Class #2153

Articulating your Spine

55 min - Class
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Description

Pat Guyton invites you to find articulation in your spine in this Spine Corrector workout. She starts standing with the "Spine Dance" that she learned from Eric Franklin, to find the correct placement and alignment for your body. She then adds the Spine Corrector as a partner, so you can begin to dance with and match your body to this small piece of equipment.
What You'll Need: Spine Corrector

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Hello class. How are you? Yeah, good. I'm fine. Correctors, one of my favorite pieces of bloodies equipment to work on. And what I like about it is that it takes my spine, it gives me feedback for the different positions that I may be missing in my articulation. And so it's interesting that this of all the pieces is called the spine corrector. Yet we, our center is our spine. The most important thing about the spine corrector is that it's your partner. And it's deceptively simple because it doesn't have any moving parts.

What's important is that you know where your parts are and where you want to match up your anatomy to the anatomy of the spine corrector to get the best outcome in your body. So since if we had a tape measure here, I would bet that if we measured you from the top of what we call t one all the way down to your sacrum, every one of you would have a different length. And I used to measure spines and that's how we measured them. So that means that to get a position that's going to get the same result in every person means that some people's pelvises will be slightly different, some people will appear to go back further. Does that make sense? So what I'd like to do is lay down on the floor, if you would, all of you feet four feet toward the center of the room.

Okay. If we're going to line ourselves up in the spine corrector, it might be a good idea if we all agree on the same cues. So put your fingertips on your ass. Those are the little bumps right here on your ilium. And then draw a line across the front and imagine that is a carpenter's level.

And so in the middle of the carpenter's level, there's a bubble of air, right? Where should the bubble of air be? Should it be to the right of the left in the center? Right? So that's one thing we're gonna Watch is where our level is. And then if we go down to the pubic synthesis and we drew a line, that's a triangle. So we want the triangle to be in same plane as the floor.

So there's a spot on the middle of your sacrum that will be your center of gravity. So I usually find that by plopping. So if everybody would bend their legs up and you're just gonna lift and lower seven times and it's done very quickly and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, it's very, very small. And as you're tapping your, your bottom is going to tap the floor, your sacrum, and you're going to notice a small spot. And let's do that again. Tap Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now remember that spot because there are going to be exercises on the spine corrector where I say, can you please put your plop here or there? And so we all agree on that.

The next thing I want you to do is put your hands onto your back. And notice there's a nice curve there. We call that a neutral spine. We want the neutral spine to be in neutral. We're not trying to make it, it's just there. And the neutral spine comes from centering on the sacrum. The spine has a natural curve and then it goes up to the rib cage and the ribcage needs a lot of back bending or what we call extension or swans and PyLadies. So take your sternum, just tap it for a minute.

So he and Dan go down to the bottom. All right, now lift that up to the ceiling. So your ribs come off the floor and then put it back down on the floor. So imagine this is the centered spot on your rib cage. So ribs up and ribs down and ribs up and ribs down and ribs up. Good and ribs down. Now when we do that, do you have to make an adjustment in your pelvis?

So for instance, sometimes people will do ribs up and the tailbone goes down, so they do it from lower and I just want to see this and this and this and this. Do you have that ability to feel that and up and down? Good in one more. Up and down. Put your hands down by your sides. When we go over the spine corrector, it's important that you have the flexibility in your upper chest. If you're going to take your arms over the barrel.

So I'm going to do a little test. Take your arms up and reach behind you on the floor. Do the bat, does the back of your arms, touch the floor. If it touches the floor, did your rib cage come off or do you have your rib cage down? And then bring your arms up and put them back down. So we're going to try that one more time. Lift up. And then I'm here with Amy.

What I'm gonna do is suggest that she goes a little bit more on an angle. Now ribs down, ribs down, ribs down. So then you're gonna feel your chest stretch. Yes. And lift up and down and lift up and open the mat a little bit. Open them out a little bit. Good. Now stay there. Feel your ribs on the floor.

Extend your right leg. Hold onto your core position. Extend your left leg, hold onto your core position. We need that kind of precision and control when we start placing ourselves on the spine corrector. So let's everyone do a roll up and roll up. Sorry about the floor. Promise that we won't do that many times. Good. And then bring your left, holds your legs in and come to standing.

