Calm, Centering Wunda Chair

Hi, everyone. I'm Carrie Pajas, and I'm so excited to be here at Pilates anytime doing a one to chair workout. Let's get started. We're gonna start laying on our backs, and I have one low spring on the chair. So we don't want a lot of spring tension here.

We'll bring the hands up onto the pedal of the chair, and then I'm gonna scoot down so that I get about an inch of tension on the spring. From there, I'm gonna allow my shoulders to elevate. I'm gonna let the spring get short, breathe in. And then as I breathe out, I pull down on the chair. Now notice my arms are straight.

So this movement is coming from my shoulders. And what I also want you to think of is your sternum heavy and your ribs heavy to create a connection to your middle to pull that pedal down. So again, we'll reach the pedal up. We let that spring get nice and short, then draw the shoulders down heavy the sternum heavy the ribs draw the low belly strong and surprise yourself by how much work is coming from your core on this. Again, push the pedal up.

Your spring gets short. And then draw the shoulders down, notice again my shoulders are coming down, but my elbows are staying straight. So I'm not bending my arms. I'm just trying to get this movement to really originate from deep in my middle. One more time today, raise the pedal up, and then draw the pedal down.

Now we're just gonna hold this connection in the middle. Again, thinking about having the sternum, having the ribs and drawing the low belly strong. Maintain the position of the pedal and raise one leg up to table, followed by the other leg coming up to table. Holding this shape deepening from your middle, let's make it a little harder. With an inhale, we're gonna send the legs out long.

Then exhale, bend the knees, and you might end up moving the pedal much more, but think about making that spring a little longer. Inhale. Take your time on this. Don't rush. Exhale.

Draw the knees back. Think if this is a fundamental to get your workout started. Send the legs out. Breathe it in stabilizing neutral in your pelvis, exhale draw the knees back in. One more time like that.

Extend the legs out. Breathe it in. Bend the knees, breathe out. I'm still working to keep my pedal pulling towards my head. My arms are still straight.

Lakes are gonna extend up now. Now I'm gonna do a straight leg lower lift. I'm gonna inhale. Go for a challenge, see how low you can get those legs, start your exhale and deepen through your middle to raise the legs, keeping your spring long doing again. Let the breath in.

Don't rush it. Take your time. Draw the abdominal strong. That's what facilitates the lifting of the legs to the ceiling above you. You get two more of these. Breathe it and take your time.

Don't rush. Try to match my pace. Exhale, strong connection to the middle, raises those legs deepens the belly. One more time today, lower the legs, breathe it in, start the breath out deep and through the center, and the legs come up now a little surprise for you. Keep that steady pull on the top on the pedal and roll over. Tap your toes to the top of the chair.

Raise your feet up. Go ahead and lower your toes back down to the chair. And roll your back down. Now as you're rolling down, keep organizing the shoulders down the back so that as you lower your legs, you're working harder through your middle than you ever thought you could. Raise those legs back over again.

Bring yourself up. Lower your legs down, roll your back all the way. Now right here, organized through those shoulders, my arms are still straight. I'm just trying to pull the shoulders to down the back from my center. Now here's my last one. I'm gonna go over And I'm gonna come up.

Now I'm gonna hold right here and just add one leg lowers and then meet in the middle. Other leg lowers as the other leg lifts meet in the middle. One leg lowers as the other lifts. Meat in the middle, breathe it out as you extend the legs away from each other, inhale, put them together. One more set, exhale.

Inhale, put them together. Exhale. Now put them together. Now using all of our work on this low part of the chair, we're coming down. We're gonna flow right into hundreds.

So let the pedal release. But as you bring your arms down, find that same connection to your middle that you felt a moment ago, get those legs nice and low, pump the arms, inhale two, three, four, five exhale. Now at any time, bring those knees on into your chest or lift your legs high, but I want you to try to believe in yourself. Find that connection to your center that pulled on the pedal and use that to hold up your long, strong legs. Breathe it in. Breathe it out.

We've got four more breaths inhale. Exhale. Breathe it in. This is 90. Exale 2345100. XL 2 3 4 hold, put the heels down, rest all the way down. Let's rock up to seated. And we're gonna come up to standing now to do a few side ups on the top of the chair.

So positioning on this really does matter. First, let's get our spring right though. Let's go for two low springs. When you set up for this exercise, I want you to sit to the very front of your the side of the chair. So don't sit in the center. You'll understand why in a moment.

