Wunda Chair Partnership

Yeah, the chair and I have a long and somewhat sorted relationship. Every time I used to avoid working my repertoire on the chair. Undoubtedly I would get the sense that it was looking at me and kind of going, whoa. Wow, wow. So it's taken a little while to create a relationship with this apparatus and today I'm going to share with you my partnership dance with the chair and I hope you will enjoy moving along with me. So let's begin standing facing the chair. I've got one high light spring on or white spring on the balanced body chairs.

You can choose to do a heavier one if that suits you, and also be sure to have your handles nearby because we'll use them in a little bit. So I'm going to begin with feet together to standing a bit back from the woods, taking a deep breath in and just reaching the arms up to the high diagonal as you inhale and exhale, pressing all of the air out, getting grounded through the whole length of the body, breathing in and releasing. Then on the next one we'll breathe. Then we'll lift up. We'll begin. To dive for sure. Board into your washer woman, taking the hands wide onto the pedal, just round forward to the place that feels the most reasonable for you at this time. Hello Sir. Talk Nice to work with you today and we're going to round the spine up to lift the pedal and as you exhale, deepen it down. So I'm using an inhalation to breathe into my back and an exhalation to deepen into the curve.

Let's do a couple more breathing in and exhale, pressing, looking for the length of the curve of the back, and then the depth of the belly as you press over. Minimal shifting through the feet and the last one. And then let's roll the spine up. Shift your weight slightly forward into the balls of your feet as you continue the roll to just get your hamstrings warm and ready as you come up to vertical, lift your arms one more time. We'll go down again. Rounding forward, almost perching forward on the front of those feet to round your spine deeper. This time. Let's bend the elbows parallel to each other and press.

And as you press round the spine up a little bit higher. Breathing in and breathing out. Yeah. Press last one, Bend and press. And now let's alternate between the two variations. Lift with straight arms, round the spine to press. Keep the spine there, bend your elbows and reach through your triceps. Lift. Exhale, press, bend and stretch.

Let's do it twice more. Lift and press and bend and stretch. One more time to lift and press and bent and stretch. Now Round Up until the pedal lifts in the spring closes. Let's keep it here and arise up onto the balls of the feet.

Take your hands onto the side of the wood, bend your knees down into a little ball and just feel that shape for a moment. Reaching back through the lower back. When you're ready, we're going to reach the hands to the ground, a little balance moment, magic, and then bring yourself all the way down. Scooting a bit forward to go into a hamstring press, so we're about a foot or so away from the edge of the wood. I'm going to reach your arms forward. Roll all the way down through the spine and undoubtedly always end up moving a little bit farther away than I would like.

So from here I'm going to bring my heels up onto the pedal and this feels good to me. And again you can always give yourself a little more Springer, a little less. I'm looking for a lot of integrity and mobility in my joints because it's going to get a little more intense later on. So from here, keeping your pelvis centered, press down and touch the pedal to the wood. For me, as this goes down lower, I'm getting more of a sensation of grounding and activity in the lower part of my pelvis and I'm thinking of my weight bearing places. So that's my pelvis, my rib cage in the back of my head. How can I keep them all is equally weighted as possible. I'm going to breathe in as I press and exhale to lift.

Just being aware to not rock a roll too far back or forward. This is a really good prep for me for leg and foot work to understand where my back body is and also how to keep it lined up and lift. Let's press down to stay in hold here and the knees are magnet magnet together magnetised and we're going to extend the right leg up. Flex and bend at the knee joint to place back to the pedal. So stretch the left leg up.

Flex and bend to come back down and the right leg flex and bend to place and the left leg flex and bend to place and slowly lift the pedal up. Close the spring without too much adjustment. See if you can float your legs to tabletop, extend them to the sky, rotate to your turnout back to parallel. Breathe in and breathe out in one more. Breathe in and breathe out. This time rotate to turn out.

