Focus and Flow Mat

Let's start standing at the back edge of our mat and I, the last several Fridays I've been reading from return to life, which is the book that Joseph holiday's wrote. I'm not reading today. I just wanted to change course today and we'll probably get back to it in the next week or two. But much of what's been discussed thus far in the reading is, um, the importance of the breath, full inhalation, full exhalation of rolling of the spine for mobility, circulation, uh, purification of blood. So anything that we can do to pump, you know, the hundred that just, that circulation, that Pilates is so good for. Um, I'm not going to go fast today by any stretch, but I, I will try to find a flow that we move through today. Yes.

I mean, I know you got to do it with sort of the race expands that, but when we read them, wow. All of that. Well, yep. Great question. Great question. So just to the recap, just think about the lungs for a second. Where are they are, you know, Kathy uses this Q a lot. The lungs are in behind the rib cage. They're in the ribs. The ribs are the cage for the lungs. So the lung is not here. Yeah, right. We know it's not there, but when we exhale, it's an inclusion of everything from the upper ribs, the mid ribs, all the way down to the lower ribs and then even beyond down at the deep abdominals. But then the tra, the challenges were to inhale.

We don't want to inhale fill here, we inhale this area. So maybe think of a funnel, the shape of a funnel or a little tapering that we inhaled the top of the triangle funnel. Good Lloyd. Just even that. And then the exhale is narrowing down. Okay, so and it is, it's practice. But that's a, that's a very good question. And let's start together. Legs all the way long and just take a quick posture scan across the front of the body. So our collarbone is wide, arms are hanging loosely from our shoulders.

I'm going to have this all to do a little balance check with how we're standing on our feet. So let's all shift our weight forward just slightly more to the balls of the feet are forward of the feet, not so much that you fall. And then we're going to shift our weight back more toward the heels. Just notice what might be happening in your core area. It could be in your stomach or your back.

I'll give you a little hint and as you shift forward again it's noticing that and then as you shift back, see where it transfers some weight, see where your body connects as you shift. Let's come forward. Again, we're going to be doing several of these movements front and back before we roll our spine down. Breathe as it feels natural for you. You might choose to inhale rocking forward or exhale rocking back, keeping your spine long or establishing it for the first time with conscious thought today, being open in the throat, open in the shoulders, feeling the shift of weight. And oftentimes when we're, when we're down on the mat doing the mat work, we don't have this awareness down there as much of the shifting weight. Sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn't. So near the end of the mat.

I do want to bring us back up on her legs and stand today. [inaudible] a couple of exercises to do. One more rocking forward, rocking back and then find that place right above the arches of the feet. It might be like you're trying to dome the sole of the foot slightly. Start to engage the upper inner thigh a little bit more. Now let's take a breath into the nose and we'll start our rolling everybody.

So it's coming from the center of the spine abdominals. Just let that head and shoulder girdle round forward. Let the arms hang loosely by you're in the front of you there. Let your head go and the one thing I am going to ask is to focus on more directly is where the weight is and it's okay if you need to put your fingertips down on the mat for fear of falling forward or that feeling of dropping forward. I don't want us resting back on the heels. Okay, that's a little too much stress on the back of the knee. Alrighty.

Take a breath here and the exhale pulling from the abdomen again last week. Good. Their cues were very heavy on rolling the spine like a wheel. Just kind of put that in your thought chamber again right now. So inhale tall. So if we were the wheel or there was a wheel right here in front of us that we are rounding and wrapping ourself over. Challenging your balance of, keep a little more weight on the front of the feet and breathe in at the bottom and let's go. Exhale, pull from the stomach all the way up.

Rounding the spine back up to a straight, tall position and again, breathe in and again, exhale and round over. Start to engage the abdominals a little bit more. Yeah, so let this be maybe your abdominal warm up. Okay. Before we even get down and do the hundred heavy arms, heavy head inhale there. Exhale and pull from the low belly. Leave the arms hanging. Leave the head hanging.

Just one more time and exhale. Head, shoulders, spine. Better, heinous. We're Jonah. I am going to have everybody put their fingertips lightly on the mat to put more weight into them. Lift your heels for everybody if you can and bend your knees down. Bring your hips down Steve realm please and let your head just be heavy by your knees. Focus on your tailbone, curling under to get a good stretch in your lower back. Yeah is if you're in the rolling like a ball exercise that kind of thought.

Let's just take one more breath into back. Exhale is we straighten the knees, lift the hips is okay. If the knees don't get completely straight, I want us to let the head hang. Take a breath and exhale. Here we go. To pool from the abdomen or roll all the way up. Where is the weight on the feet? See if you can keep it more forward than back. We're going to do that same thing one more time. Inhale taller through your body and exhale and contract from the abdominals, the head and shoulders round. I used to use the image of a candy cane, kind of taking the candy cane shape on the way down and then over belief the heels. We come into that squat position.

