Class #279

Standing Pilates Flow

55 min - Class
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A great addition to your traditional Mat class! Master teacher Kathy Corey teaches Standing Pilates utilizing exercises from the archives of the original work while offering contemporary movement patterns as well. Kathy is sure to challenge your balance, flow of movement, and control in this fun yet important variation on a traditional class. Thanks, Kathy!
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Good day and welcome to the standing Palladio's class. Today I'm going to be doing a course on the standing Polonious work, which when I learned the program over 30 years ago in New York, um, this was always a part of the Pele's mat work. And then eventually we just did a lot of mat work and, and kind of lost the standing as well. So now we're going back to our roots to do some of the work that came from the original program plus some of the innovations that have been developed over the many, many years withstanding Polonius work. Joining me today, we have Cecile Bankston who's coming from that rouge Louisiana to join us. And of course I think you all know Kristy Cooper white.

So we are going to begin as I began my course so many, many years ago with our standing alignment, we're going to stand quite comfortably just allowing the body to relax. And what I'd like you to do is to just close your eyes. I want you to feel how your body lives standing on the floor where the feet are in relationship to the ankles and the knees, the relationship now to your hips. I don't want you to have to correct anything because really this is where your body lives most of the time. And then the hips up the spine to the shoulders in the head.

And now I'd like you to relax chicken inhalation. As you exhale, I want you to just lift your toes up off of the floor. Feel what happens when we lift our toes. Open your eyes, lower your toes down. So what we are feeling when we lift the toes up and close the eyes is maybe less balanced in the body because we use our site for balance. So what we need to do to find more stability is to find our pelvic alignment. In doing so before I'm two triangles under the feet from under the big toe, the little toe and back to the center of the heel.

Then we want to evenly distribute our body weight into both those feet, big toe, little toe and center of the heel. From there align the joints so that the ankles to knees and knees to hit stay in alignment. We want to make sure that as we keep this alignment that we are not leaning the body too far forward nor pressing the heels too far back so that the body weight is not shifting. Now we come to our all important pelvic alignment and we want you to think of the pelvis as a bowl of water. We want to allow that bowl to be filled to the brim with water so that we're not tipping water out to the front or to the back, like tucking the pelvis under.

And we also want to make sure that the water is chipping out on any level of the circumference of the bowl. So in doing so, we want to create the image of align coming in at the side of the body, from the hips, through the center of the body and from the pubic bone back to the tailbone. From there. There's a cross point that would form in the center of your body and we're going to level that cross point so that the water doesn't tip the pelvis, doesn't tip front back or side to side. From there we're going to create another cross point and that's going to come in at your shoulders from the shoulders, the back and the sternum at the center where that cross point is, we want to level that and leveling that. What we are doing is we are preventing the slouching of the shoulders or the arching or thrusting of the rib cage.

From there we have one more crosspoint and that comes in from the ears and the nose back to the center of the head. So we're going to level that cross point and in doing so we are going to prevent the head from jetting forward or the Chin from locking back. One more point. Let's take a plumb line and a straight line through all the cross points from the top of the head through the center of the body and down through the pelvis all the way down to the floor. Now lightly pull the muscles in and out from the pubic bone to the naval.

Connect the navel to the spine. Keep it light and easy in the contraction so there's no constriction or over contracting of the muscles. So holding that posture alignment, making sure we have a solid foundation on a foot centers. Let's lift our toes up and close our eyes and really feel how much more stable we are in our core. Feel how the body now really holds onto that pelvic alignment, that alignment all the way through the body and open the eyes. Lower your toes from there.

Let's begin with our roll down. Let's image that this is the Joe roll-up on the floor so that when we are doing the movement, we are not allowing the body to jet out or change the positioning of the pelvis. So let's turn to the side for this. Bring the arms up over the head and begin the roll down. The inhalation takes us even higher and longer.

The exhalation begins to movement over. Let's not change the position of that pelvis image. You have a nice heavyweight on that tailbone. As we roll down that the tailbone remains down to the floor, the naval remains up to the spine. Take a breath at the bottom, inhaling and exhaling. And then from there begin the journey up.