Bend your knees into your diamond and Len, let's find the heels on the pedal. There it is in the diamond. Now as you press the pedal down with the diamond, think less about moving down in more about moving the knees apart. This is almost a tug forward and the energy is out through those knees. Really great hip opener. As we lift, we're going to think about the heels lifting higher than the, if that were possible. There's a little judging to do with the heels. As you make your way through this exercise, we're slowly starting to just coax the hip joints open, breathing into the back body and again, paying attention to those weight bearing places that we have available to us.

My chair as yours may be is having a conversation with me. I was just lets me know that we're working together. Last one and come all the way up. No, keep the legs there and close your diamond and we're going to go into a little variation for the hips. So roll the pelvis back into your posterior tilt. Heavy, heavy waistline and light light tail. The heavy parts get heavier. As you press the pedal down, take a breath, press down. Find that connection as you make it to the bottom and see if you can sustain that connection as the pedal touches the wood. From here, keep your pelvic tilt.

Open your legs to the diamond and pause. Cramp if you must. And then release your tailbone back to a neutral position, a centered position, and lift the pedal up and close the diamond. So we're moving the hips, we're moving the bar, then we're moving, moving the diamonds. And then we're doing all three of those things. One more time. Curl the pelvis back.

Press the bar. [inaudible] open the legs into the diamond, keeping everything study. Then release the hips. Lift the bar. [inaudible] close the diamond. Find that magnet connection. One more time. Hips. [inaudible] pressing the bar most, losing it and opening the diamond.

[inaudible] release the hips. Find the weight through the sacrum. Lift the bar, close the legs and close to diamond. Beautiful. Bring your legs up. Bring them to extend. Open them apart. Place them down on either sides of the chair. And I like to see where am I. Okay, there's my chair. You can hug in with your inner thighs.

And start to curl your way up to the top to come into a seated position. From here, we're going to extend back just keeping our arms or the pedal at arms length and having a bit of a v in the lower body. We want to be in a place where you can effectively press the pedal down and lift up without having to move your weight back and space. So I'm on my sits bones. I've got my weight bearing through my heels in the backs of my legs.

I'm going to attempt to draw my shoulder blades back onto my rib cage as I press down and then reach up. So at the beginning of my plot is experience. This one really seemed like an arm and lat exercise and later I recognize that it's actually for the whole body. Who Knew? So I get a lot of core connection simply by challenge my and challenging myself to stay upright. So draw the shoulder blades on the back, move the full length of the arm down to the ground. Let's do one more time. Draw the blades back. Find that connection. Keep your height and reach.

From here, we're going to add on a little variation, draw the blades back, press the pedal down and hold the pedal down. Flex your feet contract and pull that low belly back. Keep the pedal down as you point your feet and Elongate your spine. Come back on your sits bones and then reach the arms forward and sometimes you'll have to regret a little bit. So shoulders on the back, the pedal goes down, flex the feet and curl that pelvis backwards. Point your toes and extend to new heights and reach the bar forward and pull the pedal down and fold x to rock off the sits bones and point to rise up.

Grow Taller and reach last time and pedal comes down full Lex and we're not collapsing, but we're pulling back and then we're extending to that new length and reach to the top. We'll bring the arms up overhead, ring it back behind us, so level one leg to come up and we'll make our way up to standing for leg and foot work. So I'm going to add a spring. I like to do my leg and foot work on two high whites on the Combo Chair. You can go ahead and put on whatever works for you and then I'm just gonna stand on the woods, stand up tall, bend the knees or inch the arms forward and then search for the lip of the chair. Where is it? And then come all the way back on. I'll rock back, draw the knees in and then find my heels right at the edge. I really love exploring like in footwork from kind of a precarious position, almost imagining that if my sits bones had little mouths on them, they would be gripping for dear life on the edge of the lip. So I've got flexed feet hovering those hands, breathing into press down and then exhaling to lift and just trying to get that sense of those three weighted pieces on the back body that I can use for stability. We'll do two more and one more and then I'm going to press halfway down.

