Wunda Chair Workout

Hello, my name is Kathy Corey and welcome to plot these anytime we will be doing a one chair program today. The exercises that I am going to be teaching, um, have their foundation in my learning and knowledge from master teacher Kathy grant who really is the queen of the one to chair her work with. Mr [inaudible] on the chair was so in depth and her repertoire was just absolutely amazing. I was so very fortunate to have known Kathy Grant and to have learned this work from her. Joining me today we have Christy Cooper white and Cecile Bankston and we're going to begin with a very traditional exercise.

It was called the Washer woman and we stand in front of the one to chair. For this exercise we want a medium spring, like most of the exercises that we're going to be doing, the um, philosophy of the chairs that you want to use, just the right amount of spring. If it's too heavy, it may aid the exercise too much. If it's too light, it may not give you enough feedback. So you want to find a nice balance so that you are working with the chair with this piece of equipment as just an adjunct to your own body. It's to help you and to aid you to do the mat work and the other exercises in the glottis program. So we have just, um, one spring and it can be in a medium position for the first exercise medium to light spring Washer woman. We're standing in front of the chair now. Let's bring the feet hip distance apart. Align the body.

So once again, we have our full plotters alignment from our foot centers through the ankles and knees up through the hips and out through the top of the head. So let's begin then. Washerwoman exercise by bringing the arms up over the head. The feet are hip distance apart and we're going to begin our roll down as we do. So we maintain that alignment from the pubic bone to the naval and we round over making sure that we have that idea of the tailbone being drawn down to the floor. Naval stays to the spine.

We continue that and we roll all the way down without moving the hips in or back. From there we're going to lift and lower the pedal [inaudible] pulling up and reaching down. Once again, let's remember, it's that hip stabilization that is going to allow us to create that nice flexibility in the spine and we cheat up and press it down and lifted up this time. Let's press it down and hold it all the way down. Once again with complete stability, let's lift and lower the heels, pulling them up and bring them down and we're going to exhale as we lift the heels up, really maintaining that alignment across the spine and lower them down. Two more times. Lift the heels up, remembering not to let the pedal shift you back or forward that this is perfect balance and counter balance. And now, once again, let's lift the pedal and just coming up and pressing down. Once again, we maintain the nice curve in the spine, maintaining that uh, naval to the spine position and reaching all the way down, lengthening and lifting up. Not going forward or back, but having a straight line hip to heel all the way through the movement and let's just do one more of these coming up and taking down.

Now to challenge that balance and counterbalance. Let's bring the pedal about halfway up anchor, hold the pedal. Still no movement in the pedal at all. As we lift in, lower the heels, take them up and down. If you have too much weight in the arms, the pedal is going to go forward. If you have too much weight in the legs, the pedal is going to lift up, so you have to really have that balance counterbalance two more times. Exhale and inhale and exhale. Perfect, and inhale, press the pedal all the way down. One more time. From this position we're going to lift the heels up and we're going to round the back and roll down and sit on the heels.

Once again, this is perfect balance of and counterbalance. Straighten the legs and lower your heels and lift the heels up and around and sit down on the heels and lengthen through the back of the legs and lower the heels down. Note that we have. Keep the roundness of the spine, lift the heels up, we keep navel to spine. We round as we sit all the way down. The head stays in line with the spine the whole time and we linked into the back of the legs and we lower the heels down and the last one we're going to lift it up round and sit all the way down and extend through the back of the legs. Lengthen all the way up, lower the heel straight down and now let's begin to round the torso up. We're going to pull up rolling through the spine vertebrata to Vertebra.

Now once the pedal is released comes the hard part. We want to really reach down through the tailbone and Stack Vertebra on top of vertebra to come all the way up to standing. Thank you ladies. That was beautiful. One note I would like to make if in fact you have someone who doesn't have the flexibility to go all the way down with this movement and you still want them to have that, you can place a small block or pad underneath here so that you build up the, um, the base so that they can keep the stability there. So when they're doing the exercise, then you want to then re, uh, reduce this space and keep it, get it lower and lower until they finally can come all the way down and over to get a really long stretch through the pelvis. Okay. And come back up.