Now really pull in to the abdominals. Draw the tailbone down, make sure that the rib cage stays in and the naval stays to the spine. So we have a good scoop on the pelvis when we get about halfway up. Draw the tailbone down, Lincoln upward. Climb one vertebra on top of the other and then place the head on top of this spine. One more time. Inhale in Linkedin upward and actually begin that journey over.

Close the rib cage and open wide across the back. Make sure that as you go down, we do not move forward or back. It's as if we're doing the roll up from the floor. Same thing here. Now press the tailbone under. Draw the abdominals in. Keep that naval to the spine. Keep the ribs closed. Now found.

Find the foundation for the pelvis. Let the spine grow long and longer and come all the way up through the top of the head. And one more time. Arms come up and breathe. Inhale, exhale. To begin to rule over, take three or four full breaths to do the movement, making sure that as you do your breath, that each breath allows the movement to flow into the body and begin that journey up. Rolling one vertebrae at a time. Remembering that what we are really contracting through the pelvis, we are getting into that neutral pelvis and we're finding those three points on the body every time we roll down and come up.

Very nice. Let's turn it up to the front, so whenever we're going to work on our hip alignment, let's bring the feet just hip distance apart and but keep that nice foundation from the foot. I'm going to take the right leg up and without shifting the weight, we're going to find our balance point. From there we're going to do some leg circles. They go up with the hip and around in across the body. We'll do that five times up with the hip and around and across the body.

Stabilize the other leg and the other hip and around in across two more times up. Nice deep breathing and around in a cross. One more time up with the hip and around in a cross. Let's go the other way. Lifting up. Now the alignment principle that we are looking at here as we're going around as to how much evenness do we have when we go up and around across the body and up and around outside of the body, are we having an alignment problem with the opposite hip, with stability and also checking on the mobility of each way of the hip level? Let's take the leg up and down and let's do the other side.

That balance. Find your balance point. Get that nice stability through the core. Lift the leg up. The leg is going to go up and over the body. Inhale and exhale the hip lifts with the movement and lowers into that place and lift. Now do we have more mobility on one side? Then the other very important that we begin to realize that we must have equal mobility and stability on both hips. We're going to the outside.

Now we went five across the body and five to the outside. Let the hip come up. Then push it down into your full pelvic alignment and up and breathing. Inhale to exhale and again and take that leg all the way down. One more movement of alignment of the hips. Once again, we're going to come up now this time the leg, the hip just goes up to the side and squeezes down into the center.

I'll keep that alignment and take it down into the center. Inhale up and exhale as you squeeze into perfect alignment two more times. Take it up beautiful and squeeze it down and take it just the hip lifting and take it back into your center line and last one and take it down and place it on the floor. Let's do the other side and come on up and lift that leg to the side and take it down. No. Once again, we want to try and create an evenness through the pelvis, so if we have one side going up a little bit higher than the other, let's just modify that movement so that we say even and the side that maybe is not stretching so much. Let's get a longer, fuller movement to stretch all the way through. Take it out, take it down and last one and take it down. Now let's challenge the body, shall we find an evenness through the pelvis.

Take the leg up with any ego up and down and change and up and down. What we want to do here is try to make that nice and even out down and change the other side. Take it out, find your balance point and shange take it out, down and change. Are we finding one side doesn't exactly have the stability as the other one so that we can stand on one leg more than the other. That's where we need to work in an asymmetrical patterning to train our body to work evenly and equally on both sides. Really working the principles of Pilate with control, concentration and focus.

Okay, now that we've got the hips nice and mobile, let's stabilize them. So we're going to take the leg up. Now this time I want no movement in the hip whatsoever and the leg is going to circle within the hip joint. It circles around very nice. The hips stay level in this position and around and two to go take it the other way and around very nicely. Hips stay level and even through the pelvis and around two to go and around.

Very nice. Everything is stabilized through the pelvis. Let that leg rotate and take it down with go to the other side. The leg comes up, the hip stay absolutely still and down, so we're not hiking up the hip as we go, but keeping that nice stability, making the movement within the joint itself to create that nice fluidity and movement of rotation through the joint. A five one way and five the other way and circle it. Remember the hips are level and the shoulders are level and remember that we are breathing and also that we're having a really good time and take it around and around and take it to come down.

