Class #1185

First Time Session

55 min - Class
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Michele Larsson shares what she would do in a client's first session in this Mat workout. She starts with a warm up that works on organizing the body and releasing tension, and then she goes into basic Mat exercises. She also teaches her client how important proper placement is for each exercise.
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Okay. Casey, tell me about your self, about what you do for fitness and anything that I should know concerning your body. I've done polarities. I've taken about a dozen mat classes, maybe a few more. So I'm still getting used to some of the exercises, but I've been improving each time that I do them. I've been doing yoga for many years.

I like to go running and walking. So fitness is definitely something that I incorporate in my life most days, if not every day. I had a baby one year ago, so there was a period of time where I wasn't, um, as active and took some time off. And I think my body's changed a little bit since then. But um, you know, I'm, I'm pretty physically fit and coordinated. Well, let's just start simply by line on your back with your head in this direction. Your pelvis here, your hips at 90 degrees to your pelvis and your knees at 90 degrees to your, Yep. There you go. And your feet on the wall. Okay. Okay.

So it's just a little bit of warmup or organization as we can call it. Right. And I tend to always do this with people because I've found that sometimes if you're working really hard, you begin to build up tension. You just take a moment and rock yourself, okay? You can release that tension. Okay? So all we're going to do is we're going to do some just fundamental movement fundamentals thing. Okay? Number one, we're just going to start with a small coccsyx curve and over curve.

So you just curl your tailbone off the floor by pressing into the wall on both feet, tiny and roll back down and go the other way. Very tiny. So you dropped your tailbone down into the floor and your low back will arch good. And so as you curve the tail off the floor, you exhale. That's big enough. And as you inhale, you go the other way, dropping your tail down into the floor. And as you do this, you feel what movement it offers to the spine. Does that make sense? What it suggests that your head do, your spine does, et Cetera, but you're motivating from your hip sockets or your tail. One more and the other way. Then come back into the center, whatever that means for you, and just relax.

Now we're going to gently do one knee to chest. And as you do one knee to chest, I want you to, before you move, to think of dropping the vertebral from the bottom of the ribs to the naval. Gently imagine they drop into the floor so your knee or your hip folds in, your knee comes to your chest. Okay. And you do it on an exhale. So you inhale to think about it. Exhale, think of dropping those vertebra and bring this knee up. Stay here as you inhale. Exhale, drop those vertebra and put the foot back on the wall. That's it.

And again, what you want to do it on the exhale. So stay here, inhale and exhale and put the foot back on the wall. So do your other side. Inhale to prepare the movement. Exhale, drop the knee into the chest. That's it. Inhale to stay there. Exhale and place it back. Good. Do this one more time on this side.

No. What's your you're going to do is just gently place your hands on the sides of your hips and your hip and very gently you're going to do the same thing and see if you feel any movement in the pelvis. Okay? So you can start with whichever leg and come back and then the other leg that's better and come back. Yeah, you can generally tell if when you go back onto the wall with your legs and you stop moving, if there's a little EP in your pelvis that you've moved your pelvis, but you did, you did the first time when you moved your left leg. Okay, great. So now all you're gonna do is you're going to do what eve would call a hip escalator, but your feet are on the wall, so your arms are by your side and you're going to lift or curl your pelvis, whichever one feels best for you and come up just as far as you want.

Doesn't have to be a big move. Inhale at the top, exhale and come down. Imagine that your spine is a hammock and one vertebral goes down after the neck. Inhale at the bottom. Exhale, lift and curl. Inhale at the top.

Exhale and start way up here and go all the way down. Inhale the bottom. Exhale, curl. Come up a little higher. Inhale at the top. Exhale n roll down and really want to, you try to sequence equally all the way, right? Okay. Now I'm going to have you stop on your way down. Okay, so you're going to inhale to prepare. Exhale, curl your tail up off the floor, coming up as high as you comfortably want to. Inhale at the top.

Exhale coming down. Stop right there. Inhale again. Exhale and come a little for there. Down all the way. Yeah. Good. And again, inhale to prepare. Exhale, curl the pelvis.