We're gonna flow through first just a few side ups. Now take a moment here. Extend the legs long, and I'm just using my arm for balance for just a moment. Make sure you've got a little lift of those bottom ribs, and then bring your hand to your head and start to connect and create balance here. You're gonna begin to lift the pedal, bringing yourself up.

And if that spring tension's too heavy for you, certainly lighten it, and then guide yourself right back down. We're taking this up five times. I want those legs to be glued together as if your two legs are one strong leg. Breathe in. Bring yourself down. Breathe out. This is three nice and steady through those legs and thighs.

Breathe it in, take it down. Breathe out, bringing yourself up. Breathe in to take it down. Fifth one brings us up. And then take it down.

Now holding here, trying to create a little bit more balance, feel the bottom ribs pulling up, your top leg is just gonna do a little lift and a lower, and this is harder. Then it looks. Three, bring it down. Now from here, come up, and you're gonna do three right there. One, and down. It's almost a little easier when you're up because you've got some spring tension to help you. Now we bring it down.

We're gonna take this now into a teaser. So here's why your position's important. You're gonna start to send your hips back, reach your arm forward. The pedal's gonna give you a little boost and you're gonna find your teaser shape right there on top of your chair. Hold for three, two, one, bend your knee, extend your other leg out, flow right into a mermaid.

Big stretch over with your exhale. Inhale guides you up. So now you get to stretch out all that hard work. Inhale brings you up. Third one takes you over.

And you come up. We're gonna turn around to do the other side. So I'll position myself again to the front of the chair, bring the pedal all the way down. Taking a moment there to draw the bottom ribs up and then eventually finding my balance. Keeping the legs long, strong, and zip together start to float up.

Inhale takes you down. Zipping the legs together as if both legs create one long, strong leg, take it down, breathe it and exhale. Three. Inhale. Takes you down.

Lift up four, inhale guides you down. And last one is five, and take it all the way down. Now finding your balance here, lift your top leg up and lower down. Linkedin through the spine too, and lengthen down. Three and down. Now leave your legs where they are. Lift your body up and now lift your leg.

One, and down. Two, and down. Three and down, take the pedal all the way back down, flowing into that teaser, start to send your feet forward. I reach my right arm in front of me as well, sitting down with my right hip on the top of the chair, finding that teaser shape, holding one, two, three, bend the knees, reach one leg long, other arm up to the ear, and bend the body over, exhaling. Inhale brings you up. Exhale reaching the foot down through the floor in opposition. Inhale brings you up third one.

Inhale brings you up. And we'll rest and get ready for the next exercise. So now we're gonna do a swan. We'll also add swan with rocking, and then we'll also add a triceps press. I'm gonna stick with the same springs, and All chairs are different. You really do have to fiddle around with your springs to figure out your perfect spring. But I'm gonna stay on two lows.

I'm going on to my stomach. For regular swan, I start a little more back with about my waistline at the front edge of the chair. So first three spots, swans, just nice and easy. I love the swan. I love the boost that the spring and the pedal give me, and then guide yourself back down. So inhale come up to exhale, take sit down, and come up three, and take that down.

Now I'm gonna scoot just a little bit more forward, so that my hip bones, my pelvic bones are right on the edge of that chair, because they're gonna act as a little hook and support for me as I go into my rocking. So I'll come up from a reverse swan, inhale, then you're gonna bend your elbows and bring your legs up hang me from those hips, then straighten your arms and guide yourself up again, bend your arms and rock. Bring yourself up, bend your arms and rock, push up, bend one more, push up, and bend from there, push that pedal back down, re lower your legs, re wiggle back. So your waist is about at the end, at the edge of the front of the chair. From here, triceps presses, bend your elbows, press.

Bend them. We're about to do a one arm pushup, so let's build that strength and that stability through the backs of the shoulders. Six, seven, Eight, nine, 10 is enough. Slide your feet down, bring your pedal up, and we're gonna bring ourselves up to get a little stretch there rounding out through the back. You can even walk the feet back and get a little down dog like stretch. I like to open my feet wide and do a little sway to the left and a sway to the right, and that gives me a really nice hamstring stretches.

I sway that pelvis back and forth. Do that about one more way, time each way. Center it and bring yourself all the way up. Alright. So now we're gonna do a one arm push up variation. So I'm gonna stick with the same springs.

