Class #2714

Strength, Precision, & Flow

50 min - Class
186 likes

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Your body will feel so good after taking this Mat workout by Diane Diefenderfer. She teaches a beautifully balanced class offering strength, flexibility, breath, precision, and flow. All you need is a floor, a Mat, and your body to enjoy this class!
What You'll Need: Mat

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Hi everyone. I'm excited to do another class here for plots. Anytime I'd like to introduce my helpers, my assistance, Jia, m Laura. So we're going to do a mat floor class. We're not using anything except a floor and a mat. So sometimes we, I may suggest that you can do certain things with a circle or with a theraband, but the idea is to have as little apparatus as possible. So this is going to be a combination of things that I like to do. Um, we're going to certainly utilize pilates, fundamentals of breath and fluid movement and core strength. But I'm also doing some lot of stretching because it feels good to the body.

So we'll be working supine quite a bit, somewhat prone, some side bending and some rotation. So I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you. Alright, let's go ahead and sit down on our mats. Yup. And I'm going to face the front. We're going to sit with the legs criss crossed here and in the, you may want want to, next time you do the class a second time, maybe cross the other leg. So we have a variety, um, of of use. We tend to always do the same way. Um, let's just relax our hands into the center. We'll start slowly.

Then we're going to be picking up our pace a little bit. So for now we have a nice tall back. Feel like you have a nice wall behind you running up, out through the top of the head and make sure the ribs aren't flaring out. We're going to breathe in all directions here through the nose. Inhaling and exhaling and inhaling. Feel your back opening up and exhaling pulling the belly button into the spa.

Let's do one more deep breath in, a thorough breath out. And then you're going to care fully lift the chin up toward the ceiling without dropping the head inhaling and they had forwards. So we stretched the back of the neck of the upper back and again, upward careful with the neck and lengthen out and over. You always want to be real careful with your neck. One more time, upward with care. And I'm lengthen the neck out and over and down.

Your back itself is still straight. Let's look center, rotate right and left. [inaudible] front to the left, and we're keeping the shoulders very eve and center right and left. I like warming up the neck and upper body before I lie down on the Mat and center and left. Exhaling, exhaling the center. I will tilt the head to the right and gently press it down. Let's put the left hand on the Mat and you can take your hand to your temple and just give yourself a little extra stretch. Really work that left shoulder down. Then we'll put that hand to the mat and take the head the other way.

Exhale, and then take your hand to your temple. Just do what you feel good doing. It's supposed to make you feel good and we'll come back to the center. Let's shrug our shoulders and down and lift them up and press them down. We can get carry so much tension. We want to exhale it away. Get rid of it.

One more time. Up and down. Good. All right, we'll take our hands. We're going to interlace your fingers even though Joe [inaudible] said not to, but we're going to today. Exhale, contract the belly around the spines. Okay. If your shoulders lift, stretch across that back open. Lean back a little bit. Exhale and stretch your sternum open. And again, inhale class. Try the other thumb on top. Exhale, contract. Pull the belly in to the SPA. I know. Open and back again. Inhale, contract. Exhale. Let the head gently back out. Exhale. Good. One more time. Reach. Feel your arms.

Super Long. Contract at belly, pull it in and we're slightly over leaning back. Okay, we'll come up to center. Good. And then we're, I'm going to turn profile. We'll bring our feet to a parallel about hip with the part, knees in line as well. Make sure you have Matt behind you. We have a tall back, you can hold on underneath. We're still warming up here. Exhale, breath. Connect the valley and roll down to the spine. So we're now in a nice lengthened back position. Bring your feet in according to where you like to work.

We're doing some more breathing to feel that length and that imprint of the spine and we want to keep the pelvis very neutral. Let's breathe in. Exhale, pull the belly button into the spine. Make sure your pubic bone is to your sacrum. Again, inhaling, relaxing the neck and shoulders. Exhaling the ribs close. You know what to do. We'll go to some pelvic tilts. Breathe in where you are.

Exhale, use just the low belly. Let's not use the glutes. Keep them kind of soft. Try that again. Back to neutral pelvis with an inhale. Exhale, scoop the belly. Make it hollow. Keep the buttocks soft. Release. Inhale, and now let's go ahead and engage the pelvic floor. Of course, the belly inner thighs. Derriere, glutes returned to neutral pelvis once more, and let's do that again.