One more for hip and leg flexibility and that's going to be, the leg is going to go straight and everything's going to move up and around and up and around, up and around. Uh, put it around two to go watch that foot and that stability on the opposing hip. Reach it out and down, other side, up and around, up and around. Find where you fly, have your stability and really work through your core muscles and around and take it down. And how are you feeling? Good. All right. We're really working those hips and working through the pelvic alignment. That's we're gonna feed now. So from here we're going to stand very, very tall.

You may want to turn to the side for this exercise, we're going to take the leg in and out. Once again, when we stabilized in the pelvis, there's no hiking, right? We're moving here and we take the leg around to the back and we place it on the ball of the foot. Now as if you're sliding up and down that imaginary wall, we're going to bend and straighten what we do not want to happen just to have the body leaning forward and then having the knee come forward of the foot. Nor do we want to lean to the back, placing too much weight to the back so we're going up straight up and down. Inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling and exhaling. Inhale and exhale.

Find your balance to lift your leg and bring it all the way down. Let's do the other side. Lengthen and come up. Place the foot on the floor behind you and bend and straighten. No. Once again, we are finding that balance through the center of the body. Find where you really need to work on your alignment through your foot as well as through the pelvis, pelvic alignment. Again, we're sliding up and down that imaginary wall and inhaling and exhaling as we go through the movement and take one more and come back up. Now we get a little challenged.

Bring the leg back and down back to our first foot. This time we go onto the top of the foot. The things that we really have to watch for here is that we're not uh, letting a foot sickle, but we're keeping the heel directly over the center of the foot even though it's behind us. Now we're going to bend and straighten. Now what we want to watch for here is that if you lean back, you're going to put too much weight on that back foot and it's really gonna hurt. And if you lean forward, you're going to put too much weight over the front knee. So you really once again have to stay on that plum line one more time.

Take it down, take it up and lift it lower down. Let's do the other side balance top of the foot. And this is great for some of your older clients as well. We really need to have more mobility in the feet so they can do that. Holding onto a counter or even the wall is fine and bend it, laying them through the whole body working and bandwidth member.

If you move back, you're really gonna hurt the top of your foot and last time take it up and lower to come down. All right, let's do a combination of that. Of course. We're going to take the foot back and we'll be on the ball of the foot. Once again, watching the foot alignment behind us, we bend down and we straighten her legs. We roll it over, we bend down and straight and we roll it back and we'd bend down and we straight and we roll it over. We've been down and we straightened. We roll it back and bend and straighten and we roll it over then and straighten.

Take the leg up and let's do the other side. Balance is important in this class. That's why we're standing and roll that leg up again and we go to the ball of the foot. Let's begin and we're going to bend it and straight and roll it over and bend and straighten. Roll it back and bend and straight in. Rowlett it over.

Bend and straight and roll it back then and straight and last time over. Bend and straighten and lifted up and rule through the foot to take the movement down facing the front. Let's begin. We are going to do a combination. We first were going to do single leg stretch and then we're going to do cross. Now this comes right from the mat class and I was taught to teach this with the balance of the standing movement so that you really understand how the movement begins and ends when you're doing it lying down.

So it's not just throwing the legs back and forth, but it really is coming from an anchored core. So to begin the exercise, we'll take the leg up and we'll inhale and we'll exhale as we hold the leg high. Now we're going to do it slowly first. So the upper body is going to stay steel. We're going to press the thigh towards the chest on two. Then we're going to extend the leg out. It's an inhale, inhale, and a long exhale.

It's an inhale and an inhale and a long exhale. Now draw a little point on the floor and hit that target every single time so it doesn't change the pelvis. But it glows straight from a stabilized core and last time. Okay, get out and bring your leg down. Other side, hold it up. Remember the same arm as leg, goes on the cord, the bottom of the leg coming in, and remember to hit your target.

Pull it in and in and remember to hit the target and the inhale. Inhale, hips stay level. You look great, and in him, inhale and long extension, and inhale. Inhale, take it out, pull it in. Inhale, inhale, reach it out, and let's do just one more time. Anchor through those pelvises and stretch the leg out. Let's have a little more fun with that. Let's do it. Same leg, but single count. So we're going to just come in and out, in and out. Inhale, exhale, inhale, and exhale. Let's begin. Inhale. Exhale.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. One more time. Inhale and exhale. Other side, and inhale and exhale. Looks good. Inhale, exhale. Find your balance. Inhale, exhale. You're going to really need it. Exhale and in, because guess what we're going to do? We can alternate sides. Let's do two slow. First Shell.

