Class #409

Whole Body Mat

55 min - Class
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In today's Mat class, Amy moves swiftly through an intermediate workout that includes some strong abdominal foundation exercises with a few nice variations. You will take a look at deepening spinal rotation with a variation from side-lying and play with the idea of initiating rotation from the scapula all the while paying attention to your central axis. This thought carries through with Seated Rotation and also in Spine Stretch Forward with Extension-, feeling the movement and initiation of the scapula for muscles specific attention (mid-traps) and Open Leg Rocker. More Side Lying exercises include Clam with variations. Amy prepares you for Swan Dive Prep with a breakdown of the upper body-lower body layering and although not too much weight bearing in this class, your upper body will feel well-balanced and your whole body complete. Enjoy!
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So guys, let's start today with our knees bent and our feet flat on the Mat and want you just to start in a, uh, pretty vertical sitting position for yourself. Your feet are open and let's go ahead and start with our hands back behind our knees and let your feet be a little bit open. Also, I'm gonna Start with a nice breath in here and just feel your exhale. We're not gonna start moving yet. I just want you to establish your position of vertical, no extra tension in your back, no extra tension in your neck. It's kind of being easy and your sitting position.

And take that nice full breath and to connect to the lateral breath. Breathing in the expansion. I'm feeling the exhale though, coming in from the abdominals to the spine. And again, a nice breath in, in the back of the head, in line with the back of the spine. Your eyes are forward and open when you start to generate a little bit more. Squeeze at your sit bone area now and we're going to take a nice t a roll back. So on your exhale, contracting the abdominals.

Feel the pelvis pull back away from your thighs. We're only going to go back, you know, sacrum level, definitely not all the way back. Stay right there and inhale and you use your exhale from your abdominals to round yourself forward and coming up to sitting tall. And again a breath in. So working on your rounding back, feel like this is a posterior tilt to your pelvic tilt of your pelvis and your sake room. Take an inhale and exhale fool stomach in even deeper.

Rounding up to sitting tall and again. Inhale wide chest and exhale and pull your pelvis back. Really feel like you're generating a c curve shape from your tailbone under, through your lower back and spine up through the top of the head. Inhale and exhale coming forward and all the way up tall. Let's just take one more of these little ones or medium sized curve and rounding back. I'm staying there. Inhale and exhale and that's come forward all the way again to sitting tall.

Okay guys, take your left hand, uh, and put it at the right outside, right of your calf and just turn into, open up your chest to your right. Just having fun in a nice, easy spiral. Let's just take three breaths here and it's definitely not like a torquing. You're not pulling with the hand, you're just, it's just placed there and trying to wake up the muscles around your waist that help you rotate. [inaudible]. [inaudible] one more breath and exhale or you can just undo that and switch around to the other side. So right hand is lightly on the outside of the left Shin. Inhale, when you're thinking about connecting through the abdominal muscles in the back muscles that help you rotate, inhale, exhale and contract.

Okay. And one more time and exhale and then unwind and come back to facing front and wants you to reach your arms forward. Move your hips a little bit now towards your heels. Now their breath and we're going to roll ourselves back nice and slowly all the way through the spine, bone by bone until you arrive on your shoulder blades and your head. And I'm going to have to move my heels in a little bit as well and get my body nice and flat. We're going to take some articulation to bridge. Take an inhale, starting at the base of the pelvis. Tilt, peel up. Again, I want you to squeeze through the base of that pelvis and lift your hips.

You don't have to go too high up on your back if you're not ready, right between your shoulder blades is fine. Take an inhale and exhale from your the chest roll yourself downs, the back of the chest, taking some weight down through your middle back, your lower back, back of waist, feeling your pelvis and your tailbone can reach out. Inhale there and exhale. Tailbone curls first. [inaudible] peeling yourself up. I want you to wake up the back of the legs. Ask them to ignite your hips up. Inhale and exhale.

As we begin to roll back down, see if you can press the back of the shoulders more against your mat. Also on the way down and up so you're actually stabilizing the chest position and articulating your spine more detailed. Again, exhale and curl. Ah, inhale and exhale and roll down. Ah, strong abdominal contraction. Hollowing it in. Lengthen the tailbone outlets. Take one more. Here we inhale, and exhale en hilt. Curl peeling up.

All right, take a nice breath on the exhale. Let's go ahead and just roll down the spine, feeling your hips reach towards your calves and lengthening down until you're all in. What? In your level of pelvis. I'm going to have you bring your ankles together, feet together, knees together, left hand behind your head. And we've done a variation of this in the past, so we're, we'll visit that today and I'm gonna add a little to it. So your right arm is long by your side. You're engaged through that lat. Let's take a breath, exhale and find your chest lift.