So we're going to do a little spine dance. Um, it actually is something that Eric Franklin does and I have a few adjustments for it that tend to help us do the spine corrector. So you're gonna start in a round position like this and I'd like your feet to be under your hips, so not together and your tailbone is going through your legs and your shoulders are wide and your neck is long. So from tailbone to the top of your skull, you're going to be in one curve. So I'm going to check that out. All right, a little more length here. Good. Now we're going to isolate and I'd like you to take your tailbone and press it back to the room and keep your chest right where it is and then bring it under.

So you might want to look at me for a minute. I'm in this position. I'm going to isolate my lower part of my spine, my pelvis, my sacrum, my tailbone, and then pull it under out on two and under on two and out on two and under, on two out on, two under and out. And I like the breathing that's going on and under. Very nice. Now staying in that position and thinking about this, you're in a deep scoop. Your lumbar spine, your belly deep scoop. Hardest thing is for the thoracic spine to back bend.

So pull your chest through, pull your chest through, pull your chest through, pull your chest through. Good. And then stand up. So I'm going to use Karen for an example. Would you come here? All right, so go ahead and get in the position. Also, when I do this, I really pressed down and give myself some leverage. So I'm liking this neck. This looks pretty good. Little bit of, I'd like a little more roundness here and we're going to work on that. So let's have tailbone goes out. Good. And under c you notice how flexible she is and out and under [inaudible].

Now we want this to have a swan. So make a swan. And do you notice where she started? Yeah. So she started her swan down by your sacrum. So what I'd like you to do is I'm going to just kind of hold you here, see if you can bring your sternum through your arms and then around and come under and sternum through your arms without moving your pelvis. Good and come round. So everybody get that pattern.

So the reason we do the scoop and the belly is so that the Rassic has an opportunity to move. So what we want in our spine joints, all the joints of our spine, we want each joint to move in. It's three dimensional movement as much as it can according to its design and our relative health. So each spine a, each for each joint is doing that. And every joint has to coordinate with every other joint in the spine, which is why if I round this out and then open this up, I should be able to articulate any way I want to. Welcome to the spine corrector world. So let's start rounded over. So Karen, you know what your challenge is, right? All right.

And tailbone an out, sternum forward, tailbone under, sternum round, tailbone out, sternum, four word tailbone under. Uh, we're not ready for that. And then this. Good. Now just the tailbone out, then the sternum comes forward. Now open up the open up, open up. Now hold that as you bring your tailbone under. Nope. Nope. Tailbone under only good. And now the upper body and tailbone out.

Sternum out. Good. Tailbone under and around. Welcome to articulation. So we're now going to do a couple of these, um, repetitions. Behold the tailbone under and we take our chest out and then we round and our chest out and we round because here if I may demonstrate this is going to be tailbone under, this is chest out.

And what we find when we first start, wherever we don't have enough mobility, sometimes that will happen. Okay. So the best thing you can do for yourself is warm yourself up before you start. All right, so we round over and chest out, only chest under, chest through your arms. Really push that stirring up the arms. Good man. The end around and chest out, chest out, chest out, good and round. And one more chest out. Hold that position. Now pull your tailbone between your legs, keep your chest out, keep your chest out, tailbone between your legs.

And this is what we're going to try to do and stand up. Okay. And then we're going to check ourselves after we do spine corrector class. Okay. So let's start seated in our spine corrector. And I think I'm going to just turn mine around. Whenever you start any class, you always want to do a up.

We want to move our spine in every dimension. So we're going to do forward bending, backward bending, side bending, rotation. And then we're also going to use the spine corrector in it's three dimensional planes. So we're going to, so we'll do all those planes of motion, then exercises within those planes of motion. So let's start with your arms up. Imagine a ball in your lap round forward and roll up. Let's have this be an inhale.

Exhale round over your ball and full breath to roll up. And Ah, and when I stop you keep going. Ah, and one more and roll up. Good. Now I'm happy to say, but I'm going to point it out. If you notice your sit bones are sitting in the crevasse. Yeah, right down there and the little notch.