We're tucking or scooping. We're engaging our pelvic floor, not our neck or shoulders. You don't need your neck or shoulders to use your pelvic floor return. Inhale, stay there. Exhale, [inaudible] neutral pelvis. Let's reach the arms back. Watch the ribs, circle them, reach them back, reach long circle shoulders down. Reverse the circle. Reach out to the side, up and over and again, reach out to the side, up and over.

[inaudible] now we're just going to reach back again. Watch you don't arch you back here and we'll peel up into an upper body contraction reaching. Make sure your pelvis stays in neutral back we go. Exhale brings you forward. Closes your ribs, deepens your ways. Open neck and throat.

[inaudible] good. Once more back. [inaudible] exhale for word. Really reach past your thought. Let's reach back again. [inaudible] we're going to go to the oblique, reached to your right and let's take that left hand and reach it right over your other arm. You really feel your obliques there and back center [inaudible] and to the other side. So our pelvis is stabilize.

We're not tipping the hips and back [inaudible] and to the right to your right, reach your one hand over. I think this little extra reach of the hand really works that Oblique area. One more [inaudible] and we'll go to the left. Again, your hips are square, your pelvis is neutral. Let's take the knees and hug them into your chest and if you want to hug a little deeper and doe a low back flection, that's okay. Do what feels good. Now let's have the right leg alone. Stretch the left. Breathing in and out, flexing the feet. Sometimes I hold under my thigh, sometimes on top.

We'll point the feet, open the right arm. Take the leg across center and get a nice stretch on the outside of your right hip. Work back to center for a moment. Turn that right leg out. Let the external rotation happen. Relax in the groin area. Come into our figure four. Stretch breathing in and out.

And again, not to go crazy here, so you'll get a good stretch if you pull on that left thigh and then push your right knee open. Oof. We feel that? Yes. Woo. Ah, there's side hugging the left. Stretching the right. Very long out there. Yeah. Flex the feet deep in the valley. Shoulders down. I'm talking to myself here.

We don't want to lift our shoulders to hug our knees. Point the feet. Keep the knee left, arm open. Take the leg across. Give yourself some resistance. I heard somebody back crack. Okay. Hmm. As long as you do that in a good ma range of motion, it should be okay.

Unless you have pain, then you'd want to check that out. Come on back. Turn the leg out externally. Rotate the left, relax that left hip, and then come to the figure four. Stretch and pull the right. Push the left. This feels so good. Okay. We good? Yes. Yes. Alright, let's go to table top.

Let's find table top. Yeah. Just for appropriate receptive awareness. So this isn't, this isn't, I hope I am tabletop. All right, we're going to take our hands behind our heads and support our neck or still definitely working our abs. We inhale and we peel up and over reaching that chin out and over. You don't close off the throat and again, and forward. Length and back. Try not to arch the back back here. I do that so well.

Exhale four. We're going to stay here. Extend the legs, Ben, the knees. Get a little deeper, deeper, deeper in the way. Slide that feels good and back again. Sure.

MMM. Devil, pay or develop linkedin. Sure. Again. Well, come up again. Reach the arms long. We're going to do a four breath pattern. End. Inhale, four times x, l. So every time we exhale, we can reconnect that belly. If it's come out a little bit, which it will.

And let's take the legs straight up. One [inaudible] [inaudible] two long arms, easy neck as easy as possible as we can hold our position. And let's lower the legs. Two, three, four out, out, out, out, breaching shoulder blades down. Two more sets. Sure. Last set. Let's flex the feet, right?

Nice. Are we doing okay? Good. Turn your head. A little side to side. Alright, so little traditional Pilati in there, but with the four breast, let's put the left foot down. Let's take our a right sigh with our hands underneath. You could do this with a theraband or a towel or a circle. We're going to try to keep the thigh where it is.

Breathe in and stretch the leg up and bend again. I can't do a mat class without this exercise. It just is right for your body and a nice way to stretch without using your back to stretch your hamstrings. Once again, bending and stretching. Hold where you like. Try to keep the hips square. Hold a here. Inhale, flex the foot, push the heel up, point the foot. Yeah, so certainly a theraband could help. If you don't have one, that's okay. You can point again and flex again.

And let's slide the left leg out. Point that right foot. Pull the leg to you. If you need to have a little bend in the knee, it's okay if you can stretch it, fine. We're going to keep the leg with your left hand. Put your right arm out to the side and reach that right leg across. Try not to let your hip lift. We're pulling the right hip back.