Come all the way up. This is your last one. Inhale at the top. Exhale. Coming down all the way down on one. Nice, long exhale. Very nice. I had you stop it to do that sort of threshold breathing cause you had a little zig in your pelvis where you came down. Boop. It was a little like a corner. Okay, so you're going to do a one legged bicycle.

You're just going to bring your knee into your chest, straightened towards the ceiling and lower towards the wall. Slide it down to meet the other foot. Bring it in, straighten it towards the ceiling and slide towards the wall. Again, you're trying to be very still in the pelvis, no movement side to side. And pick a breath pattern that works for you. One more and come back down. Good. Other side. Now did you see the adjustment you made? Did you feel it? Yeah.

Which meant that you were moving, you were tucking your pelvis slightly in order to do this move rather than letting your pelvis just be heavy and using your so as to get all of this done. So be a little aware of that on this side. So the left knee comes in, you go to the ceiling, you lower towards the wall. That's it. And then towards the ceiling and lower towards the wall. Yeah. So you, you need to feel that the side that you're standing side has a little bit of pressure into the wall. Okay. Two more. Okay. And come down and relax. Yeah. Do you feel the difference?

So you have a little more stability through there. So those are just cues that you could watch when you're working out on your own as to whether you have a little jiggle when you stop moving. Okay? Now we're going to do something called snaking feet. So you put your feet together like this on the wall. Knees are bent and you're going to move your toes and your knees out. And then your heels out, knees together, toes out, knees out.

No, you keep walking out, toes out, knees out, heels out, knees together. There you go. One more step out. You Go, heels down. There you go. Now Walk in, come in and in the black bottom from the twenties put your heels together. You don't know the black bottom dance? No. That's the flapper thing, right? Absolutely. So just think the flapper thing. So you'd go out and you go, there you go and you go out. One more in, one more out. You've got the yeah. And Walk Yourself back in.

That's it. Yes. Now think of it for your ankles. So as you go out, you really feel that the a heel rotate and then when you come the other way, you really rotate on the ball of the fit foot. So you really working through the feet also. So open out Orient. Okay. And then go the other way and then rotate on the ball of the foot and then rotate on the heel as you open one more, come back in, rotate on the heel, rotate on the ball of the foot that rotate on the heel row. That's it. And again, there you go. That's it.

And out and coming in. Yeah, snaking feet or black bottom. That is fun. I know. Now she had something called inchworm and basically all of this is to really keep your feet alive. Cause even though we're going to probably do mostly mat work, you still want to feel you've got feet at the end of your legs. Okay? So inchworm is exactly what it says. You just inch your feet up like doing this so you, you lift the metatarsal and and pull the heels towards your toes.

So come up so your feet are down, lift your metatarsal, move your heel up, but keep it on the wall and now release the toes up and move the heel up towards that and release. It's hard work. This, yes, you're, you're uh, this should lift. That's it. Lift this lifts that's at the heels. Don't come off. They slide up. There you go. Slide up. That's, and now come down underneath and release underneath and release. Yes. We don't use the bottom of our feet, do we? No one does. We put them in shoes. Now going up.

Inchworms so you're trying to inch your way up the wall like this. That's it. There you go. And coming down Caterpillar, it's like a caterpillar. It's like an inch worm poop boom. Right? So you're working whole, the bottom part of the feet underneath the metatarsal and the other arch again, I'll let you go and come down. Good. And then just stay all the way down so they feel a little something don't think.

And she had what she called slapping feet. So you try and slap your feet against the wall, but make them sole loose at the ankle that they'd be like your wrist in hand. That's difficult, right? But you want to get them like this? Yes. And then come back and his head. Yeah, it's sort of fun and it stimulates the whole bottom of the foot. Okay. Now we're going to turn our attention to doing an upper body curl.

So the first thing you want to do is take one hand behind your head to use your arm to help roll your upper body up off the floor. And then hold on a minute. Put your other hand on your lower belly. Okay. So as you roll your upper body up off the floor, and we'll try it first on an exhale, make sure that your belly does not push your hand up. Your hand stays where it is or it even drops down. And after baby, this can be challenging. Okay, so inhale to prepare. Exhale, curl the upper body up off the floor looking at the legs and the hand is really still, and the ribs draw. Beautiful. And then come back down. Yes. And again, exhale.

