Punchbowl seated in Setting 3 using the Gyrotonic Wingmaster

Wingmaster Setting 3 – Punchbowl

Punchbowl from Setting 3 with the Wingmaster

There are 6 ways you can move your spine. One of them, circumduction, is a circular movement of the spine, either internally or externally. The idea of this exercise is that its an internal circumduction if your spine was twice as long.

With internal circumduction, your spine makes a circle around the mid-line of your body at the level of the solar plexus, with the two ends of your spine staying in the same place. This exercise does the same thing, but the shoulder girdle is what’s making the circle around the mid-line of your body.

Stepping Arch & Curl in Setting 2 with the Gyrotonic Wingmaster

Exercise of the Week: Wingmaster Setting 2 Stepping Arch Curl

Wingmaster Setting 2: Stepping Arch Curl

A central part of the Wingmaster material are the 7 primal movements: push, rotation, pull, gait, hinge, squat and lunge. Gait, or stepping, is a very important primal movement to teach as people get older. As people age they often feel less stable when walking, stop using their ankles in their gate and start shuffling, taking more and smaller steps. More steps mean more changes to trip and fall and that’s bad.

External body circles in Setting 1 with the Gyrotonic Wingmaster

Exercise of the week: Body circles with the Wingmaster

Full body circles with the Wingmaster in Setting 1

There are 6 spinal ranges of motion. In our Activities of Daily Living, circumduction is the movement we most likely use the least. That doesn’t mean it has no value. This motion is excellent for the health of the intervertebral discs.

Our discs don’t have any direct blood flow. Movement pumps our discs through a process called imbibition. While all the spinal ranges of motion help with this, the rolling of the discs between the vertebrae in circumduction ensures the whole circumference of the disc gets some pressure and release. Circumduction is also the only spinal range of motion that has no end. It’s a circle. Circles have no end.

Exercise of the Week: Wingmaster Setting 2, Reverse Tai Chi Standing

Wingmaster Setting 2 – Reverse Tai Chi Standing

I named this group of exercises “tai chi” because if you take the Wingmaster away and visualize the movement it kind of looks like a movement you’d see in actual tai chi. It’s not an actual tai chi movement, but bicycles or dolphin from the Hamstring Series aren’t actually how to ride a bicycle or how a dolphin moves either. It’s metaphors, man.This version is “reverse tai chi” because you’re spiraling away from your gaze. There is, obviously, a forward version as well.