Class #44

BASI Pilates® Flow Sequence™

55 min - Class
20 likes

Description

Kristi teaches a class that prepares the student to take a BASI Pilates® Flow Sequence™ class. The Flow sequence™ is a technique BASI teachers use that links one exercise to the next with seamless transitions in an effort to keep the student focused and the intensity high. This a well-rounded class that links many exercises together yet leaves space to answer a good question and offer detailed cues.
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Jan 13, 2010
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Okay guys, we're gonna, we're gonna start on the ground, so just lie on your backs. Lovely. And so here you are. Take a minute, don't try to do anything. I'm going to lead you as best I can through a solid workout that hopefully lets you explore your body just a little bit different. Um, what I'm going to ask of you now is that you take a deep breath in and on your exhale, just let go. Take inventory, let go, relax, whatever you need. If you're ready to really move, it's also a good idea to let go of unnecessary tension. Okay? So don't think of this necessarily as anything other than I'm going to free my body, have as much tension as possible so that when I do move, whether it's more gentle or more of a push, you do it with efficiency. One of the key principles of bloody. So one more time.

Feel the bones of your body. Wherever they sit, just become a little heavier. The musculature just starts to fall or release the muscles of your face, everything. And then with that, bend your knees, set your feet flat on the Mat. And now we start to kind of collect ourselves. If you started by thinking about your feet, they point straight ahead. As best you can, keep the feet flat so that you've got equal weight, big total little toe, or almost equal weight, I should say. As you travel up, the body puts some energy between the inner thighs. So that space that we have, and we do have space. I'm asking for about four to six inches apart or sits bones distance. So Helen, you can move your feet ever so slightly apart. Get Hug this space so it doesn't mean bring the bones together. Just hug it heavy hips.

Maybe you'll have a little space at your low back. Ribs are heavy. Take one last inhale altogether here. And when you exhale, reach your shoulders, your arms down the mat toward your feet, and then gently spread the shoulders out so it feels like your back just got more broad. We inhale for pelvic curl. Start the XL. Let it be kind of easy initially sync the abdominals so you feel the bones. Press into the Matcha, roll your pelvis off the Mat. Continue all the way up to about the lower tips of the shoulder blades.

Look down your body and look for a straight line so there's no release at the hip joint. Inhale, exhale. We come back down, upper back, middle back. This is our chance to sort of investigate further what feels particularly tight, what needs to be released, because ultimately you're going to be in charge of that. Inhale. [inaudible] begin the exhale, sinking the ABS. When I say that, I basically mean don't drive the feed into the mat. There will be extra pressure on the feet once you lift the hips but not before it, and you need to inhale and exhaling down. Taking the massage of the spine, finding a little more space each time you go and inhale, exhaling to roll up.

What I'd like for you to maybe put in the background of the practice that you do today is linking each exercise so even though it appears that we're stopped, you're inhaling, you're still energetically working. The position. Exhale as you round down, reaching the hips further than where you picked them up in here. Annex. All these movements though, slow at the moment, our dynamics, so you're always going to have to cut a recheck or my shoulders creeping up. Am I holding where I don't need to inhale and exhale down. Let me give us two more.

So if you're starting to feel like you're tensing anywhere, let it go because I promise you you can get so much out of this what seems to be a simple exercise. There's a lot in there. I only discovered the pelvic curl about 15 years into doing polina's. Inhale, an exhale. I see no one's got any comments to say about that. All right, from there, reach the arms up. Take just one where you slide the shoulders around your back. Reach and forward, reach and forward and that probably doesn't feel great around the neck. Hopefully no pain, but put the shoulders back in place.

Feel what it is to have your straight collar bones and then reach your arms out to the side, to the tee position. Inhale, bringing up the legs. Actually breathe however you want. Just bring up the legs, zip up, big toe, ankle bone, knees coming toward the front of the room for side spine twist. Inhale. As you come forward, start the Xcel. Feel the waist line as you come across the midline and go to the other side. There's no real need to actually stop and exhale. Having said that, you don't want to rush either. Follow the breath, let the breath be the tool in here and keeping it going. You email. It's almost like the legs are swinging to one side.

