Balance-Focused Wunda Chair

Hi there. Sarah Barticelli here. Today, we're gonna work with the one to chair. Simple moves, but some exciting twists and turns to challenge your balance. And, let's get right to it. Okay? I do plan to minimize the spring change. So currently, I'm on one black spring.

There's black and white on this one, and I'm at the top. So that would be number four. If you need to adjust, you're gonna adjust we're gonna minimize spring change and see where we can go. So with your feet underneath your hips, I'm gonna suggest maybe, I don't know, five inches away from the edge of the one to chair. You can adjust as needed, but not too far.

Let's breathe together, lifting the arms up, looking up as you do, lifting your body, feeling your feet. Take your arms down and roll yourself down. When you roll down, catch the pedal right away, Push the pedal down. If you can go all the way to the ground grade, feel the spring, check-in, make sure it feels good to you. Look at your legs and see that they're facing forward the knees.

Pull your shoulders away from your ears a little bit, so you're gonna kinda pull those shoulders into the back pockets to make sure you're not up by your ears. And then I actually want you to lift your shoulders up by your ears, and then feel your shoulders away from your ears. And now if you can't go all the way down, you're just where you are. So you're moving your shoulders up and down, not the pedal up and down. Yes. And now use your belly muscles to round up. Let's do that on an exhale with some awareness in your shoulders.

Inhale to go down, keeping the neck long. Exhale, rounding up, using those belly muscles, pushing down, feeling the shoulders, and rounding up, and one more time. We're gonna round up, keep the shoulders plugged. That simply means they're not lifted by your ears, but they're not forced there. Roll yourself all the way to standing.

Reach the arms nice and high. Take one arm down, side bend, look at the hand that's up. Come back to center. Take the other arm down, side bend, look at the hand that's up. Come back to center.

Two arms down. Let's roll down again. Catch the pedal, push yourself down. This time just about halfway. So can you flatten your back out? Your head might be in alignment with your, one to chair platform here? And can you now round your back? Keeping the pedal still. Pulling forward chest is open, tailbone back, a little cat cow type feeling, and round, keeping the pedal still.

And one more time, go forward, and let's stay there. Feel your left arm, keep your left arm grounded, lift your other arm, like you're doing a low row. You're gonna pull your elbow close to your body, look up, and then reach the arm down. Go again. Pull close to your body. Stay here. Put your hand maybe on your hip and you're just gonna keep your eye gaze where it is and just a slight push down and a round up keeping the eye gaze where it is.

A slight push down and a round up. And let's do one more push down. Round up straighten your back out, put two hands on the pedal. Other hand, so I'm rooting through my right arm my other arm, like I'm doing a low row is pulling back, and I'm checking out my rotation. And you might put your hand on your hip just so you know where it is, and checking it out. Good. We're gonna keep that.

And now you're going to go down rounding the back and rounding up and rounding down and rounding up, keeping that integrity of that straight strong-arm. We round up. We stay, rotate back to neutral, flatten your back, two hands on the pedal, round your back, and roll yourself all the way back up to standing. Let's move into our footwork. So for footwork, you're gonna need two springs. I wanna push my strength, so I'm gonna put two of my springs, my black springs on the top.

You might need to do less, and that would be fine. If you need to change the spring halfway through, you'll go ahead and take care of yourself. Have a seat on the edge of the one to chair. What's important about using the one to chair is that you really have to stabilize your body upright, which actually translates to everyday life. So let's work on that here.

Put one foot on the pedal and then the other foot on the pedal. With your hands on the platform, push all the way down and decide where you're happy with your feet on the pedal. Make sure you're not gonna slip. Okay? So once you've established that position, let's come back up. That's where we're gonna try to be. I would like you to come all the way up a few can. So my knees are high.

My knees are bent a lot. My hips are bent, so I'm working on range of motion with strength. So keeping your arms down by your side for the first two, see if you can go all the way down, keeping your body completely still, all the way down. Now add an arm movement, it might give you a little more power as you press down, reach your arms forward as you come up, arms behind you, reach your arms forward, and behind you. Remember, we are having some fun here. Two straight arms kind of swimming through space, checking out if you can go all the way down, and if you can come all the way up.