Feels wonderful, Huh? Change hands. Take your leg where you can left hand on left hip to encourage you not to turn the body. So let's get a good stretch here in external rotation. Pull the belly in. Remember everything comes from our abdominal center. Ah, let's carefully regroup. Come Center, take the other side. Right leg is bent.

We have our left Phi in place. We inhale and we relax into the stretch. Exhaling. And again, you can do more of these if you like. I do like to work this slowly. Yeah.

Yeah, man. We band again. Try to keep a kind of a space hold on your thigh and stretch and whole breathing here. Flexing the foot and pointing nicely through the foot and flexing. My hips are square and my belly is down, I hope and pointing and flexing. Let's slide the right leg out. You can point your top foot, pull it towards you hardware where you can. If you need to bend a little bit, it's okay. [inaudible] right hand left arm out. Take it across the mid line.

[inaudible] this really stretches outside of the leg, the back of the leg. Other way. Open the left with the left hand. Use Your right hand and my body wants to turn right over to this window, so I want to try to keep it as square as possible. You can flex your feet if you want. This is to feel good, feel a good stretch. So I have to say this does come from my dance background and that's just the way it is. It feels good. All right. Hug The knees into center. We good girls?

Yes. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and stretch the legs out now. Long on the mat, inner thighs together. Take a breath in and as you exhale, really feel that belly tight so you have less arch. Still in neutral pelvis. Arms down. We're going to devil up. Hey, the right leg up circles to the crossed over position around on one and two. Sure.

One more this way. Other way. Heat that pelvic area. Still using your abdominals up. Sure. One more. And around we're going to hold bend the knee. We're going to segue into a single leg stretch. Working fairly slowly.

Breathe in. Contract up your left legs off your mat. We're gonna make this a real stretch. [inaudible] long breath. Exhale. Pull the knee in length in the other leg. [inaudible] good. Keep going. Flux your feet. Push your heel away from you.

Elbows Open. Not Down here. [inaudible] last time. Let's point the feet. Put the right leg, we end up with our left leg. How convenient. Devloped pay up to the ceiling. All right. Belly tight. Inhale like circle across [inaudible] to the top and to that bottom legs gotta be still as well. Three [inaudible] and full other way. [inaudible] center. Bring yourself to center. Find where it is.

Nowhere it is. One more [inaudible]. We'll take it. We'll curl forward and we'll do single leg stretch or scissors. Straight legs into twos. [inaudible] pull the leg to you. You have a little extra stretch on second breath.

Good. Sure. It's the feet. Good. Sure. Reach through the heel.

Inhale to exhale two and we're not quite done. Ben, hold your head. Let's do our Chris Cross, right. Nice into elbows. Open. Flex the feet. I know I said we do a lot of stretching. We will got to work over Donald's to last set and your rest. Ah, we feel good. Don't we warmed up for sure. Alright, let's go ahead and put our feet down on the mat.

Fuzzy parallel and arms down by the sides. We're going to do a pelvic press, not only to work our glutes bots, same thing, hamstrings, but also to warm up the back a little bit more before we go further into our mat work. Let's inhale here. We exhale. We start the low belly to pelvic floor and we curl or roll up sequentially, Vertebra by Vertebra. We all know this. Inhale here and rural down. Relax the neck, open across the chest, close the ribs, press down all the way. Inhale again and we scoop.

Think of lifting the pubic bone up to the ceiling. Hold it as you inhale, tight buns and roll. I like to think of a real wide back. Also, again, scope you can glance down, make sure your hips are level, inhale, and if you tuck the pelvis a little more on the way down, you're going to get a little more round, neat and roundness in your low back. Let's do one more hold. Really.

Press your feet into your mat and rule vertebra by Vertebra. By Vertebra, by Vertebra, by Vertebra. We backed down. Okay. I felt like I'm off my mat. I'm going to scoot it forward a little bit. Let's go ahead now. My back feels good. I'd like to do the roll up. Good for girls. Yeah. Good.

All right. Let's check her weight where our legs are. Make sure are any Pfizer together. It's okay to look. We ultimately want to feel where we are, but we can look, check those legs or write out, glued the inner thighs bellies flat. Lots to think about which of the arms back over head. Go ahead for a moment. Splay your ribs cause we all know how good that feels. And then let's not.