You're reaching with the right arm down towards your left or your right foot. Now the left hand and right hand are going to lift and reach outside of that right knee. You're inviting some rotation in the trunk. Now as you go a little higher with your arms, staying up in your chest, lift as you can. There you go. Now hands are going to go back behind the head. You're still in your rotation. Want you to come back to facing front and then exhale all the way down.

Left arm will go down by your hip. Take an inhale here. XCL is your first kind of just find your basic chest lift position. All right, now both hands are reaching up on the diagonal opposite the left knee. You're getting some spiral now the arms are lifting. You're not falling back out of that chest. Lift.

Hands back behind the head and only when you roll down you let go. Right hand comes back by your hip. Two more times. One each side. Inhale and exhale. Full breath to reach. Find some rotation connecting to those obliques. Now the arms are gonna lift.

Bend the elbows, hands come back behind the head. You're still on your twist. Now come facing front, left arm down by your hip. We've got one more. Let's see. Inhale and exhale and chest lift. Long left arm both arms. Now reach to the diagonal opposite your left thigh. Inhale, float those arms. Exhale, bend the elbows, hands behind your head, and then untwist. Come back to facing front and both arms down by your sides.

I'm going to have you palms up. Exhale both eyes up as take some knees side to side, going to the right hip. On an inhale, I'm coming back to center. On Your exhale, left hip. Inhale and back to center on your exhale and to the right. Just feeling the weight shift of your hip to one and back to center on both.

Inhale to your left hip and exhale back to both and again, you inhale to the right hip. Maybe challenge it a little bit. Could you go tiny bit further and exhale back to center. Let's come to the left. Try to keep those knees and ankles bolted together and exhale back to center. Once again, everybody to your right.

Exhale back to center and last one to your left. So we've really woken up those obliques. We've woken up the front of dominoes. Let's get herself back to the center. Ours to the ceiling for the 100 and press yourself up. I'm going to take my legs on a slight diagonal little turnout in the thighs. Long reach in the arms. We're going to pump in five [inaudible].

[inaudible] keeping the chest broad pumped from the back of the shoulder. [inaudible] anyone wants to lower their leg angle more load for the abdominal, so be mindful not to stress your spine. [inaudible] pressing the back of the legs together, getting the body temperature up. Okay. 10, two, three, four, five. Exhale, three, four, five.

And let's bring the knees in, hug and let everything come back down. Okay, the roll up. So taking your legs back down on the Mat. Arms slightly overhead again to the position you can take them without losing your abdominal contraction here. And let's take our roll up. Inhale, arm, head and chest. Keep going. Exhale, rolling up. Following the fingertips with the crown of the head. Take an inhale here. Exhale, begin to roll back scooping that belly. Feel your legs long and reaching forward all the way through.

And again, arms up. Chest follows. Exhale, you're never letting go of that work in your low. You take a breath and exhale, pull back. Squeezing your legs in two together, laying the spine down bone by bone. And again, [inaudible] pulling energy through the stomach, pulling it back. Inhale and exhale. Roll down. Take a nice easy roll. Two more times guys. [inaudible] keeping the roll up. Exciting. How can you keep it exciting? How many years have you done this feeling that lift inside, in and up and roll it back.

Could your energy be stronger through your hands? Could your legs be squeezed more together? Okay. Things to think about. Rolling up, breathe, enrolling yourself down all the way. Yeah.

And then just take your arms by your sides. Okay. Feeling your heels come in. I'm going to take a rollover and we've seen this recently with kind of shortening the lever or shortening your leg length. So let's go ahead and bring your legs up and I want you to cross your ankles one over the other. Doesn't matter which one, but we're trying to not just pull the legs and drop the thighs to the chest, right? So you're keeping this the thighs away from the chest as you roll your spine and hips up and over. So let's take an inhale here guys. Exhale and lift your hips.

Roll your spine up and over and just stay right there for a second. So our sits bones should be facing up to the ceiling. We have a long waist or thighs aren't just dropped toward our chest. Now I want you to switch ankles overhead. Breathe in there and exhale as you begin to roll down your spine.

Ah, rolling all the way down. By the time you land, you should be in that right angle at your hip. So we started here. Inhale and exhale, roll over from there. I've been over the shoulders. Breathe in as you change legs and rolling down from here. Lengthen the arms. Try to connect to that stable long collarbone.