See how much around is you can pull into your lower back, easy in your neck and shoulders. Take a breath in and exhale. Once again, strips the legs. Now from here I am going to have us walk our hands out into our friend support position. Try to keep your legs glued together. Walk out with a sense of control. Okay, now it's optional. You can jump or step your feet to your hands. Okay, good. And let's set her hips down a little more.

Rolling to get us going. So arms reaching straight ahead. I am going to have us with our knees and feet together. Take a nice full breath in tall, put some awareness in your lats and let's start to roll back and I want you to really pull it down into the lower back. When you get to your shoulder blades, everybody pause. Okay, we're not going to do a full roll back yet. Okay. When you get to those shoulder blades, pause and inhale. Now let's curl up from here on your exhale, pulling deep into the low belly.

It's okay with me if you let your head round forward too. If you want to come back up at the very end and sit tall, let's just take two more. So exhale and pull back like your embossing your back into the curve of a wheel or a hula hoop. Take an inhale and exhale and curl. It might feel good to let the head and shoulders carry the curve as well. And then inhale back up to sitting tall. This one will take it all the way down.

Exhale and curve [inaudible]. All right, now let's go ahead and just come right into open feet, sits bones with the part. I'm going to take about three pelvic curls. One more moment for articulation. Take a breath and the exhale against starting down in the belly. Feel the abdominals contract.

You'll the pelvis can track the back of the pelvis and hamstrings if you need to. Pick up and take a look at your pelvis. That's a okay. You're learning by looking sometimes. Okay, take a breath there and then again, the exhale. Really direct pull of the sternum. Pull that sternum in and down sequentially articulating the back. Find yourself all the way out to that very long position with the flat pelvis and take another inhale. Again, exhale from the belly hooking that tail under the very top when you feel like it's safe to let go of your abs, increase the contraction a little bit more as well as pulling the tail under we that nice. Take off ramp position. Long arms. Inhale and exhale. Pull the back of the sternum down, articulating all the way through that long mobile spine.

In a minute, we're going to stabilize it. All right, take a breath and exhale again, a curl. Doing what you can do to stay turned on in the back of the leg. Muscles without cramping. You haven't lifted your toes, your feet or even chest is broad. Let's breathe in and exhale as we articulate down. Oh, next exercise we'll go into is our hundred and I want us to just write from here and take a breath on the Xcel. Raise the knees to the tabletop position.

Lift your arms about hip height, everybody and breathe. Now let's curl the upper body. Let's extend the legs forward. And with this we will pump in fives and [inaudible] two [inaudible] three. So there's the wheel image, the upper back. Rounding a little more as you can. I want you to feel the legs squeeze. Don't let me pull them apart. Okay? Yeah. More together. Yeah, don't let me pull them apart there.

Yes, yes. Okay. Can you curl higher? Ask more of the strength in your abdomen muscles to curl you higher. Where we nine four five exhale. Three, four, five, 10, two, three, four, five X sale or so. Hold the position. We do this every now and again.

Challenged this by raising your arms alongside the frame of the ears as an inhale. Exhale is press it down two more times. Objective to stay curled in the upper back. [inaudible] stay focused and exhale. Okay. Draw the knees in, lower the chest and bring the legs all the way down. Okay. We haven't done this next one for several weeks. Um, and I want to, it's a kind of a PR, a little preview for single leg circles and some of the legwork.

But right now if we all deepened, did the belly just so much that we're, you know, couldn't get a hand underneath your low back if you try, it's not by tucking the hips back. Okay? Again, keep the belly, engage the hips parallel and flat. Let's take a breath and I want you to just lift your right leg up off of the mat all without losing stability in the chest and pelvis and the spine. And then inhale as you lower it back down. Started in the abdomen, left side. Now exhale, belly. And then the leg doesn't have to be very high. Inhale as you come back down again, exhale, belly and then leg. And as you come back down, can you lengthen it even more?

Get a sense reaching that leg away from that stable pelvis, left side, exhale and lift. [inaudible] inhale and lower once again on the right. Exhale and all that inhale as you lower last time as you lift on the left side. And then bringing it back down. That's plenty. Now keep your legs down. Let's reach the arms back overhead palms can face in today. How flat can you have your spine by compressing the belly down.

So keep your legs heavy. Let's do our roll up. Inhale, head, chest. Exhale, peel away from the madness. That continuation of curving than Corona. They head towards the fingertips and breathe in and roll back the same muscles you found here. Here to lift your legs. Pull them in. Now articulate. Keep your legs down and roll all the way through. Again, inhale, roll like a wheel MP you never giving way, never giving up in the tummy. Here is still contract. Breathe in and exhale.