Now check-in that you have equal weight on both sides of your pelvis, And check-in that both legs are, in fact, working equally. Press down one last time, come up halfway. Here's how we'll find out if we've been working equally. We keep those the pedal where it is, and we're gonna just lift one leg. Lift the other leg.

Lift one leg. You obviously have to put one down before you lift the other one. Right? So we're doing a little baby marching here, just feeling. Can you hold the spring with one? Can you hold the spring with one? One more time. Two feet down, come all the way up, and we're going to change to the toe position. So I'm gonna recommend guessing where you think your feet need to be. Use your hands on the pedal, push the pedal down, I'm looking for at the bottom this slightly prehensile foot so your heels drop down, your toes wrap around the bar if you can.

And then you wanna feel that you're sitting equally on both sides of your pelvis, and you can sit upright. That's where your feet will remain as you come up. We press down, feel the feet, drop at the bottom, and we're gonna come up. The heels have to lift a little bit. Try not to push out through the feet, but to go down.

Nice. And up. Now let's add that arm movement. So we're gonna go down arms forward. That actually helps you use your abdominals a little bit. Arms forward gives you a little bit of a change in center of gravity, heart open. Arms forward, swimming through the space, see if you can get your elbows to be nice and straight.

Honestly, somebody could do this with little hand weights in their hands, and that would add a little challenge to the arms. I didn't think about that. Next time. Let's do two more here, please. One, both legs working equally.

And two, come halfway up stay. Feel both sides of your pelvis grounded. And we're just gonna march those legs a couple times. Feel the support, feel the the translation in your body without movement. So this is a little bit of cross patterning in the body.

Your body has to respond to the lifting of the one leg, but there shouldn't be a lot of movement. Good. Two feet are down. We're gonna come all the way up. Let's put the feet wide on the pedal as wide as you feel comfortable, but certainly you still wanna be on the padded pedal part, not the dowel. And then once again, with your hands assisting, push down, and make sure you're happy with your position down here so you don't slip. Feel that you're sitting equally on both sides of your pelvis, and we're gonna lift and press down.

Let's add the arms swimming forward and swimming open. Swimming forward. So when I push down with my legs, my arms come forward. That helps bring you a little bit more into your front core. And as you take them back, it brings you a little more into your back core. So think about that.

Your abdominals and your back muscles are both part of your core, if you didn't already know that. Check-in and make sure that both legs are working equally. We'll do one more here. This is a doozy halfway up. Can you do a baby on weight?

A baby on weight. And if you can actually lift your foot up great, I find really, that is a big challenge for me to organize that on one side. But with practice, I get better at it. So if you don't feel comfortable with your foot lifting up, just don't. Just play with pushing into one foot without actually lifting.

And you notice my arms are just kinda playing around. I'm responding to the movement, keeping my eye gaze forward one more time. Good. Push all the way down and come all the way up. Now I'm gonna ask you to do a little bit of single leg work. If you need to get up and change your spring, you'll change your spring. You'll just take it down one or two.

I'm gonna keep mine the same, and I'm gonna ask you to try. So with your feet, so your heels are on the pedal, when you push all the way down, check-in and make sure you're happy with your position. Let's stay there. Okay? We're gonna put the hands behind us and push into push powerfully into the one to chair. Good. Let's see if we can first lift the right leg up. Press it to straight, push through right arm as you go 10.

Nine. I want you to use the right arm eight with the right leg straight, seven, and six. And five good. If you're wearing out, that's good. And two, I think I counted correctly, if not do one more. And we'll do the other side, please. Okay? Push down with two legs.

Challenge yourself to push a little bit, sitting nice and tall. Left arm pushes harder into the table as that left leg lifts up, and we're gonna count together one. And two. Feeling the height three. And four. Nice spring.

And five. And six. Seven. And eight, and nine, last one, ten. Beautiful. I don't know about you, but my legs are working. Let's go ahead and step off here.

For the next sequence, one spring is all you want. If you felt like the one spring up high was too heavy for you, you're welcome to take yours down one. I'm going to keep mine the same. This time, instead of being close to the one to chair, I'm gonna step back. So I'm about a foot and a half, two feet away. The way I'm going to decide how far away I need to be is can I just touch the edge of the one to chair with my toe? Now I'm gauging in my peripheral vision where that is, and I'm gonna stand.

