University, instructor and Timber Creek team up with chair yoga

Montana State University-Northern business professor Barbara Zuck and students in her human resource management class have partnered together with The Yoga Shop owner Bonnie Williamson and with Timber Creek Village in bringing generations of people together through chair yoga.

“We go to Timber Creek, the students come, I come, Barb is there and we get the residents at Timber Creek to move a little,” Williamson said. “We do a lot of things and we are safe because we are from our chair. We get a lot of stretches in, oil up our joints with little movement and I help lead them in breathing lessons.”

Williamson said the residents seem to really enjoy it as she volunteers her time and Zuck works with them along with her students.

She added that as part of the human resource management class is for the students to get to know the residents.

Williamson said she would define chair yoga as doing yoga poses such as downward dog that can also be done in a chair.

“I’ve modified those poses, those regular poses when you think of yoga, I’ve modified those so you can sit in your chair that way you don’t have to up and off the floor,” she said. “You don’t have to use a yoga mat. Some people take their shoes off and flatten out and wiggle their toes which is the best, so we just move what we can from sitting in a chair and we try to follow thinking of all the poses you can do from the yoga mat to the yoga chair.”

She said they turn the dining room at Timber Creek Village into the yoga room.

“When you think of these people who sit in their chair a lot, because their mobility is limited, that these people have a lot of limits. Some of these people have frozen shoulders, but if you think about sitting (in a chair) and not able to move much, to really straightening your back, elongating your neck, push up with your crown, lift your heart and open that chest get some more of that breath, bring your arms into a ‘T’ position and bring them down, stretch out your obliques — and just think how much better that would be than sitting there,” said Williamson. “I’m certain one of the biggest benefits is increasing some lung capacity, the deeper breath and oiling the joints with little movement.”

Williamson said she really believes in the benefits of yoga even from the chair.

Zuck has been teaching at Northern since 2008 and said she is a real proponent of service learning.

She said she attended a service learning conference at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo where she was rejuvenated about using service learning in her courses.

“After attending this conference, I just wanted to think long and hard about something that would reach the community and maybe fill a need,” Zuck said.

She added that she also plays the harp along with Mary Stevens at Timber Creek Village. She said she has learned how much the residents appreciate the harp music and just conversations and companionship.

“I just had this idea to integrate a wellness component in my human resource class and I have a relationship with Bonnie Williamson through various community projects and knew she was a certified yoga instructor,” Zuck said. “I had confidence in her that she would do a really good job in leading the courses and then I facilitate with the students.”

She added that with the students the service learning component involves the chair yoga classes, writing a paper on organizational culture and creating a 24 inch-by-36-inch poster on wellness programs that will be presented at Timber Creek Village in December.

She said reflection is also a really important part of the service learning project.

“Through the goodness of Timber Creek being open to it, Bonnie Williamson being available to offer her expertise, I just felt super-confident this would be a great project for my human resource management course,” Zuck said. “I just love it. I really appreciate all the effort Bonnie is making, the residents are coming, the students will spend five to 10 minutes after each yoga class visiting with the residents.”

  The chair yoga class is every Friday from 10:00 to 10:40 a.m. at Timber Creek Village.

“It’s so fun to see the interaction between different generations of people,” she said.