MS Chair Yoga At Home
Your Step-by-Step Guide
25 Poses to Alleviate Tension, Tightness, and Anxiety So You Can Thrive
Paula Strupeck Gardner
M.A., M.A., YACEP
Kindle Edition
Copyright 2020, Paula K. Strupeck Gardner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Medical Disclaimer . The information in this book and associated videos is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, information, and videos contained on or available through this book and affiliated sites is for general information purposes only. Please consult with your own physician or healthcare specialist regarding the suggestions and recommendations made in this book. Use of this book implies your acceptance of this disclaimer.
Photographer: Damien Szelazek
Photo Editor: Nicholas Baker
Editor: Anne Matty
Cover design: Danijela Mijailovic
Formatter: Debbie Lum
Authors website:
http://paulaksgardner.com
Cheers to you for doing your yoga practice at home!
Thank you for purchasing, reading, and USING this book!
Click Here and Ill send you a FREE video so you can practice along with me.
20% of net profits from this book are donated to the MS Society, MS Focus, and other local MS groups.
If youd like to donate directly to a particular organization, just click on the name of the organization below:
MS Societys South Cook Self-Help Group
(Scroll down to Make a Team Donation.)
We thank you for your support!
MS Focus
Working on Wellness Foundation
Dedicated to the Members of the MS Yoga Class at Orland Park Health and Fitness:
You inspire me and countless others.
May your journey continue to bring you peace, joy, happiness, and health.
Table of Contents
Note From the Author
Thank you for showing me how I can do yoga and how yoga can help me feel bettermore peaceful, more focused, more comfortableno matter what.
From SA, longtime MS Yoga participant
Everybody can do yoga.
If youre breathing, you can do yoga.
But NOT every body can get up and down from the floor to do the traditional versions of the yoga poses.
Are you one of these people? Youve heard friends talk about how great they feel after yogahow relaxed, calm, stretched, soothed, lengthened, strengthenedbut you arent able to get down on the floor and then back up.
So how can YOUR body enjoy the benefits of yoga?
In 2003, I created chair yoga classes for my students with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Parkinsons, COPD, arthritis, and other conditions or injuries that inhibited their ability to get up and down from the floor with ease. I used the traditional poses as inspiration but adapted them to what my students could do.
I encouraged and still encourage them to practice at least one pose each day at home and they, in turn, asked me to draw pictures of and give them descriptions of the poses to help them remember. Theyve been asking for a book since we began working togethera step-by-step guide to what we now call MS Chair Yoga.
THIS is the book theyve been asking fora step-by-step guide to 25 poses that my students have told me have changed their lives. Because of COVID-19, in-person classes were suspended and Ive been leading them online. This nudged me to get this book into their hands and yours so you could enjoy yoga at home.
This book helps you build each pose from the ground up. It helps you put the poses together, do them with friends and family or by yourself. When you click here and enter your email address, youll get a free video of a guided practice that includes some of the poses in this book. And you can see the poses on my YouTube channel and do them along with me. Subscribe! The DVD is coming and if I have your email address, youll be notified as soon as its available. In the meantime, please join my Facebook group where I regularly post poses, inspiration, information and where Ill let you know about future developments.
Remember:
Youre worth the work.
Everything you do counts.
As a Warrior, you exercise your courage so you can cultivate your strength.
Breathe.
Blessings Always,
Welcome!
Heres How to Use This Book and Why
Ive been teaching long enough to know that youre likely to use this book in the way(s) that is unique to you. Some of you will simply open to the page you want to look at. Others will read it cover to cover 4 times before you do any of it. Still others of you will take it pose by pose and try each before you move on. Youll each do what you want. And this is good!
With that in mind, Id love for you to start here before you go to wherever it is youre going.
It will be helpful to you to read my philosophy so that you know what the heck Im talking about and where Im coming from and how you can use it to build and enhance your yoga.
It will also be helpful to you to read the guiding principles of a successful yoga practice . Successful means you get out of it what you want. We want it to be safe. We want your yoga practice to fit with your life. And I want you to do yoga for the rest of your life.
Im not a doctor. I make no claims for instantaneous (or ANY) remission of the multiple sclerosis. What I offer is a proven way to help you live your life with vibrancy and a way to reduce or eliminate some of your aches and pains (inner and outer!). Proven in that Ive been sharing yoga with the group of folks (whose comments are sprinkled throughout this book) for over 15 years and they report and I observe how gracefully they live with this disease, how supportive they are of each other, and how yoga has helped them on their journeykeeping them as limber of mind/body/spirit as they can be, engaging with their loved ones and their not-so-loved ones, meeting life with an equanimity that I envy.
You can have this too. Use this book to help you get there.
Each pose has its own page with an in-depth description of how to get into, hold, and then out of the pose. And a photo to guide you as well.
At the end of the book, youll find a couple of sequences (poses grouped together with an intention in mind) that you can practice. I invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you can SEE the poses in action and hear me talk you through them. If youre interested in the upcoming DVD of the practices, please click here to subscribe to my email and youll be notified when its available.
As always, remember:
Breathe deeply in and even more deeply out. Let the breath come to you.
Youre worth the work. And the play!
Namaste.
P.S. The model for all of the photos in this book is my long-time yoga student (though I believe Ive learned far more from her than the other way around) Anne Matty. For all of the years that we were together, creating and tweaking and playing with the poses, Anne was a stalwart supporter of everyone, teacher included, who entered our sacred yoga space. She was, until she moved to be near her grandchildren, everyones Mom. The program at OPHFC remains strong, but the gaping hole that her departure left will not be filled. I am forever grateful to her for her time and her devotion to her yoga kids.