Yeah. Thank you. The next exercise is the frog on the floor. It's a traditional [inaudible] movement, but we've added a little bit of extension to it in order to really emphasize what the focus and alignment of this exercise was actually to be. So we're going to get sit on the floor in front of the one to chair. Once again, we're going to keep about the same spring. So you want a medium spring on this. If the, uh, spring is too heavy, it's going to really challenge the alignment through the pelvis.

If it's too light, you really won't get the work of stabilization that you need. So we're going to have you, um, roll back onto the floor, placing the feet in the diamond position on the pedal. Now at this point you may need to adjust the body sliding in or out. So what I'd like to have people do is to place the side of the foot right through the center of the side of the foot and press it down to begin with. And then we're going to ask, are you comfortable here?

Do you need to slide in or out? As with most movements on the one to chair as I was taught, um, from Kathy grant is that you want to start the movements with the pedal down as if it's the, as if it is the floor and then you're working from the floor, from the ground up. So once again, we will begin this movement here, looking and checking the pelvic alignment from here without changing the pelvis. We're going to lift the legs up and draw them down and we are going to lift the legs up on the inhalation and let's exhale and per it all the way down. Now we don't want the pelvis to be checked. Let's do two more of those please. We want the pelvis to be aligned, so you're looking at not having someone pull the pelvis under or arch the back in this position, but to have a nice elongated spine throughout the movement. Now what this exercise is really about is the alignment of the pelvis.

So what we're looking for here is as the bar is down, we're going to take one leg off and go to an extension. You went to extend it straight out. If you move it a way from you or towards you, you're going to have less stability in the pelvis, fold it to come right back in, transfer it to the other side. Now what we're looking for here is really that the stability on the pedal so that you have that pelvis bendy back in, uh, absolutely. Still all the way through trans for the movement.

So we're not rocking the pelvis or over activating the muscles and come back in and let's take it out again and take it back in. As you can see, it's a real challenge for pelvic alignment to make sure that we're not gripping, but really working through and aligned pelvis. Let's bring the pedal up and down a few more times. Yeah, this time when you're bringing a pedal up and down, really feel that it's coming from the alignment of the pelvis and that powering from the legs or the buttocks muscles, so feel that alignment all the way through that. As we are doing this, we are making that adjustment into our deep core muscles. Unless you just do one more of those, shake it up and take it down. Now we've got a real challenge for you. Take the pedal about halfway up.

Hold it there. Now without letting the pedal move. We're going to take one leg out to the side. Remember, it comes right out of the hip. Nothing changes. It's not a leg exercise. If you're hitting the side, fold it back in. If you're hitting the side of the chair, you're moving the leg, transfer it to the other side. Perfect. No wobbling of the pedal, please pull it back in, transfer it to the other side. You got it.

They're really working hard and pull it back in. Remember there's nice deep breathing and inhale, take it out and exhale and pull to come in. Press the pedal all the way down. How are we doing? It's a challenge for sure. Release the pedal to come up and take the feet down off of the pedal. Hmm. Good job. So you really can see what's happening there is that as you know.

And we also will find that we have one side that will be very stable, but when we try to transfer it, the other side is not so stable. So we want to work into that side and get that even an equal transference all the way through the exercise. Let's come up on top for one of my favorites. So we're going to sit facing out for the mermaid. Okay, so the first part, we're going to sit very tall. Once again, please, please always remember your centering.

Don't just jump onto the chair and plop down. Center the body so that you are in the center of the chair and you have full alignment. So again your leg is going to be right into the center, dropping straight down. Now the two positions that you can have your leg either straight, if you need a little more support, you can have your foot on the edge as well. The other leg is going to straight out of the hip so that we have that straight line from the hip down to the toe and we have that nice alone geisha run all the way through spring wise we're going to keep the same amount of tension which is medium to light. Once again, we don't want the spring so heavy that you're fighting with the machine because the idea of the movement pattern is to really get a long stretch when again we should remember the less stable the pedal, the more work from the core. So from here, let's bring the arms up and down. Take a nice deep breath.