Inhale at the bottom. I'm going to watch you exhale up and over. So sitz bones pointing to the ceiling. Good Samantha, change the legs. Inhale and exhale. Rolling down. Crown of head, reaching back. So you've got some energy opposing the direction you're coming down.

Nice control guys. One last time. Breathe in. Exhale, pelvis up, spine rolls overhead. Change the legs on an inhale and exhale and roll down. And I liked that. For this group, it's kind of Nice to not have to just throw the legs. Okay, so let's come back into placing both legs down. Stretch your left leg on the mat. Bring your right leg up to the ceiling. Little turnout. We're going to take our leg circles.

We anchor the back of that right hip. We anchor our spine. The foot is relaxed. We're taking five circles. Let's cross to the left. Exhale around and lift. Remember the circle is in the hip joint and cross. Circle around and lift and cross. Circle around and lift one more this direction around and lift.

Now the other way, not too wide, ah, around an up and three around and up and four lots of abdominal support for the pelvis and the stability of the lower back. Hold right there. Now let's do an extra. Stretch your hands in the back of the leg. Bring your head and chest back up. This is one of my variations. We do this when kind of a lot. Now I want you to really emphasize your sitz bone reaching to the other end of your mat as you try to bring your leg closer to you.

So there's an oppositional thing going on. I am using my arms to pull it toward me, but I'm definitely reaching my hip out, so I don't want to shorten this waistline. Really sense of length there. Okay. And if that's not enough, stretch if you want a little more work, but the hands up on the Cath and same thing. Okay? So I think that looks pretty good. Let's keep your leg where it is now. Roll your chest back. As you're going backward a lot more.

Reach in your sitz bone. Please reach, reach, reach, feeling the dynamic stretch on your hamstrings. [inaudible] all right, one more breath in. And then exhale. You can just bend the knee and stretch it down and then you can bicycle your left leg up again. A soft thigh, you're not gripped in your hip flexor. Your pelvis is stable, hip is pulled down. So to the right cross circle around and lift.

Inhale, exhale around and lift three around and lift four. Ah, five around and lift. Now the other direction [inaudible] so it's again the femur is it's in the joint. That's where the circle is taking place she and four around and lift five around an lift. Finding the stretch. So hands at the back of the leg. Chest coming up. [inaudible] so equal efforts of us pulling on the leg and reaching the hip and the sit bone out. Take the hands a little higher up on the cat for more challenge.

[inaudible] nice you guys. Inhale. Now lets use the exhale. Keep the leg right where it is or increase the stretch. Try not to go away from it and bring your chest all the way down and at least one more. Nice. Inhale. Exhale. [inaudible]. Okay, let me have you bend your knee and let's bring the other knee up also for that tabletop position. Inhale there. Now curl up into your chest. Lift.

Let's go into our double leg stretch. So the legs will go out on your diagonal arms alongside the ears, and I want you to hold that position. So to open the arms, go a little higher in your chest. Take the arms open. Now close the knees and reach for your heels, which might demand that you go higher in your chest. Left. Exactly. Inhale and lengthen. Pause, open. No, go a little higher on your chest. Lift. Try to get your heels with your fingertips two more times and pause.

Exhale, reach, reach, reach, reach at last one, pause and open around in. Put your hands on your low shins. Let your head come down. Take another breath. We're gonna curl right back up and I want you to hold onto the back of the right calf. Lower your left heel so it barely touches the mat. Yeah. Curl. Hiring your chest. Lift easy with your hands.

Sitz bones are organized. Let's do our pool pool. We have our scissor pull pool switch. Paul Paul switch. Feeling a nice, steady back on your mat so you're not pulling into an arch if you're on the beach. Maybe doing this, you'd actually be sinking into the sand. Sure. And four, three, two, and last one. Bend the knees in and rest your head.

Okay. I'm going to have this come up to a sitting position and or getting ready for rolling like a ball. I'm having to kind of play with this a little today. So go ahead and hold onto your ankles, you guys, and get into your nice tight ball shape. Okay. Lift your feet up off the floor. Just one hand on either shin. There you go. All right. Again, what rolls you back is the pull in of your abdominals. Feel a little freedom with this. Inhale rock back to shoulder blades. Exhale, rock back up. A little pause. That's right. Rock back.

Think sitz bones are going to face up and as you come up, you're right on top of those sitz bones and rocking back and exhale up and balance to rocking back. Exhale up in little balance. Last one. Good little balance. Place your feet down. Now what I want you to do is scoot your feet, tighten it forward. Last week we did single egg teaser. We're going to do that again. We're going to start up this direction today. So bolts your knees together, reach your hands forward. Now pull your waist back, okay.