Now you're good at this. So do it on an inhale. It changes the way you use your head, doesn't it? Yeah. And again, on an inhale, now come back down. Now go back and do it on an exhale. Okay. Put, bring your hands down for a sec. Okay. No, what you have is a joint right up here. Okay.

And that joint is the one that has to move, lengthen, and pivot very first. So you have to come up. But drop the chin slightly down. Don't pull the Chin in. Just think length. You feel that what I'm doing now, drop the chin, keep dropping the chin and come up. Keep dropping. Drop through here. Yeah. And come back down.

Okay. You were overdoing a good thing. You were overdoing the lift and then the rock. So it's a combination between a lift and a tilt. Yeah. So you have to tilt, lift or lift, tilt or whatever. Right? So try this as a comment. Put your hand.

Interlace your fingers underneath your head with the heel of your hand, against the occiput and down. Relax. Now on an inhale, squeeze the occiput, the lower skull bones with the heel of your hand, and then on the exhale float up off the floor. So on the inhale, squeeze out on the exhale, come up and let the ribs come down. There you go and then roll back down. Yeah, you feel the difference? Yeah, cause that's squeezed, releases it and it allows you to have that little bit emotion way up top and the elbows can actually come a little forward. I know this is everybody there. You see all of that changes. Now you have a little too much in the head, but that's pick on you too much, right?

If you try to keep your elbows open, then you're trying to keep your scapula open and do a flat position. As you curve your spine. Brain doesn't know what you're doing. Are you curving my spine? If you curve the spine, the Scapula will need to come around your ribs. So the first thing you do is you squeeze the base of your skull, exhale and coming up. Let the Scapula come forward and just drop here. How does that feel? It feels pretty good. Yeah.

One more for your memory and come down. Yeah, very natural. Yeah, very natural. I mean, there's a lot of flection in philosophies, you know, make it as comfortable as possible. Okay? What you're gonna do now is you're going to slide out a little bit. Your legs are going to be flat on the Mat, but your feet are going to be flat against the wall. So you just scoot yourself out. Arms are down, you don't have to worry about, and the legs are flat on the Mat and the feet are flat against the wall. So what's your feet against the wall here and push yourself out. There you go.

All the way down. That's it. I call this horizontal standing. Okay? You're standing against the wall. You just happened to be horizontal. Okay? What you're doing is you want to be able to do these roll-ups and Keke weight equally into both legs. Okay? So this is letting you know what's going on. Okay?

So take your hands and place them underneath your skull. The base of the skull. Right? So you could do this. That squeeze thing can relax. The elbows on and then he'll squeeze the base of your skull, roll your upper body up off the floor and look down your body and out between your feet. That's far enough. Don't come up any higher than you would for hundreds, which you probably know a little bit about, right? Okay. So you just curve your upper body like an apostrophe.

There you go. Kress equally into both feet and make sure there's no rotation going on here. Perfect. So this is the way you check yourself, because you can't exercise with it in a mirror box, right? So you use the wall as your mirror. You're starting to get back into that head thrusts a little bit.

Keep the head back in the hands. Squeeze the base of the skull. Float the head up. There you go. And Nice. Yeah. Okay, good. Alright, so just bend the knees into the chest. Feet flat. Good. Bring your arms down by your side and you remember hundreds, the famous hundreds. You're gonna roll the upper body up off the floor, finding that link. Good.

And now begin to beat the arms and inhale for five beats and exhale for five feet. Inhale. Now when you get to thirties slightly, begin to straighten the knees just to their right. And this is 40 all right? Then straighten the legs to the ceiling.

There you go. Still dropped back through here. There you go. Yes. And then lower the legs a little bit. So this is the way you progress yourself into doing full hundreds. Two more. Lower the legs a little more.

I think this is your hundreds, right? And Roll into a bowl and come down all the way down. Head down. Good. [inaudible] yeah, so that's your progression, right? Knees in. Be careful with that. Leading with your Chin a little. Okay, so again, even though the head isn't, the hands aren't behind the head, still imagine that you squeezed and the head actually has something to rest on. Okay? So just let your knees go side to side for a minute. Just easy and light.