So we close our ribs, engage our waistline. Bring the arms now by your ears so your hands are off the mat slightly. We're going to bring our arms to the ceiling on the inhale. End and roll up. Sure. Very far the first time. Stay here pointed feet [inaudible] and rural away from your feet.

The shoulders are down that round. That feels good. Arms up again. [inaudible] and rolling. Gently Tuck the chin, scoop the belly a little further reaching. Breathe in here and roll down. I want to go down, but I still want to reach across the room again.

[inaudible] [inaudible] let's go deeper. Still a rounded back though. We're not pancaking. Let's flex our feet. [inaudible] and rural vertebra by Vertebra, by Vertebra. Keep the feet flexed. Keep the arms by the ears coming up. It's a hard one and over all the way, reach past your feet.

Inhale, exhale. If you need help, you certainly can. Put your hands on your legs. Point the feet, lengthen out, or relax. Good. I'm off my mat a little again. How have fun is that okay? It happens all the time.

Bring yourselves back and we'll hug the knees to the chest. So now I feel we're good to do the rollover. You all know not to turn your head. By all means. Let's devil a. Pay the legs to the ceiling. Toes are up. Sacrum is down. The arms play a huge part here in pressing down appropriately.

We're going to inhale. Exhale over. Inhale, exhale down, and [inaudible] legs together. Parallel to the floor, not dropped. Open and start your descent and continue. Exhaling anchors, sacrum and again. Inhale, exhale. It's a little slower than traditional. Open.

Start Rolling. Don't drop the legs down into your body like I just showed. Reverse [inaudible] open legs. Reach your toes behind you. Close tightly and roll down. Use your arms. Anchor belly to spine, pubic bone to sacred. Open.

Oh again, close the legs. Use your inner thighs. Work down the spine, Vertebra by Vertebra, by Vertebra. Doesn't this feel good? Anchor. Anchor. We'll do one more with flexed feet. Push the heels back. Reach through those flexed feet. Close the legs.

Roll Down Vertebra by Vertebra, by Vertebra. Let's see if we can go point the feet to 45 and hug than haze. Whew. So now I love this little thing called happy baby. So take your big toes.

I did a bit of yoga enough to know that I don't know that much, but this feels good. So go ahead and hug your knees or your toes. I should say rock side to side and kind of give your body back a massage. We've been doing a lot of rolling here. Okay. And then to move a little further from that, or you can take your heels, you can take your calves and your whatever feels good to you.

Let's take the right leg and stretch it out to the side. Now let's try not to tip, tip over and reach. So you have to keep anchored on your left as well. So we're stretching now, that hamstring and inner thigh and come back. Hold where you would like other side. Reach your left heel out. Whew.

Well this is more of a dancer stretch. Watch. You don't round the back so much. Come back and then you knew what this was going to happen. We're going to take both. You can hold your toes. I'm holding the bottom of my calves.

Let's try to get the sacrum down so your legs are going out at an alignment from your hip, not back by your head. So we have a secured back. Let's point the feet and gently pulse the legs open. Breathing in and out. Out. Here we go. Sure. Reaching, reaching, reaching. Flex the feet.

You're always using your abdominals. My sacrum is on my mat. Okay. Point, flex point. Stretch the knees best you can. Flex. Reach through the heels and what can bring our legs to a diamond. All right, holding your shinbones or the back.

We're going to rock back and roll up. Inhale, exhale and we're up. Good. We're up. All good. All right, just move. So we're pretty much in the center of our mat. We'll keep a nice long diamond, so don't bring the feet way in. Keep a longer diamond level bit Laura Hall, right? A little bit of a gram contraction here. We'll have a tall back watch. You don't arch, you have a wall behind you.

Lengthening through the neck. Shoulders down. We'll breathe in eh, belly and contract and for [inaudible]. Oh, breathe here. Exhale. Roll back up to sitting along that wall. Vertebra by Vertebra. Lengthening through each part of the spine again, it's the breath and the belly and more round and float for word. We'll stay here and pulse over our legs.

Exhale. Yeah, rounding the back. Hollowing the belly. Yeah. Again. Yeah. Just let the neck gently flow and the alignment of the rounded spine last time. [inaudible] a little breathe again here across the back.

Scoop the belly and roll up Vertebra by Vertebra. By Vertebra, by Vertebra, by Vertebra. There's a lot of them by Vertebra. Okay. Let's reach the right arm up. Rotate and reach your little finger back to your mat and return and France. So we want to have some spinal rotation.