And if you put your hands on the top of your hips and you go around, you'll notice you have your dimples Venus there. So when we're sitting up, we don't, we're not looking for a straight back here. We're looking for a little bit of a curve. Does that make sense? And also if you remember, happy dog, naughty dog, you would be, well it'd be hard to relag with the arch behind us, but that's the position we want. So from this position here, let's take the hands out and I want you to twist toward your left and twist and center. And let's not do any pulses. Twist and center and twist and center. Good and twist and center.

Now this is for Michelle and Amy. Look at me, twist and center. So that's the ribs coming out. All right. It's okay. We're allowed to get better. So let's try it again. We'd go into the left, just feel like you have a central axis and you rotate around it and twists and center and twist and center and twist and center. Very nice. Put your right hand down on the floor and reach over and come up and reach over and uh, and reach over and Ah, over. And uh, now find your two sit bones.

Let's take the right arm over our head and not much weight in the left, not much weight. So right arm is over the head weight. You're right. Sit Bone and bring yourself up from the bottom and then over, not much weight and then come up and center. Do we feel the difference when we do that? And all the way over and then, uh, good and all the way over and come up and bring the legs in. So I'm going to turn my spine corrector to the side now and we're going to slide forward so that you're on, on what's called the lip hold on and roll down into the lip.

So we just did an exercise. Put your hands on your knees and pull your pelvis, pull the tailbone between your legs and release and pull it between the legs and release and between your legs and release that end between your legs. Hold that position, hold that position and release. Now, if you were looking at yourselves, you might notice, or you can feel this, that if you don't have the ability to move this and keep this still, you might notice things like that happening. So I'm here, I'm a little bit off my arc and I'm going under and release, but I'm not doing anything with my upper body. I'm choosing what I want to move and under and release and under and release.

Look and great ladies and under and hold. Notice the plop on your rib cage. You feel that it's on the spine corrector. That's that particular. Wherever you feel the weight, that is your spot for ribcage cuing. So I, I'm seeing some faces here, so everybody come up and take a break for a minute.

Yeah, so what I did do is do this again. I imagined my spine dance. I went forward. Now I'm going to take my hands behind. I'm going to hold this position as I walk my vertebrae over the top of the arch. And for most of us, we're all about the same size.

The sternum will be right on top of the arch. My head is not gonna fall back. I'm just here. And then I'm going to roll up. And my image for this that comes to me right now is I'm going to think about bicycle sprocket and how the sprocket gears pull the chain. So I'm to think of my vertebrae as pulling me over, over, over, and up, up, up, up, up. So do you recognize this? Good.

Very nice. That's the point of it. All right. I get to watch now. So here we go. Hands on our knees and we're going to have our hands open. So we're not, we're not so much doing pretty, we're doing function. We want to see how this feels so through good and let it go again and tailbone through. Good. And I like what you just did, Amanda, you repositioned, you'll, you'll learn that you have to reposition. And remember, you're close to the lip with your sit bones. So put those issial tuberocities right on the edge. Great. All right. From this position, put your hands behind your neck.

Don't lose your pelvis and your lumbar spine as you walk your sprockets over the top of the arch and just hold there for a minute. Michelle, open your elbows just a bit. Get those. You want to get your pex to stretch. Good. So I'm checking everybody's position and then walk your sprocket back up. So we're going to do this. Four counts back. Four counts up. Ready? Yes. Yes. We're keeping this.

Remember how the tailbone wanted to go back? It was sneaky. Okay, so we're asking can this part of the spine move independently of this? And that's something that a lot of people really need. That's an area that starts to the sprocket doesn't work very well after a while. All right, so elbows open a little bit. Just expand. Lengthen the pecs.

Yeah, yeah. There we go. Back and four and rolling back. One, two, three, four. Coming up. Pick up the sprockets. Two, three, four, and one, two, three, four. It. Reestablish your tailbone. One Up, three, four abdominals. Lengthening, lengthening, lengthening, lengthening. Now abs shorten and they're pulling your sternum to your pubic bone. Very nice. And come up and sit from this position. Let's just take our arms up and down and breeze and up and down and breathe.

Yes, if you do that correctly, that's a hard exercise and that's a key for the AB series an up and down. So bring yourself back into that position. Tailbone is up and bring the legs in. Pull your sprocket up as far as you can. One leg out, ready and change, and two and three and four, five and six and seven. And hold.