And you're working through that c curves. So we are going to roll all the way down to the back and take your arms back overhead again. Now what I said last weekend, uh, we want to try not to hop around with the bottom of foot. So where you feel your foot here is where it stays. Okay, and legs are pressed together. Now inhale, arms, head and chest. Feel your exhale dynamically contract your abdominals. I don't want you to come all the way up, so stay back with your waistline.

You're kind of in that seat curve again. Shoulders are down off of your neck. Inhale and pull back. As you exhale, there's still energy through the arms forward, but you're pulling the waistline back and reach your arms long again and you've got him putting on the brakes with your low abdominals. Breathe in and exhale, roll it back. Trying to keep those knees together as if you had a bolt holding them. All right. And one more change here, Bree. Exhale coming down.

Oh, nice control. You guys read with that, arching that back and when I'm reading in, that's right. Exhale, knees together. Knees together. Press the knees together the throat and articulate through the back. One more time. All the way up. [inaudible] oh, okay. I want you to put your feet down and then come up just sitting tall. Let's open the legs to mat with spine stretch forward and just one of them.

And then we're going to take some extension cause we've done a lot around backs already today. So flex your heels, really reached through the uh, the heel in the back of the leg. Tall sitting position on your exhale, your c curve, you're going to go through the forward flection again, head is above your arms. Okay. Now I want you to start thinking your tailbone and shift your weight of your pelvis. You tip your pelvis forward, your tailbone is, should be kind of sticking back to the back of your mat and you're leaning forward or hindering forward. Here, lift your chest a little more, Lisa. Here we go. A little more for Christy. If you can get more erectors, soften your knees to find your erectors maybe. Okay, more low and then lower your arms. Samantha, we're all going to be doing some shoulder blade retraction from here, so exhale, pull your shoulders to gather behind you and down. Inhale, release. Exhale, pull them together and down. Inhale, release. Exhale, pull together and down. Inhale, release. That's it. And there is still lifted in the sternum, in the front of the chest there. Strengthen the abdominal so you haven't pushed those out.

We're trying to isolate the mid back and exhale one more guys. Now just neutralize them so not too much back or forward. Now let's see if we can lift our arms. Ideal. Again, we're trying to frame the side of the head. You haven't shifted your head position. The higher the arms, we know that we need more shoulder blades down with the lats, but also the middle back needs to lift. Okay, we're going to hitchhike just six times. Exhale. Sure.

Add five and six. There we go. Theater still flex because we're going to contract. The abdominals. Hands are going to touch the toes and the feet. Now I want to see if you can bend your spine deeply so that maybe the crown of your head can get to the mat. I have to actually change my hands a little bit and continued to breathing in and out and asking my flexors, my trunk flexors to work to get my chest closer, my head closer, opening the back of my lower back.

Help them more breaths. [inaudible] anyone we're getting closer. Okay, let's roll all the way up and take a look at the open leg rocker. Not that our back is good and open legs together. Bend the knees, bring the hips to the heels, hold on to the outside of the ankles and let's go ahead and just find your position, your pose without your legs extended yet. Okay, so my knees are kind of in the crooks of my elbows. Looking straight ahead. Feel your shoulder blades on your back a little more. Your low belly pulled up and in.

So let's just extend our right leg where it would be for open leg rocker. It's not wider than your mat. All right, and then bringing it back in. Left leg is going to extend and exhale, bringing it back in, right leg, trying to do the leg gesture, the leg move without losing our posture that we set, which is rather extended in the spine. Good. Samantha and n. Now both legs at the same time twice. Usually. The first one's a little catchy. All right, coming in.

Second one. You're going to extend and hold the legs there. Want you to keep your elbows a little bit, Ben, to everybody so that you're not locking them out and fill your lats. Pull down shoulder blades around your back. So for the Rocker, let's take five repetitions. Roll yourself back, lift your sitz bones up, come back and try to find your balance. Feel your shoulders come around the back of your back. Inhale, roll through the Lumbar, middle back. Roll and feel the strength to come up. And again, roll. Exhale, add up. Nice. Christie, it's getting better guys. Two more.

Stretch out of that waste. That's it. Last one. Okay. Okay, good. Put your feet down. Let's go ahead and just put her feet together and just round forward again, just briefly, I'm going to take us to spine twist and we're going to do it with the elbow crossed, a choreography which we've done before, so with the seal position of the legs might feel better in your hip flexors rather than the long sit. So go ahead and just open up the sit position and cross your elbows.

