Class #2079

Breast Cancer Recovery 3

35 min - Class
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Description

In phase 3 of Kathy Corey's breast cancer recovery program, she adds strengthening exercises to work both sides of your body evenly. She reminds you to honor your body and to rest when you need to, and she includes modifications for the kneeling and quadruped exercises. This last phase tests the breathing and stabilization exercises you did in the first 2 classes, which helps to strengthen your awareness of how you move.

If you are interested in purchasing a CORE Band™, you can find them on Kathy's website. You also have the option to use a Pilates Pole instead of the CORE Band™ for the same results.
What You'll Need: Mat

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We are now ready to begin our phase three exercise program. As with all of these programs, you want to make sure to check with your doctor before beginning and also we want to remember that we don't want to work the body to the point of fatigue, so lessen your repetitions and rest when you need to. Also we're going to show some modifications of different positions so if kneeling is hard for you or hands and knees position is hard. We will have alternative PR positions for each one of the bodies and the exercises. Honor your program. Rest when you need to, but let's begin. So we are going to sit on our mat and I'm going to have you once again either sit with your knees bent and feet flat or with the soles of your feet together.

As we remember, the alignment of the pelvis is extremely important in these exercises and these movement patterns and either position is absolutely fine. We want you to be comfortable. We're going to use the core bands for many of the exercises in this program. But remember, if you don't have a band, you can use a pole. The idea is that the band will give you feedback as to whether or not you are allowing the affected side to not work through its full range of motion.

But we're also adding some strengthening exercises here. So once again, just work to your comfort level, not to the point of pain. And um, let's begin to exercise. We're going to slide our arm in and this time what I would like you to use is go all the way to the end on one and in the second on the other end. So it's an, it's uneven for the band. It will be more even for your body. And we will begin by sitting very tall and first just bringing the band up to the center and rounding the back and pushing the band in front of you, pulling the band, taught, utilizing the effected arm to do most of the work.

The opposite arm is your stabilizer. Inhale, exhale and round your back, the length in the spine and come up. Very nice. Inhale, exhale, pull it taut and round your back. Very nice and length in the spine. Come up nice and tall. Beautiful. One more time. Inhale and exhale and come up. Now we're going to bring the band, twist the body to the unaffected side and put that arm on the floor. Good. Let's take the other arm up over your head. Take an inhalation. Now as you exhale, you're going to bring that band down over the floor and round your back.

Try and keep the band is pulled, is taught as possible. Very and come back up. This is similar to the rolling of the ball exercise that we did in phase two where we were seeing how far we could reach. But now you're going to use the band and keep it taught. So you're going to come put this in and the little bit, that would be great. Right? Place that arm on the floor and, but you're going to go that way down to the floor. Yeah, that's it. And back up.

Nice and down to the floor and back backpack. Bring the band into the center and let's go to the opposite side. Inhale and exhale and get that nice stretch, stretch. And reach and lift to come back up and go, go staying on that same side. Yeah, and over and lift to come up and over. Let's go back to our other side. Now this time, keep that hand on the floor. Come over to the front, come up to the center and then I want you to rotate.

So you're going to stretch the center of your chest up to the ceiling. Try to keep it. Yeah. Oh, I'm right where it is. Next to your ear and come back into the center. Go down to the floor, come up into the center, use your breath and exhale. Open, open, open, and inhale. Back to center. Exhale down to the floor. Inhale and lift. Beautiful axial churn the body.

Rotate from under the rib cage and back into the center. And let's go to the other side and placed the hand down. Reach to the floor, reach to the center, lift the chest to the ceiling. That's it. And reach to the floor into the center and oh, open to the ceiling. And again, using the breath and lift back up. Exhale, open. Inhale, come back and come down in to the center. [inaudible] no, if you can, I'd like you to first just have you straighten your legs. Good.

And the leg should just be slightly wider than the hips. And we're sitting up tall out of our hips. Let's move their hands in so they're in pocket too, on both sides. And take an inhale and turn and twist the body to the side. Keep the band pulling taught.

Come back into the center and Hale. Turn the body to the side. Inhale. Exhale. Come back into the center. And again, turn very nice and back to the center. One more time. Now w have equal pressure on both arms. Don't let the unaffected arm do the more work. Keep the shoulders down.

We want to only do one more. Come back to the center. And one more time and center. Keep the hands in, pulling the band tod and rotate. Now remember we want to keep the show dars reaching down. So the is not doing the movement, but we're working with inside the shoulder girdle to do the full movement of the steering wheel. I'm gonna go around and open, coming around and open using the breath.

And one more time. Let's place the band down just at the side of the body. The next exercise is known as the butterfly. Now if you can, we're going to take the hands and we're just going to play to hand over hand behind your head. The affected arm will be closest to the head and the other hand will be on top.