Okay. Roll to the side and sit up with your feet against the wall. So you're sitting up facing the wall with your feet against the wall. Sit up normal. We're going to do with your feet and your legs straight with your feet against the wall. There you go. Right? So again, we're using the wall to do a roll up or a roll down to begin with.

So as you start to roll away from the wall, your heels, it's like crash into the microphone. Your heels will come away from the wall. Does that make sense? But you want to try and keep the ball of the foot or the toes at least touching the wall so that you have equal weight on both feet. Okay? Okay. So first thing you want to do is just take your arms out in front of you and on an inhale, round your spine and reach for the wall. Good. On the exhale, start back. Exhale, back to about here. Stay here on an inhale.

Exhale forward. Drop the heels into the wall, reach for the wall and stay round. Whoa. Stay around and inhale back. So this toxin underneath, there you go. Stay here on an inhale. Exhale over my arms. Slide those heels into the wall and stay round. Good.

And rolling back a little deeper. Each time that stay there on an inhale, there's your challenge, right? Exhale, come up and over like those beautiful waves out there and you reach them back. Beautiful. And rolling back a little deeper this time. So you go all the way down. Get this down on the ground. If you can, inhale into the back, exhale up and overreaching the heels into the wall. That's it. Staying round all the way down.

Good arms overhead. How does that feel? Good. Yeah. Good. Is it a little harder than normal with my, you know, through my sit bones, my toes to get my mic to this? Yeah. Where you just actually flex through here. Yeah. So it keeps all this organized. Okay. So try a cup full roll-up. So you bring your arms forward, your head forward, and you have to pretend to reach into the heels there. You Go. Up and over.

And I don't straighten your spine. Yes. Stay round. Yeah. And roll down. So there's basically no straight spine in the roll up. I learned originally for me. Yeah. It's hats it, there you go. Yeah. And one more arms coming forward.

Think of lengthening those heels into the wall. It gives you a little bit of anchoring to [inaudible] and coming back down. Very nice. Good? Yeah. Okay. Bring your arms back down. We're not going to do a roll over, but we're going to do a leg circle. So bring scoot up just a hair. So the heels are against the wall again and bring your right knee into your chest. So your left foot, your left leg, the left side of your body is your standing leg. All right.

You're on the left side. This is doing all the work. Okay. So put your hand here one hand and just make a little stirring motion with this. Yeah, that's it. Now you want to find the independent part of the hip fry word. Yeah. And Go the other way was just easy.

Good. Now you can put the arm down and slowly straighten this leg to the ceiling. The right leg. Now did you feel that movement change that happened there? Bend your knee and be backs and put your hand back here and do the stirring. Okay? You see how the pelvis sits comfortably? The abdominals are dropped in.

There's nothing else. As you go to straighten the leg. Don't change this. This is foundation. Okay? Foot reaching. The wall is standing. So straighten this leg only as far as you can and to not change that. Put the leg up there, right?

That's it for now. This is the position you're going to do your leg circles in so it's not completely straight. And now just circle gently again, reaching with this leg into the wall and hollowing out your abdominals. Good. And other direction you'll work on getting straight without pulling it out of the joint, letting it drop into the joint. Does that make sense? Great. And then just bend your knee, take your left hand on the knee and take the leg across the body and just put a twist in your spot.

So basically what I'm showing you is how to check your body for misalignments that happen when you're struggling to do a certain form or reach a certain look. Right? Okay. Come back, other side, leg straightens into the wall. Other leg comes into your chest. Do a little niesters to begin with. You can use your left hand if you like, and this you don't, don't want to involve the pelvis at all. So you have a tendency on this side to rock a little more. So you might have to make a stirs smaller and then bring the arm down and now slowly straighten this leg to the ceiling without it gripping up. Good. And now the circles legs hard to keep this from going, isn't it? [inaudible] and other direction, but that's the goal. Okay? Bring the knee into the chest. Take the right hand on the left knee and bring the knee across the body just to put us a spiral in your spot. Full leg circles.