Let's take the outside arm up and place the other hand on the pedal. From here we're gonna take an inhalation. The actuation is going to stretch us all the way over, shoulder, over shoulder and hip over hip and lift to come up. And again, exhale to do it. Take the movement over and nothing changes in the body.

We keep that nice long line on the side of the body all the way through the movement and exhale and take it all the way over and inhale and take it up. And one more time. Exhale, take it down, stretch it out nice and long and inhale and lift to come up. Now we're going to change the arms, so we're going to rotate the body and place the arms directly under the shoulders. Things to remember here. We're going to pull back into those abdominals and try and keep this line hip over hip. This is our anchor point. We don't want to let the hip roll forward, so we just keep that anchor here. And when I'm teaching I sometimes even stay right here with this and the head is going to go down and stay in line with the spine.

From there we're going to press the pedal all the way down, getting this a long gated stretch and pull up from the abdominals and we're going to stretch and reach all the way down and we're going to inhale and really feel the back pulling the ribs in and anchoring. Let's do two more of those. We're going to ask how and reach it down, stretching nice and long. Everything else is stable and pull it back up and reach and stretch down. And again, we're working on this nice, uh, asymmetrical pattern across the back and come back up. Well now take the front arm, place it behind the back, but once again, keep our anchor in our hip and in our shoulder. So you're going to rotate all the way over, rounding it and stretching down and pulling back up. This was one of the ferry first exercises I got to learn on the wonder chair, which is really wonderful to help my scoliosis so that it works. The Path, the back, and an asymmetrical pattern to really stretch in length in one side, helping to strengthen the opposite side of the body. Take it down, pull it back up, and take it back down.

Stretch up nice and long and pull inward and upward. Now let's place the hand back in the center and rotate the body. So we're gonna get a long stretch here. From this position, we're going to find our balance and counterbalance. Inhale, lift up. Exhale, stretch over in hands to lift the leg. Exhale and lower the leg. Inhale, reach buddy in opposition and exhale to come up and lengthen it out and stretch to reach it over to keep the chill on the floor.

Now the leg lifts high and lowers down and reaches out to come back to lift right up and again, linkedin and stretch nice and long and lift up and come down. Stretch it out and lift up into the center and sit up nice and tall. Now let's come around and change sides, the same positioning. So the leg is nice in front and now you're going to get to see some of the back work and actually see some of that wonderful asymmetrical patterning with the rotation. But first we're going to go into our directly into our side band. So the arm comes up and the other arm goes right on to the pad.

All we're going to inhale up and we're going to exhale. Once again, we're emphasizing this long side stretch and reach to come up, pull the pedal up and press to come down. Anchor those pelvises, anchor the foot. Once again, if you need to, you may place a small block or something to stabilize the foot. Someone's leg can't reach all the way down to the floor. Take it over, lifted up, and let's do one more of those up and over and stretch a long gate and um, up. Oh, let's do our turn now. Take it over. And once, you know, watch the different sides of the body and how they work, uh, pulling back through the hip and getting this stretch. If you see any muscle imbalances, this is really where they are going to show up where one side might be fuller and tighter than the other and we want to work to really get balanced through those back muscles. And let's begin. Let's go ahead and stretch it down. Keep the anchors through the pelvis.

Do not let the abdominals or the naval lose that contraction to the spine and come up remembering of course that as we stretch, we don't want the abdominal contraction to be to be constrictive and pull up, but to aid with the stretch of the body and take down and lift it up. Very nice. Let's just do one more long stretch, deep breath, head in line with the spine and lift to come up. Let's place the hand now in the center and the other hand behind the back and the arm goes directly under the shoulder and we take it down and pull back up. Very nice. So we have a straight line shoulder to the wrist and another straight line across the shoulders as well and pull up from those abdominals and take it down and pull it up. Very nice and one more time. Take it down, stretch it out, use the breath, feel and open the back and come back all the way up.

