Full-Body Wunda Chair

Welcome. This is going to be an intermediate to advanced chair class. My name is Portia page and with me today I have my wonderful friend and comrade in arms, Eric AQuESTT. I call her a dog for short and I'm P dog. Just to you, do you want a little bit of fun to your day? Let's go ahead and stand up, come around to the other side. We're going to start off with a really nice warm up taking the heels underneath the sit bones. First off, I do want to tell you for the set up, we have two black springs, one on each pedal on the number two setting and we're going to try to leave it there the entire time.

Just keep in mind that for some exercises you might want a little bit more weight to give you that ump to help you. When you want to lift your bum off of the chair or inside Facey, you might want a little bit more support. I'll let you decide that for now we're going to go with two black springs on the number two setting and we're not using the pulse. We have a split pedal the entire time. No handles. It's just us gravity and the chair. Let's get to it.

He'll send her hips, feet parallel. Take a nice deep breath with the arms up and over the head. Set the shoulder blades down, is it? As you exhale, roll and fooled over feeling that nice long stretch all the way down. Hands onto the pedal. Press straight down. Rounding the back eyes look right between where your knees are.

Take a deep breath here. Inhale. And then as you exhale, slowly rise. You want to keep the legs activated and strong. So the kneecap is pulling up. We're going to lift arms, we'll lift up with us. Take a nice deep breath and we're gonna let the arms come down. And right here I just want to do a little shoulder release. Inhale and exhale, circle back. Let's do that one more time. Good.

And we're going to do our hamstring stretch again. Take a nice deep breath. Inhaling up and as you exhale up and overhaul, Halloween out the mid section, feeling that support for the lower back, pressing down with the pedal. Really feeling that engagement in the abdominals. Oh my goodness. Yes, it feels so wonderful. And then take a breath. You're at the bottom. Let the neck relax, and then one vertebra at a time rolling up. So we're setting that nice articulation of the spine, setting up our posture.

Arms will come up and all the way around again, shoulders up, back down. One more time, infusing the breaths. We warm our system up. Let's try that again. And as you exhale, see if you could actually get taller before you come up and over. Chin tucks in towards the chest and then press down, bringing the chest down towards the thighs. Become longer from the top of the head to the tail tail to the heels. Take a breath and as you exhale, hollow out, even more, press deeply down through the feet, lengthening out the legs, arms will come up, up, up. Oh the way. Set the shoulders back down. Arms come down.

We do the shoulder, shoulders, circles again. One more time. And we've got one more of those because I like the number four big stretch and a big exhale. As much articulation as you can, but really feel the connection with your abdominals. Take a breath here at the bottom and then exhale restack feel the pressure through all four points of the foot. Reach, reach, reach, all the way up and arms will come down. And then shoulder rolls again, big circle. And last time. Now we move into some balance work.

This is a great place to put the hands on the hips so you can feel the hips level and we're going to start with the leg closest to you. So shifting the weight to the other foot, lift up and we take the foot onto the pedal level, the hips. And then as soon as we're ready, we're going to take the arms out and Erica can bring your hands back to the hips when she feels the need to and a single press down. Exhaling as you press down. Inhale to left. Here we're just finding that balance on the stationary leg underneath the hip and we're really drawing the abdominals and as we press the pedal down, so hamstrings and abdominals working, you've got two more for a total of six.

Now we're going to add some arm movements. As the pedal presses down the arms, lift up, exhale and inhale to return. Keeping the length between the last rib and the hip on each side of the body. Good. And we're gonna do three more as the arms lift the shoulders, stay down, pedal stays hovering just above the base last time. Now stay here with the pedal down and I just want you to drop the arms as the paddle lifts. You're going to rotate towards the knee that comes up. So rotate and come back. Yes. Nice one. And you've got four more of these. You want to keep the hips level in parallel.

It's okay if you wobble a little bit. Just readjust. Good. Three more. As the knee lifts, keep the sit bone reaching down in opposition and really feel that rotation of the ribs over the pelvis. Now hold here and we're gonna go into some lateral flection. So let's bring this arm down and the paddle leg up. And as the knee comes up, flex towards the windows. Yes.

And then back up somewhat like a sunflower. So we want to feel that nice stretch and press. You're going to do two more here and then we're going to change not the direction of our stretch, but the direction of where we're going with the feet. Keep the pedal down, stretch over, and then as the knee comes up, we stand tall for and press. And I know that standing leg is probably getting a little bit fatigued.

