Frequently asked questions

Chair yoga is a gentle form of yoga practised while seated on a chair, or standing using a chair for support. It adapts traditional yoga poses so they can be done without getting down to, or up from, the floor. This makes the benefits of yoga — flexibility, gentle strength, balance and calm — accessible to seniors, people with limited mobility, and anyone recovering from injury.

The program is designed with osteoporosis in mind. All forward movements use a flat-back hinge from the hips rather than rounding the spine, because deep spinal flexion can pose a compression risk for people with low bone density. That said, everyone is different, so please consult your healthcare provider before you begin.

Yes, this is a core part of the safety design. Seated Yoga avoids inversions and any pose that would drop the head below the heart, because head-down positions can raise pressure in the eyes. The head stays above heart level throughout. As always, check with your eye specialist or doctor before starting.

Many people with well-managed high blood pressure enjoy gentle, seated movement. Seated Yoga keeps the pace calm, emphasises steady breathing, and avoids straining or breath-holding. Because blood pressure and medications vary from person to person, please speak with your healthcare provider first, and stop if you feel dizzy or unwell.

Gentle, regular movement is one of the most helpful things for stiff, achy joints, and chair yoga is well suited to it. The mobility work keeps joints moving through a comfortable range without impact or strain. Move only to a gentle point, never to pain, and let your body guide you.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for arthritis →

Very little. All you truly need is a sturdy, non-rolling chair and comfortable clothing you can move in. As you progress, a yoga strap, a cushion and a set of light hand weights (1 to 3 pounds) are optional additions, but they are never required.

Sessions start short — about 10 to 12 minutes in the first phase — and grow gradually as your stamina builds. They reach around 45 minutes only in the final phase, and only when your body is ready. Most days fit comfortably into a normal routine.

It is designed for seniors and people with limited mobility. Beginners and people returning to movement after a long break can work at their own pace, make any move smaller, or skip it. No single program is right for every body, so use the safety guidance and any personal limits you already follow.

No prior experience is needed. The program begins with a Foundation phase that teaches posture, breathing and safe movement from the very first day, with clear, plain-language guidance the whole way through.

Yes. Every exercise has a fully seated option, and you never need to get onto the floor. Any balance work keeps the chair within reach for support, so the practice is accessible even if standing is difficult or not possible.

Not directly while you are sitting down, and we would rather be straightforward about that. Balance is trained by being challenged while upright, so a fully seated routine cannot train it the way standing work does. What a seated practice can do is build what balance is made of — ankle mobility, leg and hip strength, trunk stability and upright posture — and it can do that safely for someone who is not steady enough to train standing yet. The programme adds chair-supported standing poses gradually, and those are where balance training itself begins. If you feel unsteady, or have had a fall, please speak with your doctor first.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for balance and fall prevention →

Often yes, with care, but the honest complication is that sitting is itself the aggravating position for many people with sciatica — so the sitting has to be sorted out before the poses are worth much. Raising the seat so your hips are level with or slightly above your knees, using a firm chair rather than a soft one, and splitting a practice into two short halves all help. Beyond that, the programme suits sciatica better than most because it contains no movement that rounds the spine, and every forward bend is a flat-back hinge from the hips. Be wary of hamstring stretches in particular, and judge each movement by whether your symptoms retreat up the leg or travel further down it. Please have your leg pain assessed first, and seek urgent care for numbness around the saddle area, any loss of bladder or bowel control, or spreading weakness in both legs.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for sciatica →

Usually yes, and it is worth doing — with one adjustment that matters more than the choice of poses. Parkinson's tends to make movement smaller while also dulling the sense of how big a movement was, so a routine performed exactly as it feels correct can quietly train the shrinking rather than resist it. The correction is to deliberately overshoot: reach until you can see your hand, turn until you can genuinely see behind you, and count each repetition aloud so the rhythm comes from outside the body. Practise during a window when your medication is working well, and use a mirror if you have one. A seated practice keeps the trunk, chest and shoulders moving and is safe when falls are a concern, but it cannot train walking or address freezing — ask your specialist about a referral to a physiotherapist with neurological experience for those.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for Parkinson's →