I've got my, it doesn't matter really, which on top do remember though, because as we come back around to the front, I'm going to say switch arms on top, so you'll want to switch. Okay, so you're on the back of your up on your sitz bones. Your back is tall, shoulders are back and down. Let's take a breath in. Just exhale. Be Right there. Let it out. Get a rotate to our left first on it. Inhale [inaudible]. Exhale. Now extend your arms. Your arms are just going to slice through space or reaching through the fingertips. Now inhale, lift the chest and go a little farther around to the left.

Your arms haven't done the movement. It's your trunk rotators. Now as you come back to the center, switch arms, the one on top, whichever wasn't on top before, and heel toward your right, not over rotating. Now exhale, open, creating this nice straight horizontal line. Go up the spine a little farther around toward your right. Feel your back. Assist that and then return to facing your center God. So inhale takes the rotation. Exhale, stretch the arms.

Inhale up and around. Exhale, find home to the right. Exhale, stretch the arms in heel lift. Go a little higher around and exhale, come back to home. Couple more each side, seeing if you can keep an inhale, twist. Keep going, that your weight is even on your sits bones. So on this one is you're trying to go up and more around the side. Be careful not to hit that hip up. Okay. And Center to the right.

Inhale, exhale and stretch. Shoulders should be low. Inhale up and around. Nice work guys. XCL Center. Once again, each direction. Twist, exhale, stretch. Inhale, up and around, and exhale. Center. Last time. Inhale, lift with [inaudible]. Exhale, stretch up and around.

Two with and center. Nicely done. Okay, I'm going to ask us to roll back down again. So moving the hips in and coming back. Now, uh, often when I take us to shoulder bridge, I have a set up with our feet and knees, a couple inches apart. Can I have this? Try something today. Bring your feet together and your knees together so you're completely abducted again and just a little practice. Instead of articulating up to a bridge, let's just press our hips up.

So let's take a breath. You're going to recruit the base of your pelvis, the back of the thighs, and bring your hips up. Now as you bring your hips up, I also want you to make sure your abdominals are very active. Okay? Now let's take a lowering of the hips. Same thing. Just bring them down. Inhale at the bottom, and exhale and bring your hips up. Stay there. Inhale and exhale. Just simply bring your hips down. Couple more like that. Are Your knees feeling okay with your legs?

All the way together. Okay. And lower your hips down. So next one, go ahead and lift your hips up. Now from hearing guys, let's do a little breakdown. Take your left leg vertical to the ceiling. You can have a straight leg. Now let's just do five. Think of lifting the left hip to the ceiling and we lift one and hip up to sit. Bone is still reaching to me. There we go.

Four and last one five. And then set that foot down for the other side. Okay, so right leg up. So two things. Your hip is to the ceiling, but your sit bone is out. So it's going to avoid that hip hiking tendency. All right, five lifts of the hip and one good and two and hip and four and five. You can bend the knee, set the foot down, bring your hips down for a second.

Alrighty. And we'll go in with the leg sweeps up. And same idea, keeping the emphasis in the hip. So take that. Inhale, exhale. Here come the hips there coming up, left leg went up first. Let's flex the heel just five times. You're taking your leg down and lift. I'm going to flex down and point to come up and flex down and point to come up and lower and lift and lower and lift. Place the foot, no coming out of it.

Go right to the other side and lower he thinking hip up and down. Sit bone reaching out and three and hip up and four and hip up and five and lift. Place the foot down. Now let's articulate out of the bridge. Roll down. Feel the stomach contract all the way in. Okay? What I'd like us to do now is I'm going to face you, you guys can face me. This is, you've seen it recently, so what I want you to do also as kind of line up at the middle of your mat.

If we had a piece of tape and I could put it right down the center to divide it, we'd be in the center. The back of your head would be online, your bottom shoulder, your sideways, your hip, and the heels. Okay? Let me just take a check and then your other hand, both hands are actually going to be behind your head and bring your heels back a tiny bit. Good. Okay. And so let this elbow go here. So we're going to work on some rotation again. So top elbow, look to your top elbow and start to open that elbow toward the ceiling.

And what I want you to think about when you're opening into the twist is you can keep your feet together and stacked your knees stacked together and your hip over the other hip. Now depending on how flexible your spine is right now, you might be not going too far or you may be going pretty far. Okay, we're going to do a few of them and then go ahead and find your way back to center. And again, so looking at the elbow, feel your upper abdominals engaged on this exercise as well. Now if you go farther than what we've been studying, the last few classes is allowing your shoulder blade to move a little bit. So if you let your right shoulder blade kind of sneak around the back of your ribs, your rib cage might want to move more. It's really your threat. That's good. Yeah. Good. That fine question. We want thoracic rotation. Yeah.