This is great. Single leg work last time. Oh, tough. Now arms come out. You're going to let the foot lift, settle the hips, really find that levelness and draw the arms in towards the shoulders. And we're going to come into an airplane. So the pedal arm comes down, leg goes out, and we press down into an airplane and then you're going to come up, keep the leg steady and press down four more times. Inhale to lift and exhale to lower in this position here with the arm out in the opposite leg up. It is tough work, Eric, and you've got two more. You're doing great. And last time, awesome. We're come back up.

Ooh. And find the balance. Arms come down. We're going to take that same leg, just cross it over and sit back. Take a nice little stretch here. Ah, and it's actually the other hip that we need to stretch to, but I like to give this one a little stretch, so just put the foot down and take over that other leg. Oh yes, this is the one where we need the stretch it if you'd like to, you can even pull back into the chair here so that you get a little bit of leverage there. It really helps to stretch out that side of the hip and guess what? We have to do it all over again. So standing up, bring the arms out, draw the armpits in, and now the other leg lifts up balanced level.

The hips feel the abdominals drawing. You can take the hands to the hips and even leave them there. If you'd like to. Erika, you want to feel the lower back. Nice and long arms are out or at the hips and press down and up. You will also notice that we're wearing toe socks and they do have Griffies on the bottom of them, which is excellent for keeping that foot from slipping on the pedal.

So we have a little extra help here. You got two more for a total of six. Good. Last one. Keep the pedal down now as the pedal comes up up, sorry, lift the knee up and as the pedal presses down the arms lift up and, and again we want to find that length, especially through the leg that's pressing on the pedal because as we let the pedal come up, the tendency is for that hip to want to lift and our goal is to keep it level and I have a wonderful view of the ocean here. It's quite nice and watching to surfers out there last time. Good. Leave the pedal down and let the arms come to shoulder height.

And as the pedal lifts we rotate towards the beautiful ocean and then come back. How you doing there Erica? Could you got four more? Again, you want to rotate the ribs right over a stable pelvis, pressing down through her stationary leg, shoulders pressing down away from the ears. And we've got one more. Ooh, yes, pedal stays down now arms and we go into that lateral flection. So tilt over, pedal lifts and press come down. And I really want you to think on this side about drawing down through the shoulder blade to lengthen through the neck and then feeling that nice stretch as we let the pedal lift up. One more time. Good.

Now leave the pedal down. Stretch. And now as the knee comes up, we stand upright. Four and press and three ribs are stacked right over the pelvis. Oh, almost lost their last one. Oh Nice. Arms come out to the side. Now we balance, lift the foot off of the pedal, make sure the hips are level, that same hand is going to reach for the pedal.

As the free arm stays out and we come into our airplane, find the pedal with the hand set yourself pressed down with an exhale and an Andy Hill to float up and down. Nice and long from the head through the toe. You want that hip that's of the lifted leg to be level with the floor. Three, two. Oh this is tough. One more time.

Excellent. Up we go. Ah, stand cross, sit back, figure four stretch again. If we use our this little lean back to feel that stretch, it helps us to feel the stretch along the side of the hip. Now it's this leg that we were just working in standing on, so that's the one we're going to give a nice little stretch to right now in our figure four and you might find that on each side you are extremely different with balance, so take that into consideration. You also might want to play a little bit with the tension that we have on here with less tension. It could be tougher stability-wise with more tension.

It's a little tougher arm strength wise. All right, good. Let's give it a little shake out. We're going to come around and come into some extension work. So here we want to put our hip bones right near the front of the chair and then we're going to reach over and again we're staying with the same tension legs will be slightly separated. Draw the ribs in, shoulder blades back and down, reach nice and long through the toes and we're going to lower down and then lift up. Inhaling as we lift and exhaling as we have a right above the base.

And the goal here because we don't have the pole between the pedals themselves, is to keep the pedals level as if we actually had a poll there. It's quite challenging. I know Eric is doing a great job even though I can't see her and we're going to do three more of these cause I really like extension work helps us to really work our posture muscles of the torso. Good one more time. Now stay in a nice neutral long position here Erica and we're going to turn towards the camera first and bend that elbow coming into a little prone rotation and then pedaled to the other side. Look at the ocean and then exhale, we're staying in a pretty neutral, maybe slightly extended, but here this is a position that in the car you'll notice we always go towards one side as we reach into the backseat. Now I'm trained in you. If you were driving on the other side of the road to be ready to reach into that backseat, aren't you excited about that? Good.