Often yes, with your stroke team’s agreement, and with two things understood first. The first is that this is not rehabilitation: recovery of movement comes from structured, task-specific practice guided by therapists who can assess you, and if you are still under a rehabilitation team their programme takes precedence over anything you find online. The second is the shoulder on the weaker side. When the muscles around a shoulder are weak the joint is less well supported, so never move that arm by pulling on the hand or wrist, never let it hang unsupported off the side of the chair, and stop at the first firm resistance rather than working through it — and have it assessed rather than stretched if it has already become painful. Beyond that, the useful adjustment is to count repetitions by what the weaker side can do and start each movement with it, because the stronger side will otherwise take over movements that look perfectly even from the outside. Check what you are doing with your eyes rather than by feel, since sensation on the affected side is often altered.

Read our full guide to chair yoga after a stroke →

For most people yes, and being active is generally encouraged for people living with diabetes — but one habit has to change if the nerves in your feet have been affected. Almost all exercise advice assumes that a movement doing you harm will hurt and you will notice, and peripheral neuropathy interferes with exactly that signal. So the safety check moves from feel to sight: look at both feet before you begin, check inside each shoe for a stone or a folded insole, practise in shoes rather than bare feet on a clear floor, and look at the skin afterwards including the soles and between the toes. Beyond that, keep something fast-acting within reach if your medication can cause a low, do not start a session while you feel shaky, stand up in stages if the room sometimes swims, and be more careful with standing work rather than less, since numb feet remove much of what balance depends on. Contact your provider the same day about any new wound, blister or area of redness on a foot — where sensation is reduced these can progress a long way before they hurt.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for diabetes and neuropathy →

For most people yes, once your healthcare provider has confirmed gentle exercise is appropriate for you — and with one adjustment that matters more than the choice of poses. Pushing hard against a held breath produces a brief, sharp rise in blood pressure, so the habit to build is that the breath never stops: let the exhale go with the harder half of each movement, hold the chair lightly rather than gripping it, and keep the jaw, elbows and knees loose. Judge your effort by the talk test — able to speak in short sentences but not comfortably sing — rather than by a pulse rate, which several blood-pressure medicines deliberately slow and which will therefore mislead you. Get up in stages at the end rather than all at once, since light-headedness on standing is common with the same medicines. And never skip a dose in order to exercise, or adjust one because a routine seems to be helping: raised blood pressure is symptomless, so how you feel carries no information about whether it is controlled.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for high blood pressure →

For the everyday, position-related sort — the ache that builds through the day, eases when you move, and is worse after a long sit — gentle seated movement is a reasonable and low-risk thing to try. The useful adjustment is to work below the neck first. Most of that discomfort is made by the head drifting forward of the shoulders for hours, which leaves the muscles at the back of the neck holding continuously, and the position is set by the shoulder blades, the upper back and the front of the chest rather than by the neck itself. So loosen those first and reach the neck last, with small slow movements: semi-circles rather than full neck rolls, and never pulling on your own head. Changing a position you hold for hours — raising a screen or a book, supporting your forearms — often does more than any stretch. Have it assessed rather than stretched if the pain followed a fall, if it travels down an arm with pins and needles, numbness or weakness, or if a shoulder wakes you at night and will not lift.

Read our full guide to chair yoga for neck and shoulder pain →

The app keeps track of your journey — which day you are on, the sessions you have completed, and how your practice has grown over time. If you miss a day, nothing is lost; you simply continue where you left off, at your own pace.

You can try the first three guided sessions free. Every paid plan is a one-time purchase: $4.99 permanently unlocks Sessions 1–30, $10 unlocks Sessions 1–60, and $15 unlocks all 90 sessions. The $40 Lifetime plan also includes future updates. Nothing renews automatically.

If you have a question about a purchase or would like to request a refund, please get in touch through our contact page and we will do our best to help. Our Terms of Service also cover payment details.