Feels good and reach and recover. And Front lift up out of your waist. Reach and up. Nicely rounded arm, front and up. And look where you're going. Look at your hand and your head's usually in the right place. Let's do that one more time. Look at your hand. Look at your hand.

Unless you just use your eyeballs, your head should be in the right place and look at the hand rotate. It feels good and good. Let's stretch the legs out. Point the feet. Hands by the side. We have a tall back again. We reached the lower right arm up. Flex the left contract, four or point up and return other side lift.

Exhale, deep belly and up and return. We're gonna add a little rotation. Turn the head left and up. Point. Return ice and lift and [inaudible] and arms for rot. Hold something heavy. We're going to do some flex the feet and the elbows.

Let's point in stretch again. So we go a little bit of toning of the arm. No equipment. I can still fill our muscles. Contracting, stretching. We'll hold this one. Exhale back and up. So it's a long exhalation. Lift, reach, contract for, or take the hand, stretch them, circle and head to your union.

Go all the way forward. Just don't let go of the belly muscles and again, arms and feet. One. Exhale back, two and four. Release Tall, 30 around contract belly. Take the hand. Stretch that upper body, shoulders circle, or around. One more time on [inaudible] stretch circle and woo. That feels good. Up we go. It's time to work.

Prone into some spinal extension and hyper extension. So why don't you gals face each other without making faces. And I'm going around as well. We're going to put our foreheads on our mats and our arms out in front of us. Make sure you do. Put your forehead on the Mat.

Not Your Chin is might be the worst place you could put your neck. So forehead down and your legs can be a little bit apart, not not crazy. Make sure the pelvic area, pubic bone, hips are on the mat. We're going to, as we inhale, tighten the dairy air in the legs to support the back. [inaudible] and slide the hands backward and coming up into a little bit of an extension and I want you to really pull those shoulder blades down. Inhale here. Exhale, pull the belly away from the Mat. Inhale, prepare [inaudible].

Exhale, slide. It's hard to slide if you're sweating. Inhale, lift a little more. Shoulders down, sternum up. Next in line with spine and variety. One more. Inhale, prepare tight buds. Work the bones back there. Exhale, slide. Good lift. Shoulders down, long neck, belly in as you reach forward, staying down there. [inaudible].

Lift one arm in the opposite leg you choose just opposite. Inhale and put them down. Exhale, other side. Inhale [inaudible] and put them down. Exhale, first side, not high, equidistant on the other side and lower. Let's lift everything and go flying. Reach your bun, legs and [inaudible]. Sure, sure.

One more and reach really pulled it. Open up your shoulders and chest. Let's take the hands to the mat, pull back, use the belly to sit back on the heels. You all can go all the way. I'm not able to [inaudible] does that feel good on the back? We go side to side a little bit if you want one too. We'll go prone once again and do more like our conventional swan, depending on your range of motion, flexibility of your back, shoulders, everything. You may have your hands closer in, wider, further out.

See what you can do. Same preparation. Let's inhale, tightening the buttocks. Exhale coming up word. So now we have our hands closer. Maybe you can lift a little higher, maybe not, but pull your shoulder blades down. Inhale. Exhale. Pull that waste away from the mat and legs taut and lift. Spread your fingers.

Even feel a beautiful extension of the back and lower down. Okay, good. We'll do one more time. [inaudible] and lifting. You could go into swan dive. Now we're not. We're more stretching. Yeah, and [inaudible].

Oh, all right. Let's push back once again and move back into a nice rest position. Okay. If you like to this time you can reach your arms back behind you. Palms up. [inaudible] so if it bothers your knees, be careful. I do have a knee replacement, so I'm pleased that I can get this far.

You could put a pillow under your knees or avoid this altogether, but it does feel good on the back. All right, good. Let's come back. We're going to swing around and face your face one another, and we're going to start with our traditional spine stretch. So we have legs not too wide. It's not first, it's not for the leg stretch. Hands in the front. And let's again stack that spine. Use the belly, feel the length, bow and reach forward. Keep the feet pointing.

Long breath back up. Inhale. Exhale for Ron Fletcher. You're telling me this was a breathing exercise. Oh, time your breath. The inhalation lifts you elevates. You. Flex the feet, Paul, through the belly. Up the spine. Point the feet full acts and four.