Think of most of the curve carpeting in your lower back, lower back, lower back and all the way through. Three more you guys. And exhale, pause at the top. Breathing and exhale going back. So dropping some tension from the top of the shoulders saying looking forward. Focus in as well as out. Inhale arms and chest. Slow it down. Next day he'll pull into the corner.

The very top. The stomach is still pulling back, pulling back in. Exhale. Okay, nicely done. All right, last one of the roll ups for now. Ah, curl C, round, low shoulders. Staying right there. Now guys, let's just put our awareness again on right belly, left gully and do little [inaudible]. [inaudible] pull back eight of those. There are little but very, very deep pool. [inaudible] last one. Hold onto it.

Let that initiate even deeper and go deeper and Merle, you back. We're going to stop when we get to our shoulder blades rounding through. Now I think it might be wise to put her hands behind her head. Okay, now that same leg lift, we're going to do it again here. Take a breath, exhale first in the abdomen, lift your right leg up a little bit and inhale and lower it down. Left side. Exhale your abdomen and then lift your leg and inhale, lower it down and exhale and lift and inhale. Lower it down. Left.

Exactly. I'm going to have this. Keep going with this, so the the ribs are heavy, the pelvis is heavy. You are also trying to bring your lumbar spine to the mat with your stomach, not your pelvis. Tell this as level stomach is dropping down. Once again on each side we lift. How are we doing? Yay. Oh right. Okay. And then let your head come back down just for a second. Arms down by your side. Take a breath.

We're going to bicycle our right leg up to the ceiling for our leg circles. And so as we come up, we know these so well, but take just one quick check back of the right hip should be very, very heavy. Pull that back coming from the stomach. We want to free up the thighbone to twist circle. Let's go five today across to the left.

We know the circle around and pull up and cross and circle. Pull up. [inaudible] I just keep the back of that right hip. Absolutely heavy. Relaxing your foot also. Okay, that's fine. Now let's take it the other way. Open to the right. Exhale down around sink and pool and pool.

Two more last time. Open down, around up and let's hold right there. Now hands behind the right thigh. I'm gonna bring us up to do a little climate tree. What kind of a pre climate tree? So is your hands are behind your side. Go ahead and walk up. Can anyone get higher? I know some of you can. So at this point, when you're being asked to go higher, the shoulder blades are no longer on the floor.

You know you've got to give away somewhere. So that's okay to let the shoulders come up. You still find your lats a little bit and feel the other leg reaching long and away. Now let's increase the stretch of this hamstring. Pull it toward your chest, see if you can still work your level pelvis. This is where the pelvis might want to tilt a little bit deep in the breath.

Okay, no guys, we've done this before. Let's leave our leg here. We're going to roll our torso down. The lower the head of thing, the more dynamic you're in, the feel it right in the, uh, upper hamstring. And let's just keep this year [inaudible] nice little warm up for scissor [inaudible]. Just take one more breath and then as we let go, exhale. Just lower the leg without any loss of stability, ribs, pelvis, spine, bicycle. Your left leg up and hold before we circle.

So imprint the back of that hip. Draw down into the abdominal old's, free up your foot and it's not a big circle. Think of almost the frame of your mat. Okay. Cross to the right. Inhale. Exhale around and pull your leg up. Yeah, finding some ease in the joint as well as strength and hard to partner. Those two concepts. They work really nicely together though.

And then other way. So we inhale out to the left. [inaudible] down and up. Is your back steal down? Are the rib muscles still contained? I'm assuming that's a yes because I didn't take a look. Okay. Hands behind your thigh. Curl the upper body up.

Walk a little higher to the calf. So the, the more you ask this, the abdominal muscles, almost like you're shortening these muscle fibers right there, they're coming closer together to create a curl. More of a higher curve for, okay. Kind of catch into that. Then bring the leg up. I often will say compress the space from chest to thigh, thigh to chest compression. Sometimes it's not of a negative. It's okay to positively compress sometimes. Okay. Bring the leg a little closer if you'd like to. We're going to hold it there. Breathe and roll back down. As we exhale, try to hold that leg absolutely stable where you put it.

We're going to take two more big breaths. Enjoy the stretch and axial. Let go and down. Now did bicycle instead of the advanced bicycle up on the risks which most of us in here aren't ready for or maybe want to do today. Anyway, we can bicycle down here and it's a really nice one to let the neck relax in fact and just work again on the stability on the spine and the core work. So if we take our right leg, drag your heel up like you're pulling sand through the um, the beach sand and lift your leg up to the ceiling as that one goes out. The other starts to bicycle. Okay. Some coordination drags sand with your heel.

