FAQ & Site Info

About

Because the Wunda Chair exercises have different names depending on a teacher’s training, the movements are often described to clients for lack of moniker. As a result, the vocabulary of exercises for this piece of apparatus have not been codified like the Reformer or Mat. This is when I have found having a visual reference very helpful.

During my time as a young student of Kathy Grant’s, I was fortunate to have access to photographs of Joseph Pilates performing the original Wunda Chair exercises, the order of which she used when teaching. Kathy saved them from the Pilates Studio she ran at Henri Bendel’s department store from 1973 to 1988. When Kathy passed away in 2010, NYU was gracious enough to share these photographs with me on the strict condition I didn’t share them with anyone else.

For years, when visitors to my studio witnessed me use the vintage photographs as a guide while teaching, they would ask to copy them for use in their own practice, I had to decline these requests. It was my goal to create a poster available to others in search of a helpful resource that could more clearly define the exercises and the order. As such, I have replicated (to the best of my ability) the poses that Mr. Pilates documented in the original photographs taken many decades ago. To “read” the poster, you scan from left to right, which is, generally speaking, the order that I do and teach the exercises in.

- Blossom Leilani Crawford