We're gonna do four more. Here's four and switch and three stay long. ABS tight reach from head to toe. Last two sets, getting that rotation right through the thoracic spine and we'll come to center. Whew. Give me one. Inhale and extend. Lift, lift, lift through the sternum, lengthen out and then lower all the way down. Let them pedals touch the base and then Shimmy on back.

This is always a very flattering way to get out. Yes, come on up and now we're going to go into some side facing work. You're ready for that. So we are going to come first into a nice stretch. I'm going to show this variation here with the leg coming up. If this is hard on the knee, then just follow what Eric is doing and she's allowing the foot to come right in front of the chair. As we sit up and stack, we want to anchor down through the outside foot, bring the arms out to the side and close the ribs in back of the neck. Really Nice and long.

Let's go to the counter stretch for so we're going to come towards each other. Big exhale here and then as we inhale, open up, lifting tall and then we're going to reach over. Find the back pedal, keep the foot anchored in, reach up and over and then we're going to come up steady out and we reach in towards the center, up and over the hip and then center. Nice and long. Reach for the pedal, anchor down through the toes as you reach over, feel that Nice, wonderful stretch and then come up center and we'll do this twice more because this one feels really yummy and we have some delicious, really difficult work coming up in a sideline position that you'll want to go back to this I'm sure, but we're going to do it first our last time we come towards the center to get that beautiful stretch out of this hip, up and lifted. Find the back pedal reach, stretch. All right, find a nice centered position here. Looking lovely and now we're going to come all the way out onto the side hip.

So as we lie out here we want to hover the pedal. So here's the work here on this side. We want to feel nice and long. It's almost like you're in a side hover with the more weight you have on there with the tension. It actually provides you a good support system, less weight. It's going to be a little bit more on you with the feet stacked knees, stacked hip, stacked shoulder stack head nice and long you Erica is going to show what the hand in front here could also bring the hand to the hip fingertips at temples or arm reaching. I'll try a few here and we'll see how we do. We're going to work the top leg lifting up and down.

The key here on this one is to keep that connection to the backside of the body, so from our pedal arm, shoulder blade in the back all the way to the opposite but top cheek there and then down through the heels and in through the front of the leg three more times. Oh two and one. Now keep the leg hovering. I'm going to take my hand to the hip cause I want to make sure that my hips are still stacked and now we're going to take the leg just a little bit forward, back behind the bottom leg to the center and then up and then down and again we crease here at the hip to come forward. Then reach the leg just a little bit back. Come back to center, up and down. We're going to do just two more of those because these are so tough.

You'll notice there's a very small range of motion here. It's just enough to kill up and down. Whew. Now point the top foot and we're going to do little circles for in the front. Ooh, keep nice and long. Press down through the pedal.

Last one here and now we go to the other side. You doing all right Erica? Okay, two more. Feel the length out of here and get that nice long length underneath them. Woo. And release. Let's come on up. Oil. That was tough. So we need a little stretch here on this side. So what we're gonna do is just turn around and then pull the leg in front of us.

We get this little stretch here. We just did a little sit spin all the way. Oh, let's take our arms over our head. Erica, take a nice big long breath and then turn towards the leg that's up on the chair and get that nice little side stretch there. Yes, that feels wonderful and we have to do the whole thing on the other side. All right, so again, Eric is going to bring her foot just in front of the chair. I'm bringing my shin inside of the leg up and we take the arms out to the side slightly in front. Draw the shoulder blades back and down and sit tall. Take a nice deep breath. We come towards one another. First stretching.

Oh Gosh. That feels luxurious. Luxurious. Arms out. And then find the back pedal. Reach up and over, anchor through the toes, fingertips all the way down to that toe. Come on up, release, find center. And we go to the other side. Now we have this wonderful view of the seagull that's out there perched just watching us work hard here inside the studio. Oh, and you want to feel as if your ribs and hips are sandwiched between two plate or two glasses, two glass plates.

I think we have two more. Yeah. Feeling that nice stacking up as we lift and reach over last time. Shoulders melt down and then reach up and over. Oh and we come all the way up. Find that beautiful position here and then release coming all the way into sideline. Again, setting up with the pedal just hovering above the base. Hips, knees, ankles, toes, stepped hand can be in front at the hip, fingertips at temple or arm reaching towards the ceiling.