Have a spiral in them where you taking to leg all the way over and you'll let your body and you swing around. I just took it out because I'm pretending you're rank beginner even though you're not. Okay, so bring both knees up to your chest, put your hands on the knees, put them on this way. You're going to do a real eve gentry thing called rocking. It's like you're the bottom of a rocking horse. So your legs, your elbows are straight. You just drop your feet into the floor and you roll your upper body up off the floor. Now in this position, you rock back and forth without bending your elbows or going down. So where are you going to find the momentum to rock back and forth?

So you're only rocking on the mid part of the back. Like this a cool part, isn't it? Yup. Yup. Don't change your eyes. Don't change anything. You're the bottom of a rocking horse. And off she goes. There you go. Now Pelvis, gums. Whoa. Look at the difference there. Oh, that's baby. I bet. Huh? That's it. Yes. So you're going into that a place that goes clunk, clunk, right?

When you normally do rolling, likable, the clone clunk stop. You find that and you try and round it out and rock in it, just like a rocking chair. And then you find that sense and come back and relax. You know pinball machines where you chew, right? They're like a little wet. All weighted balls and some sort of metal.

Yeah, you just stick one in your mind, in your imagination inside. And you wrote to the top of the ribs down the pubic bone and top that gives you your sense of rocking. Okay. Okay. Come all the way up. Scoot back just a hair. Cause we're on a table here. And then do rolling like a ball. Okay, so we're going to do, to begin with is we're going to do stage two. Rocking would be stage one and ease way of doing things.

Rock and roll was stage. So put your hands underneath here and we do real. No, no. You really can put your whole arm wrapped around here. There you go. You get to use your legs. Oh, Oh yes. It's a real, no, no. So on an inhale, you roll back and let your feet go over your head and then bring your feet to your butt as you roll forward. There you go. So use your legs. So inhale back, exhale forward. Inhale back.

Exhale, forward. Inhale, back. That's it. Forward and back and forward. Yes. Giving you a little sense of the rocking. Yeah. Of the rolling before we actually get to full rowing a little easier. Makes it a little easier. Yeah.

So the challenged one is the rocking where you're walking around on the flat space and then the rock and roll is just for fun. Okay. So the next thing we're going to do is single leg stretch. So an ease way of approaching it. Lay back on your back. The knee that comes into the chest, the opposite hand is on the knee. Same hand is on the Shin, other leg is off the floor. Upper body's up off the floor. This leg is straight, elbows are nicely open.

See how the shoulder blades immediately dropped and the pressure that you put here is down into the hip this way. Do you feel that? Not towards you this way because, yeah, but down into the hip. Good. And you change. So you inhale, change hands. Exhale on the next leg. Yeah, yeah, no. Good. And exhale, eh. Inhale.

Nice. Keep those elbows open. Very formal and inhale and exhale. Last set and in, bring both knees into your chest and roll all the way down. Keep your knees up to the chest for double leg. Interlace those fingers. Place them back underneath your skull. Heads on the mat.

Relax your chin. There you go. Don't Tuck it in. Just let it be normal. Squeeze your base of your skull, float the elbows off the floor and roll your upper body up, bringing your elbows towards your knees so they really come in towards your knees to here. Now as you extend the legs, you open the elbows and you inhale so you extend the legs open. Don't change your head. Exhale and come in so your head stays right like this. All you do is open the elbows, extend the legs, inhale. There you go. Exhale and inhale and exhale. Inhale. Exhale, inhale and exhale.

Last one. Exhale, come all the way and rolled down. Release your head. Place your feet on the mat and let your knees go side to side. Fun, Huh. Okay. Now we get to do salt, so you're got to turn around. So you're facing out, sitting up with the legs strict, sitting up with the leg street.

Yeah. Good. Now if you were on the floor next to the wall, you could back up and put your legs back against the floor. But we have a little gap here, so not quite dead dangerous, but so open the legs too about the width of the mat. This is one of the hardest exercises to teach. Um, so I don't know what to say about it. It's actually we're going to do spine stretch. It's just where you reach forward out over the toes.

[inaudible] so I'm going to actually do a hands on. So take your arms up to shoulder height in front of you and you're just going to on an inhale, reach forward for your toes. And on the exhale you sit up tall stacking one vertebra, two contributors, stretching. That's it. Inhale, reach forward. Very nice. Exhale, stack. Inhale, reach forward over the toes. Exhale, staff.