Reach the other one out long and the other ones to the ceiling so we can breathe in and exhale out. [inaudible] I'd love the exhale to be when the leg is to the ceiling. [inaudible] and ceiling. Good. You guys bend and find this stretch between two legs and [inaudible]. Yup.

Now of course philosophies is about opposition and reversing patterns. So let's reverse. You've got to take the top leg, bend it, push the sand away as you lift a straight leg up. Taught me bins, finds the sand and pushed the sand away. Same thing. Your exhale is when your leg is straight up to the ceiling and the other one is long on the mat. How's your back feeling you guys? Okay? Do you feel the AB work in it and rest if you need to? Just one more each leg.

Yeah, that is a little bit challenging if you haven't done that for before, you know and it's okay. Something to work for. Sometimes I take that for granted cause I've been doing it a while. But when I first began plots I had and most of you know, a pretty excessive curve back there and worked so and I'm still working on getting it longer. So that's, that's challenging exercise. If you start to feel the stress in your back yard. That's it. Yeah, no more. Um, and we'll, we'll progress. Okay. Drop both knees in. Let's come up for the ball. Alrighty. Hands on the ankles or some of you, uh, maybe we should try it without holding on today. Can we find our balance point?

Can you circle your arms out in front of you? Maybe your fingertips around in front of the shins. Okay, so I'm a kicker. Try not to kick. That's for everybody. Roll back. Inhale as we rolled to the shoulder blade. Exhale coming back up to her. I don't lock in the balance. Woo. Inhale. Roll it back. Pelvis up.

Exhale. Inhale. Roll back and lift the sits bones to the ceiling. Curl up. Three more. Lift your sits bones. Exhale, curl up. Find the curve sheet. Be the ball. Be the wheel. Yeah. Letting the low back have the flexibility. I know I just counted to seven.

I got an eyeball from someone. Okay. Transition single leg, stretch hands on your right shin. Let's roll all the way back down. Stay up on those shoulder blades when she goes to let your elbows point out nice and wide to the sides. Okay. Now if anyone has a desire to do something a little more challenging, a couple of you can. The the, this foot could go through the bicycle channel a transition. If you don't want to go there, we're just doing regular single leg stretch in and out. Okay, so let's take an inhale. Inhale, exhale, exhale and sure. Elbows out. Chest up. Let's get a chest off of the mat.

Sure. No one chose the bicycle, huh? That's okay. Maybe next time. And we did four and three and we two last one. No resting. Let's go right to double leg for four repetitions. Inhale, stretch your body. Exhale, contract, stretch without losing the back. I'm a mat and curl. Two more. Stretch. Keep your head above water.

Keep your head up and now scissor right leg up, left leg down. Let's do it. A little pool pool. So I am going for my flexibility this morning. It feels good to me to get my leg to stretch. You can do that. You can play it safe and just do smaller switches.

What does your body need? What is your mind me last one. And let's bring both legs to the ceiling. You rest your neck if you need to. I'm going to go ahead and go three times straight leg. Lower lift. Inhale takes us down the exhale from that belly area to bring the legs up. Just like we warmed up as down here. Exhale and pool, you know the next exercise, right Chris, cross.

Rest of you need to double breath to the right and we inhale. Inhale. [inaudible] keep your hips balanced on the mat. Can we get elbow to knee today? Curl up and reach the elbow. Reach the elbow. [inaudible] and four, three, two, last one.

Now Chi has come back to tabletop. Know that you're there and we curl right back down. Take a little rest. And that's all. Sadly enough. What? Come on up. It's fine. Stretch forward. We're going to go classical, uh, thought classical principle. Okay, so I'm going to have us flex our feet. Arms reaching long or I forgot. There's, Oh God. There's so many variations.

You could put your hands down on the mat and your spine. Stretch to this way. [inaudible] backless I'll do it. We're in the sand. We're in a beach community. Imagine we're in sand. We're going to push the sand away and pull it back to us. Take a brick and said, really tall. Now it comes from the core first exhale. We round now push of course the sand away. Can you get it? Your head?

We've been working toward this. The crown of the head will get to come up. [inaudible] NXT girl. Push crown to the head. Bend your spoon. Full breath to come up. [inaudible] three more and curve. So please think about flexing your feet. Feel you have the details in this work.

Inhale and exhale. Curl all the way up. So if you're rolling right up a night, straight wall, two more times and curve. [inaudible] Ooh, breath. [inaudible] last one. Sit a little taller and exhale as you curve over. Stay there everybody. Just stay there and breathe. I want you to keep feeling the energy in your belly muscles, how they're feeding the spine, bending here and your lower yep.

