Yoga Benches & Props to Enhance Your Practice
If you’re new to a yoga practice or have an injury or other limitation, you can still do yoga! By making use of yoga benches, chairs, props, and other tools you can assist your body into beneficial yoga positions with no pain. These tools and props are also great for practicing restorative yoga possess and helping to relieve stress.
They are many different types of yoga benches and props available, each meant for different uses. We’ll cover the different types here and what kind of poses you can use them for.
This page covers benches and props for yoga postures. If you’re looking for benches used for kneeling meditation, check out our meditation bench page.
Essential Yoga Props
Gravity Plus Back Bridge
This back bridge yoga bench made by Gravity Plus is the perfect back bench for people who have back issues or need some extra support for certain poses. The back bridge has a natural wood finish and looks gorgeous in any home.
Back bridges can help increase the flexibility of the spine and relieve back pain. It realigns the spine and decompresses your spinal cord. When laying over it, the curve helps expand your chest and ribcage to bring more oxygen into your body. You can also use it as a prop in yoga and to do other exercises.
Use this yoga bench for extra support in bridge pose, fish pose, legs up the wall, upside-down seal, or for a modified wheel pose.
Health Mark Yogacise Yoga and Exercise Bench
This 2 in 1 bench is perfect for yoga and regular exercise. In fact, they tout it as “yogacize” which combines the best of both. Whatever you want to use it for, this bench is perfect to help supplement and support your workout routine. It’s also portable so you can use it at home or take it to class with you.
As a yoga prop, this bench helps increase flexibility and improve posture for beginners or people who have injuries and physical restrictions. You can also use the included tension straps to get a workout equivalent to lifting weights. If you’re someone who likes a well-rounded exercise routine, I would recommend this bench.
Use this yoga bench for poses like cobbler’s pose, plank, bridge pose, headstands, and more.
Thundesk Yoga Headstand Bench
The Thundesk bench is a little more focused in its intent. This yoga bench helps you achieve a headstand. A headstand pose is very challenging, especially for beginner yogis. But you can get all of the same benefits by utilizing this bench which cushions your shoulders and lets you hold the rails to steady your body and prevents straining your neck.
The benefits of using this bench for headstands include decompressing your neck and relieving tension, as well as improving circulation, digestion, and metabolism. Get the benefits of an inversion without the strain of a normal headstand.
The bench also includes a seat insert so it can also be used as a yoga chair.
Backless Yoga Chair
This sturdy steel chair looks like a regular folding chair, but its lack of back makes it perfect for yoga. Chair yoga is a gentle form of yoga perfect for newbies, people recovering from injuries, or senior citizens.
A yoga chair can be used as a seat for standing positions that are too difficult, and also as a support for backbends, twists, and other poses that are too strenuous normally.
The list of yoga positions you can do with this chair is very long as most poses can be adjusted to be done in a chair. Some examples include seat cat and cow, seated forward fold, chest expansion, seated pigeon, and seated spinal twist. If you are new to chair yoga, you can check out this book A Chair for Yoga by Dr. Eyal Shifroni for more poses and instruction.
BalanceFrom Yoga Wheel
The yoga wheel by Redder is a useful yoga prop that should be as common in home practice as yoga blocks and yoga straps. All of the wheel’s use in a yoga practice are surprisingly diverse, and luckily the wheel comes with a guide of all of the modified yoga positions you can do with it.
The wheel features thick padding to comfortably support your spine during backbends. And it’s strong, able to support over 500 lbs. so you can feel safe using it.
Use this yoga wheel to modify positions like crescent pose, reverse plank, shoulder stand, plow, bridge, wheel pose, and more.
If you’re new to yoga, make sure to get this essential yoga gear for home practice and yoga bolsters.
Always make sure to consult with your doctor before starting a new exercise program, especially if you have injuries or health restrictions.