Okay. And then coming back to facing center two more times and open the elbow. Good. And we know that we're abdominals are engaged. We know our shoulder blade can kind of slide or move around the back of the ribs for more movement in the t spine. That might be a nice way to open up your pictorial muscles. The goal might be to get that elbow all the way to the floor on that side and let your head be heavy in your hands. Okay. Let your head rest back and then come around to front one more time.

And I better not do it cause I haven't prepared for it and open. So by that fourth one, maybe yes, maybe we're fully open to the ceiling, but we're there with some abdominal squeeze up in the upper abs where you do the a hundred nice tents tummy. Good. Okay. And then come all the way to facing front. Now let's just turn so your heads this way and we'll do the same exercise. So lining yourself up, head back of spine, back of hips and heels.

It's Kinda hard to feel you guys actually looked fine. Okay, good. All right, so the f and then bring your shoulders and your head back. There you go. That's it. Yeah. Okay. Ready? So opening the top elbow. There you go. You're just kind of enjoying the first phase of this.

You don't have to go too far. Keeping the hip stack, knee stacked. That's right. And then exhale as you come back to facing your front, move your hips back as coach. Okay. And again there. And so we're trying to establish hips. Lower. Half of body is stable. You're not twisting through the pelvis, trying to get that spine to ring out. Good. And then coming back to center and two more times.

Inhale, allow that shoulder blade to kind of travel around the back of the rib. Good, Rachel. Ooh. Yeah. You feel that? Not Uncommon to get some of those little maybe releases end joint. And then coming back to center. Of course, that's not our main goal. Main goal is mobility and going around good and freedom to rotate.

Trying to let that head go. Maybe that elbow can drop all the way to the floor, right? Upper abdominals are engaged. Nice you guys. Okay. And then unwind from the rotation. And let's go ahead and just turn face down than heads this way. Go into the a little prep for swan dive, and we've done this before.

I'm going to have your hands here by your shoulders, forehead on the mat, legs close together, or ideally all the way together. If you need a little space, that's okay. Pull those abdominals up and feel the weight of the triangle. Nice and level on your mat and recruiting your lats. So let's take a breath. We're going to slowly lift the top of that.

Reach through the top of the head and just [inaudible] your head and chest were not coming all the way to swan, as high as you could lift, keeping your hands, forearms, and elbows down on the mat. Okay, so all that thoracic rotation I chose to do before this movements, you can have more range in your t spine, your thoracic spine, reaching long forward and up, getting more extension in your back there. Now keeping that length, let's use that to come back down all the way to the forehead. You're going to keep your head down. Let's breathe now. Exhale, lift your legs and your, it should say your thighs. So if you can keep your legs together doing this wonderful cause, that's where we want to get them to swan die. But if you need them a little apart, that's okay. So the back of the thighs, we know our hamstrings. Lift them to the ceiling.

Knees are stretched. Take a breath and exhale as you lower the legs down. Again, inhale, so upper body and exhale, freedom to lengthen through the chest. Feel your mid back contract to pull you up higher. Inhale and exhale as you're coming down with that same integrity of reaching [inaudible]. A long inhale at the bottom and exhale and lift the back of the legs, the thighs trying to work from right at the base of the pelvis. Good, Rachael.

So the low glutes, hamstrings support your low back by pulling your stomach up. Breathe and exhale leg legs down. Let's take one more slow pattern. Exhale. Wow. Inhale, hold, and exhale all the way down.

Inhale, let the mat and exhale lift the legs. Stay there. Inhale and exhale and lower the legs. So now if we do a little swan, let's do three regular swan or full swan all the way up. Here we go. Same things, passing through that Mini Swan. Now to go higher, of course you are going to have to press through those arms a little bit, but I want you to think shoulderblades around the back of the back. Squeeze the middle spine. Lift Tall, breathe. Exhale, coming down, keeping the shoulders around the back, and then down to the forehead. Two more full swan, x, Z, O, n. Nice and lifted.

Take a breath, exhale, and coming down. Once again. Exhale. All right, so let's do the prep. Releasing the hands. You're gonna fly out to the sides. You're going to lift those thighs up. Catch your hands underneath your shoulders. Release and catch.

Fill your thighs, lift. Good. You guys lift the thighs. Catch one more time and lift and catch and then slowly come down. Yeah, all the way. Now let's go ahead and put the hands back. By the size of the shoulders, press up and we've seen this recently too. I don't want you to go all the way to a passive position.

