Have Your Tried Chair Yoga

You may have already decided that yoga is not your thing. The stretching, the breathing, the pants... not everyone's cup of tea. But according to Forbes, 36.7 million Americans practice yoga in one form or another – and it does have many forms. One in particular you should look into if you are older and suffering from osteoarthritis is called “chair yoga.”

Chair yoga is an especially gentle form of the exercise, one that is practiced while seated or while using a chair for support. Most of the chair yoga asanas (poses) have been adapted from the more familiar Hatha yoga. It is growing in popularity at senior centers, where it is credited with relieving hypertension, anxiety and chronic fatigue syndrome.

But chair yoga's greatest days may still be ahead of it. A research team out of Florida Atlantic University have discovered the tremendous benefits the practice bestows upon those who suffer from osteoarthritis.

Osteo is the most common form of arthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The degenerative joint disease affects more than 26 million adults aged 25 and above, and 33 percent of seniors over the age 65. There is no known cure.

People with osteoarthritis are encouraged to swim or walk, but many seniors find even that little bit of exercise too difficult as their balance and muscle strength decline. But most have no difficulty performing chair yoga, and the study from Florida Atlantic U indicates it's more than worth their while.

One hundred and thirty-one elderly adults with osteoarthritis of the hip, knee, ankle, or foot were randomly selected for the trial. Divided into two groups, one followed a typical health education program, the other a chair yoga program. The scientists measured joint pain and how much the pain affected the subjects' day-to-day lives, a metric also known as "pain interference." Additionally, they took secondary measurements of balance, fatigue, gait speed, and functional ability. The researchers measured these parameters at baseline, 4 weeks, and 8 weeks into the trial, as well as 1 month and 3 months after the treatments had ended.

The chair yoga group reported a greater reduction in pain interference both during the sessions and 3 months after the therapy ended. The reductions in pain and fatigue did not last past the therapy, however, and yoga had no effect the subject group's balance issues.

"Currently, the only treatment for osteoarthritis, which has no cure, includes lifestyle changes and pharmacologic treatments that are not without adverse events. The long-term goal of this research is to address the non-pharmacologic management of lower extremity osteoarthritis pain and physical function in older adults, and our study provides evidence that chair yoga may be an effective approach for achieving this goal," wrote Dr. Ruth McCaffrey, who led the research.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.