Now the hand is going to move more into the center and we're going to rotate the body around and bring the arm up over to add our little leg lift, which is really a beautiful stretch. Again, it's all coming from the centering of the body and the balance and counterbalance of the movement. We take it all the way over. We anchor through the pelvis, we let the leg float up off the floor, we bring the leg back down to the floor, we extend that reach and we lift to come back up two more times. Inhale up and actual end lanes and to stretch over and then take the leg and let it float. Press it and lanes in and it's not enough to lower it. You'll have to stretch it out to the floor, reach the torso longer in opposition to come up and one more time, linkedin up and stretch to come over and linkedin the leg out and press the leg. Reaching out of the hip and the long gating now reached the torso even longer and lift to come. Thank you. These feels good.

Doesn't it say really beautiful movement. One of my favorites too for the imbalances of my spine. Let's go back to the first part and we're going to do the tick tock. This time we're going to sit on the side and we don't have hip over hip for this movement. So we got um, we're going to really bolt those hips so it's one hip directly over the other shoulder, over shoulder as well. Once again, Spring Wise, we're pretty much staying on the same spring, which is light to medium, um, on this exercise. Once again, if you have two heaviest spring, you're really not going to get the full benefit of the movement. Now the hand is going to be here, but it's only for a support and a little bit of balance.

The strength of the movement, the power of the movement is going to come from that aligned core. In this, let's just do a few lifts and lowers. So we're going to pull ourselves up and we're going to press ourselves down. We'll pull it up and press down and we will pull up and we will press down. Now we're going to scissor the legs so that the bottom leg is going to come forward in the top leg is going to go to the back. This gives you a little bit more stability and now we're going to just lift and lower in this position. Take it up and reach it down.

Beautiful and take it up again and reach and stretch it all the way down. Take it up, pulling. Press down one more time. Take it up and pull and strew Rach down. Remember when maintaining that alignment from hip to hip. Now we're going to pull about halfway up. We're going to stabilize and without moving the pedal, it's keeping everything else still.

Let's scissor the legs with a large scissor kick and scissor and scissor and scissor and scissor, scissor, scissor, and scissor. Okay, I hold it there. Now let's do a smaller scissor, but let's work the upper body with it. So we are going to scissor down and scissor up and scissor down and scissor up. Scissor down, Cesar up. Best time, scissor down and scissor up.

Now just cause we really want to have a little more fun today. Let's hold the body still in place. This arm behind the head, where are you actually doing the movement from your core? Let's find it out. Scissor. Keep the pedal steel. All right, you got it. Let scissor down and scissor up, scissor down, scissor up, scissor down, scissor up and scissor down and scissor all the way up. Place the hand down and come up into your sitting position.

Unfortunately we have the other side yet to do so let's begin lying on the side. Hip over hip. We are once again, we placed the hand down, um, is going to help us for support and balance but really we want to think about not having that hand down but because we're going to have to lift it up later. We begin however with leg over leg, hip, over hip and shoulder over shoulder. And we just get that stretch down and we length in to come up. The lighter spring challenges your core on this because you really have to do the work from your core muscles.

Look at how beautifully they are performing the exercise by really keeping shoulder over shoulder and hip over here. Two more times. Take it down, stretch it long and lift to take it up. Very, very nice and take it down. Stretch it out nice and long and lift to take it up. Now we're going to assessor the legs, so the bottom leg is going to come to the front and back leg. It's top leg, goes around to the back and from this position, once again, let's just take it down. It's a little more stable and so begin to feel how you can lift those front fingers just a little bit and begin to feel where you really need to pay more attention to your core work in this position and take the movement down and lift the movement up. And let's do one more time. You look great ladies.

Fantastic job lifted and I'm up. All right, so now we're going to keep the pedal stable and won't just hold on and feel what it is. A nice long scissor. She's switching legs and switch again and switch the legs and switch again. Beautiful. Switch your legs and switch again and switch the legs and switch again.