Arms can be anywhere. Let's put them out to the side maybe for fun. Tap the edge of the reformer, change tap. Tap now the pedal without looking at it. Change tap your balancing.

Change tap the platform without looking at it if you can. And then go down again to the bottom, tap, tap the foot bar, pedal, and then tap up above tap up above. Now stay for a moment. We're going to put our heel on the foot bar. Ideally, you're not going to look if you have to. You do, but see if you can find your balance on your left foot. Lift your right leg to bent knee like you're marching. Flex your ankle.

See if you can straighten your leg and just rest it on the foot bar, it should be there or a foot pedal, depending on what you wanna call it. So my heel is on that pedal. I'm going to bend my knee only as much as I can without leaning forward. And straighten my knee. It's a little bit.

And do that again. Standing tall, and one more time. Hold. You're gonna keep that knee bent, and you're gonna rotate around toward the leg that's bent. Let your arms respond. And come back through.

Do that again. Keep the leg arrangement the same. Use that hamstring connection to help you feel balanced as you do the rotation. There we go. Three times, stretch the leg to straight, put your foot down, feel, maybe shake out for a moment, feel grounded on the other leg. That's the right one. Lift your left leg to that, ninety, ninety position flexed ankle, find your balance.

Try not to look for it, see if you can find the pedal. I'm enjoying the view today. It's beautiful. My arms are outstretched because it feels good. I'm gonna bend the knee only as far as I can, keeping my weight grounded over my standing leg three times. Here's two. And here's three stay.

So I keep that arrangement. I'm staying grounded as I rotate around, back to center. Feel that hamstring working around. Of the leg that's on the pedal and one more time around. Back to center. Arms can come down.

Feed can be grounded. Same alignments, so we're a little further back than we originally first were. And we're gonna hinge the hips flat back. Reach forward and see if you can touch the one to chair. Hopefully, you're able to.

If you can touch the one to chair, put your hand flat there. Stick your tailbone back and up, engage your abdominals, shrug the shoulders away from your ears, be here. First in this position, decide am I safe and I comfortable? You could stay here. You don't have to do anything more. If you accept the challenge, right hand goes down to the pedal, and you're gonna push the pedal down to where it feels like you can have that arm more underneath you. Good.

Now you're gonna take that same right leg and you're gonna extend it back for me. If you feel safe, you've got a hand and a leg lifted in a straight line. Good. Now if you feel safe, you're going to extend your spine a little bit flattening, look forward. You're gonna tap your hand in your foot and round your body. The pedal will come up a little. You're gonna look forward reaching down, maybe going down a little bit if you want, and you're gonna tap the the, platform if you need to, foot comes to the floor around your back.

And again, extend. If you can keep your hand up and your foot up the entire time even better, and one more time, extend eye gaze is crucial, changing. Put your hand down, put your foot down, come up, two hands are on the the platform area. Restretch your back out here, sort your abdominals, feel your shoulders. Let's do the other side.

So tailbone backing up. Left hand finds the pedal. You're gonna push yourself down, nice straight arm, and you're gonna feel that. Organize. You're gonna find your left leg, and you're gonna reach it back and up, and you're gonna find your balance here.

Good. Now if you would choose to choose to accept the mission, you float that other hand up, and it stays up, comes down whenever it needs to. Okay? So as you go into extension, you're gonna look forward with your eyes in the direction of the platform. And as you round, the hand and the foot tap, the pedal comes up a little, you round your back, and you extend forward. And round. I would use the exhale here if you're looking for queuing on breath and forward and round and forward. And one more time, we're gonna round in don't be shy about using your hand when you need to for balance. You can see me doing it if you happen to be watching me.

Put your hand down, bring the pedal up, put your foot down, Tip your tailbone backing up, transfer your weight back to your legs. If you feel safe with this nice flat back, one hand to hip, other hand to hip, and stand tall. You can always bend your knees if you need to. Let's keep this arrangement here for one final thing with your knees a little bit, out to the side, your toes out to the side. We're gonna see if we can bend comfortably, reach into the and hold the pedal with your hands without sliding the one to chair without leaning on it too much, can you begin to use that just as a little bit of an assist to come into a deep squat? Now if you're not able to go all the way down because of knees or hips, you might just stop here at this about 90 degree bend and just kinda use that little bit of support to help you learn how to go a little deeper.