Now put feet down again. Looks Pretty, doesn't look like a lot of work to me. Come forward a little bit. So with this body, I'm going to bring your tailbone forward. Bring your legs up. Good. So right there, I don't want you to bring your knees to your chest. What I want you to do is bring your towards your legs. One more sprocket point off. Now put one leg out.

Good and change. Now I want you to think of your chest coming to your knee, chest and knee. Come on. Chest and knee. Chest and knee. Do you see the difference? Yes. Yes. Okay, let's everybody do it. Do you understand? You're trying to pull up probably one tiny sprocket.

Yeah. Okay, so let's get ready. Do you have it? Do you have enough space there? The Youtube. Okay, here we go. And change and two and Michelle, that looks good and nice. Karen. Six and seven and a little faster. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, double legs both in good and reach out. Stretch and round and come in and reach out and think chest needs a little more in ear, in and out. And in.

When reach out and in scissors. One leg up. Now from here I want you to take your leg and imagine the tree exercise. So let's start down here and climb. Two, three, four. Down, two, three, four. Up, two, three, four. Flex. Flex, flex. Are you round? Are you holding it?

Tailbone is up and down to three. Change legs and climb up. Go up the tree. The tree trunk doesn't come to you. You go up the tree trunk down two, three, four and again up up. One more vertebrae. Uphold that position. This looks good. Belly and Michelle. That's it.

How can anybody that thin and gorgeous have our belly hanging out and down? Two, three, four. Now let's do scissor change and change. Climb the tree. Climb the tree. Four and five and six and said, watch your shoulders. That's it man. The end one. Good. Karen. Three, four and five and six and seven and eight both legs up. Good. Flex your feet. Hands behind.

Now lower your legs and four counts. One, two, three, four. If your tailbone still going up and up to three, four down, two, three, four up. I'm not going to have you point. You're going to hit each other and down. Two, three, four and up to three, four and bend your legs and put them down on the floor. Very nice. So from here, I want you to plank out long and we're going to come up and just measure ourselves. It's one thing I learned from Kathy grant is find out what your positioning needs to be. So as I roll down, one, two, three, four, I want to be able to come up two, three, four without dropping off the cliff.

Ready and back. Excuse me, two, three, four and up to three, four and back to three. And hold. Now if you can lift your head just a little bit. Look at your triangle. So Amy, notice your hip flexors are tight. Yeah. Can you flatten out your triangle? Yes. Whatever that means to you right now. When you come up, your triangle should be flat until you're rounded up and over.

Okay, and here we go. Up to three and four. Is that a little different ladies? Good. And back to three and four and come all the way up and come to sitting and take a rest for a minute. We're going to turn around to the side and I've got this old, a six pack thing on me.

And from here we're going to roll down and the arm is going to come out and roll all the way up to vertical and down. Inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale and over. Inhale and stay. Bring the top arm up and reach down and stretch and down. Yeah. And come all the way up and bring your hands behind your head and over and all the way up and over and all the way up and over and up. Good and over and all the way up.

So notice the preceding exercises. If we divided ourselves down the middle, we're also dividing the barrel down the middle. When we turn around, we are now on the coronal plane or the plane to the side rolling over the barrel. So we still have sprockets, but we can monitor our sprockets from our ribs. So I would like to see a little bit more of this. As you round over and you come up, could you get up out of the barrel and get a straight line? So instead of this, we actually take the last count to do this. Let's do two more. Four counts ready over two, three, four, up to three and lift. Lift a little bit more.

That sounds about right. They're up now. Tailbone out. Just a bit. Yeah. And this leg may need to come forward because of the angle of your hip. All right. And over two, three, four up to three and get up there. Straight up, up, up, up, up, up, up more. Michelle, Michelle, pull it up, pull it up, pull it up. That's good. Karen, and let's change sides. So I'm going to come back here. [inaudible] [inaudible] all right, so we had our arm out to the side. So when you're doing this, you can either with your clients or yourself, actually let yourself go out and stretch over the side and then pull yourself back up.