Just find that connection and the little pulse is going down and up and down and up. We can breathe in and in. It's just about stillness but not gripping. Last one, let's breathe in. As we press all the way down from here, we're going to contract back round the spine. Find the connection. You can use your hands on the chair and it just means to Splore a little teaser for a second. Rotate out, back in, turning out, back in, turning out. That's enough. Flex your feet. Bend your knees. Use your hips and your belly to make your way all onto that chair and then take yourself up, stretching, stretching, stretching, and lower all the way down from here. Breathe in.

As you press breathe out. As you lift, I like a little narrow turnout. Lifting up to my shoulders. Let's just do one more here and then we'll add our little pulses going down and up and down and up and just asking myself, where's my stability? Where's my pelvis? And three and two and one end.

Press it all the way down and rock it back. This time I'm going to come up and extend to an open leg rocker and a flex my feet and place my heels onto the corners of the bar. Once again, lengthening up. Keep the arms out to a tee and pressing down and lifting up there. Just doing the reverse of a deep plead a, a deep squat. We'll do one more this time as we press down.

Let's rotate to the left twisting and then coming back to center and rotate to the right. Hello and back to center and rotate to the left and back to center and rotate to the right and back to center and press down and contract pointing the feet. Extending all the way up close to the teaser. Rotate to parallel x the toes. Placed them on the bar. Lift the arms high. Fine your placement, pressing down, breathing and lift. Almost there. There we go.

Everyone's allowed a little scooch on the pedal if needed. One more. Down and up. Let's pulse here. Going one hand, two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight. Press halfway down and stay. Keep the knees across from the hips. Find the ankle movement to lift the pedal up and the ankle movement that presses the pedal down. Fold in the ankles and press to lower.

Breathe in, breathe out, lots of concentration. Breathe in and breathe out. Now from let's lower the heels, keeping the pedal still so we lower the heels. We move this eyes and we lift up. Trying not to move that pedal. We lower down and lift up it. This is like one of those risky moments.

I'm really on a tiny little surface area, but I trust myself. I trust my chair. We're working together here. I'm equaling the pressure, the pedals, giving me last one down and lift. Press it down, curl back to pull it in. Find my teaser once again, reach and come up to standing. Whew.

Let's walk around to the other side and I'm going to go ahead and remove one of my white springs, place it down and then come to sit on the front of the chair. So I've got my knee really sidled up to the edge of the chair. Other leg out to the side. We're going to go into Ron's mermaid seated on top. So hips are square knee is forward. I'm working my inner thigh against the edge of the chair, my knee against the edge of the front edge of the chair and the lift the arms up. Going to reach over and just take two deep breaths here.

Breathing in and breathing out. One more time. Breathing in and breathing out. Lift up through the center, lengthen your body over and then use the curve, the side bend to reach towards the ground and let your head pour the contents, all the information out to the bottom. And so from here we're going to breathe into this top side and lift the top ribs up. And as we exhale, we're going to reach over to the floor. Inhale, increase the length on the top side and exhale, reach a little deeper. Inhale, lift, exhale, reach a little deeper. And one more. Inhale, lift and exhale, reach from here, press your ribs up to lift the pedal up to a balance point, reach your arm out, find that connection, and then bring it all the way up through center. Crossing. Over a big rainbow. Let's pulse and reach and two and three and four, five, six. Finding ease and relief. Lifting up this time, press all the way to the ground.

Now you know what the expectation as you come up grow, never letting that pedal push you around. This time you are in control. You lift, grow and over. One more time and up and reach and lift. Smooth transitions over. Come up to the top and press your arms to a tee and let's rotate towards the pedal.

And then just take your hands wide as you round yourself forward and press and round over. And as you exhale, press your back to the sky. Inhale round over, looking for length for space. Two more times over and press last one. Opening up that back. Now let's stay down for a moment. Feel like you on the chair are both one unit and let your back leg lift and lower again and reach and lower.