We balanced through the hips. Let's begin and inhale. Inhale, long. Exhale. Inhale, inhale, long change sides. Inhale, inhale, long. Exhale. Inhale, inhale, long. Exhale. Now alternate with the slower count and we're going to move it up to the faster count. Let's begin. Inhale, inhale, and change. Inhale, inhale out and shange again. Inhale, inhale, long to change. One more. Inhale. Inhale, stretch it out. All right, let speak in.

Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Two more sets. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Let's go. Last time. Inhale and act. Hale, fun, but we're not done yet.

As we know when we're doing it in mat, we involve the upper body, you know, contraction. So let's try that, shall we? So as we pull the leg up, we also make a light at contraction. Now we want to keep the length on the body as we do on the floor so that we're not crunching the body over, but we keep the along geishas all the way through the spine as we go. So as we come up, we were do at linked in the body and rounded toward the leg. Let's do the slower one first. The Nice double count. Let's begin.

And just this, do three on the right leg, so on the same leg, one inhale, inhale. That's it. Long exhale, but it just take it out and inhale. Inhale, reach to stretch. Palladian. Inhale, inhale and reach it and change sides. Other side, and inhale, beautiful and reach linkedin. Take it in and in. Keep that pelvis stable. One more time. Inhale, inhale and reach. Okay, let's do three more with a single count. Same leg though. Let's begin and take it in and take it in and out.

One more time in change sides. Take it in and out and in. You're really working those cores and in and out. Let's do the alternating sides first with a double count. Then with the single count, let's begin. Inhale, inhale, exhale and stretch. James Sides. Inhale.

Inhale, reach it out. Very nice and inhale. Inhale, reach it out and down. Last one. Inhale. Inhale, reach it out and go count. Let's go. It's inhale. Exhale, lower. Inhale, exhale, left. Inhale. Beautiful.

Exhale last time, and inhale. Exhale, lower at town. Chris crosses next because that just got us warmed up for crisscross. Let's take the hands behind the head. Let's take the leg up and balance. From here. We're going to go across the body and toward the knee. Five Times. Inhale, inhale, exhale, exhale. Exhale.

Come in, change sides lifted up. Take it across. Inhale, inhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, and come down and place, and now let's just take it. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and change sides. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. Linkedin it all the way up.

Let's alternate and pull it up and you know, and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Again. Inhale to exhale. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, exhale. Last one. Inhale. Really press out on that exhalation for a nice long body and a nice long core. All right, moving on. Let's get into some side bending moves.

It's really quite a workout, isn't it? Okay. The Mermaid is next, so we're going to bring the feet just slightly apart. For the First Section of the mermaid, we'll take the hand behind the head and the other arm down. For those of you who do this movement on the one two chair, you can image the fact that you're really progressing through this space and you have that weight underneath you to push down, lengthen the torso up, hand behind the head, take a nice inhalation, and we're going to exhale to you. Go over and inhale to gum up. Exhale to go over.

Now remembering to keep the shoulder directly over the hip and to watch that pelvic alignment as we stretch to the side and come back up last time. Exhale to go over. Inhale and come up. Let's change sides. Hand goes behind the head. Once again, it shoulder to hip. Let's begin and exhale. Take it over and inhale to come up. Remember to a long day, that side of the body, but straight from under the rib cage down to the hip.

Watch the alignment through the pelvis, making sure that the rib cage is not jetting out as we are stretching over and there's absolutely no rotation through the body. It's a side bend directly to the side. Now from there, let's bring the heels together and the toes lightly out. We're going to still have the hand up this time. We're going to add a movement, so we're going to go over, but as we go over, we're going to slide the foot on the floor and pull it back in. We're going to exhale, take it out and inhale to come in and reach at nice and long and pull back to the center. Reach out and stretch, pull back center, reach out and stretch and change side and the reach to the side and pool and reach it out and pull and reach long and pull. Reach out and pull the last time.

Stretch it over and come in and come up. There's one more thing that we'd like to add at this point we're going to do the stretch over. The leg is going to come out, but the arm is going to lift and the leg is going to lift as well into the store position. So we're going to take a nice deep breath and we're going to do a long exhale and come back and exhale few this star and reach it nice and long. Find your balance and goes high as you can comfortably keeping your balance. And one more time. Exhale, hold it out.