Steppping to the side of the chair, my hands will come to the pedal, and I'll step back and find a plank. Now you'll notice that my start position right now, I'm really crooked in my shoulders. So I have to bend my left elbow enough that my shoulders square off. Then I'm gonna lower myself down and push myself up. Two, push up. Three, and up. Four, and up. One more today is five, we bring it up, we walk around, do the other side.

Find that plank shape, at first, you're nice and crooked, so you gotta fix that. You'll bend your right elbow, square off through those shoulders, and take yourself down. And up, two, and up three, four, and five is enough. Step forward, and let's take a moment to change our springs. We're gonna get ready for balance control front. So I'm gonna go to two high springs.

Again, you can play with this spring a little bit. I will let you know that it's gonna flow into a series of pikes, so you want a spring that you can control for balance control front and for pikes. So standing, facing the chair, let's go hands behind the head just to get stacked up here. I'm gonna put my right foot up on top of the pedal. Push it down, it's gonna feel heavy initially, and then I'm gonna step up and bring my left foot onto the top of the chair. For today, reach your arms right in front of your shoulders, push down into your left heel, guide yourself up, and I always give myself permission to get that foot right where I like it, at the top of the first one, minimizing the fidgets from here on out.

So that's one. We're taking it up. Bringing it down. That's two. Taking it up. Bringing it down.

That's three dig into your left heel to get up. Dig into your left heel as you come down. We go five and down, and then add a bonus rep. Taking it up to the sixth time, you're gonna bring your toe to your knee. I'm gonna open my arms out to the side and extend my right leg out, holding one.

Two, three touch the toe to the knee. Again, extend it. Hold it one. Two, three tap the toe to the knee. Third one, extend it out.

Hold it. Two, Three, tap the toe to the knee. Reach your foot back. Try to find that pedal without looking for it. Now here's where things get exciting. Leave the pedal up, nod the chin into the chest, place your hands on the pedal.

You're at the top of a pike. You go five times down, and up, two, up, three, inhale lower, lift, five, and lift. Now put the pedal down. Turn to the side. I'm facing side with my right foot on the pedal, my left foot is crossed in front, squaring my hips as best I can, three pikes here. Bring that up and down.

Two, three, take a little transition here, walk the hands, one to the side, one to the front of the pedal, top of the chair, and do three here. One, Now this one might end up getting a little smaller. This is three. Now turn the hands. So you're super twisted. This one might be a little smaller.

One. Two, and three, bring it down, turn yourself to the side, step back to the floor, slowly guide the pedal up, bring your feet back down onto the floor, hands behind the head, we start the whole thing from the top to the other side. Put the left foot on top of the pedal, press it down. Once it's on the floor, stand up, right foot, on top of the chair. Reach your arms in front of you, dig into the right heel, guide yourself up at the top a little fidget if needed, then try to minimize those fidget for the next four reps. Take it up.

This is two. And down. Take it up three. Bring it down. Take it up four.

Bring it down. And five. Bring it down. Now we're gonna go up on six and bring the toe to the knee. Open your arms to the side. Extend your leg.

Hold one, two, three, bend the knee. Again, two, three, hold that moment. Extend. Don't rush. Hold it. Build that strength.

Touch the toe to the knee. We'll bring the foot to the pedal. Looking try not to have to look for it, lower the arms down. We nod the chin into the chest, curl through the spine, bringing those hands down, and we're ready to pike again. Five reps Take it down.

Exhale up today. Inhale. Exhale up. Three. Four. Five, bring it up, take it all the way down. Turn to the side, left foot on the pedal, right foot crosses today, square the hips, square the shoulders, take it up with an inhale.

One, take it down. Two, three. We come down, walk the hands. One to the side, one to the back. Take it up. One. You won't get quite as high on this one.

Three, now we walk super twisted. You won't get as high on this one for sure, but boy, can you feel that right side body? Two, three, and we'll turn to come off, step one foot to the floor, bring the pedal up. Alright. We're gonna have a lot of fun now with tabletop and tendon stretch, making it a little flow. So this takes a little bit of fidgeting around, so just go with me as best you can. You're gonna put the pedal down and bring your hands back.