Let's do two more times. You've got it working together. One more time. Lower to touch. Replace Your right hand to the center of the pedal. Find your side bend. We all the way down there and then come all the way up to center. We're going to turn woo to the back of the chair, just round over.

Hover like a seagull. Take a moment of reprieve for three, for four, for five, for six, for seven and eight, and then let's come up and over to the other side, extending out, reaching those arms long, big up and over. Big Side. Bend over that outside hip. Breathe in and exhale, reach to. I'm looking for length, space, and support. Bring up through the center and find the pedal and reach over. Now let's start practicing that rib cage, reaching to the sky and then arking down to reach down through the hip.

Lift and press. Let that breath carry you up and press over. Lift it up and press it over. Now lift it up to the top. Find your connection to the chair. Reach that bottom arm out. Ooh.

Garreau up through the spine and reach all the way over to pulse. Two, three, four, five, six. Now we get to flow through it like rainbow up and over and press and lift from their center. And fly and up and press. It is not lost on me that moneyed. It looks much better from this viewpoint and up and reach and lift and last time and up and reach and lift and over.

Bring it up through the center. Press the arms long rotate. Here we go. All the way over. Rounding and breathe into the back. As you lower and press the back up to stretch as you lift and lower route and lift the belly off of your thigh and round over and pull up in. One more time. Round over. Let's stay here. Your body and your chair are one.

You lift the back leg and g lower and to reach it a little bit longer, find that side of the glute, not the front of the hip flexor. Last one and lower. Take your hand to the center. Turn it. Wow. How far can you go and lift? All the way back to center. Good. Let's come around. Let's stand up. Let's fix our clothes.

Let's turn around to face the back of the chair and we're going to come on top for Swan. Bring the pedal all the way down and I'm still in that light spring. It's up to you. I have come to a place where I feel like I can work a little bit more cohesively with a lighter spring and that's my choice. So from here my belly button is just off and I'm going to hover the pedal and you'll notice I have the heel of my hand onto the pedal for of course support. But I'm also doing a little bit of pull back to access the muscles along the side of my back. So when I lift it just got a longer hand.

It feels a lot nicer to my wrist and lets me move from the places that I'd like to move from. I've also got my legs apart a bit for my back and if you'd like to bring them together, be my guest. So from here we're just going to find that long line weight into the pubic bone through the crown of the head. Feel that space in between your vertebrae and then we're going to bend and press pendant and stretch. And I want to feel that two way stretch coming through the crown of my head, out through my tail, through the souls of my feet.

Let's do two more and press and one more and just to mix it up. We'll begin with our swan, so imagine you could pull the pedal back against the chair as you lift and reach and create that space in your lower back. Looking up, pulling the shoulders on the back, lift a little higher and then lengthen all the way out to your long flat back. Again, pull the chair in. Find the back muscles, lift up, reach up higher, long sides of the neck, and then reach all the way out. One more salon here. Pull up, lift up, reach up higher. Find that open chest and reach all the way down.

We've got one more stability. Challenge a toughie. We're going to remove the right arm. Just hold it out there for a second. Then bring it back. Find your connection through your middle. Reach out through your hands, your arms and legs. Move the left arm, bring it back down to the center. We're going for it. Remove the right arm, bend the elbow, press two, three, and four. Place it back. Find your bearings, reach out a little longer. Last variation and bent and two and three and four.

And place both hands down. We're going to lift up, we're going to climb back. We're going to let ourselves lower down and just hold onto the chair for a moment. Little squat, submissive squat for a moment feels good after that series and we're not done yet. So let's come all the way up and we're gonna find our balance point on the side of the chair for side buttons. So I'm going to let myself go over and again, I want to find that place that's definite. It's precarious. And I'm also gonna use my arm pulling in and against the chair to help me lift.