But if you are comfortable coming all the way down in your joints, be here for a moment. You're gonna use a little downward press through the pedal to pull your shoulders back and look forward. So I'm not asking you to pull the one to tear toward you. Just a little downward press to look forward. And then down. A little downward press to look forward and look down one more time.

A little downward press to look forward and down. Now You can use your hands to help you, but if you find that you're able to stand up on your own, that'd be wonderful. Let's move on to a different arrangement here, some arm work. So coming to the other side of the wonder chair, we're just using this as an assist for, a plank position moving into some push ups. So my hands are on the corners. Now if I do too much pushing, my one to chair is gonna move.

So I hope you're on a sliding surface, and I want you to try not to let your one to chair move. My hands are underneath my shoulders, so I'm pushing myself to straight. But simultaneously, I need to feel the pull of my shoulders away from my ears so I'm powerfully in my back body here. So now we're gonna try to keep it just like that as we bend and straighten the elbows a few times. Bend and straighten the elbows.

So if you feel that your one to chair wants to move, if you're pushing it away from you, you don't have the pull enough. One more time, we're gonna stay here. Feel the back of your heart is open. Your head is back where it belongs. Keep your left hand as your standing hand.

The other hand comes to your chest. You open your body. You look up. You unwind. Put your hand down. Other hand to your chest, you open your body, you look up. And let's do that with a little more energy, open end reach, and come down.

Open end reach, and come down. A couple more open end reach, feel that arm back connection. Reach. And just one more time each side. Reach. And reach.

Good. Let's walk back snuggle up next to your one to chair. So I'm sitting on this, like, back corner. Okay? I need to put my standing foot, which facing this direction is currently my left foot, and my other leg is, forward a little bit. My standing foot is a little wedged back in the corner, so I can feel against my thigh the, the I think I called this a reformer.

I can feel the one to chair wedged up against my thigh. Here we go. So we're gonna stand on that leg for me, for please stand on that leg, lift the other leg up, find balance. That's all. Right? We're just doing that first. Then I'd like you to know where the one to chair is and have a seat.

Set all. That's all. And stand up. Good. So let's do that a couple times and stand up. So when I have a seat, I'm not actually resting, and I'm not actually shifting. I'm just feeling it. Right? Now have a seat and stay.

We're gonna feel that you're sitting on that part of the pelvis that's on the, one to chair here, and then really push the other knee to straight with the flexed ankle, and we'll do that a few more times. Squeeze that inner quadricep, little moment here to do some training for our knee health. Good. Two more. Good. Just one more. Now we're gonna keep this bent, relaxed front leg. We're gonna lift up through the body, arm goes up, reach over, pushing that leg that's on the mat in the direction of straight, squeezing the inner thighs without actually touching yet the pedal.

And then undo that, reaching up through the arm, up through the waist, squeezing those inner thighs to straighten the knee that was on the mat or the floor, and I might touch the pedal, but I'm not going to it yet. And come in. So just the transition is an exercise, up, tipping over, straightening the legs, squeezing both in her thighs. Now if you have connection to the pedal, you're gonna keep it. My other foot has stayed flat. I want you to try to keep it flat.

Rather than making it about going over, we're going up on the diagonal and then a little stretch. And it's not a lot of movement like this. A little stretch. Good. Two more times. So I'm going down.

And one more time, please? Dow. We're gonna come out of it. Bend that leg that's on the floor. Take your two arms down.

Notice which leg it's my right leg that was in front. That's the one that's gonna go on the pedal next. Are you ready? Just turn around and face the root the one to chair now. So I'm going to keep my standing leg on the one that is closest to the pedal here. My right leg was the one that was forward and it's gonna lift now. And I rest that foot right here on the pedal. Okay?

So first, just get your balance here. Stand nice and tall. You're gonna take your arms to the side if you want. That can be down. It doesn't matter. Let's do side. And then I'd like you to feel that you're pushing with your bent knee into the pedal to squeeze both inner thighs until you find the bottom and come up with control.