And so this would be a preparation for side bending and pull yourself back up and then over. And when I say pull yourself back up, let's go pull ourselves up and out of this, up, up, come on, up, up and all the way over and all the way up. Let's go over with our arms. Slide over one more time. Good. Now stretch over and allow your ribs to open on the top and then bring your hand back down. And again, inhale, reach and down. Inhale, reach. And down and one more reach and down and hold. So if the, if all of you can just reach over and stay exactly where you are, I want to point out that the anatomical differences, look at this leg.

It's straight out, but Michelle's triangle is in the same plane. It's a vertical plane. Looks good. Whereas an Aimee, you look pretty good. I feel like you are better off in this position. And Karen, you know the same thing with you, right? That could be different. Not Everybody's hip joints are the same. So you have to take that into consideration. So hands behind your head.

Let's roll all the way up and sit up out of the barrel, up and rollover and dam and over and up. And you do this very well and Dan good and your foot will slide with you. It will slide across the floor and down. It's allowed to and all the way up, up, up, blah, blah, blah. Good and all the way down.

And then I want you to roll over and face the floor on your, on your spine corrector. So your pubic bones on top of the spine corrector, and you're going to do a swan dive down and up. So I'm going to look at all of you. You have to find your position. So if you bend your elbows, your chest is going to go down, your feet are going to go up, and you really want to be able to lift your feet up. So if you have sticky, sometimes that does help. And then you're going to come up. Now this is the reverse of what it looks like.

The legs go up to push the chest down, hold the legs on the ceiling and pull the chest up to straighten the arms. Good and legs up as the chest goes down, chest up, come on, work at market, Mandy, up, up, up. Do you feel that eight and legs up. Get the thighs off to get that size off the machine and chest up, up, up and all the way down. Good and all the way up and press back and you can come back over your spine corrector and do a little stretch [inaudible] and then come back up and sit forward.

Okay and slide forward. Bring your hands behind, legs in and we're going to do Chris Cross. Ready and turn. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight one two hold tailbone between your legs, round your upper body. Pull one sprocket off the barrel and change again, change and two and three and four, five and six and seven and eight. One and two and three and four. Finish your legs, seven a and come back up to sitting.

So for a dear friend of mine, Elizabeth Jones, Boswell taught me this little exercise and I think it's a lot of fun. You're going to turn, touch and lift and center and turn and touch and lift and center and turn and touch and lift and center. Now as you turn, turn as much as you can touch. If you call it in the middle of the barrel. Now pull up and turn, twist, reach back with your chest up and center. Now as I go back, I want to make the shape of the spine corrector, but I am not allowed to lay on the spine corrector. All right, so two more.

Turn to me. Turn. Reach back up and center. Turn, reach back up. Good and center. Very nice. And back onto the spine. Corrector. Tailbone goes up, legs come up, arms out walking in.

Four counts and one, two, three together, right. Two, three together, left two, three together, left two, three other side and right. Two, three together. Left two, three together, right two, three together and left. Two, three n up and bend your legs. From this position, tailbone is going toward your knees. You're going to reach up and see if you can get all the way back and come all the way up and reach forward. Number one, the shoulder joints have to be on the barrel. And then I reach out, Amy, particularly two for you, slight diagonal and then arms and head come up and reach forward in four counts. One reached back on to come up on three and forward on four.

So your sprocket is buried here. [inaudible] round back on one. Keep that sprocket there. Come on, keep it there. Now reach back, reach back, reach back, reach back, keep it there. Good. I'd open your arms a little bit more, get a little more stretched there and then come up. Do you see the control that you have to have here? Good and back and open. Open, open, open, open Michelle. Wider arms, good and come up good and reach forward.

I don't think so. Remember, this is the one where you start to curl. Then you open the chest, the chest goes back. I will show you something that's important for everybody to know whether they're here or at home. If you have tight shoulders and you start to go back and you start to round and bring your neck over, this is what you're doing to yourself, so it's the idea of one vertebrae, one vertebrae, one vertebrae, one vertebrae. No, my cervical spine is not going to touch because it's narrow, but I want to feel like I'm going that way in space. Then my shoulder joints are down. Do you see that here?

That's what I'm going to get in that case. This is going to be my range of motion until I get better because I will get better. Yes. We're going to go back over the spine corrector now and when we do, I am going to demonstrate how to do that. This is how we do it and listen very carefully because you may be at home, maybe you've never worked out on this before and whether you get um, there's another arc that's a little smaller. That's a foam. There's other arts that are bigger. It's still the same procedure.

