traps down? Shoulders down? Chest up? Two. Breathing. One. Wow. Already, whoo, tiring. Palm up. And then we have the motion where we get a little higher. You move that arm how it feels right to be moved. Do you feel work? Great. Do you feel pain? No. Don't do it if you feel pain. As we lower slowly, hand to shoulder and then hand to the floor. We're getting the muscles not only in the shoulder to work with us, the muscles around the elbow and the forearm. In and down. Good. Relax. Do both arms feel about the same? Hope so. If you have a book or if you have a can, and if not, you have fists, two of them, we're going to put them like this between your knees or the can between your knees or the book between your knees. Squeeze and lift. Yes. Squeeze and lift. Now arch backwards a little bit and then relax. Don't drop because the squeeze is still on. Lift the feet and squeeze whatever's between your knees. If it's your fist, you arch back with your fist there. Otherwise, if our hands are free, we come up and we open and we arch the back. We breathe and we slowly come down. Notice when we come down, we don't come down past good posture into a droop. So we're here with me. Pull in the belly, lift the feet, squeeze the hand, the can or the book, and then open out, breathing, breathing. That little arch at the back just helps to relieve the stress of us always being forward folding or forward postured. One more time. Squeeze the can, lift the feet, in this big, beautiful, open, calm space with breathing. Yeah. This is leg work, pelvic floor work, core work, and upper back posture work. Let's relax. Did you notice that you held each of those a little longer? Yeah. Very, very good work. Very good work. The can on the floor, the book on the floor, maybe you just want to pull a stool over or something. We're going to put the ball of the foot on top of whatever you have. And if you're wearing shoes, great. I just happened to not have them on today because I was doing some yoga. So I thought, well, I'm in the chair, we're going to leave them off. It's fine. The one thing I actually do like sometimes without shoes is if you're wearing real stiff shoes, it's difficult for the toes to bend here. Do you see how my toes are bent? And I'm up real high, so I'm stretching the front of the shin and I'm strengthening the calves and the Achilles tendon. So I'm going to lower the heel and lift the toes and spread the toes. Yep. Okay. Lift up. Tight. Yep. Lift up. Open. Nice. Now lower the heel, lift the toes, spread the toes while we really tightly close in the thumb, first, middle, ring and pinky finger tight. Are your toes still up? Are they still spread? Are your heels down? And now move that hand and knuckle down. Yes. One more time. We're going to lift the heel as high as we can. Then we're going to lift the wrist as high as we can. Spread the fingers. Yep. So your strength training back under the leg, stretching down the front, stretching under the wrist, the fingers, thumb to middle finger or to little finger all the way out, all the way back. Then lower, lift, spread the toes, close the fingers. This time let's do the pinky first and the thumb last. Then roll that wrist down. Feel the stretch across the top of your forearm. Strong, flexible hands and wrists. Strong, flexible feet. Super important. Let's let the hand shake out. Take the foot off and let those feet circle other direction. And then before we do the other foot, pick up what you had on the floor there. And I want you to just open the knee and lift the inside of the foot and let the outside of the ankle stretch a little bit. And the other direction brings that inside ankle down. Yep. We're just getting mobility into the lower part of the body. And hey, if we don't keep active here, so go up and down with me a few more times. In and out. Yeah. In our feet. When we try to walk, we're not as nimble. We're not as fluid. We're not as secure. This is balance training. Without that nimble, strong, flexible, responsive ankle, foot, and toes, we won't walk as well. Yeah. Okay, whatever you have on the floor. And if it's nothing, just use the floor. You can do it like this, right? This just brings it a little higher, a little more awareness, a little more feedback. Feel how strong you are here. Feel how stretched you are here. All right. You ready? Flex. Stretch. Big time stretch. You can even pull back a little bit if you want a little extra tension there. And reversing the foot first. Heel down. Lift up. Spread your toes. Thumb in. First finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky finger, tight. Keep those toes up and open. Drop your fist down and feel the stretch across the top of the wrist. Beautiful. Here we go. Concentrate on the foot. Lift high, lift high, lift high. Really keep it strong. And then up with the palm, out with the fingers. Stretch them as far as you possibly can. Yep. I have some arthritis in my thumbs. So, keeping the fingers moving. Okay. Go down with the heel. Up. Especially if you have some arthritis like I do. Let's bring the thumb in first. Keeps that arthritis from taking us down by not moving it and then becoming weaker and then having the arthritis be what is most significant in our hands. No. Our strength is. Our mobility is. We keep them moving. We're going to move that can for a moment. Open the knee. So, you see how that rolled open? Open the knee and lift the inside of the foot. Good. And then let's go the other way. So, I'm going to turn. I'm going to actually lift my foot. Turn the inside part of the foot down to the floor and pull this knee in. Nice. And relax. All right. Grab your can or your book again or not. Both hands. Opening the feet just a little. Sitting off the back of the chair because you're going to lean back just slightly. We're going to lift the knees. Open. Close the feet together. And then lift. Lower. Relax. Lean back. Chest is up. Not down here. Up here. Take all the wrinkles out of your shirt. Open the knees as they lift. Close the feet which are now warmed up and ready to move. And lifting up. Again, efficient movement. Total body movement together. Coordination. Yes. Complex, compound movements. Getting your whole body to exercise at the same time. Here's my question for you. Is this mobility or balance or strength? I'd say it takes some strength to lift your legs. I'd say it takes some mobility to open your knees and