If you find this is too difficult, you can just place the arms here on the shoulders. Now we're going to go and you assigned stretch, lengthen upward, and this is your modification. Lengthen up and stretch to your side, trying to reach the elbow down to the floor and backup actual in. Reach that elbow down to the floor. Go along the side of the body so we're not allowing the body to wool forward or back. It goes straight over the side and straight over this side. Yeah, go over your side and turn your body toward the floor.

Take the top arm and bring it down and around and open it back up. And Jesse elbow goes down to your knee and open it up. One more time, down to your knee. Open and come up into the center and the other side come up and do over and turn your body. To face your name. The top, top arm comes down, Jesse Elbow and lifts back up. Exhale, opening, lift. Exhale down, open. Turn to the side and come up to the center and lower your arms.

Bring your hands in front. Walk the body, flower down towards your toes. Rounding your back, take a breath there. Even your arms by stretching effected side, just a little more so that the hands are even on the legs. And then we roll the Spotify app. One Vertebra at a time. Roll the shoulders down and sit up tall.

Now where you remember we were doing a shoulder rolls, so here in place the hands right at the sides of the body. And this time we not going to use the ball through the tape, but we want to have the feeling that we're putting the correct alignment in the body and circle around, circle around, try and make sure that your space is even on both sides of the body five times. And then we go five the other way. Feeling it under the shoulder blades, the arms are relaxed. Come more from the center of the chest and work with your breath. Very nice. So the next set of exercise is done kneeling if you can. Um, but we have many alternate positions so we can sit on a small box or you can actually do these, um, seated in a chair.

Either one is absolutely fine, but if you can, I like to add this kneeling position. And so we're going to use the core band again and you're going to come up and come into this position. Now the core band we want to have for this first one a little bit, I'm closer in. So I'm going to go all the way in to the next to the center pocket on one side. The one out on the other side, so when I'm coming down, my arms are just slightly wider than my stance of my legs. My knees are going to be hip distance apart and the first we want exercise we want to do incorporates our breath as well.

It's called chest expansion and it's a palladium exercise that we do on equipment as well as in our mat work class, so we were going to bring the band up. We're going to take an inhalation and bring the band down. Now we're going to rotate to turn the head and we're going to turn right left center and lift the band up. That's going to be on a full exhalation. Remember in their first phase, we worked so much on the breathing. I'm going to put that to a test right now. Let's go ahead and start.

Bring the band up. Inhale as you lower the band. Now exhale, exhale, exhale, x hell so that you really are using that full breath. Remembering Naci to begin the exhale too soon or to para fully. You want to have full breath at the end. Let's go again. Keep the band taught, turn the head the opposite way, so it's exhale, exhale, exhale, and exhale two more times. Inhale strongly and exhale.

Exhale, exhale and exhale. And then one more time, take it down and exhale. Exhale, exhale, exhale and sit down and round your back. Yeah, we are now going to bring the legs to the side of the body. Keep your one n on one end and go all the way out on the opposite end and stretch that arm up over your head.

So once again, if you find this too difficult, come to whatever position you are and work from there. Make the exercise suit your body and get that long stretch. So from here we are lifted up and inhale, exhale and take the movement down and press around. Underneath we are working, the affected arm is in the band. The other arm is our support and up.

But in this program I like us to work on both sides, whereas in some of the other programs we worked more on our symmetry. Now we really want to begin to get that body to work evenly on both sides. And we want to begin to put in that awareness of how we are moving. Come up into the center, turn stretch all the way around. Come Center. I just bring your legs over to the other side or if you're seated, just change sides and come here and bring the band up.

Now we don't want to be leaning into that effective arm, so we're going to be pulling away utilizing the work from our core as we stretched with the movement. Now come down and around with a long breath and come up and stretch and actually I'll come down and around. Yeah, inhale, come up and stretch and down and around. Oh to stretch one more time and down and lengthen up and stretch. Bring your body in and turn all the way around. Relax the shoulders down and come center. If you can.

We're going to come back either in the seated position or come back up to nailing whichever is more comfortable for you or be seated on your chair or on a small box. Let's bring the arms up and slide down the back. Slide back up. Slide down your. Now, if you find that this is too difficult, rotate as much as you can and bend your elbows and come back down. Remember we're working for that range of motion. If you can, we're just going to slide it and lifted and slide down and lift and slide and left. Bring the band into the center, round your back and sit down on your heels. Bring your arms to the sides. Pull the band hot, release it, pull the band chart. Really sit.

Pull the band hot and release. All right, we're going to work for full range of motion and this exercise is a challenge for everyone. We'll come back up, lift the band, bend the elbow is toward the waist, press it back behind you, bend towards your waist and lift up overhead. Then once again, good and push stretch behind you. Bend and come up. If it's too much, just come down and go only as far as you can behind you and in and up. Remember, honor your body. Don't go past the range of motion, distorting the shoulder girdle and do fewer repetitions as you work and come all the way up. Once again, round yourself down. Sit Down, round the back, over. Pull your band taught in front of you. Release the Bandon, roll yourself.