I'm going to put my sit bones in the crevice and I'm going to roll back and I'm going to think of my sprockets and my sprockets. Nothing has changed here. Nothing has changed here, so now I have my sacrum here. I had my red plop here. When I get to this position I'm going to hold on tightly. Some spine correctors, you can actually hold onto the handles. Some of them they don't. They won't fit everybody. My neck is up. I see my knees, my neck is up, I see my knees, I see my knees and then I come up and then I straightened from here.

We're going to just lift up and come down so it's plop off, plop down, plop off, plop down. Makes Sense. [inaudible] and then we're just going to ensure way off and come over and come up. I'm going to give you a few other exercise when you're over there, so that makes sense. So let's start tailbones are pointing to your knees. Faces are looking at your knees. Put your hands on the spine corrector. As you roll back, you're going to probably have your hands on the arch, so you're still probably going to be here. And then lift one foot up.

Continue to look at that knee, put it on the spine corrector, put that foot on the spine corrector. Yeah. And then put this one on the spine corrector. Good. And slide yourself back. And I always think of myself as the sleeve on a coffee cup and winter. All right, so my spine is wrapped around the barrel. Lift your feet straight up in the air, straight up in the air. Good.

Now check your shoulders. You should have from clavicle to clavicle to shoulder joint on the floor and your hands are giving you enough of a hand holds so you have some leverage. Feel that your rib cage that we found in the beginning of class is on the barrel. Feel like your plop is on the barrel now slowly lift your tailbone up and then put your plop down on the barrel and lift up and back down on the barrel and lift up and back down on the barrel. And with Amy you'll notice it's really hard to keep your toes right here and lift and lower and then lift up. Now from the lift up position, get up, get up Michelle. More, more, more, more. Lift up, lift up, lift up.

I feel like I feel like, yeah, see that takes belly. It takes belly strength. Core strength to put your feet up. Now round over. Open your legs and flex. Roll all the way down and point. Good. Let's do it together. Leg Straight up, tailbone up over open and flex.

Now Walk your sprockets over, over, over and bring the legs together and straight up. Up. Up. Up, up, up, reach over, over, over. Good. Open and flex. Walk your sprockets over the barrel, over the barrel, over the barrel, over the barrel. Legs go down. Good. And come straight up. And then from here I want you to bend your knees and I'd like you to come up.

So bring your tailbone off and let's do a short lever. Cork screw around and uh, and over and around and up. Good. And over. Now when you bring your feet around, pool with your belly and up and over and around and up and over and around and up and put your feet down on the incline. Put your heels on the incline and your toes wrapped around the front. Good. So you kind of in a prehensile position. Toes wrap. Good.

I'm going to bring your feet together now. Can you get your lower back on the barrel? Can you really? That's it without your shoulders. So it's going to be a balance. We don't want this to get tense, but we really want to work to get that down. Alright. Legs together. Pull your inner thighs together, bring your right leg.

Can you get those heels down, please? Bring your right leg up now. Shoulder bridge, flex down. Stop right there. Your left heel should still be down. Come all the way up. Your left heel should still be down and flex down and come up and two and come up and three and come up and four and come up. Change legs. Now put both feet down and press those heels down.

This is a great Achilles stretch legs together. Now you'll notice as your leg goes up and down, parts of your spine may want to dance on and off the barrel. Yeah, can you get your shoulders down? Thank you very much. I'm not picking on you. I like you. [inaudible] and left leg up and press down and come up and two and come up and three and come up and four and up and put both feet down. Good. Now this is where you get to slide off the spine. Corrector slides, slide, slide.

There are other dismounts but tricky is not necessarily better and safer and then roll over on your side and come back to the let's sit side. Now again, the triangle should be in this plane, in the sky, in the side plane, or what we call the coronal plane. It's the same plane as the wall. So sometimes if I put my foot, my leg straight out, my asset tab, the Acetabulum may actually not allow for that plane, so I may have to come forward. It's okay. Hands behind. We're going to do what I call the reverse side, Ben. So you're going to go all the way over, lift your foot, lift your body, lower your body, lower your foot. So let's all get in this position.

