I’m a yoga teacher and this simple prop has helped ease my anxiety.

I started practicing yoga about 20 years ago out of curiosity. As a recent college graduate and former Division I college cheerleader, I thrived in an environment where I multi-tasked coursework and intense team practices. He was moving into action less Which I found difficult. In other words, I’m as Type A as they come.

Vinyasa yoga made me feel as if I was putting pieces of my personality together. Things were fast paced and sometimes chaotic while I was on the move Wave, rush, chairand Half moon. At the same time, yoga slowed me down. As my body came into twists and turns in my spine Dove poseI felt a constant energy on the mat that I couldn’t find anywhere else.

Still, I went through my mental to-do list during sun salutations, tapping my toes and fidgeting with my fingers. Savasana. The difference was that yoga made me more fit Conscious From him.

Along the way, I became curious – was there another yoga method besides vinyasa that could further calm my Type A tendencies? Years later, I found my answer.

After subscribing to A 200-hour yoga teacher training (YTT) and then retreated (after all, I thought, should a fidgety person like me teach stillness??), eventually I took YTT and graduated. I was content with teaching vinyasa classes in person and virtually until a friend of mine, who is also one of my students, told me she had broken her foot. She said she needed to take a hiatus from yoga. I can tell by her voice that she’s not missing okay. As someone whose life revolves around yoga, I understood her concern. So I got to work.

I spent hours in my home gym with a chair, figuring out how to create traditional yoga poses that worked for her. I’ve also found myself researching foot injuries to make sure I’m more attuned to how I present the chair as an option for my friend (and anyone else who needs one). For about six months in my virtual yoga classes, I demonstrated different chair variations for each pose I do.

At first, I was quite nervous teaching traditional poses and chair variations at the same time. But I developed my own system. First, I like to pose without the chair. Then I will pretend to be in the chair. The more we practice, the more accustomed we become to adapting the poses.

I’ll admit, I initially thought using a chair during yoga was mostly for older people. But while practicing Warrior 2 Sitting in a chair during my virtual class, I was surprised that the support provided by the brace allowed me to lower my hips, bend my front knee more, and deepen the stretch more than when standing. I also liked the standing balancing sequence using the chair – the tree, the dancer, and the Warrior 3 – as support. The chair allowed me to focus on how I felt in the pose and less on “nailing” what it looked like.

I also felt my perfectionist tendencies dissipate more during the chair than in other yoga classes. It was as if the support of the chair was relieving the burden on my body and mind at the same time, alleviating my fears.

After practicing and learning how to teach chair yoga poses for six months, I started teaching my own virtual class from the studio. My classes usually start with sit-ups and stretches for the neck and shoulders, working through the hips and lower body. I absolutely love seeing my mom, mother-in-law, and students who normally do fast-paced practices pulling up the chair on a weekly basis.

I’ve also learned to incorporate chair yoga into my life when I’m feeling overwhelmed, using an office chair (with locking wheels), a dining room chair, a metal folding chair, and even a beach chair at various times. All of the chairs serve the same purpose, which is to provide stability when I need extra support, especially during times when my Type A personality needs to step down to a B level. I’ve learned that we can all use extra support.