Squeeze both inner thighs, add a little rotation. Whoa. Come up. And squeeze add a little rotation. You can always put your hand down on the one chair if you need to. If balance is an issue for you. That's what we're working on here is balance and rotate around.

So as I push down with my pedal, I'm rotating in the direction of that side of the body that just pushed. Good. And we're gonna come out of that. Beautiful. And let's come back over to the back of our window chair here and have a little seat. Okay? So we're just gonna use this as a table to do some tricep dips. So hands come on the front on the corners and then slip your booty off.

So you're standing on your hands right now. Ideally, you could move your feet with ease. Many people when we do triceps do too much leaning back. Can you press your heart forward, keep your belly in? And can you feel this pressing forward as you bend down? And then feel once again, I'm not really standing on my legs too much.

I'm pressing forward and up with my arms. Let's go again. And forward and up. Good. Keep your gaze a little bit forward and up as well. And we'll do a few more here, forward and up straight elbows if you can. And one more, can you stay here? Two straight arms.

One foot goes out in front, till the leg is straight, heel, other foot out in front. So my ankles are flexed. I'm just resting on my heels, and I'm trying to levitate myself out of my legs. Let's see how well you're doing. Lift one leg up.

Lift the other leg up. Lift it up. Lift it up. You can't lift both at the same time. In case that wasn't clear. Good. Go ahead and rest that.

And let's go to the other side. That lateral flexion works. So we first are going to nestle your standing foot up against the one to chair, and then stand up tall. The other leg is kinda bent out in front of you. And then you wanna try to keep connection to the one to chair with the leg that standing.

That's one of the goals here. So we're getting a little more inner thigh work. Now can you lift the leg that's in front? That's my left leg into a lifted position. Keep it like that and see if you can find a soft seat. And stand up.

And there is always one side that's harder than the other. And depending on what you're doing, sometimes it may not always seem like intuitive. It might be might seem surprising to you. Have a seat and stay. So I have the seat of my leg that is bent right now, and I'm gonna kick it to straight and bend. Kick it to straight.

Try to get that inner quadricep to work. Kick it to straight, two more kick it to straight, hold, and one more kick it to straight. Relax that. Now up and over, so the leg that's on the floor, that same arm lifts up. We reach over, reach over, reach over. You might feel that you can touch right away the pedal, but I don't want it to be about the pedal. I want you to see where you can go.

And then try to straighten that standing leg a little bit if you can, squeezing your inner thigh. Come back through. That's not gonna work for everybody, especially if you're tall. Up up up as you go over, you're straightening that leg, reaching and stretching, using your body for that transition. And one more time, we're going up and over.

Now put your hand on the pedal, and you're gonna go into a bigger stretch pushing down and coming just to the top and down. When I say the top, I mean where the spring stops. Good. And just one more there. A nice little side body stretch, and we come back through and back to center stand up. So the leg that was forward is the one that's gonna be driving the pedal down. I'm gonna find a spot where it feels kind of like I'm gonna be starting on a little bit of a tight rope. So I don't wanna be too twisted up.

So my standing leg is just a little next to my other foot, basically. Find your balance first. Minby. Standing nice and tall. You can use your hand if whenever you need to.

We're gonna push down through that leg. Whoo. A hard work. Squeeze the inner thighs and come up. So we're gonna push down, squeeze the inner thighs, and come up. I put my finger down on this side. Push down, squeeze the inner thighs, add the rotations.

So you're rotating in the direction of the leg that just put the pedal down, and control up, and we'll go again. Rotate your upper body, squeeze your inner thighs, see where you can go. So what I love about that rotation is it really makes me feel my inner leg a lot more. Makes me use some things that I don't wanna have to think about using. You just want them to show up for you.

Last one here. Rotate around. Bam. And we'll unwind that. Okay. Some back extension is coming next.

So to get on to this, you wanna put your pelvis right in the middle of the platform and bring your hands down. So they feel like they're basically underneath your shoulders. But depending on your height, you're gonna have to modify. The key is to make sure that you feel your pelvis about the middle of the platform. Your legs can be together if you'd like. I prefer mine to be a little separated.