Lift your leg up, hold it in that spot. Lift all the way up. Can you get your elbows to go straight across? Go all the way over and down and the lift and lift. You see that's probably where your leg goes, and over and down and lift and up. So here's the side bend and over and down and lift and up and over and down.

Bring the leg in, put it flat. Now we're going to see who really has the core strength to get up. This is I call hip opener and come all the way up. Sit up out of the barrel, sit and then control it. Don't fall one vertebrae at a time down, sorry. And lived all the way up. Up, up. You do this, great.

And then roll down one vertebrae at a time down and all the way up. Up, up, up, up. Wonderful. They bring your leg just a little bit further forward there. See how your triangle, yeah. Good. And all the way down. Remember, we're not all made the same right there and all the way up, up, up, up, up, up. Hold that position. Good. And we probably want to go to the other side. Hey. Okay. Hmm.

So let me see if you all can find your side leg position. So organize from your triangle. Good hands here. And then I noticed the, my teacher Ron like to have a foot like that because it was a gram foot. If you can do that, great. If you kee, if you'd like to have it pointed, fine. If you want to lay it down, lay it down.

Fine. Even Martha Graham did that in some positions where the foot was just on the floor. Main thing is what's going here, what's going on here in the spine, ready and all the way over. Just over and let's lengthen out. Get the elbow straight up to the ceiling. First the elbow. I want you to just lift the elbow up. Good. Stretch yourself out. Now lift the leg, keep the stretch into your upper body and let side.

Then up and body down and leg down and up. Come up, come on, Alibaba and all the way over and down. You'd like me to be there all the time, wouldn't you? And lift and all the way up. Come on Amy, get up there and over and down. Your leg might even be happier here and lift and up.

Good and all the way over and down. Now slide it in for hip opener and it seems like if you work with me that I do a lot of hip openers. I feel like some of the hip openers, so I'd put you here. Knee over heel. There's not the hip openers that exist in the equipment are not pleasant for men. Here's something a man can do. This may not be pleasant either, but for some of us ladies, we need that growing stretch too. So we're going to come up all the way up and tried to sit up and if you can keep your knee right there and roll all the way down.

Good and come all the way up. Keep that neither live, live, live, live, live. That's it Karen. And then roll all the way down and two more and lift all the way up. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, sternum, up. Good. That was a good correction and all the way down. One more time. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift up. Good and all the way down and come up and face the barrel face front.

So I'm going to turn legs up and play some out in front of you. Okay. That's it. See you're getting longer. Very nice, very nice. But this go. This is going to be called the getting longer class. All right, so from here, just put your hands on your triangle a little bit above it. Now pull in or do the scoop and see if your legs can come up because your spine bent made a deeper c and C so it doesn't have to be a big movement.

Pull those lumbar into the space and press down. So these are going in, which is causing my leg to have to go up. You like that and down. And one more time lift. Now if you lift a little, oh well, yes you have a teaser, but did you get there in the proper way? Good. So we're going to lower and four counts. One, two, three, four.

Belly one keeps pulling three for you. You better be glad I didn't do this in 20 counts. One, two, three and then I'm going to go back to a plank and belly in two, three, four. Let's pick up the speed. Inhale back, exhale up. Inhale back. Exhale up. Any length in your hip flexors. If you can, inhale back, make it long.

Make it long. Make it long. Now start with the belly and come all the way up and take a rest. Gets right in. Yeah, it's so wonderful to just feel this space. Yay. Okay, now I'm going to demonstrate something and I'll do it for all of you. So Amy, if you just arrest before we do the next piece, if you'd bring your leg straight up and flex straight up and flex.

So what I'd like you to do is hold onto the barrel and round forward a little bit. Good. So you can get all your as many sprockets off as you can. Bend. Bend your knees. Good. Now you're gonna think monkey and come up. And then, now it depends if you, if you don't have, if you're spotting somebody, press up. You may have somebody doesn't have long hamstrings. Maybe I'm out here or maybe I'm back here and then, and then I can use around. Ah, and then, and round up and you can take arrest. I'll tell you what, you can go over and do Michelle and Ben and uh, and Ben. Now, what I'd like you to do is bring your shoulders down. Yeah, you can hold on maybe a little. Yeah, hold onto the spine corrector. Hold on.