Take a deep breath and take the movement down. Because if you can't stop in the movement and you're not in control of the movement, you've gone too high and too far losing the control of the pelvis. Let's go to the other side and let's begin and stretch it. Ooh. Over and in, stretching out and Palladian and stretch it long and in stretch again, stretch higher. And in this time we're going to take it out and hold it. So find your balance, reach it long, long.

Take a deep breath and pull it back in to center. So nice into the star, which is a great preparation for the star on the other pieces of equipment, which also really challenged the body. Okay, this saw is next. Let's bring the feet on a comfortable distance apart. Just a slight, um, turn of, uh, of the toes in this position and we'll bring the arms down. Let's bring the arm up and the churn. The body take a long inhalation. And on your exhalation, we are going around the body over.

Now don't lose that pelvis so that the hips don't come out. Keep that tailbone down toward the floor. As you rel the body over. And now the gaze goes to the knee. I mean take a nice deep breath and we're going to reach down to the floor with a small movement. Inhaling and inhaling and then exhale three times and now really reached down.

Reel yourself up, bring the arm back up and turn the body to the center. Other side lifted up nice and high. Turn the body, lengthen yourself upward and round the body over nowhere. Really pulling in on those abdominals, keeping the navel to the spine and the gaze to the knee. And from that position we are gonna. Inhale, inhale. And then three exhale. Note how the arm goes up to the ceiling and very, very nice long position.

And from there we begin our rolling up, pulling the tailbone under. Once again, really rounding the body. Naval goes to the spine and we rotate up to that position and come back into the center. Let's repeat it one more time. On each side so we come up and turn length in the body up and to round it over. Now when we are rounding over, we do not want to lock the knees and let the table come out, but we wear the body over again, keeping navel to spine and take it down toward the floor and bring the pulsing reach, reach, and an exhale. Exhale, exhale. Take a nice deep breath and begin the ruling up, keeping that naval to spawn, keeping your plotty scoop and rounding to come all the way up and through the movement and the other side. We take it up, we turn it, we it.

Oh, rounding the body all the way over. Inhale and exhale. One whole breath to get down. Remember not to let your opposite knee go with you, but we keep that leg back so that we had a straight line across the hips. And inhale, inhale and exhale. Exhale and exhale.

Roll your spine back up and come on up to your standing position and bring the arms back and down. The next exercise is called the butterfly and it's one of my very, very favorite exercises. It was originally taught in the mat work sitting on the floor, but it's a fabulous addition to the standing class. Um, this exercise I learned from, um, my dear mentor and Teacher Kathy Grant. This is a Cathy grants butterfly and I can never see a butterfly without thinking about this exercise or her hands go behind the head. Let me stand up very tall.

Now we're going to pull up at first movement is an actual lift from the inside, the interior of the body lengthening up from the core, so we really get that nice long lift. It doesn't come from the shoulders, it doesn't come from the neck. It comes really from the stabilization of the core and the lengthening of the spine. Inhale and lifted up and exhale and go over to the side. I reached the body out on that line and lift higher into the middle. Inhale to lift up and actually us your stretch over to the side, linked in the body out and come back to the center. I lift it nice and long and stretch high and over to the side.

Reach out, inhaling and exhaling up in hand to go up and we'll reach and stretch that body long. Once again, it's the shoulder over the hip. There's no rotation yet and come in and come up. Now we're going to add a little bit of rotation, so now that we've gone straight to a sideband, we're going to lift and stretch over, but now roll the body slightly toward the knee. We're going to take our top wing as the butterfly would and we're going to flap it so it goes to the other elbow and it opens up. Now the other elbow is stabilized and open and three and open and four.

Really round the back and then open it out one more time. Take it down. Very nice. Open it out and out. Reach out to lift up. Lengthen and come up and over and we take it rotated down and open it and rotate it too and open and rotate. Three and have a nice deep breathing with the Movement for and open and again last time and open. Reach out to come up. All right, I butterfly's gonna take off now. Lift high, stretch high and over to the side.