Last one. Inhale, reach forward, exhale and that open your arms to the side and you're going to do a salt on an inhale. Rotate towards your right. Exhale, reach for the little toe and look back to your right hand. Come up, inhale and rotate the other way. Exhale, and I'm sort of in the way. There you go. And inhale up. Keep the weight equally on both sitz bones. Exhale. Inhale up. Exhale, round. Inhale up. Exhale, round. Inhale up. Exhale, all round.

Good. And the way Eve, he would always talk about this. I'll use you his little finger sowing off the little toe. You won't forget that, right? No. And then you turn and look at this hand, which is turned over this way. Right? And you feel Rad. The weight stays equally on both hips, right? So you inhale, you come back center, exhale, rotate to the other side. Good. Inhale, come back, center. Exhale, rotate to the other side.

One more. Each side, looking at the right hand and come up and look at the left hand as you go around. Good. And come up. Yeah, that works with the salt, the salt. Oh yeah, you remember it? No yelling. Yeah. So I saw all the toe. I remember this from too many years ago. So now you're going to do some extension work. So lie on your belly with your head in this direction. Since you've done yoga, you probably have quite a good Cobra, right? Yeah, yeah, pretty good. Okay, well let's do something a little different to begin with. To warm this up, place one hand on top of the other, and your forehead on your hands on your hand. There you go.

And move your hips a little to your left, a little bit and seat just a little bit to the left just to get you in the center of the Mat right now. One of the things that you need to connect in order to do any form of Swan, interestingly enough, are the back shoulder muscles here. So when you're in this position, you want to feel that this drops down and this drops down. There you go. So there's that connection into here. Okay. Now you can very gently lift your abdominals very gently, and the only thing I want you to do is turn your toes underneath you and slow. And now on turn your toes, Lisa.

I forgot to do something. Okay. Before we do anything. Just look forward and look at something here in the studio. Yeah, and come back down so you know what you're looking at. Okay. Now turn your toes underneath you and slowly straighten both knees, pressing into your heels. Press your heels away from the mall. That's it. And then bend your knees and do that again. As you straighten the knees, be sure for you that you support with your abdominals. You keep this gen small little connection.

And last one, good. Now on do your toes again and we will wiggle your pelvis. Come back to the center, pull your abdominals up, pull your toes underneath, straightened both knees. You're going to take both of your heels to your right. Allow your pelvis to follow and just relax. Take a big sigh here. That's it, Casey.

And now come to the other side. Take both heels. Excellent. And take another side. One more each side. Let your pelvis follow. Don't make it happen.

Let it happen and sigh and come back the size actually rather important. So just go right and come back center. Now release your toes and again look forward. Any difference. Yeah, it's freer, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Come back down. This time I want you to, yeah. Press your hands, your forearms, and your arms slightly into the floor and lift your head and shoulders and your rib cage off the floor. So press down and lift. Good, and come back. Nice. And again. Inhale, lift. Don't, not quite so much in the head and down. And Inhale, lift. Beautiful.

And then inhale, lift. Connect all of this and down. Turn your head to one side. Take both arms down by your side, palms facing up, and lift everything off the floor. Gather up your abdominals, lift both legs, both arms, both shoulders and look straight down at the mat there. And turn your head the other way and come back down and relax. That's it.

And again, inhale, lift everything off the floor. Exhale, come down. Inhale everything down. Last one, everything and down. Nice. Sit back and rest position or child's pose, anything that feels good, I'll come forward onto your forearms. So you're in Sphinx, I call it spanx. You're on your belly and you're in a s like the Sphinx in Cairo. Yes, they're okay, everything's connected and all I want you to do is round your spine and look down.

So pull your belly off and look down on an exhale, pushing your hands away from you. Inhale and look forward. Gently pulling your elbows in. Exhale, looked down. Round. Inhale, look forward and pull. Exhale round. Nice. Inhale forward.

Last one. Exhale, round. Inhale and forward. Good. Come all the way down. Put your head on your hands all the way down onto your belly and shake your pelvis. Now you're going to come up for single leg kick, so you come back up to the Sphinx position. But in this instance, put one fist inside your other hand. There you go.