So when I find there we go. When I find my side bend, I'm just biasing my legs behind me a little bit and I'm finding that arm into the pedal and almost pulling the pedal into the chair to feel the connection there. And we begin with my arm overhead and as I lift up to the top, I just want to adjust and see where I am. Look out the window, find my alignment, and then I'm going to lift without moving the pedal. I'm staying lifted through my center. I'm reaching over and I'm finding that nice long line. I hope pulling the peddle in, breathing in, reaching over, finding that connection. If I'm slow here, I'm working with the chair as opposed to letting that spring press me into my movements. I want the assistance and the resistance. What?

I don't want to be pushed around. Last one coming up. Find that reach, lift up a little higher and then slowly come off like it was no big deal and we'll go to the other side. All right, so find that perch place on your hip. Feel your long line. Reach your arm over head. Feel the shoulder come onto the back. As you pull the pedal into the chair, reach and lift those legs. Lift up. See if you can suspend yourself as you make your way back down into the side bend or into the long line. And then as you come up, you're finding that contraction, finding that strength, and then slowly asking yourself to Elongate, to stretch and to reach.

Let's do one more time up and reach. I guess it's really to to complete the cycle all the way over, sorry, not sorry, last time, lift and reach. Find your connection. Find your control lifted up, lifted up, lifted up, lifted up, done. Let's go get our handles. So I'm going to add a heavy spring onto this light spring at almost the highest position because sometimes I like to be kinder to myself so that I'll be successful in the step ups and not suffer through them because I like them, but I also can enjoy some help. So I've got my handle set, I've got kind of a heavy and a half going on and I'm going to go ahead and take the pedal all the way down and just stand back with my slight turnout and just begin with a little calf stretch lowering down and then lifting up and feeling where that lift comes from. My heel and to my seat all the way up through the crown of the head. Again, lowering and lifting and one more and lifting up to the top.

And so from here I'm going to step on what is currently my favorite leg, the right one. And for the first few I have that balance point on my hands, four with the handles instead of pushing down through my top leg, I've adopted a thought process of pulling the pedal up with my back leg. So if this is new to you, try it, see how you like it. I'm going to shift the weight forward until that back leg gets lighter and then I'm going to pull that leg up almost into my hip socket to feel it lifting and lengthening and then lower all the way down. Some breathing in and breathing out. Little adjustment there and breathing in. Okay. And breathing out. Now I feel good about that. So I'm lifting up two more times.

Okay. The last time we have a special treat, we're going to lower halfway down contract place, fingertips on the front of the chair and pulse, two, three, four, five, six, seven and that's it. Lower all the way down with the control roll up through your spine. Nice and simple. Bring it back together. Lower the heels, lift the heels one more time. Lower. Okay.

And lift. Stepping that opposite leg back. I shift my weight and my weight into my standing leg and bring myself up to the top. Find that sweet spot lowering and lifting. Fair leasing to go down a little different on this side. One more time. Lowering down, finding that 90 degree bend and stretch. Three and four, five and six, seven and eight. I lower down.

That's enough of that coming up back to the center. I'm going to turn my legs into parallel and just lower them for the calf stretch and then come back up. And we're going to lean into press ups. So we'll do a couple in a flat more plank like back in. Then we'll start to go into our extension at the top. So from here I'm going to find that connection through my heels, through the back line in my legs.

And I'm going to lean forward and lean forward until the pedal gets a little lighter. And then I begin to press to the top. I want to feel, I mean one long forward trajectory. I'm going to bend. Pull the legs up to press and bent. Yeah, one more time from here. Lift, lift, lift. Open the hips. Stare at the sky, come back to center from the belly bend and press lift. Lift, lift, open. Come back from the center.

Bend and press last time up, lift, lift, lift. Come back to the center. Bend and press and then slowly lower down to come back. Alright, beautiful. Let's go ahead and slowly let the pedal come up and we're going to take our handles off and go into some more fun with pikes pikes. All right, so I've got the same spring setting on so I can keep going at this pace and I'm going to go ahead and press the pedal now and I'm going to do these pikes in parallel and I'm going to give myself a little more space by moving my hands to the back edge of the chair. If you are having shorter spine, you might want to go closer.