Reading wide into the mid back. You'd be reading wide between your shoulder blades and then we'll roll all the way back up to sitting tall and pause. Okay. Open like rocker. So if we bring our legs together, hands by your hips, bring your hips forward. We did this transition a couple of weeks ago, uh, instead of just going right up into the, the, uh, openly position starting in your balance point. Okay. And you know, there comes some styles in the, the OpenLink rocker where you could have a little more curve in the spine versus being in your balance point and having a little more upward extension. Let's go there today. So it's really between the short, the whole spine, but between your shoulder blades and up maybe to where your hairline is, can you can engage in, lift up. Sometimes they'll say it's the sternum, sometimes it's the girls. Um, you know, all right. Now taking both legs.

Ideal is to keep that posture. Let's go both legs open. We're going to pull both legs together. That's sets you up. I'm falling back. Open both legs, no wider than mat. And then we re bend to the start position. As you rebound, I want you to pull up more in your spine. Okay, breath is inhale open. Exhale as you close.

[inaudible]. Inhale as you open now lift more of your spine. Your the mercury element in thermometer needle that's rising. Hot temperature is your body. Heat's going up. Your mercury is rising. Let's go again. Inhale no wider than the mat with those legs.

It could throw you off balance. Bring your legs together. Inhale as we open. Exhale. Now lift your spine, lift your waist, grow taller as you bring your feet down. We've got one more. Inhale as we open. Exhale as we close. Inhale as you open everybody, stay right there. We're going to roll back in the rocker. Six repetitions.

Now this is an extended spine. You've got to flex it, change your st, change your spinal element ready to flex and round. Easy. Come back up. Find ease in the extension. I can tell you it's not in the arms or in hams. It's in the spine. Inhale, as you roll, you yield up easy in your hands and your arms. It's use your trunk. Inhale as we roll. Exhale, unrolling lift three more.

Everybody hang in there so okay to keep it with your knees bent. Focus more on your upward extension. Upward extension of your back. She last one. And everyone come back up and hold your balance. Please stay with it. Even if you have to bend your knees or if you want to break for a, okay, we're going to bring your legs together and hold them there and just hold, okay.

You don't have to answer this out loud, but if we were to let go of our hands were to, you know, our legs were going to, but don't do it just by not thinking about it. Pull into your abs. First is if your, your stomach muscles are gonna suck in your thigh bones, let go. Okay. Put your hands up behind that, behind the thighs and let's roll back to uh, get ready for a corkscrew rolling back. Ideally the legs don't change from that position. That's very, very challenging for most of us in here. And then let's go ahead and give your spine a little rest. I know. All right. Now I'm going to show you guys a couple things for corkscrew. Um, give me a second, but when I started teaching quirks, here is a beginning level exercise or introducing the concept of corkscrew.

Many of you have seen this, we've just started from Brit. Basically a bridge like that and I teach you how to identify rolling down one side of the spine. We've done this many times. It could just be this, you're rolling down the right side of your spine, you're rolling up the right side, roll down the left side, roll down the left side. If you don't know what I'm talking about with corkscrew, that's what you should do today. Okay? The rest of you who know corkscrew, you could do it just by staying with hips on the mat and doing the circle or doing the full cork screw rolling down the right side of the spine. You know the idea up and over the left side of the spline. Okay, so there might be a few variations of a form and decision right now. Do what your body needs. Okay.

And I think I'll show the fundamental cause. I think there's maybe one or two that haven't done it. If you know the full, you can do full. Okay. It's mobilization of spine articulation and mobilization. Here we go. That's all. If you're doing full rollover, go ahead and take yourself there. Now I'm just going to check them. Angela, lift your legs a little bit to the ceiling. Yeah. Okay. The rest of us. I love it. That's fine. So we're going to come up into bridge.

So all of us have our hips up. We all have our hips up. You just have their legs over their head. That's all. So if we all take your breath and as we roll down, we're coming down the right side of our spine. Here we go. Right side of this fine big corkscrews you guys keep going around to the other side. You and I are gonna roll back up the right side of this line.

So we're mobilizing one side up and here we have our hips up. Now we go down the left side of the spine, tracking the left side articulating. They're going to do a full circle back over to the right. You and I are going to go back up the left side of the spine. Okay, keep going. Coming down the right side of the spine.

He's going to keep you here. Yeah, and rolling back up. The right side of the spine and hips are level over the top of our chest. There you go. And coming down the left side of the spine. I love that you're all taking some good breath to get some source and contraction. One more time. Are you opening your chest all the way up and over again, Angela?

And then one more time articulating down the left side. Up and over. They're going to go all the way up and top of the shoulders and then just as simple. Good. Lisa. Rolling right down the center. So we're all even down on the mat. Okay, good. Hey, lexicon needs to chest. Come on up.