Now we're going to sweep down the Windsor wide. Chased the foot. Now continue your flight along the floor, up the sidewall, up to the ceiling, high to the ceiling and land back in the center. Other side. Take it up and over. Fly Down to the floor, look at your foot. Follow along the floor to the side, up high to the ceiling and length into come down. Let's do it again. Up and over to the side and fly it down to your foot. Sweep it around and take it a long the wall up the ceiling, even a little bit more through the upper body and landed in the center other side and take it up and over and take it down to the floor.

Fabulous rotation and continue to fly it up and up and up. There Ya go. And Center. Let's just do one more village to each side and take it over and take it down. Keep those elbows wide, then take it a long the floor, long the floor. There you go. Lengthen it upward. Little bit more to the ceiling and rotated into the center.

One more time. Take it over and sweep it down. Watch those ribs and reach it out in a long. There you go. Beautiful. Nice big flight on you. You went all the way to New York on that one and all the way back in to the center. Okay, now we need to do the return trip, however, so we're going to take up, we're going to go over, we're going to go and go all the way down, all the way to the foot, a little past the foot if you'd like. Now from here we're going to change our minds and go back the way you came.

So we're going to go along the floor to the other side. Climb up the opposite wall, reach the torso high. Was it a little bit of extension? Rotated back into the center and land where you are. Other side, lengthen it up and stretch it to go over and breathe all the way through. Take it down. Oops. Did we want to go the other way? Turn it around.

Real it through the floor. Up under you. High to the ceiling and back into the center. Let's do that one more time. Each side. Come on up. Go to the side, rotate it all the way down. Remember naval stays to the spine. Full rotation through. Now change your mind and go back the way you came to get underneath you.

Go all the way up the sidewall higher, very nice and back into the center. And the last one, take it up. Take it all the way around it, over from under the rib cage. And now we're gonna change from under the rib cage. Take it around the yas yet from there, from there, that's where we go. And remember we will have to work our core muscles all the way through the movement. Rance bring our arms up and our feet hip distance apart. Take a nice deep breath.

You're going to need it after the last one and before the next one for sure. And exhale, take it down. Inhale up and just open that chest and get everything resettled, realigned and that Nice centered, uh, postural alignment position. From here, we want to take the arms all the way up. Now the feet are going to be parallel and hip distance apart. The shoulders are down and we have that same roll down that we began with.

So maybe maintain that posture that we had and you want to turn to the side for this exercise. And once again, let's show how beautiful we keep that tailbone down and that length of the torso all the way through. Let's begin our rolling down. Inhale and exhale. Take three full breaths to get over. And we remembering that the tailbone stays down to the floor, the naval stays to the spine. And once we are down to the floor, place your fingertips on the floor and walk yourself out. Yeah, pull your body weight back toward your hip. So your spine is long and straight. And Christy, you still want to be up on your, on there. So your back is straight. Good.

And their there. So we want you to think about this as a reformer exercise, um, in the, the standing series that we do. So from here we have that nice long stretch of the spine and weight in the hands and the feet. So we're not pushing the body weight forward nor leaning aback. Let's lift the heels up and lower them down and lift the heels up. Now once again, we want to think about this coming from deep within the pelvic alignment.

So there we go. Lifting it up and present to stretch the back of the legs and lifting up and stretch the back of the legs. Now if just a little onto a half toe, so dis one heel, the heels are lightly lifted, and from there, and let's take one leg and take it up to the ceiling so it goes all the way up. So this is the same position in arabesque, arm or leg pull front on the reformer. And from there, let's add a little reach out. So we should hire and hire, hire, hire, hire, reaching long and take it down. Now don't change the palace. Don't switch the hips and take the leg up and reach it and lift it and lift. Good. And three, four, just a small lift to really get a flip stanchion.

Reach it long out of the hip and take it back down. Changed sides. Watching that alignment through the pelvis and take it up and reach it long and long. Reach it out of the hip and out of the hip. Take it higher. Two more times. Reach beautiful movement, like lengthen it out to take it down. Last one, take it, reach it up and stretch through the back of the leg. Reaching longer and longer, keeping the hips stable as you go. Three, four, five reach high and sweep it and take it down.

Now let's round the back and bend the knees so that the knees are going to go onto the floor and then bring the hands underneath. So we'll go into a cat stretch. So you want to go into a nice long spine. The shoulder to wrist position is in alignment and the hip to knee position is in alignment as well. We're going to make a contraction and we're going to bring the tailbone under, pool the ribs in and around the back. That's your exhalation on your inhalation. You're going to just length into a flat back linkedin.