Really feel the connection of both legs and the top leg lifts up and down. As you lift you want to feel the reach right out through the like all the way down into the heel, back of the neck is long and from that pedal shoulder all the way down to this top hip three, two and one we fear that. Feel that posture, your oblique system. Now Erica, we're going to bring the leg just a little bit forward and then back behind that bottom leg over and then up and down and again, forward, center and back center. Now lift and lower. Really feel the connection hand on that pedal. Really reaching through front side of the body and the backside of the body, keeping everything stacked up. This is our last time Erica Woo.

Up and down. Now point the top foot, reach long and circle forward four and three. Activate that bottom leg to keep the connection there. And now other direction for four, three, two and one. Whew. Feel the heat. Now come on up. Who? So we're going to go for that stretch to spin all the way around. Oh yes, it's feels wonderful. Reach back down through that leg. Draw the in for support.

Arms reach up, take a nice deep breath, draw the ribs in and then as you exhale, just rotate towards the ocean for us. Oh wonderful. Now since we're here, we've got this leg here. Let's just spin and we're going to face the pedals again and come to a nice perched position, lifting up tall and straight down through the sit bones, legs up. And again, remember we have a fairly light setting on this. So the control is going to come in our torso and right here through the belly, really low and deep into the hip flexors. Lifting up tall and straight. Your hands can stay here, Erica or you can bring them out to the front like this and we're going to take the leg front, like press it down and then march with the other one. So it's just like we're taking a little march in a little marching band and as we do the heels are lifted and we're just pushing down through the ball of the foot.

And what you'll see a lot of times is that people tend to push with their whole torso. So see if you can really pretend that your back is right up against an imaginary wall, feeling that nice tall position from the top of the head right down through both sit bones and then just like you were having a picnic on this lovely Sunny California day, you have a smile on your face and we're here for four more sets and three a little faster, Erica and two and one. Now hands come onto the chair. We're going to go into a little 10 and stretch. You're ready for that. Okay. Is this tough again because we have a pretty light setting on here and we are using the split pedal.

So from here we've really got to feel that connection deep, deep, deep into our core and feel the stretch in our lower back. Here we go. So hips up, just reach down through the feet and then we're going to lower and lift and lower and lift. And again you might eat to fudge a little bit with where your feet are. So I moved my back a little bit to get a better grip. We're going to do four more Arabic cause I know you can three and two oh one more time. Woo. And all the way down we go.

And as if we did not have enough abdominals, we're going to turn onto our backs and lie out on the little tiny chair that we have here. Keep our head suspended. Knees right above the hips, shins parallel with the floor, belly and tight and we go right into our double leg stretch. Inhale, reach and exhale. Circle modified would be to bring the legs a little further up and a challenge would be to lower the legs down. We're going to do four more reach long drawn close. Oh my goodness. Lower back stays right on the chair. One more for good measure. Now fingertips at temples and lets you go towards me, Erica and Chris. Cross two and three. Knees brush one another as they pass. Got Four more sets for elbow stay wide.

Three nice stops just above the hips last time. Whoo. Knees together. Let's roll ourselves up. Oh holy moly. That was tough. Okay. Now we're going to move down a little lower into our legs and work back to our pedals again. You ready for some step-ups? Okay, so let's press down the back pedal. Reach all the way up with our front foot.

Now Eric is going to bring her toes just off the edge so she's got a good angle here with the knees so that it doesn't go too far past the toes. We want the angle of the knee to be somewhere between the ankle and like the ball of the foot or just at the edge of the toes, somewhere in there. And you want to be able to press firmly down through the heel and get that gluteal connection right where we want it. My motto, you don't squeeze it. No one else will. So we're ready for that. Eric is going to show her hands here and she's going to keep them there.

But what she's going to feel is this hovering and deep abdominal connection. I'm going to bring my hands here and hopefully I can do this. Are we ready? We come up and hover and we go five, four, three, two, one Oh yes, and down we go. So I think we need a little stretch for that. Like what do you think? If you just keep the pedal down, just reach back, press the heel down and then lift up into a little bit of extension here.

That feel good? Yeah, I get a nice little stretch and then step your foot in. We got one more set. Same leg. All right, so you can either try Eric his position or try mine or stay with what you did the last time, hands where you need them lift up and we go five scoop the abs back of the neck. Long three, two. We feel the intense work through the legs and release this time for our stretch.

We're going to step off, release the pedal, stand on that leg that we were just pushing the pedal down and just give a little bit of a hip flexor stretch here. Press forward with the hips and down with the knee, opening up the chest, getting that nice long stretch. Feel our balance here. We're able to balance, it's all a good thing and we have one more leg. What's good for one is good for the other, so we find our position here with the ball, the foot on the pedal. Reach the other leg up again, situate the foot.