So we're gonna start with our tabletop. I want you to keep your gaze down the front of your body as you raise up into your high bridge, nodding the chin into the chest, pull the pedal underneath you three times. One, push it down, two, push it down. Three, push it down. Now sit down. Walk out to your heels. Get ready for three tendon stretches.

Up and down. Two and down. Three and down. Position your feet back to Pilates V, bring your hands back. Lift up two tabletops. One, keep the hips high. Two, and down, sit down, walk out, two tendon stretches, up, and down, up. Now we alternate, come down, lift up, pull one, and down, sit down, heels out, tend and stretch, come down, sit down, we do it twice more.

Pull the heels under, push it down, have a seat, walk out, lift up one more, pull out easily, lift up table top, one, have a seat, last tendon stretch up And down, have a seat. We'll bring the pedal up, and we have earned some amazing stretches. So let's walk around, adjust our springs. I'm gonna go to one high for cat, which will then flow into a pigeon stretch. So we'll start on our knees, reaching the arms up high to the sky above you. I want you to allow yourself some freedom for movement through your hips today.

Start to lower your arms down, nodge your chin into your chest, and I want you to go ahead and sit back towards your heels. Don't battle trying to keep your hips far forward just for today. Nodge your chin into the chest in the spirit of knee stretches, really finding that rounded shape at the back. So we're gonna go from this extreme down, lengthen out, and arch up to that extreme. Peddle comes back down, nod the chin into the chest, roll through the back.

Let's start it again from the top. Arms come down, Naw the chin, curve inside yourself, then lengthen out to find that arch. Lower the chest, guide yourself up. Coming all the way back up to the top. Last time, lower the arms.

Nod the chin. Link thin out, find that high swan shape. Lower back down nod the chin. Guide yourself all the way up. We're gonna bring one leg back. The other leg comes forward. Decide what feels best for you here, some people like to really bring this foot far in front of them. I like to keep my foot tucked under.

You can play with that at home. Raise your arms up, inhale. Lower your arms to the pedal, nodding the chin to the chest guide that pedal down for that deep hip stretch. Come up. Just leave your hands on the pedal. Take it down too.

Lift yourself up. Three and guide the pedal up. Walk the hands back to the side of the chair for a little support as you do a little seated extension there. And then let's do the other side. So bring the other knee through, and you'll notice one side feels a little happier than the other.

Just observe it. Don't judge it. Love that body. Let's take a moment here. Raise our arms up. Nice inhale.

Lower the arms down, find the pedal. Nodding the chin into the chest. Lay the body over the chair. Inhale brings you up. Just leave those hands on the pedal.

Take it down too. Bring it back up. Three, bring it up, walking the hands back again, and finding that seated extension. We've got one more lovely stretch. Let's get a little heavier with the spring. I'm gonna go with two lows on this next one.

And this is a seated figure four. So what I like to do is get my pedal down, position my foot so it's comfortable there, and then I'll cross one leg over. I'm gonna try to keep my body as vertical and my pelvis as neutral as possible as I float the pedal up. On me, that's not very high. Some of you may have a little more range, but I'm really trying to maintain my neutral.

Then I'm gonna allow myself to go into a pelvic tilt. So I'm gonna curve inside myself as I let that pedal, it come up, and it comes up a lot higher now. Put it back down. Back is nice and straight, and that pedal comes up. I push it down. Back gets to round.

Now notice I'm using the sides of the chair pulling up a little on him and push that down. One more time, flat back first, push it down, and then pull up on the sides of the chair as you round that shape of your back, push it back down now cross your leg over and give yourself a little seated twist. Come back to the middle, switch legs, crossing the other foot on top, just taking a moment there, it's gonna feel different on this leg, figure out what you need to do to get neutral, take a moment there, inhale, and then just float the pedal to where it will go. And push the pedal back down, now pull up on the chair. Mindfully going into your little te pelvic tilt, finding that rounded shape at the back really curl inside yourself, come back up.

There's almost a spirit of a swan right here, just the littlest lift of the heart chest, press the pedal down, and then pull up and round deepening through the middle. Inhale takes the pedal back down. On this third one, we're gonna go for a little more range. Oh, I got there. And one more time in that rounded shape. Push the pedal down. You're gonna cross knee over knee, thigh over thigh, give yourself a little assisted rotation, and then bring the pedal up.

And you are cooked for today. Thank you for joining me for that one to chair workout. I'll see you next time.