“If you can sit in a chair, you can do chair yoga,” says exercise physiologist Holly Hazlewood.

Working with Arthritis ACT, the 41-year-old says she has meshed years of personal experience with yoga along with the exact sciences she learnt through her qualifications in exercise physiology and rehabilitation.

Developed by American Lakshmi Voelker, chair yoga has been an alternative to the traditional practice of yoga since 1982.

Chair yoga adapts traditional yoga poses for older people and others with physical challenges. As older adults have become more active, chair yoga has grown in popularity.

Also desk workers can squeeze in 15 minutes of chair yoga and many companies are reported to offer it as a way to cut down on stress and improve overall health.

People recovering from surgery or injuries may not be ready to get down on a yoga mat, but they can stretch in a chair.

Working as an exercise physiologist at Arthritis ACT for almost a year, Holly says it was a natural progression to explore chair yoga for their clients.

Now running weekly chair yoga classes as well as traditional mat yoga, Holly says one of the hardest things about encouraging new clients is overcoming the assumption that yoga means bending into uncomfortable pretzel shapes.

“It’s such a gentle form of exercise,” she says.

“We don’t hold the poses for too long.”

Working with chronic illnesses, such as arthritis and hypermobility issues, Holly has now seen clients aged 22 all the way up to those in their 90s participate.

“We are helping people keep their range of motion, making sure we are always working with what is a comfortable level for them,” she says.

Not only does Holly say chair yoga helps with centering and mindfulness, she says it has a range of health benefits.

“Yoga has been around for centuries, but the physical benefits of participating have only recently been discovered,” she says.

Traditional yoga originated more than 5000 years ago in India. Many of the poses used today are also that old. It can be as much spiritual as physical, and that also goes for its chair descendant.

As well as improved balance and strength, Holly says chair yoga can improve metabolism, self-awareness of movement, immunity and lymphatic drainage, muscle joints and bone density, energy and can even improve low blood pressure.

“It’s a special thing to see physical changes in my clients,” she says.

“To have someone come up to you at the end of a class and tell you that they’ve been feeling better or the exercise has helped them, it’s a fulfilling thing.”

Chronic pain and conditions require ongoing maintenance, which is why Holly says yoga can play such an important role in daily routines.

“It can be discouraging not to be able to walk up stairs or do simple tasks, that’s why we also provide mental health support to encourage our clients to continue coming and keep them motivated,” she says.

Yoga therapist and senior teacher Robyn Lewis has been teaching chair yoga and training people to teach chair yoga in Canberra for more than 10 years.

“It’s important to differentiate it from a seated exercise, because that’s not what chair yoga is,” she says.

“Chair yoga heightens the accessibility and inclusivity of the yoga practice.

“We are just working at moving the mat technique to something as stable as a chair.”

Teaching students as young as 12 and as old as 100, Robyn says chair yoga isn’t just for those with a physical limitation, such as chronic pain or weight gain, but can cater to those living with issues such as dementia.

“There has been a demand for chair yoga since I established my services in Canberra and even before,” she says.

“Being in a chair doesn’t limit the practice, it’s getting as much out of it as mat yoga would, but in a more supported way.”