So a choice I could make would be saw. I'm not going to, I'm going to go to sign, twist. They're both the same element of rotation. Okay, so OB brings in element of rounding, but we just did that in corkscrews. I'd rather have us be a little bit more upright, which I think is more challenging anyway. So guys, can you flex your feet again, right on the edges of your mat is if that's the wall and you're pushing on the wall. Now let's go ahead and take our arms out to the sides. Turn your palms face up, put a little bend in your elbows, just a tiny bit of a bend and holds them good like you're holding a big Atlas. That's always an image that comes to my mind. I guess we'd probably have it up here, but okay, so it's not the head that initiates. This is not a head movement.

It's this trunk movement that includes the head but doesn't isolate the head. We're going to inhale in the center to our left for three exhale, pulses and we'd go [inaudible]. It's the trunk, the trunk. It all comes back together. Inhale to your right. Exhale and one, two and three. Inhale, growing taller. Exhale and one, two, and three.

What I know about this, it's not just the abs, it's the back. Your back muscles can help you rotate. One, you're right on your sits bones. One more each side, easy facial expression. Last one, and rotate. Rotate and rotate.

Very nice and let's rest. Okay. Legs together. Do a quick shake of your wrists. Shake of your knees. We're going to go into some back support. That's why I'm having you get some wake up on your wrist. Okay? Because some of us have some wrist issues. You could do this choice of coming up on your fists. It's actually kind of nice to try the fist, but if you've got a fun joint thing that doesn't feel so great either, so the back support can be also down on your elbows.

You're just not going to get as much of a of hip lift, but you might like it just for the shoulder work. Okay. Are you all in for the real one? Don't know yet. Okay. It's honest. So we want fingertips facing them. The hips usually back support can, you know, kind of be more indicative of advanced work, which I agree with, but I think it's also important to get with some weightbearing. You don't have to lift your hips to get work out of the exercise.

You're going to see some big stuff here in a second though from this. Okay. What we want though is first and foremost support in the shoulders. We know that comes from our labs and our stomach and our back extensors. Okay. Now lift your sternum. I'm going to look up the stairwell and see where the wall meets the ceiling.

That's where I'm gonna fix my gaze and reach my sternum and my chest too. It's not there. We've talked about that before. Yup. As much as that feels like it's going to help you, it's not. It's going to hurt. In fact. Okay. Now guys, before we get the hips going, this could be your back support. Tense your upper arms. Use your lumbar spine and lift your lower back. That's right, right there. Okay.

Now we're going to go more. Some of us are going to lift our hips up off the mat. We take a breath first. You've got to engage your buttocks. You've got to engage your hamstrings. You can lift just a little bit. You could lift pretty high. We're going to stay looking forward.

I'm just going to have us hold this position. Fix your gaze. Fixed your control. Ah, let's read in now as we come down, gently bring your hips down, but stay engaged and stay working in everything else in your body. Inhale again. Exhale and we lift. Can you don't have to. Good. Don't have to go too high, but you guys are pushing it. This is nice. Breathe in and exhale. Let's come back down one more time and then I'll give us a little rest to explain the next section.

Exhale as you left. Easy inhale and exhale as you come down and just shake these out for a second. Okay. Uh, right. So you know earlier kind of fundamental but still pretty hard. I think you're going to add that up here in the leg, in the, in the plank or the back support. We've done it before. Just a different way to think about preparing for it. Maybe it could be that little, you could even just think your legs lifting and you could be doing the exercise honestly. Or you could go for a pretty big leg kick, which you might see a couple. I'm pushing these two. Okay. You want to do a big one. If we do a big leg lift with control, we don't drop our pelvis no matter what leg lift we're doing. Okay, let's go.

Take a breath and go. So inhale prepares us. Exhale, right leg, ah, C and lower down C the same point on the wall. Lift and lower. Once again you'd side at lift and lower. Exhale. And lower inhale as you hold now.

Exhale, lower down with control. Keep the chest open. That's going to be enough though. We'll eventually we do more repetition of that. Lets walk herself forward. Can you get a big spine bend chest toward thighs? Okay. And come all the way up. Okay, let's progress going down onto her stomach guy. So come on down.

So the a Swan looks, these are Swan hands by your chest. Last week I kind of liked what I did. So we're going to repeat from last week. Uh, start the position. Yes, your hands are near your shoulders. I want you all to start though. Hovered with your hands, forearms, and upper arm and just start that hover there. Pull your upper arm towards your ribs, your shoulders down your back.

Feel your abs engaged. Ideally legs together, but they can be slightly apart. Now how high can we come up in the upper back extension without using the hands on the mat? Okay. We all have our own range. Okay. Now to go into the full Swan. The hands do need to come down. Engage the upper arms back of the upper arms, the primarily the back. Think of pulling your back back. All right.