So at the peak of your travel, all your air is out and you must breathe in to come up and arms to the side. Good. Let's point the feet. Turn the palms up. Okay. And change and change and change. So we have activity in the whole body.

[inaudible] good. Watch the ribs. Good. [inaudible] one more. We're going to hold and go into our Saul. As we inhale, we grow taller, rotate and reach center left and rotate. Each lift center, rotate your back arm and your head [inaudible] and you all know to keep your opposite hip glued to your mat. So I'm thinking left hip down as I go right. [inaudible] cool. Let's do one more each side and where reached her that back.

We're good. Come on up and point. Now Open your legs so y'all do what you can do. You know if it feels good, do it. Be careful. We're going to gently bring our hands forward. We're going to have a long line of the back. Different ways people can do this.

If your butt starts to lift up, it may feel good, but know what you're doing or keep those sitz bones anchored and just reached forward. Maybe elbows, who? Who we good. Are Our bellies still in? We ask ourselves important to think about that. Let's flex the feet, reached through the heels and we'll do little gentle breathing. Just breathe. It doesn't really matter. Just breathe. [inaudible] we're not flopping forward.

Pancaking we're still controlling and come on back up. Woohoo. All right, let's take the left arm up reach and we'll reach over to the right leg center and I'm going to face the camera. [inaudible] so I want to talk about the lift on the side. You're going to see you don't just crunch over. There's lift there and up and either side reach.

Now lift off of your right side so you have take another breath in. Go a little deeper without dropping. I want to think of pulling my left hip down. Let's flex both feet. Oh boy. Grab your toe if you want point and go other side. No, I'm lifting up over my left. Reach. Bellies are still in, even though we're working sideways. Flex both feet. Grab your toe if you want. Press the other hip down. Ooh, that feels good.

Come on up and nice. Kind of a dancer thing, but that's okay. We're dancers. Let's bring our legs together. I'm going to stay this way. All right, and let's do, but the hands behind you. Let's bring the knees up and down. Kind of a teaser. Two more good. Engage that belly.

Pull it in one more and we're going to bend and bring the legs to your left. Good. Oh right, that's good. Your right hand is out to the side of you, not too close. And we're going to take the top knee. This is a hip opener, upper, and we're going to pull it into external rotation and press it forward and open the hip. So this feels good on the, I think on the hip and on the seat. Open it and close it like a creaky door. Open it and cool allows that. Good. Let's take the left arm up.

Slide your right hand, reach over. You can put your elbow down. Come on up and reach back to the other way. So we're rotating lift, slide over and [inaudible] and back again. Tall body slide. Reach up and down. One more time.

We're going to go over her slide and turn your hands. So you're in a pushup like position though. You're in a rotation, so you really have to work the ballet. Your neck is in line with your spine. Breathe in here and we go down on and up. And too. So just keep the body on a nice diagonal line through the spine though.

Rotated up. Extend the left leg and yeah, and up and lower. Shoulders down. One more. And uphold. Lift the left leg up and down and up. So we're working our seat here. Buttocks. Up and down.

Up and go. We're going to lift it up. Turn, flex the foot, grab your toe. We'll fancy stuff here. Bring it down in front of you as best you can. Take your right arm to your left knee and bring your left hip downward as best you can. And rotate to your left. I'm doing what feels good. Hopefully this feels good to everybody. Yeah.

Good stretch. Nice rotation of the spine. Let's come back to the toe points. Yeah. And we're going to lift up and down. Let's take the arms to the side. Lift and down. Reach towards your toes. Up and down. Once more up. Hold Sh. Well, band. Well, I'm going the other way and and good. Oh, and we do this movement. Sorry. And open the hip and are, you're all both on the other side. Now you're not. Repeat y'all good. Okay.

I want to do twice on the same leg, Eh, and close and rotate. Fill the seat muscle. Close two more. I tend to do somewhere between five and eight of everything. Depends on what it is and right arm. Reach up, back. Reach to your back, toe and lift to the ceiling.

Nice side Bin, Little Mermaid. Action here and reach again. Center and Hoover and up and twist. Last time center you bend and you rotate. Hands in line, breathing up.

Lower eight times one and up and two and up and three we're keeping our shoulders down, our belly buttons to the spine. Lower and up and up. Straighten the back leg. I forgot that up and down. Come on up and hold. Lift the back leg up and down and up and down. Two more so you really feel your back muscle and your buttocks up and down.