His spine head stays in line and let's do it again. And you take it up and around, pull it under an under and under. Good and lengthen it and take it nice and long and pull it in. Take it around again and lengthen it out. Well, that was a very nice stretch, but let's work with that stretch. Shall we curl your toes under? Round your back into your cat stretch. All right, from your core, you're going around so much that we're going to have the legs become wait lists and we're going to lift the knees just to there. Parallel to the floor. Uh, this comes from the knee stretch series. All right, now what we're going to do is we're going to touch and lift the knees. Touch, exhale, lift, touch, exhale, lift, touch. Don't lose your little curl the spine, nothing changes just to lower and lift the knees and take them down and take them up. Take them down and take them off. Let's do two more down.

Pull it up and down. Pull it up another time. Pull it up so much that the leg straighten and we go back to our initial position. Let's lower and lift the heels. Heels come down and lift up. Heels come down and lift up. Heels come down and lift up and heels come down. Lift them up and round the back. Let's go back to our knees stretch series.

This is set two out of three and take the legs up and touch them down. Lift them up, touch them down, lift them up, touch them down, and exhale up, down, back doesn't change down. We have five more now down to lift down and lift down. Pull it up and down. Pull it up this time. Touch it down. Pull it up so much that you go all the way back.

Lower the heels and lift. Lower the heels and lift. Lower the heels and lift. Lower your heels and lift. Last set. Round it down and he's touched down around the back and lift on the exhale, lifted up. Touch it down and lift and touch back.

Doesn't change. Exhale up. Watch your foot alignment and up. Lift up and lift up and lift up. Lift up this time it goes so high, oh, pulls all the way back. Walk your hands back in and relax the body.

Take some nice deep rest from this position. Then we'll begin the ruling up, making sure that the tailbone stays under, but only come half way up. Let the upper body relax and dangle in this position. Making sure that once again, we have the tailbone down toward the floor and the navel to the spine. Let's now begin to circle the arms from keeping the arm muscles very loose and just within the shoulder joint itself, within the shoulder joint and around and around.

Circle and breathe. Inhaling, exhaling. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. That's changed the direction and get a nice, easy, even circle. Nice deep breathing. Allowing the body to relax in this position, the muscles up from the naval to the spine or lightly contracted. The tailbone is down toward the floor and now let's begin to keep that tailbone down. Roll the spine up, pull in on those ribs.

Stack Vertebra on top of Vertebra. Roll up one vertebra at a time. The next exercise. I've been teaching for many, many years and it's a wonderful exercise for the um, for the wrist and the forearm. So what we're going to do is we'll face front for this one and we're going to make two o's with our hands. We're going to stabilize the rest from the forearm into the wrist itself so that we won't keep that hand very stable, but we want to make the circles and with the thumb on the outside, then we're going to spread the fingers very wide and you want to do this so strongly. That makes it sound very good. I can actually hear that.

So the first thing we're going to do is just stand comfortably with body aligned of course. And then we're going to open and close. I'm going to breathe and just do a small movement. The things that we don't want to do when we're doing this is we don't want to move the wrist back and forth. We want to keep it very stable and want to make sure that we keep the PPO body posturally aligned all the way through and just do that movement. Make it really, really strong so that you can actually hear the sound as if you're flicking something off your fingers.

Now let's bring the hands up just to the center of the body. When we are doing this, we remember to keep the shoulders down and we keep the sternum lifted, the neck and head in complete alignment. We're just being these nice little flicks off of the fingers, maintaining the strength and the stability through the wrist. From there, the arms are going to go up over the head so we'd climb it up and we keep the shoulders down. Now when we're in this position, we must remember that we don't let anything jet out but we maintain that alignment from the shoulders all the way down through the palace to the core is very, very much aligned. As we are doing the exercise, we cannot forget all of the body must be working at all times. When we're doing [inaudible], we're going to now open the arms lightly out to the sides are going to really reach the arms nice and long. The shoulders are down and the wrist, the hands are up, the wrist is still stable and we take nice deep breaths as we do the exercise all the way through.