Now as we come down length in the front, try to stretch your chest a little farther forward on the mat. Lift your arms and you come back down to the forehead. And again, listen, he'll prepare. Exhale en. How high can you get? Is your collarbone bro? Hands down and continue to press up. I'm going to go. Not quite as high the second time around.

I'm going to think longer through the top of my head and down through my feet. Yeah. And we come back down long front of spine and all the way down. Hands lift, forehead touches. Breathe in one more like that guy. So how high can we get?

Chin down. Little Lloyd. There you go, girl. Yeah, keep that concentration. Now hands on the mat. Same idea. Use the back primarily the upper bap, pressing back toward the legs. Anyone up for a little rock prepping? You knew it. So I'm just gonna have you let go rock carefully please. Your hands.

Good call. Let go. Place your hands. Keep it in the back muscles in the leg muscles. So it's hamstrings, back extensors, hamstrings, back extensors to more hamstrings, back extensors, and hamstrings back extensors. Let's all come down. Yes. Move our hands back toward the size of the ribs. Push up round this wine and make your way back into your rest pose. It's been a few weeks since we've done that as well.

So got to keep bringing him back in repertoire. Okay. Single leg kick. Now single leg kicked today. Come on back all the way. I, I'm classical is up, but we've just done a lot in the back. Some of you I can tell we need a little break of, of placements. So place your hands down. Oh I'm not. No, no, no I won't. No. And I, I think that a couple of them know they could be, they know they can do the classical position.

Sure. They're okay with that too. So actually in a way, this is a little harder in muscle specificity. It can be. I for me. So if you have your hand stacked, your head down, imprints your pubic bone so you get as long of a lumbar as we can. Alright. And yeah, now engage the back of the legs and just float your legs up a couple inches. They don't even have to, you can even relax your feet. It's the upper leg. We want to focus on lifting anyway, not so much dynamic on the foot.

Some of you clamped, so be aware of the feet. Okay. Now as you pee, let's start the right knee. You're gonna pull, bend the knee, bring the heel toward the buttock. The other leg though is still stretching along in a way that's going to do a little squeeze. Squeeze. Lower it down. We switch sides and squeeze. Squeeze. Lower down. Squeeze. Squeeze. Lower. [inaudible] LinkedIn back.

Yeah. So even though it's a hamstring, uh, exercise, it relates into the back extensors as well. But you still want the support from your abdomen. The [inaudible] leg is still reaching way back to the wall. That's behind. You don't, okay. Yeah. Looks good.

Okay, keep going. Can you all float your head off of your hands? There's a natural lift that might start to occur there. Yep. Good. Lisa [inaudible] let's go with four more. Right, left, right, left, reach back, reach back. Last one on the right. Last one on the left and hold both legs. Okay. Now if you're, can you all just now lift your arms up and place your arms back by your sides. The flight position, put your hands right on your thighs.

Let's just hold for a little bit now and want you to focus on the back of the legs. You are the back of your lower back, the mid back, the upper back. Let's lift to everything a little bit higher, not the chin, but the spine. [inaudible] all right, take one more breath and exhale. Bring everything down. That's plenty there. And once again, come back into your rest pose around that spine. [inaudible] big breaths into the side and the lower back.

Okay. Now a little bit of sideline and I'm going to conquer quite a bit in one exercise is my thinking. So come to face me. Face the front. We've done this set up many, many, many times. So your knees are hip bone with the part. Let's go ahead and just start with your arms out to our sides. Okay.

And then side bend to your right. Last week we did a lot of this and we're not going to do as much of the preparation. So what I wanted to do, keep going by bending the waist, stretch your left leg out to the side and just put it on the map. Yeah, just reach your toes long. Now take this top hand if you'd like to. I'd love for everyone to put it behind their head. So same conversation. You could be on the fist if you needed to, or good Louise up on your fingertips. Perfectly fine, or on the heel of the hand. Now take a look down your front.

You should see that your ribs are in right and your pubic bone forward. So pull that sucker forward or in your, if you want to think of it from the back of your body, pull your tail under. Okay. Now just reach the leg a little longer. Think that if I had a hold on it. You're lucky girl. Woman pull. Yeah, everybody reach your leg more that direction. Okay. All I'm going to have us do from there is lift the leg.

We're going to try to get the leg hip height on an XL five times, so we live and exhale from your abdomen. Then to the hip. Top elbow is in a fixed position. Looking out, looking forward. There you are. This is going to help in a minute when we come to standing and last one, let's hold it. Oh, I lied. We're going to have to do about three little circles. One direction one and two and three reverse and one tail under two and three. That is going to be plenty. Bend the knee and come back and sit on that.