Let me do this. Okay. Now Bend your knees, Bend your knees. Now come up with your spine. Straighten your legs. Straightened legs. Think spine. The knees. Keep your shoulders behind you and Ben. Good. And uh, that's excellent.

Do you feel that now you do it instead of my knees doing it and up. Excellent. Then and up. Good. And Ben, now pull your shoulders down. Pull your shoulder stand, pull your shoulders down. Good. And then maybe you need to hold on a little lower. Yeah.

Actually hold onto the held on the spine curve, spine corrector and up. Up. Do you feel that? And uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Good. And come down. Wow. Welcome to the monkey and the spine corrector. I don't take credit for that. My friend Yuko showed me that from Romana I think.

So it's a nice little stretch, especially for some of the men. So let's take our legs up and go over to our right and pull down to our left and over to the left and back into the barrel. So when you go over to the right, you're twisting, pull back into the center and over, pull back into the center. Now over, keep the tailbone up, reach up and to the center, arms out, over and around and up and over. And sorry, I'll get out of the way and over and around and Ah, and over and around and up and put your feet on the floor. Good. And come to standing. Now that's not necessarily a lot of material in a class, but that's how to work material in your class.

So let's see if our spine dance improved because it's what we do off the equipment. That's important. Let me see what we carry out of the store. So start rounded forward and what I'd like to see is tailbones out tailbones under tailbones, out and under. Try to think about your shoulders. So the shoulder blade should be spreading and round and out.

And Michelle, your neck is looking better. This is looking much better out. This might be a good piece for you to do and pull your tailbone under and hold it there. Now did you make a change on the spine corrector? Pull your chest through your arms, keep your tailbone under, pull your chest through. That's it. So this comes up. That's why your head comes up. And then around four word and again up, up, up. Bring these together up. Good. And we round. Yeah, the tailbone is going to stay under. We're going to see, can we move our thoracic spine into an extension?

Good and under. Now let's all do it together. So round under, we're going to do a little piece here. So it's choreographed. You have practiced for many, many, many, many months. Now let's see what we can do. Tailbone alone goes out. So the pelvis is moving around the femur head chess goes through the arms.

So now we're doing a swan. Hold Your Swan and pull your tailbone back through your legs. Round your upper body so it's tailbone out. Chest out. Keep that chest out. Tailbone under, chest under Nella.

See if we can undulated and heal bone owl chest through tailbone, under, chest round, tailbone out, chest through, tailbone, under, chest round, and come all the way up to standing. Take a deep breath in and down. Thank you very much.

Comments

1 person likes this.
This is sooooo helpful!!! Moving the thoracic without the lumbar spine! Thank you for the great cueing, Pat.
1 person likes this.
Kathy Grant once said, "Your body should fit the shape of the equipment". This does not sound too astounding until applied. One vertebrae at a time and deliberate articulation with purpose. Thanks for the comment!
1 person likes this.
Brilliant cueing, loved the sprockets image and the lumbar-thoracic disassociation. Thanks a lot :)
Really really excellent cues and so helpful for articulation in spine dance.
Feeling long! Wish I could have been there! Thank you!
Fantástic class!!
Thank You very much
1 person likes this.
Such great intentional cueing!!! Especially liked the cueing for the teaser. In fact, I've never been able to do teaser before, but I was able to do it here!! So excited!
Thank you for the comments. Those of us who teach at Pilates Anytime want you to enjoy and to have take-homes. Regarding the teaser, I do not think it is effective to hip flex to initiate the exercise. I learned this from teaching girls gymnastics. Those little athletes could find every trick to muscle through warm up to get to the "real stuff". Without the core skills, the big tricks never work and the judges do deduct for bad form. Imagine two judges watching your performance and scoring. I like at least a 5+ at my age!!!!
1 person likes this.
Such a useful class for myself and my teaching Thank You Pat!
Thank you! I am glad that you found this class beneficial. Ron Fletcher introduced me to the Spine Corrector in 1994. I had thought that you just sat and threw your back over the top and hoped for a good outcome. He credits Clara Pilates for his understanding, but I know that he did much of the choreography that he taught me. Ron encouraged his students to go forward and make it our work. May you be fruitful on your journey.
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