Now we're going to rotate and take the hands so that they face down toward the floor. I know out there you're all probably screaming at this time, but just think what's such a simple small movement can do for the entire body. You feel that not in the wrist but also up the forearm. This is a great exercise. Let's take it down to finish it off. Great. Great exercise for Carpal Tunnel, for tennis elbow for um, any of the activities for your golfers as well to really get those movements, uh, connected to once again realize the importance of how the body works as a full unit and done with that.

So you can really feel the whole idea of says that the simplest movement done properly makes a connection throughout the whole core. Okay. The last exercise that we are going to do and as out an exercise that I learned in some of my very first polite sessions and classes. It's a classic from the archives and um, it's also just a great, great movement. Um, it's done with the feet slightly apart and if you have your feet too wide, you're not going to be able to do it. If you have your feet too close, you're not gonna do it either. So I'm giving you some tips to begin with. We're going to bring the arms out to the side and the first movement is very exact and very precise. You raise your fee to the relevant.

From that position, you're going to turn all the way around 180 and you're going to stay on your toes going all the way all the way. Face the back of the room on the toes. Very nice. Take an inhalation on the exhalation low where your heels down. From there we take the, the front arm, we lifted high and we reach it around to the back foot. The other arm goes up to the ceiling and we stretch it all the way over.

Beautiful. From there we come back up into the center. Lift yourself onto the toes. Now once again, here you go. All the way around on the toes, on the toes. The positioning was exactly as I was told, and now only when you're here do you let the heels come down. Don't cheat and put him down before you're completely around. Let's go to the other side. Lift it up, turn it around, turn it and turn it and turn. Keep turning.

Take an inhalation on your exhalation. Lower your heels down. Take another inhale on the exhale. Let's go all the way down to the back foot. The other arm goes to the front. Good work. Stretch it long. Stretch it out and reach nice and high. Let's take it back up and lengthen it. Lengthen it, reach it. Come on up to your toes.

Rotate it around and around and around. And once we are here, we lower the heels down. Very nice. Let's go again. Lengthen and lifted up and rotate and rotate. Shake it around and around. Beautiful.

All the way as far as you can. Then. Then once you're there, lower your heels down once again and we inhale, exhale and go to the back foot. Let the other arm come up. You tuffle beautiful movement and now lift and come back up. Find your balance in your core. Lift the heels and rotate around and around and around.

Hold it for a moment and lower your heels down. Let's go to the last one. Last side. Lift it up and rotate all the way around. Take it all the way through and reach it. Stretch it, lengthen and heels. Come down, take your breath and take it up and oh all the way over. Reaching down, stretching all the way through and come back up into the center. Lift the heels and rotate up and come around.

Come around, come around and finish by lowering the heels and the arms down. Once again, as the few people know that a lot of this is in the archives from Mr Pilati some self so that a lot of the standing work, um, is as traditional as so much of the mat work that we do. Let's now find our alignment with, for the last part of our class. Let's stand comfortably. And what I'd like you to do now is to just relax the body and, uh, stand in complete alignment, but just close the eyes and lift your toes.

Take a nice deep breath. Open your eyes, lower your toes. Now I hope you are feeling as we are, that the whole body maintained the alignment all the way through, even though we've been working, balancing unbalancing one side than the other, and a lot of really strenuous work, but the main, the maintenance of the alignment is innate in the police work. And so I hope you feel that as well. And I hope you carry that through your day. Thank you, Christie. Thank you for to CEO. Great work. Great work. Good.

Comments

WOW, Great workout. I thought it was going to be easy. No Way. Thanks
Nice class! Thank you.
1 person likes this.
A great teacher with a deceptively challenging class. I was very surprised!! Thanks so much.
1 person likes this.
What a refreshing change! I absolutely loved the butterfly, really got into my back extensors. Thank you Kathy Corey
1 person likes this.
I am amazed at how much this one worked my back and core muscles. I did this workout 3 days ago and am still sore. I loved it.
It is nice to hear other people thought this class was challenging in the same way I did!
1 person likes this.
Loved this class, please add more standing classes!!
Just what I needed when a mat isn't an option
This class made me nauseated. I'm not sure why? I felt like I was getting carsick.
2 people like this.
I really enjoy Standing Pilates as it helps me with my balance, posture and alignment. This class was very challenging, and I would not consider it a beginner class.
I would like to see more Standing Pilates classes. Please add more Standing Pilates classes!
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