All right, let's switch legs with a little smaller and scissor down and scissor up. Nice deep breathing, scissor down and scissor and scissor down. Exhale, scissor up and scissor down and scissor all the way up. Now we're going to stabilize and place the hand behind the head. Note Heather still maintaining that alignment hip over hip and from that position we'd pressed down and we're going to do our scissors began to hold. Good. Keep the pedal steel first. Keep the pedal steel. There you go.

And now add your challenge and scissor down and scissor up. I am sure he that you are finding this as well as everyone else. One side is going to be a lot easier than the other. Challenge that side work a little bit harder. So we even the body and we equalize both of the sides.

So the movements come from deep within the core. Take it back up and bend your knees in and come on to the back. Great job. Any uh, words of advice to the rest of them? A No. Okay. Practice, practice. And you know, with all of these exercises we, we don't start off with the most advanced.

We start off with really working from the deep core muscles and if you really are practicing your proper mat, your, your proper, uh, basics on all of the equipment. The rest of this comes from just the knowledge of where the core muscles align to make the movements advanced. And that's really what it's about. All right. The next section starts with, again, a traditional movement that I've kind of repatterned into 'em. So a little bit of wonder chair choreography, which I happen to like, it puts together three exercises, um, which is the, um, the back arm with the twist, the, um, uh, iron cross with the also that has a twist finishing off into a teaser. So again, we have got a bit of a challenge, but it's really fun.

The back arm stretch we are going to do with that, with that twist. So again, this comes from the original and the archives with one arm back on the other arm front, but we're going to add a twist to it by bringing the arm over arm up and as we go down, the body is going to twist to the side so the legs are extended in straight. You can uh, in the beginning have the leg support it or the knees bent and we're going to progress down and come back up. Now once again, what we're very careful about is your body positioning. You don't want to be too far forward or too far back seated on this. You have to have the correct balance with both your body in alignment and with the spring, let's do one more of those. Press it down and come back up. Exhale up. And now we're going to bend the knees in and from that position and make sure you're aligned properly and we're going to extend and bend legs. Extend them out, and bend them in.

Extend them out and bend them in one more time. Extend them out and bend them in. Now we're gonna extend the legs up to the ceiling. We're going to bend the back to the chest. From here, we're going to press the bar down while we extend the legs out and rotate the body. Stir retching it nice and long. The arm can be over or up depending on where you want. From here, you've gotta use those abdominals, pull the movement in and come back up to sitting.

Let's do that in a smooth movement pattern. Extend your, bend them in stretch and reach. Pull it back in and up and again, extend your legs and pool and stretch to go out. Lowering the legs. You get a long arch in the back and pull to come. And one more time. Extend your legs and bend and stretch to go out.

Bend it in and right from here. Bring your arm up. Extend your teasers, deep breathing, and then the legs in other side reaches around and down and from here just extend your leg straight and the arm coming down and lifting to come up. So now it's just that upper body, and again, we're training. Feel the balance and counterbalance. So as you're working deep from your core, this is our first step in that training. Once again, the knees can be bent or the legs can be supported. Then we begin with the next step of really working deep from that core.

Pull it back up. All right, now we're going to bend the legs in. From here we have three extensions. Bring the legs up and down. This is not very easy. Extend them up, but again, it's a training tool to moving on to the more advanced movement pattern and come in. All right, we bring them up. We've been the men, we stretch everything out. The arm can go over or straight up.

Getting that straight line from shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip takes a nice long stretch and bring the legs in and extend them, bend them and stretch it out. Go deeper with the legs and longer with the torso, pull it in and extend them last one and then them and stretch it long to go out, support yourself and pull yourself in and up. Alright. Find your balance point, extend your legs, bring your arm around, teaser, beautiful and bend to come in. Very, very nice. That looks terrific. All right, let's go onto our pushups on the floor. We're going to um, do a variation on the traditional push up here because I found that so many times when we're in that plank position that the body is getting thrown, um, and really not working in its full extension.