The rotation really coming from the obliques or the abdominals. Inhale to the front. Begin the exhale. You might feel a mild stretch across the chest. It might be a deep stretch across the chest if it's duty. If you just lower the arms a little bit, if you feel your back starting to work and I'm just going to press your ribs down a little bit. Michelle, there you go. And again, one more time.

Each way in hell to the front. If you feel your back start to work, this can also be done with your feet on the floor and last time to the back, bringing it back to senator. Set the feet back down. Let's say feet together, finding that neutral pelvis. So at the moment you have not pressed your low back into the mat. You're trying to remain as maintained as neutral as possible. Lace the fingers and put them behind your head. Allow the elbows just off the mat.

We're doing just a couple of the chest lift before we add a variation. Inhale, prepare, start. Exhaling. You might feel the ribs knit together as you curl from the top of your spine or your head up. Hopefully high enough that now the low back has released into the mat. Inhale, but you still haven't talked. XL length in yourself. Back Down, stretching out through the neck. Inhale, no rest in. Down here at for sure feels like you could, but don't. Exhale up. Working slowly to the top. Can you put your hands fully together?

Just makes you a little heavier, heavier, a little more curl, Michelle. There she is. Inhale and exhale down and inhale, great place in the beginning class to really feel the post lateral breathing. That just means basically let the whole trunk expand, not just out the front. Inhale, hold and exhale takes you down. I'm getting ready to add. The variation starts exactly the same. Inhale.

Exhale. When you know these exercises, this is your chance to kind of look a little deeper within yourself. Inhale, reach to the back of your arms. You know what I meant? Legs. Exhale, pull. Just a little higher. Yes, take. Just stay here for a moment. Inhale, looking at your abdominals for a brief moment. Sink the abs on your next exhale. Just let them fall and hold that. Keep the ab down. If you can. Inhale arms up. I do. Put the hands back and down. Now I'm going to qualify that statement. I still want the pelvis neutral where possible. So really, um, probably what I should do, Debra, is change my queue rather than having to go higher.

Think of folding more right below the chest line. See if that may, and for some, some of us, we do have to go higher. So let's say this. Inhale, exhale to curl up. So if here your neutral and your low back is touching, you probably don't need to come much higher. What'd you say? Your low back rarely touches, right? So what I want to say to you is, and even almost me, go ahead and grab the legs. Everybody inhale there is Deborah. You're probably should tuck a little bit. Then you relax your back, right? You should then, because that's more important with the back. Relax as you can get into the app.

So everybody at this point should have a release back. If you can't, you should talk a little. Perfect. Inhale, arms up. Thank you. That's a good point to make and exhale down. Plus we had to stay there a long time. Inhale. Let's do one more. So right now, maybe your back's not touching anybody or at least not much pressure. Exhale, curl up. Hopefully this does it. If it doesn't, inhale, reach to the back of the legs. Try not to tip, but you might have to exhale to come a little higher. Fantastic. Moving on. Inhale, arms up. Put them behind your head. Exhale, rotate to the front leading shoulder to hip. Inhale, keep the height as you come to the other side, shoulder to hip. That's a good position. Inhale and exhale.

Inhale, rolling across those shoulder blades, keeping your persuasion and should be getting a little bit warmer. Hopefully by now and if not, I would ask you to just try and relax your feet. Relax what you can with the exception of the powerhouse hips on up. Basically, we'll come back to center on this one. Inhale, reach to the back of the legs. Exhale, sink the ABS. That ought to help. Inhale, we'll keep their arms up straight once they get there and then just take everything down. Reaching the arms back overhead. Take your legs up. We're heading into the hundreds, so take the legs up if you're going to extend them or you can leave them on the ground. Shoulders are down. Here we go. Inhale, prepare, exhale to curl of head, neck and shoulders. We're reaching the legs out to the point where your challenge and your back is rested. Absolutely critical. Here we go. Inhale, and it's Hicks. Heel. Two, three, four, five in and out. Two, three, four, five and out. Two, three, four, five. And Ian, so think it is a vigorous pump, but it should look calm.

So you don't want it yanking you around, rather you just move the air. That's it. It's a strong arm. Good. That's better. I'm so much better. Is your low back touching now? Okay, good. And that's, you hate it when we get up. Cause you know I'm not counting want to get up, but I am actually, wouldn't you like to know what I'm thinking?