As you're reaching your hips back towards your heels, make it be a stomach contraction or an abdominal contraction to really open up your lower back. [inaudible]. Okay. Coming back down onto her front. It's come up on her elbows, palms face down. Single leg kick. Press your shoulders down, away from your ears. Lift your low belly up. So we're doing point flex with the foot to take abreast. To start, right heel point.

Flex and lower left leg and low point flex point. Flex [inaudible] lifting the top of the head to the ceiling. Let's go eight more today. Point. Flex point. Flex keeping the strength in your back. [inaudible] four more years. Three Dan, two last one and all the way down. Okay guys, come all the way down to face me again.

Rule over [inaudible] you're into your side and let's bring our knees together somewhat back in that position we were in a moment ago. We're going to do a little hip, little lateral hip so you can have your bottom elbow bent heels again or back in line with your sacrum and take your top hip and just reach it away from that rib. So you're going to lengthen that top waist out, which will probably lift this one a little. And let's take clamps. We're going to take an open and close and rotate and close and rotate so you can keep the feet inside edges all the way together. And there it is and down two more times and open and close. And last one open. Just hold right here. Okay, so we know where hip joint is here.

If we lift our femur by creasing this hip joint, it's this crease, uncreate. Crease in your toes are going to touch and crease and uncreate and touch the toes and crease. Good crease. Two more. And crease. Now let's crease and hold. Okay, so from where I'm going to put my hand like this on my thigh, I'm now going to extend my knee flex, lower the leg, come back into the clam. So it's a variation of our, some of our leg work that we've done. Stretch the knee flex and lower pass through that clam flex at the hip.

Stretch the knee, flex and down and come through the clam crease. The hip. Extend from the knee. Flex and down. One more time. Crease at the hip. Extend from the knee, flex and down. Now let's try to reverse it. So coming up with the straight leg point, come through the clam. It's kind of funky and stretch out and lift and knee and hip and stretch.

Full leg, knee, hip, [inaudible] and stretch. Two more. And lift and knee, hip, [inaudible] and down. Last one and lift. Knee, hip and stretch. Okay, take both legs together. Bring them almost more right in mind with you underneath here. And take your top arm up and then stretch overhead. So I want you to take that arm and reach.

And so moving this shoulder blade up, the ribs and down and one more. Lift and down. Okay, now the arm is going to come back to facing the ceiling. Let's lift both legs up. Just hold. We'll take our flexing point of our feet so we have an inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale. Good. So keeping those integrity of the strength way up at the top of the leg in the front of the leg as well as in the back of the leg, which might turn on your glutes a little bit and point and flex and 0.2 more guys.

Flex point and flex and point. And then just simply lower the legs, bring your arm down and we're going to bend our knees and come up and sweep the legs around to the other side. So the clam, and again, the setup, I want you to stretch the hip first. The bottom wastes will lift. In doing that, you don't have to just jam that waste up. It's about linkedin in here. Okay. And then inside edge your feet together as you open the hip and close and open. Close establishing hip, over hip and close.

Shoulder. Open and down. Two more. Press close and open and hold. And then just creasing at the hip. Crease and toes. Touch and Currys. Good. Divide a string here like a little puppet there.

Three more crease. Good. And keeping the chest open. Eyes Open and last one crease. Now hold right there. Here's where we went. Now stabilizing the femur. Stretch from the knee. Flex the heel, reach your leg out. Long. Come through the clam crease at the hip.

Stretch from the knee flex and all the way long again. And Clam. Hip me. Stretch Clem. Hip, knee and stretch. Last one. And Clam, hip Ni and leg reversing. Bring the legs straight up. Me.

We did a little extra crease. Clam stretch, left knee hip through the clam. Reach straight leg up me help stretch last one. And lift and bend and crease and all the way down. Okay. Legs long and straight waistline lifted leg is still reaching. Let's take our arm up. Just a little shoulder blade. Buba. So allow that shoulder to live towards the ear and bring it down.

Shoulder blade, lift toward the ear and down, inviting a little side bend underneath our waist and down. And then arm to this ceiling. Lifting both thighs, flex and point and inhale. Good use and work the feet. Only. Pull the toes to the shins and press and three and four. Good. Two more. And flex point and flex and point and lower.

And bring the arm down and bend your knees. And let's come all the way up. So I'm going to have us come to a front support position and we can have heads facing into each other. Can't get this on there. You're cracking your knuckles. All right, so find your, yeah, your friend. Support Hands Open. Stand strong. Okay, so we know our triangle of our pelvis, pubic bone and hips.