See you really press away from the ground and all you're going to do is kick your butt with your heel of one leg twice to go kick, kick and extend and kick. Kick and extent. Now hold on a minute. What I'd like you to do is slightly pull up through the deep abdominals here. Keep your hip bones on the mat and kick your kick again. So you go kick, kick, extend, kick, kick, extend. Keep the hip bones down and extend.

Kick one more set, kick, kick, extend. Last one, kick, kick, extended. Stay here. Bring your feet together, curl your toes underneath. And what you're going to do is take your pelvis and knees off the floor so you're in a forearm pushup type position. A plank. Here you go. And now do breath pattern. Go Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow. That's it.

Athens. Really pressing those forearms into the floor, reaching out through your heels and the top of your head and challenge all of this by doing one more breath. Good. And come all the way down. Relax and sit back and rest position around that spine. Okay, you're going to turn around, put your head that way.

Lie on your back. We're going to do crisscross obliques, right? So bring your knees into your chest. Interlace your hands and place them underneath your head. Roll your upper body up off the floor slightly. There you go.

And that don't lead with your chin. Let your head drop back into your hands. That's it. This whole thing. Air. Now bring opposite elbow to knee and straighten the other leg. So go other way. There you go. Reach and turn, reach and reach.

Good. And reach. And think of taking the elbow to the mat. Like speed it up and math and math. And that's it at four, three and two. And last one. Good. And roll down. Nice. Alright. Okay. Now we're going to roll over onto our side to do some side legs.

So again, we're going to use the wall. So you want to be close enough to the wall that the top leg or both legs can reach into the wall. Okay. Then slide all the way out and down. Okay. There you are. Perfect. Easy. Now Ben, the underneath knee, 90 degrees at the hip, 90 degrees at the knee. That's it. Hands in front of the chest, reached this leg up to be hip hikes. Now press into the wall gently and slide the foot up the wall and down the wall just a little bit. That's it. And down and, and uh, and, and um, see how honest this keeps us.

And up and up and up and down. Two more hand up and down. Good change legs. You can bend the top leg and put your foot on the floor here and hold onto it if you like. So I want the, if possible, the knee up in the air and the foot on the side, this foot there and reach the underneath leg into the wall and lift and lower. That's it.

Nice. Good. All right. Same thing on the other side. It's amazing. You have to really reach with that leg to hit the wall. So then you keep your spine straight. It doesn't all sag, et cetera. Right. Keeps you really steady. Right.

So find the both wall then underneath leg Benz first top leg is into the wall. So you have to, yeah, really reaching out long. All the ribs in. Just a hair. Good lifting lower. That's it. Keep it honest. You don't go below your hip heights. We used to do that a long time ago and fitness, but not anymore.

That's it. Two more. Good. And now bring that knee into your chest. Put that foot on the floor and reach this leg into the wall. That's it. So you really feel, again, like you're standing. It's not a big move. You're sliding that foot up and down the wall. That's it.

Two more. Last one. Good. Yeah. Now let's go back onto the other side for the [inaudible], more traditional Pilati sidekick. So you're on the other side. You can scoot up a little bit. So this, because you don't want to kick the wall at this point and come up onto your forearm. Okay? Yeah. And really take the arm here and it's in fairly close so you can lift your, that's it.

Now bring both legs to the front of the couch here, there. So you're on a diagonal. Now the first thing you're gonna do is sag into your ribs. Sagged down. There you go. Shoulder comes up, everything. Now exhale and press away. So the ribs lift up to the ceiling and you're out of that shoulder.

You feel that that's where you want to stay. You're too far in. This should be directly below your shoulder. There you go. That's it. So that's it. So there's your stance. So you actively have to use the whole back of the shoulder and the ribs. Lift the top leg off the bottom leg. And now just swing it forward and back.

I don't think you'll hit the wall. You're okay. That's it. Good. Yeah. So you're really holding this support. Good. Four more. Nice. Keith. This lifted. That's it. That's the hard part, right? The last one. Good.

Put both legs together. Slide all the way out onto your side again, this arm goes out, bend this top leg and grab your foot behind you and stretch your quadricep out. Just breathe. All right, other side. So the first thing is defined the stance and then segue into it and then push away from it. So you know what the sag is like, right? That's it. And then you press up.