That hips are kind of pushed into it. Yeah. Stretch that out. Head down. [inaudible] I did too. Actually. I might. My bottom foot was cramping a little bit. It happens. Sometimes it's hydration. You know whole calcium, potassium conversation could be just be the angle of your foot, made your foot change angle in muscle work. It's a long, long discovery. All right, so come on up. We're going to go to the other side and let's breathe in together. Exhale, side bend at your waist. It's your spine bending to your left right away. Place the hand down. Just start with your foot out to the side.

You again, do what you need to do on your supporting hand. Spread the fingers. You have a bigger base of support. Elbow is in a fixed position of the ceiling. Take that quick. Scan down your front. Are you satisfied? [inaudible] feels good there, but then there's sometimes when the leg lifts we buckle and weak collapsed. That if we break it, the hip joint, so almost exaggerate.

You know the tail tuck, I think it could help you. Let's take a breath and five repetitions. We exhale and raise the leg. Inhale, lower exhale and we lift. Nice open chest elbow is in the fixed position. We'll lift looking good. You guys more tail under. That's it.

Hold that. Commit to that tail under. Yep. One more and open the sternum. It feels good to be this challenge. Now. Three little circles and we have one and two and three other direction and one and two and three. Bend the knee, sinking back into that hip and we around back. Very nice. You guys. [inaudible] okay. I'd like us to come to a standing position and you can stay facing me if you'd like.

Does that help or do you want to face each other? Either way. So I'm going to have a stand with our legs. Hip with the part [inaudible] let's look down, make sure they're completely parallel. Okay, so the same muscles you just felt in the the side hip work. Well, I want to see if we can find them here. So if you shift a little bit of weight to your left foot, I'm going to be on my right shift a little bit. Not yet putting, taking weight off of that foot, but we're going there. Does anyone feel a little, what if? Feel a little catch in the side of the hip, not a buckle, but just that, that that muscle kind of contract a hold you. Yes, you won't fall and then shift the weight again to your other foot. [inaudible] now I know if you're too far back on your heel, you're not going to feel it as much.

If you're centered over the ball of foot and the heel and the arch and you laterally shift, there's that catch there and then we'd go to the other side. I think we're ready to take that foot up and just little lift and down transfer weight and a little shift. Yeah, and just transfer weight. Good. Yeah.

Now this time, hold it there. Knowing that the standing legs inner thigh is also working. Place the foot down. We shift now over to your right, so outer hip as well as inner leg doesn't have to lift too high and we stepped down and again, so these are little more in the functional category. Like I said at the beginning of class, we do really well down there, but sometimes, whoops, when we come up to standing, we get out of focus a little. Our balance isn't working too with us.

Okay, let's go again. And this time is you lift the leg up the outside leg. Just hold it there. I'm just going to do a little Whoa, a little reach of it to the side and bring it back in. I too have to work on my balance of reach. And then just one more time and then and step it down. Shift to your right. So feeling that, pulling that buttock in to the center, right. And then as the leg moves, ideally the torso wo isn't a falling off balance. Ideally, again, these are, these are ideals. These are goals to work with.

Yeah, we're going to do that. Very same thing. One more time. Each side. Okay. We're doing pretty good. So finally establish that point. It's this hip. Pull it in to the center for me. I have to engage my glute. There's a bunch of glue. There's three loots pull them all in. I've been told this is my weaker side. So showing up today, extend the leg in [inaudible] ah, and in and extend better. Okay. Last time. Ready. And we're almost there.

Other side hole into that glued. Pull it into the center. Be very solid on the leg you're standing on. Even if you don't move your other leg, you could stand and be in the exercise, open, N , N and in an open [inaudible] and in and let's place the foot down. All right, you guys stand right here. Take a full breath, reach your arms up and bring your arms back down. Let's just do two more like that.

Bring your arms up even if you would gesture with your head in your shoulders. I'm okay with today and back down. One more time. Let's take a full breath. Dell. From here I'm going to have this roll forward and down kind of soft arms. Find the curve again. Feel where you are on your ankles and on your feet. Ideally we are level.

Ah, take a breath at the bottom and pull from the belly to rural. Backup. Easy head and arms. I do that one more time. Take a breath at the top and just easy. Does it go ahead and roll forward. Head, neck, shoulders. Ah, where's the weight?

Take that full breath and find your last role up to standing. [inaudible] when before you get ready to walk away. Just stand there for just about five to 10 seconds to allow me to thank you for coming to class. Cause that's important for me to do. And some of you I haven't had in class for EP ever or for a while. So it's always nice to see familiar faces. Thanks you guys. Yeah.