Fine up to the sitting position. The next set of exercises we're going to be doing on our hands and knees, but once again, modify that if you need to, you may be seated on a box or even in a chair, and we are going to not use the core band for that. Just put it on the side. We've been working a lot with the stabilization of both the pelvis and the shoulder girdle, so we're going to really put that to a chest as we go on to our hands and knees. So we're gonna come up. Yeah.

Now I want you to work on the effected arm first. The back should be long and straight. Slide your fingers along the floor. [inaudible]. Now inhale, exhale, stretch a little bit further, but keep the shoulder in alignment and let the arm float up towards your ear.

Stretch a little bit more from there. Then bring the hand down and let's do the other arm and slide it along the floor. Lift and let it float up. Beautiful. [inaudible] reach it and come back down and pull in alternate arms back to the first side. Stretch it and lift it as much as you can. Very nice. Reach it long and come down and in other side, stretch nice and long. And then let it go. Hello.

So we're getting full rotation mobility through that shoulder girdle and rigid out and come back down and in. I'm going to do the same thing now, stabilizing across the shoulders and working with leg. So let the legs slide on the floor as long as it can. Then let it flowed up. Stretch it out of the hip and touch it onto the floor and come back down other leg. Stretch it out and let it float up all the way. Good, good, good. Stretch it out of the hip joint.

Touch the toe down and bend it to come in. Let's go ahead and put that together. So we're going to do one arm and the opposite leg, starting with your affected arm and opposite leg, slight arm and leg, and let it float up. Beautiful. Touch it both down and pull them back in. Change sides, sly. Use your breath and exhale up. Touch it down and pull it back in. One more on each side.

Take it out and up and down. And in. One more time. Slide in, lift. Reach it long and down and come in. We are now going to work on articulation of the spine and this exercise is a variation on the cat for spinal articulation. If you're sitting seated in the chair, yes, going to lengthen and round over walking down.

So you get the spinal articulation on the hands and knees. What I want you to do is think about the top of your head and the tailbone as number one, and then coming down across the top of the shoulders and into the hips. Number two. Number three is at the a ribcage and climbing up. Number four goes under the rib cage and number five is at your waist.

So this was [inaudible] going to help us prevent from just lifting all at once and having just the chest and the upper back do the work. But it's going to help us do a long gate the spine and work from both the tailbone and the top of the cervical spine. Let's begin one only move one in one. So you're going to climb up there. You got one in one, two and two, three and three, four and four and five. Now start from five. Take it open on five, open on four. Nice. Open on three, open on two and stretch out on one and you can be doing that same coming from the head in your tailbone issue round. Let's go again. Lengthen out.

Beautiful head up. There we go. One and one. [inaudible] the air. Nice. Beautiful. It's just not an easy exercise. Two and two, three and three. Four and four and fully in ribs up on five. Come out on five.

Beautiful and four beautiful articulation. It's not an easy thing to do. Three, two, and one. Very, very nice. And Go ahead and rest back and sit down on your heels. So that helps with the correct articulation all the way through the spine. The next exercise, we're going to still be on hands and knees.

Go back into your position and we are going to take the effected arm out and place it behind the head from their position. We're going to keep the elbow wide, but we're going to come down and try and touch our knee with our elbow and open out and lift and exhale down, trying to beautiful touch that knee, the elbow and the knee. So the elk elbow goes to the opposite knee, actually all Jan on three. That's it. Nice. And take it all the way up and take it down on four and lift up. Very nice and down on five and comm less work on the other side. So now we're going to have our support on our affected arm and let's go ahead. Inhale, exhale down across the body.

Try and work symmetrically as we've been working through our program. So th there's not more, uh, flexibility on one side of the body than the other. And you know that we've been working on using your breath to increase range of motion when it is necessary on one side of the body that looks good and last one come down, stretch it around, stretch and come back up. We're going to do the same exercise only this time we do it with a straight arm so we get a little bit more of the advanced stretch effected on first comes. Now we're going to do all of them together.

Go from the point you're into the cat, then take the arm and try and get the whole body down. Reaching your ear on to the Mat. Lift and stretch along and again, inhale, exhale, sit all the way down. Good. Articulate the spine and come back up and we tried it out one more time. Reach and stretch the spine, getting a rotation through the ribs and come back up.

Stretch nice and low and RM down other side. Once again, now we're working on our symmetry of the body. Try and work evenly, working a body for full recovery, for full range of motion so that we're really feeling that rotation in the movement as well as the length and stretch through the shoulder girdle and all the way down, all the way through and come back up and stretch out. Now once again, go ahead and sit down on your heels, stretch back, stretch your spine. Beautiful. Take an inhale and exhale.