You don't want to say that pop leg lifts off the bottom and you swing it forward and back. Keep pressing away from the four. That's it. Yeah. I think you have two more to meet. Come to eight. That's it. Last one. Good. And come all the way down. Slide out on your head, reach back and stretch the quadricep of that leg and just, okay, turn around and face that way and sit up on your butt so you're on your legs this way.

Come a little forward just so we don't bump into the wall a little more. Good. Now roll back and you're going to hold on underneath your legs like this, but both legs. So one leg there, the other leg is there and you just hold on way up here. So you almost cross your arms. There you go. So you're quite tight. You really pulled in here. Let your lower leg relax. Now extend one leg towards the ceiling and then let it drop their other leg. And when you extend, try not to pull out of your teaser position here, right?

So as you extend one leg, stay here for a sec. You want to bend it slightly. Bend this leg, this drop keeps dropping in. There you go. You feel that? And then let it release and other side, drop it in. There you go. And let it release up. Yeah. And now both legs. I was like, inhale, hold, exhale, release. Dawn. Inhale up.

Exhale, release. Inhale up. Exhale, release. Inhale up. Last one up. [inaudible] lower the legs a little bit so you can release the hands a little bit. Lower the legs, reach the arms out towards your feet and balance. Oh, teaser, yes. And come all the way up to sitting. Good. Alright, a seal. So come to the front end little bit. Put your feet together.

Hold your hands underneath this way and lift your feet this way and lift your feet off the mat. There you go. Now the thing about seals is you have to bark and clap. Okay. Okay, so clap your feet. One, two, three. And then roll back and come forward. And Clap. One, two, three and come up and clap, clap, clap, clap, boom. Last one, clap, clap, clap and go back. Good. And sitting up. Nice. That was great. Good.

You did really well. And there was a beginning math class. Yes. It used to kind of do the rocking, the rocking horse rocking because that'll begin to roll that out. Be careful on your rolling up. You know all the roles that you, you have a tendency to want straighten your spine. That is a way of doing it. But I think for now, for you, you should stay round all the way up and all the way back down.

What else did I notice? The head, right? So you do, you want to be careful, you don't want to Tuck your Chin in and get a lot of double Chins, et Cetera, right? Cause that's correct. But you sometimes are a little bit leading with your Chin forward this way. So remember this occiput heel of the hand squeeze to release the head to drop back and nod forward. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it doesn't, it doesn't do the, what I call the turtle head when it comes forward. So those are the three things other than that you did beautifully. Great.

Thank you. Well, thank you. Yeah.

Comments

2 people like this.
What a lovely session- such a wonderful teacher! She embodies gentleness, kindness, wisdom and humor: a recipe for learning with ease.
Yeong Cheol C
So great is the content. Thank you in Korea
I wanted to watch the video but a box pops up that says it is unavailable??
Thank you for a lovely "personal" training session. I will watch this many times because the cuing is wonderful for teaching beginners.
A fab class, very beautifully done, love the cueing. Thank you
(Edited by Moderator - Alex Parsons on April 1, 2022)
Rebecca ~ I am sorry you weren't able to watch this video. Try restarting you computer to clear away the processes that are running. If that doesn't work, you can email us at support@pilatesanytime.com for other options.
In awe. This may have been a beginner's session but I learned a lot about my body doing it - and felt it deeply in my core throughout. Wonderful to see and so very helpful as I go in to teach a course to older beginners. The way that Michele teaches teaser is so much fun. Inspired by Michele's mat class, I now ask people to imagine that they are kids kicking their legs under a chair that is too high for them. Everyone loves the notorious Teaser now. Thank you so very much Michele and Pilates anytime.
I am often in awe of Michele as well and this class with Kacie is no exception.
Fantastic class! Michele, one of the best decisions made was to do your teacher training. I am so proud to be associated with you! I could watch you teaching again and again and never stop learning. Thanks so much!
I would like to have a teacher like these one for my self, I love this class. Thank you Michele a lot. In mi country , Ecuador, we don't have access to good qualify teachers.
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