So what we want to do is once again as I was taught, you want to press the pedal all the way down to the ground. You're going to be in a kneeling position. And if you, um, find that you would like to, uh, level the arms, I also like to place a block or a pad under the arm so that the shoulders are level, but we are going to start with the pedal down so that once again, we're not starting with a misalignment of the shoulder being Henry's up of the shoulder being up and having to press down. So we get here and we aligned shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. The back is in a straight line. Let's go ahead and lift the pedal up and lower it down.

The elbow can go wide to the side or you can bring it back in line with whichever position you would prefer to do the elbow up and down, any elbow up and down and the elbow comes up and presses down. Now once again, we want to begin to challenge, this is a wonderful position that everyone can do, but we want to find our balance and counterbalance through the movement. So let's take the outside leg and slide it along the floor without changing the weight distribution of the hips, the pelvis and shoulders remain aligned. Let's work from there. Lift the arm up and take it down. Beautiful Ladies and lift it up and take it down.

Lift it up, take it down. There's only one more lifted up and harassed to take it down. Let's see if we have truly that balance. Lift, lift the leg float to the ceiling without changing any movement in the pelvis. So the lay comes up level with the hips, arm up and down. Arm comes up and down.

Inhale up. Exhale, use that power of the breath and one more time. Take it up and take it down. Now to really get to the position that we originally had from Mr Polarities, we curl the toes under and lower the leg to the floor without changing the hip without changing the shoulder. The other leg slides out, bolt the hips. Both the shoulders do not change anything but let the arm raise up and presses down and we raise it up. Everything stays the same too.

To go raise it up and press down. The Vac is in that absolute plank position, beautiful positions and down a bend the outside leg in and bend the inside leg in, back to your hands and knees position and take the hand off of the pedal, releasing it upward. Place the hand on the floor. Nice cat stretch. Really rounding the back, pulling up. Sit back on your heels and stretch your spine out. But we do have two arms, so don't take too long in this position.

Come on up and Sharon around last exercise, last side. There you go. Kneeling beautifully next to your one, two chairs and press the pedal down. Once again, let's remember if you want to keep the shoulders level, you will put a small pad underneath the hand, leveling shoulders, leveling hips, and the spine is a long gator. The head in line with the spine. Nice deep breathing and let's began. The arm comes up from that position and the arm presses down. Let's remember, nothing is going to change.

Maintain your core alignment and exhale as you come down and lift back up and exhale to take it all the way down. Let's just do one more of these and let's go in to our progression. It's the outside leg, it's gonna slide out and stays right there. And let's begin. Nothing changes. And note how the inhale up. Exhale down and note how the um, movement changes and how much more core you need as you begin your extension out and lift it up and press down.

We have one more of these to take it out. Very good and take it down. Now the leg was again without letting anything change in the pelvis, the leg floats up so we're not changing the hip or the pelvic alignment. And we want to take the pedal up and down and take it up and take it down. Terrific. And two to go.

Make sure you get that good exhalation and take it up and use your breath to power the movement. Curl the toes under and place to foot on the floor without changing anything. We're going to slide that leg back, slide it back behind you, and place it onto the floor and let's begin and take it up and press it down. Once again, we keep that alignment hip over hip. Keep that alignment to the shoulders and down. We just have two more.

Taking it up, beautiful alignment and down. This is very difficult and down. Let's slide the outside leg in, inside leg. Release your pedal upward. Take a nice deep breath and sit back down on your heels this direction, the torso long and inhale and exhale to get that nice long stretch.

Curl your spine up and roll to sitting. One Vertebra at a stacking vertebra on top of Vertebra. And thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Um, because he's exercises I think are so important coming, uh, from the original, but having some innovation, some patterning and some choreography and some intensity. Uh, yeah, the wonder chair is a Fab, fabulous piece of equipment and, uh, one of my favorites. Thank you again.