Eric is going to bring that toes just off the edge. I'm going to keep mine right at the edge so I can press through. The heel. Hands can either be here or here. Square and level. Draw in and hover. Oh, this is my bad leg. Oh, I know. And Five, four, three, two hour hourly and reach.

Wow. Lower go for our stretch. Keep the foot on the pedal. Reached the leg back. Press the heel down. Oh yes, that feels wonderful. And lift up. Let the hips come forward. So we get the stretch, not only through the calf and the Achilles tendon, but a little bit through the hip flexor. And to get a little bit of extension, which is always good. And now we're going to be fueled and ready to go for our next set, right Erica. All right, we can do this. I know.

And Five, four hips are nice and level. Belly is drawing in. Whoops. Two one and reach long pedal goes all the way down. Step off, gently release. Ready for a stretch. Okay. Pick up. Press the hips forward. Knee points down.

Make your legs parallel with one another. Reach out the opposite arm. I think I did the wrong leg on the other side too. You know, it feels good on both legs. That's the bottom line because both of the legs need a bit of a stretch at this time. All right, good. Now we're going to go back to that lunge position cause I want to go for a nice stretch here. Press the pedal down, doesn't matter which light cause we're going to do both and you're going to reach into that position there. And then from here, keep the hips level pressed down into the chair and just hover and press. So we actually get a little bit of Ab work here because you know we're getting ready for our, our up section two more.

This is warming up our arms and giving our calves a little more stretch. Last one. Good. And step in. Lift and switch. No workout would quite be complete if we did not have a pushup somewhere in it, right Erica? Yep. Well especially where I'm involved. I love pushups. Planking hovers. All of the above. Good. Two more.

All right, so now that we've got our pedals close by, lift up, we're going to come down to all fours to set up. Well I'm spritz in a little bit. All right. Take the hands wide so you're out of the way of the springs. Press both pedals down to the metal as they say or to the base and then find a position where your shoulders are directly over your wrist and then extend one leg and then the other feet at least hip distance if not even a little bit more and always is an option here Erica, you can lower the knees if you need to. What we're going to start with is just a marching with the arms, so keeping the pelvis level one arm and down other arm.

You're going to feel the shift and it is amazing how different it feels on each side. Two more here and then we're going to take a quick break for the rest. One more set. Erika, nice and long through the back of the neck all the way down to the tail and from the tail to the heels rest. Now Eric is going to take a rest and come to her knees and I'm going to show you what you can do if you didn't need arrest. I'm just going to march my knees back of the neck nice and long, and then I'll lower my knees, lift the pedals up, and to just sit back. Oh, that feels really nice.

Now we have one more little thing to do. Press the pedals down, lift up through the sternum, extend the legs. Now we take the marching to the next level. So as you lift one arm, stay there and lift the other leg and then press down and switch. So this is marching with arms and legs. Oh yeah, Erica, we have two more sets. Oh, you look great. One more time. Both sides. There we go. Finish. Ooh.

Now Bend and straighten. Bend Shoulder. Stay back and down last time and draw the knee in and under this time. Let the pedal up. Sit Back, get a nice stretch here with the chest. Come forward and down. Back at the neck. I'm and let your fingertips just drape over the, the pedals so you get a little, I'm stretching the risks there. Oh, all right, come on up.

I think we're time for it's time for a little stretch here. I'm just going to come to this side. Take a nice long stand here, top of the head, all the way down through the heels on both sides. Feel nice length here between the rib and the hip. Chest is wide and open in that smile and take a nice deep breath in. And as you exhale, let's roll and drape yourself right up and over.

Soften through the knees, just like yourself. Come all the way down. Oh here we're going to take an extra breath as you bring the weight into the balls of the feet and really feel the stretch through the back of the heels, all the way up to the sit bones. Excellent out. Take an inhale and exhale half way up just about halfway. And now let your arms dangle and let the arms just kind of circle there and let the head hang the other direction. This is really a nice feeling of suspension here. Take a nice deep breath and then exhale. Roll. All right, way up. Ah, take a nice deep breath. Big Inhale here.

Your left hand grabs the back of your right wrist and just give a nice stretch over to the left. And then as you inhale, lift up and then exhale, right hand grabs the back of the left wrist and we feel that nice stretch to the right and the big inhale, arms open and release. Take a nice deep breath, lift the shoulders, and then release. And again, awesome work, Miss Erica. Thank you. Thank you. Good job.