The next section of exercises we're going to be doing standing, and once again we will use the core band, so we're going to begin our standing exercises and I am going to be placing my hands and the second pocket on each side or sleeve on each side. If you need to have a greater range of motion, you'll want to go wider on that. The in on the two is a little more challenging, but I think we're all ready for that. We're going to begin coming into the center, standing comfortably, feet apart. Bring the band up in a rotation of through the shoulder girdle.

Bring it center and down. Bring it center, lift up, rotate. Get that opening through the shoulder girdle. And one more time. Get that nice rotation, calm, center and down. Come Center m lift. Now we're gonna go left. Lift the torso and reach to the side. From there, really lengthened from the shoulders through the fingers and come up.

Lowered down. Once again, center in this. Lift the torso long. Come over to the side, stretch away from your body, reaching away from the shoulders. Come up into the center and reach to come again. Center and lift up and over or reach out. Lift up, rotate through the shoulder girdle.

One more time. And again these all don't need to be done standing. You can be seated to do the side stretches as well. Center and calm down. Let's bring the band up and again, we're going to work on our rotation. So let's turn the body to this side. Try and push that hip back so that your once again rotating from under the rib cage, come into the center, turn to the side and we want to try and keep that are opposing hip, pressing behind your good work. Come Center. Very nice. Other side and for resting your hip away from you. That's it.

And come center. One more time. Turn and for the rest of the hip away, pull the ribs in and down. Use your breath, come into the center and let's bring the core band down. And one more with Corbyn and that is let's go to this side. Let's take the bat back arm behind us and push it front and come center.

Come around to the side, back arm Ben's and extends and into the center. Come around, bend and extend and center and around. Bend and extend and come center. Let's bring it around to the side. Now one arm down, one arm up, back to that level. Position and center it. Other side. One arm down, one arm up, back to center. One more.

Each side reach and come back to the center. Last one and center and lower the band down. All right, let's put those bands down and let's bring the arms center. If you can. The arms are going to go over. Very nice. Drop the shoulders down. Begin to roll the body down. Keep the shoulders away from the ears roll and stretch over.

Now in this position, imagine that you're rounding over a giant ball and just relaxing. I want the shoulders to be relaxed and I would like you to do small circles, just allowing the movement good in the shoulder girdle itself. So circle those at NYSE and then reverse the circle. Reverse the circle. Now begin to roll the spine up and lengthen the spine out to the front so you're going to reach it long and stand up. Once again, arms up as much as you can. If it can only reach center, that's fine. If he can. They rotate in side the shoulder girdle and we roll the spine gently over gently over circle three times one, two, and three.

Three reversed it on one and it's just a little circle through the shoulder. Begin to roll your spine up. Lengthen your spine out, and Lyft and Lyft and rural. Last one over five circles this time. Circle one, two, three, four and reverse circle one. Just let the shoulders relax and have the movement calm without forcing the muscles. Begin to roll your spine up. One Vertebra at a time.

Role length. Lengthen the spine out to the front of the room and all the way up and come down. Now make two o's with your hands and when you open and close the hands. This is called finger flex, so we want to really flip the fingers. Good, and we're going to keep the arms down in front of us and flick on. One, two, three, four, five. Walk the arms up, two, three, four, five, higher if you can. It's going to go all the way over your head and walk it out.

Good. Once again, open then from the shoulder girdle. Now the rotation is from the shoulders. Turn it over and flick. Flick three, four, five. Come down. One, two, three, four for hive and center. Reverse it out. Two, three, four, five. One, two, three. How we doing? Four. Five. Rotate inside. One, two, three, four or five and bring your [inaudible] arms all the way down. Let's bring the arms together in the center and press.

Now lift the hands up over your head. From there, Keven pressed together, pulled down as much as you can, and circle the arms open to the sides. Circle it up. Press and pressing evenly. Now we want to have that symmetry all the way through the body. Keep the hands together as much as you can as you come all the way down and around and up. Last one. Breathing deeply.

Push into the hands. Evenly. Elbow should be even at this time. We remember our symmetry and reverse it. Come into center. Bring the hands together as close and low as you can. Lift it up. Lift all the way up. Try and keep them together over your head to straight and open.

Two more times. Push and reach your arms up. Keep them together and open it out. Last one, push up and stretch app. Open it out. Come back up. Bring the arms in. Thank you very much for joining me in my program.

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Playforever
Kathy Corey shows us a simply beautiful series of movements for 3 Phases of Breast Cancer Recovery. Very adaptable for all levels, providing both challenge and success! Thank you so much for this Kathy!
Thank you Kathy for motivating me doing the exercises that make me feel gaining my skills back and give me confident....

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