Liz’s approach to Chair Yoga focuses on ‘levels of flexibility’, which can empower health professionals, coaches, and counsellors to integrate yoga into their work, benefiting both themselves and their clients.
Liz offers an introduction to bringing adaptive yoga on a chair to those with mental health needs, including inspiration and examples of Chair Yoga tools that can be shared with any BODY in any setting.
What the workshop will cover:
- An introduction to Chair Yoga using the Lakshmi Voelker method
- An embodied Chair Yoga practice (please have a sturdy chair to sit on)
- Breathing techniques for mental health
- Philosophy, lifestyle, and ethics for the mind from a yogic perspective
- Practical tips for integrating Chair Yoga into your practice
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- Learn how Chair Yoga can provide benefits that meet your clients’ needs.
- Understand how Chair Yoga can benefit your own practice.
- Recognise Chair Yoga as an effective tool for mental well-being.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Psychotherapists, coaches, counsellors, and other professionals interested in integrating Chair Yoga into their work and/or personal life.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- This workshop will have an impact on how participants view Chair Yoga, from simply sitting on a chair to a multidimensional modality that supports their own mental health and that of their clients.
Course Content
Presenter
Liz Oppedijk is co-founder of the social enterprise Accessible Chair Yoga CIC and a leading expert on Chair Yoga. She is passionate about making yoga accessible to everyone, including those who may not think it is for them. She has taught accessible and chair yoga to people with a wide range of abilities, including those with Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, stroke, cancer, dementia, learning disabilities, and their carers.
Liz’s special interests include training a community of Chair Yoga teachers to bring yoga to care homes across the country and carrying out research into yoga’s effectiveness in the social care and healthcare sectors. She is a qualified yoga therapist and regularly lectures on accessible and chair yoga, yoga for Parkinson’s and dementia, and yoga in care homes for The Minded Institute and other organisations.
Liz is an official Lakshmi Voelker Chair Yoga teacher trainer and a regular facilitator for Jivana Heyman’s Accessible Yoga training. She is co-author of a book on chair yoga, Get Fit Where You Sit: A Guide to the Lakshmi Voelker Chair Yoga Method, published in September 2023 by Shambhala Publications, and her most recent research article, ‘Reduced Anxiety and Depression and Improved Mood in Older Adults Living in Care Homes after Participating in Chair Yoga’, appeared in the Journal of Applied Gerontology in March 2024.