close your feet. I'd say it takes some mobility to be able to lift your arms overhead. Let's go one more. Lean back. Up and in. Mobility and strength. Keeping the chest up. Using your core. Using the strength of your arms that are being very mobile right now but lifting a heavy can overhead. Coming back down. Controlling with your belly is more balance training. All at the same time. Let's put this away. Really, really well done. A little more mobility before we close the class for today. Put a lid on our efficiency of formal training for it and take that efficiency out into our day. Hands on your knees. I want you just to lean to the side a little and then it's like rolling in a circle or stirring the pot they say. Let's go the other way. Shifting. So, imagine you've got a big, big, big pot and your head, your shoulders, your heart, all the above are stirring in each direction. Coordinating movement. So, this is a lot of mobility. Now, as you go to the side, we're going to lift the heel and the hip. As we come forward, put that foot down. As we come the other side, lift the foot. Put it down as you come back. Now, you're coordinating leg, hip, and spine movement all together. Lift. Come forward. Creates a whole change in shift here but you're ready for it. Your foot and ankle. As we come around, you're going to lift the other side and unweight over here. Unweight the hip off the chair if you can. And so, when we come up, we have to use a little bit more of our trunk strength. As we go to the side, we lift up. It puts us off balance more. Training our balance, training our mobility. Put that foot down. Hey, tail feathers way back to the wall, not tucked under, right? Yeah, over the side. And stir it right in the middle. The next thing that I'm going to have us do, we're going to use a little twisting to the body. But before we twist, I'm going to secure your lower legs a bit. There's a couple different ways we can do this. The why behind it though is if we secure it and then we twist but the legs can't move like I just had you consciously move them, we're going to get a real good muscular spiral in the spine. So, cross your ankles, pull your feet back, and squeeze your knees tight. Yep. Very, very good. The other option, if you have a leg and a hip that's interested and willing to come over, then we come over on a cross leg, pulling the top foot in. That makes it solid and muscular in your legs. So, you're either pulling the ankle in and really making those legs come together and lock tight, or you're down here with the ankles crossed together, squeezing the knees together to lock tight. Whichever you choose, palms are up and one palm is going to push forward and the other one back. As we hold those knees together, legs are working, your trunk is working, your eyes are looking at me, right? I'm looking at you. Now, hold this, sit taller, take an inhale breath, then as you exhale, turn your head and look to the back hand as far as you can. Keep breathing, keep squeezing those inner thighs or your pinky toe into your lower leg. Keep pressing the front hand towards the screen, towards me. Press the back arm, look at the back arm, and then on your next exhale. So, first inhale, exhale, everything relaxes slowly. Remember, we do slowly turn. That's fabulous. Other direction, okay? Whichever you want to do, and you can change it up as you go along, but we're just finding some compression time, time under tension in the legs. Inhale to be tall and push that palm forward as you rotate the body and the legs can't move with you because you've got them squeezed tight. Other arm pushes behind you. As much as this front hand is pushing forward, the back hand is pushing backwards. We've got equal amounts of pressure both ways. You're looking towards me, I'm looking towards you. This is a neck rotation you didn't even know was in there. We snuck it in, so now we've got the chin towards the front shoulder. Slowly turn your head and get the chin to turn all the way to the back hand and breathe. Hold there. You're sitting tall. Give me one more inhale breath. Sit taller, squeeze your legs, keep breathing. On your exhale, slowly let everything return to home base. Good. Lift the hips, lift the hips, lift the hips. Quick question. Mobility. Did we get it? Check. Strength. Did we get it? Check. Balance. Did we get it? Check. Proud of you. We did a bit of a warm-up and our cool down, if you will, is allowing the brain and the body to settle. You know when you, say, would throw a rock into a pond, lots of those waves come out, right? And they continue, but as time goes, just come with me, just flap your wings a little bit gently, as time goes on they get smaller and gentler and smaller and gentler. That's what we're really doing right now. Let your palms come up and do a smaller but gentler twist. Slow and easy. And so the brain is also going, ah, the ebb and flow of life. Yeah. We wake up, we get up, we do things, we calm down, we go back to bed, we go to sleep, and we repeat. Yeah. Roll down just a little. It's not bad to roll down, it's just not where we want our body to stay. Lean back just a little. Come into the center. Reach down just a little. Yeah. Those are the words for right now, just a little. Always adding the breath, but it's a gentler, slower breath. Gentler, slower breath with gentler, slower movements. Then just lift the leg with your arm so that it's kind of dead weight, and just circle a little bit because that really is working into the hip joint. Let it know that it's also time to relax. Down, other side, just a few gentle circles. Thank you so much for being with me today. Let's go the other direction. There's always so much more to do, and there's always so much more kind of commitment and dedication to doing these great things for ourselves together. Circle when there's a little variety, but a whole lot of togetherness each direction. Yeah. And how do you know that what you've done is good for you? You know with your thoughts, but my guess is you also know with really how do you feel? Not just what do you think, but how do you feel right now? And how do you feel if you take some time off from working out? It happens. It's great, but you always want to get back to the, I want to move freely. So thank you for taking your time and moving efficiently with me today and freely. I cannot wait to see you again. Have a blessed day.