We'll lift it. Sit back on your seat, flex your foot, grab your heel foot, put it down across you do where you can leg, hip and rotate. As you take an extra breath, really try to put that right sitz bone down as you pull that right knee closer to your chest. We good? Good. We're almost done, but not quite. All right. We're going to go to some plank positions for just pure core strength, so why don't you all face one another. We'll come to our knees. We'll find our good position. I like legs together. We'll curl our toes.

Then depending on your alignment and proportions, we want to have the hands pretty much under the shoulders, so let's go ahead up into plank position and I like the legs together so we can glue our inner thighs and we're going to hold for four counts. Inhaling one and exhaling shoulder blades down, scapula and gauge two and inner thighs together and three, pull that belly button. Deep heels downward four and squeeze the buns. Beautiful. You can kneel but bring your right leg forward quite a bit. We're going to go into a lunge position, so don't drop the press forward and always use your belly here so you get a proper stretch of the left hip flexor without crunching into your low back.

We don't want that. We'll open the arms side and take a lift up. Careful focus, keep breathing and recover. We'll take our hands to the floor. We'll put the leg back as gracefully as possible and holding the plank one to make sure your neck is in line with your spine.

Three, squeeze the legs, heels down, four and yeah, well Neil, on the right, bring the left leg forward. Make sure you are having your front leg at least perpendicular, not less and stretch forward, pulling the belly in, pulling the shirt down, open the arms side and if you like to reach up, that's great. If you want to arch back a little bit, fine and come back. Good. From here we're going to go back and step into a downward dog like position and let's make sure we don't hyper extend but really work the belly into the spine, head in line with the spine. That's irrelevant. Up and down and up and down. We'll take the right leg, sweep it up and back. Let it turn out. You can move your hands.

I know I need to, and really reach that right leg up. Right relevant to the left, but the heel down. Lift that Allie a little higher and bring it down and the other leg up and back. Open your back hip and reach your Relevate up on the right and heel down. Lift that left leg a little higher. Bring it down. We're going to walk our hands back towards our feet. Relaxed. Forward. Then the knees slightly. Inhaling, straighten the knees. Exhaling pulling the belly button again into the spine.

Bend. The knees will slowly roll up to standing. Let the arms hang. Straighten your knees as you come up Vertebra by Vertebra. Unfold until you're in a beautiful tall alignment belly. Pulled into the spine. Tall, lifted, proud, energized, tight, stretched.

Let's face our camera. Yeah, and let's reach our arms out to the side. Up to the ceiling. Turn the palms down. Yeah. Oh, I can take a lot of air [inaudible] and turn the palms down and reach down. One more time. [inaudible] reaching and lowering. Good. And let's go forward today. Thankful that we have our bodies to work with.

Thank you.

Comments

Kathleen M
3 people like this.
I'm loving the dance inspired stretches! Very good for my hamstrings and hip flexors!
When you recommend using your arms to press down during the roll over, wouldn't that encourage the shoulders to round forward? I'm sure the two girls here had no problem with that, but I'm just wondering for teaching the more "average" client. I was trained to not use arms during roll over. Thanks for any explanation on that, and I will be adding this class to my favourites!
2 people like this.
Great transitions! and I loved the stretching! Give me more of that !
Great instructor !!! Thanks for share
Trisha Donnelly
Thankyou, just what my body needed after a big week of teaching. Great stretches!!!!
Diane Diefenderfer
Thank you to all who have enjoyed this class. My intention was really to simply offer movements that feel good to the body! For Kathleen......yes, we do have to watch that the shoulders don't roll up and round while doing the Roll Over. I did actually learn it from Romana and she encouraged us to correctly press the arms down to the mat to assist in the movement. Another thing to mention, if you have an "original" style mat, one that is raised slightly from the floor with a strap at the foot end and 2 wooden handles near where your head would be, you would hold the handles with elbows open to side, (shoulders down of course) and therefore have another way to aid in the movement. Hope this helps.
Diane
This felt fantastic! Thank you, Diane!
Nice workout! Thanks for the stretch 👌🏼
What a feel good class!
Yum....can't wait to share some of these sequences....so much strength & stretch. Great attention to feet, rotation, breath, and flow thank you thank you!
Gosh I feel great after my first longish class as a beginner thank you for great instructions!!
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