And I prefer to think a little bit more about this slight internal rotation position. So I encourage you to give that a go. Tuck your belly in, push your arms to straight, but pull your shoulders into socket here. So you're actively trying to use your back muscles in this position for sure. And then here we're going to inhale, please, and lift up. I am purposefully not making my legs neat and come down. I am purposefully trying to find a little bit more opening through my backside. Lift, lift, lift chest is open.

And, and if you prefer to bring your legs together and go into external rotation, that's okay. Lift, And I'm gonna come to center or neutral, I should say. So a straight back, yeah, we're gonna keep that. Can you feel your pelvis? Try to feel your hip bones first. So feel your right hip bone, your left hip bone, your right hip bone, your left hip bone, right, hip bone, left hip bone, and notice what wants to happen with your hands when you do that. Do you wanna kinda march a little with your hands with your hip bones? Feel that. See if that makes sense to you.

If that doesn't make sense, come back to this. Try it again. Hopefully, it'll make sense. Two hands down? Good. Flip yourself off. There's no pretty way really to do that.

You just kinda have to slip a little bit. And let's finish with a beautiful stretch. So my knee is gonna line up with the corner of the one to chair. And the key here is not about making a perfect picture. What I really want is for you to find your way.

Where do you need to be? So you feel like you can stand on your thigh, your leg that is on the one to chair. K. So I'm here, and I'm gonna tip and move until I feel like I can be here with my body weight over this leg, and I'm beginning to feel stretch. But actively, I wanna be able to with ease, lift up my back foot. It's just there for balance or just to relax. I'm not using it. Okay? So stay in that relationship, whatever it is, and ground into that relationship to lift your eye gaze up and to fold your eye gaze over.

So eye gaze, lifting your body up and folding over to sprees. So I'm staying grounded the whole time, lifting up and folding over. That's the first option. So I'm gonna lift up a little bit. Now I'm gonna rotate around in the direction of pedal.

I'm looking at it, and then I'm gonna unwind. I'm gonna rotate in the direction of the pedal. I'm looking at it and unwind. This time, rotate to the pedal, decide if I can reach down using my body, I don't care what your other leg is doing. Get my hands nestled up onto the pedal, and I'm going to push down into the stretch.

Think of this as stretching the leg that's on the platform and rounding up look forward. Rounding go down, and rounding up look forward. Just one more time. Down, rounding up, look forward. Carefully, try to use your body to come out of that. And what I hope you felt was an experience in your leg as much as an experience in your core. So let's try the other side.

So the knee is on that kind of front corner ish, and then organize yourself because both legs are gonna be a little different. And so that you feel like you can stand on that leg. Yeah? Feel that. And then kinda get used to that position and see if you can kinda lean in and out and notice when you lean in and out with your body. It doesn't matter what you're doing.

You're staying with the same amount of weight on that leg. What you're actually doing is using that muscle in this range of motion, which is good. That tissue, I should say. Now rotate around, look at the pedal and undo it. And the other foot can be resting or not. It doesn't matter. Rotate around and stay Now we're gonna see if we can get our hands on the pedal.

And if you can't get your hands on the pedal, you know, you could just put them on the, on the reformer. This is not a reformer. It's a Wounded chair on the platform here. I forgot to say that on the other side. Apologies. So here, you can push down into the pedal, which is quite a lovely stretch, and then you're gonna round up, push into the pedal a little bit and look forward.

Do that again. If you were holding the the little platform here, you could just bend your elbows and just come down a little bit. And then push yourself up. It's basically the same move, same idea. One more time, we're gonna go down. Just like we did on the other side, only if it feels good. And round and roll up, use your body to get out of it.

And let's just do one final roll down the same way that we began. With your two feet underneath your hips, take a breath up, feel your body, sense where you are, feel your balance, roll yourself down, you'll catch that pedal on your way down and push into a deep forward fold. It is okay to lift your shoulders up by your ears. Can you feel what it feels like when they're not by your ears, but in a comfortable way? And rounding up and gently down.

Feel the flow, the breath, the ease. Yes. You're working, but you're also calming. This time, round all the way up Stand nice and tall. And with your eyes gently closed, breathe in and breathe out. Perhaps turn your palms open.

Breathe in, and breathe out. Feel the weight equal on your feet, awaken your eyes. And I thank you so much for playing with me today. I'll see you again soon.