Think get moving that triangle up as you go into your up stretch. So lift that triangle. Yeah, and so the back of the triangle is very high. Here are the points of it reached behind you there and then come back down. Lower that triangle toward the mat. Let's take a full breath. Inhale and exhale and reach.

Full breath. Inhale, exhale, and coming down. Two more guys. Inhale, exhale and reach. Good. Inhale. Exhale, bringing it down, feeling the relationship of shoulder blades down and up and reach. I stay right there. Now Walk your feet to your hands and on the way walking in round your back.

See if you can round your spine, who by the time your feet are underneath your hips and your hands are down, you're somewhat rounded in this and your stomach should be active. Let's just go ahead and have the legs be very close together on this [inaudible]. All right, begin your roll up to standing. Pull your pelvis down underneath you. Restack each vertebra all the way up. Nice and tall.

Nice breath in at the top or get a rolled back down. Exhale and ground [inaudible] stretch, stretch, stretch the back of the legs and I would like you to just step your feet back one at a time, back into your front support position. Okay, now I'm going to move my right hand and set it next to my left hand. No scooted over. No pivot on my feet and switch to that one arm side support and take the left arm overhead over the ear and just squeeze the legs together.

Feel yourself strong. Just standing in this pose. I'm going to turn and look at you. Open up your sternum. Good. Okay. Lower your inside hip a little bit, Rachel. Yeah. Okay. Now breathe in and out and rotate back to facing down. I'm going to do the other side. So first getting your [inaudible] set up there.

Left-Hand will scoot to right hand step and feel the sternum reaching. Long Swivel on the feet. You're arm is overhead. You're squeezing your legs together. We've got a nice long body. Breathe in. Exhale, pivot. Lower that arm down.

Is that your knees down and let's come off of the wrists. Nice work. You guys round through here. Okay, let's come on up and do one more. Let's go into our seal or no, we're going to do the crab. Half the crab. Okay, so ankles crossed either one in front. Handy. Handy. Okay.

So looking down, get that c curve wants you to feel like you're pulling your heels in toward your sits bones. Just like we would think for rolling like a ball. I've got the my knees pressing outward into my elbows. I'm going to roll back, hips up, switch the ankles and come up and find that little balance I've got to put on the brakes and the abdominals. Roll back. Hips up under the feet. Crumps I'm coming up and find that little balance. Rolling back. Hips up. Change the feet, curl and again, roll hips up. Tune to the feet. Let's do it again for more. When you're rolling, stick tucked in tight to your body. Ah, and again, curl. Stay in tight shoe and rollback change.

[inaudible] last time and roll lift. Okay. And place your feet down. Face me real quick and let sit in a diamond position. Arms out to the side, palms face up. Let's do a nice side bend. [inaudible] this is a good, easy stretch.

So as you're opening that a your side to the sidewall, making sure that sit bone has some weight into it. Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible] bend your elbow. What it feels like to let the elbow bend. You might go lower to the floor. Increasing your bend. Yeah. Okay. And then let's go all the way up to the other side. Starting over anchoring. Both sits bones, [inaudible] lifted through the sternum, and then again, allow your elbow to bend.

See if you go a little lower to the floor. Just like that. You're going to contract one side and you're stretching the other one more. Let's go each side again. Up An over [inaudible] good. Looking straight ahead to the sternum and has a relationship through the head. Ah, and other side [inaudible] got you guys all the way up and over. Okay. Let's just close the knees.

Just tuck your feet back behind you. And one more roll up. Let's pivot ourselves so our hips are facing back and go through that straight leg position once again. So with this position, I want you to reopen your stance so that your feet are a two to three inches apart or they'd be right underneath your pelvis. So that would, they're ready for us to walk on when we roll up. All right, and have pull that stomach up off of the thighs you really scooping in. Take that inhale and then use the exhale to pool your belly even more. Roll the tailbone down. Feel the hamstrings kicking into ruralU up.

Open up your shoulders before you walk away, just take one easy little knee bend of your knees. There we go. Okay, thank you guys. Was work today.

Comments

Always an interesting and fun class.
Hi Michael......so nice to hear from you! This is one of my regular Mat classes that I teach at my studio and the level on our schedule states that it is a Level 2 class. With that said, we're on the edge of going a little farther and adding some new pieces...more advanced....they're excited. Stay tuned!
Hi Amy, Definitely, I will stay tuned! This class helped me taught a group class Today. Now I felt that the people in my class aware their weaknesses of their body and be able to tried to make forms better. Thank you.

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