That is not my cross to bear in this exercise. So again, I want to pour my weight into my hands until the pedal gets lighter and then work through the center to peek down and see what I'm working with. I'm going to inhale to press the pedal down with my legs, push the chair into the ground, lift the pedal up from my legs. Inhale, want to say from my legs, I'm thinking about the background of the legs pulling up to help my belly so they're not just dead weight there. It's not just abdominals. One more time. Lifting up. Now let's lower halfway down for a little variation.

We're going to flex the feet and extend the spine into as long of a flat back as we can. Then point the feet and round the spine up. We lower down, we lift up flex and extend. Point and round. Lower touch and lift. One more for good measure. Flex and extend.

Oh point and round. Whew. It's getting quivery off here we lower and lift. Come all the way down and flex. Mistake your long flat back here and then come back on. Take your hands to the front edge of the pedal and stand in tandem. Just a few side pikes, so shift the side bolts, the side of your hip in towards the chair. Again, press the weight into your hands until you feel like the pedal is light and lift and lower. Exhale to lift.

Just one more hand lower and then come all the way up and we'll swivel to the other side. Rounding inner thighs, very strongly connected. Push the chair down. Here we go. Lift and lower last time. Lower down. That is enough of that. One more time. If you have a combo chair like I do, you can bend your knees and just hang and open up your back. If you have a one to chair, please don't do this. Let me guess.

It may be unstable for you, but this is a nice stretch for the Combo chair. We're going to come up and slowly lift ourselves up and then make our way around to the back of the chair and once again I'm going to take off that heavy spring that I had. Now I'm back on to a light situation and going through into a piece of movement called the bronze teaser. So this is going to be your teaser to a plank position. Back to your teaser, and maybe we'll even add a flourish at the end.

But where we're going to start is to when Mele are front facing arm, back to the pedal to draw the legs in to your ball position. You indicate where the legs are going to go in your teaser and you extend all the way up light, light, hand from here, pull everything to center and then as you press the pedal down, we're extending and reaching and drawing a long line from one end of the body to the other. We curl in from the center and then we put a cherry on top. Look, Ma, no hands. We bend in, you connect, hamstrings, everything we work today, side Bend, twist, Swan, all of it, bending in and extend last time and reach. Stretch it out, stretch it out, look for it, and then contract and to find that last moment and just challenge yourself there and release. That's not bad. Let's go to the other side.

I think I just surprised myself. Let's come all the way up and over contract. Pull it in, indicate that teaser line, reach your backhand as light. If you can bend in hamstrings heavy. Now push through the space to extend, to lengthen to make that flat back contract and reach up. Stretch. Woo. I'm coming. We're almost there.

Lavati starting to just put up a little bit of a fight. So we've got to judge it with some smiles, some directions and breadth. Last one, press reaching long. Come back in. Let's finish with what's called a Fletcher flourish. Make your arm into a circle and extend up.

And then we finish all the way off the chair. Last one. Let's turn around. Let's face the chair. This time we're coming into turnout or external rotation. We're gonna take a moment to get our bearings, feel our body, reach our arms up, contract forward. It's a long, long washer woman, long way down to that pedal. And once you have your hands on your pedal, we're going to articulate through the spine to move the pedal.

So extend through your back and reach and reach and reach. And take this moment to see how long you can get. Release all of the contractions, the tension. Let your abdominal stretch from here. Curl your tail under. Draw your belly up and round as if you could lift off the pedal.

Never stopped rounding, extend, reach, reach it long and then curl and round. Calming it down. And this time extend and at the bottom of your round, find a little swan moment, reaching out, curling under, lifting to the top, and again, just trying to find that connection and flow around in curling. Let's do one more time saying, good job chair. Good job, Jenna. Good job. You rounding and curling under. Find the weight into your heels. Slowly rolling up one bone at a time.

Taking a moment to express a little internal gratitude for the fact that we made it together. Good job chair. Good job, Jen, and good job you, and thanks for moving with me today.