One more full cycle and out. Two, three I end after the inhales and then draw the knees in. Set the feet on the ground and reach your arms back. Slide the legs out all the way under the mat. Stretching long. Go ahead and arch the back of it. Feels good. Just really let your body get as long as you can.

Create the space between the hips and the waist and then re-engage the abdominals enough to press the back of the ribs down. Shoulders in place. Here's the roll up. Inhale. We exhale to bring it up. Oh, I know. Not Easy. After the the 105 here we go. Inhale, exhale down. Things you can think about. Move the pelvis to initiate it.

Really it's the abdominals butt and it'll back. Do not give up here, meaning don't have to recommit. Inhale, stay committed. Exhale. Sometimes if you just think I'm going to make this look easy, it actually is easier. It might be intense on the muscle groups, but there's a less strain and down. Here we go slightly faster. Inhale, head, neck, shoulders up, exhale to lift off. Lot of options you could choose for your arms. If you want it a little harder, make yourself heavier by reaching the arms up a little sooner. That would also be true on how you get up.

You would keep your head a little more in line with your arms if you wanted the challenge. If you wanted a little less challenge but still working hard, you allow the arms to come a little lower initially. Whichever version you decide upon, you keep the shoulders relatively relaxed, not relatively quite relaxed. Yeah, we're just seeing him and exhaling. I'm going to stay down on this one. Take the arms out to a t or if you prefer you can take the arms a little lower.

In any case, palms up. Check for neutral pelvis here. Take the leg closest to the back of the room and bring it to 90 knee bent first. Just so now you can really solidify the ribs back in the ribs. Extending the leg up. The leg itself is weightless. It's effortless. Extend it longer than you think you can. In fact, let's do this.

Reach the lay higher so the hips going to come out of alignment. Reach it up there. You can push into the ground with your arm. That's fine. Then keep the toes up there. This is a theoretical cue here and sink the hips back into place, so let the leg just rest in the hip socket as best you can come and across the mid line. I'm going to keep the toe relaxed. Inhale for a full circle stop. Same direction. Exhale, full circle.

Stop doing your best to keep the trunk absolutely still and exhale. Inhale and exhale. The legs were pretty soft. Did the rest of the trunk is stable. Last one here and hold it up. Other direction, inhaler around and boom and exhale. So you are mostly interested in keeping the hips and ribcage still.

If that means you make it smaller, make it smaller. If I'm going too small for you, make it bigger, challenge yourself to that edge. And then from here, hold it up, bend the knee, cross over the body for a stretch. You just going to take it across the knees, very bent, maybe look the opposite way to finish out the rotation in the spine. Good. And then come on back. Still slide that leg out.

Situate yourself so you're even take the other leg up to 90 and then the reason I stop here is because I think the setup is everything and it's worth it to us to take a second and engage all through the trunk so that the light can just straighten easily. Now I say that if your hamstrings are tight, you may need to bend the lower leg. Here we go, crossing the midline, it's inhale around and exhale and inhale, stirring up the hip socket. Annex. [inaudible] important thing we need to be able to do is move that leg independent of the hip joint and one more exhale here and change directions in Heller. Round up. Exhale out around, up. Check your neck tension here. Let it really relax. Sometimes you have to look down a little. If that's too hard, we can get a little pillows out. I'll go one more. Full Cycle. Inhale and exhale. There we go. Bending the knee, crossover for your stretch and look the opposite way across the body.

Okay, I'm sensing that we are calm it feeling strong. If I'm wrong, don't tell me. Here we go. Reach the arms overhead. I'm sorry. Over chest. One more. Roll up with precision egos. Inhale, exhale, pulling the abdominals back while the rest of the body nice nylon goes forward. Keep the abdominal contraction move forward for rolling like a ball so you just have room behind you. Draw the feed and close as you can without flattening the low back. Here we go.

Inhale, roll back. Exhale up hole. Just behind those sits bones is I'm going to recommend you. Stop. Inhale, exhale, uphold. Once you cross the tailbone, there's a lot of balancing you've got to do and it's not that that's going to help you. It really isn't. You want to be able to control the stuff behind it. Things that help stay where you start. No kicking, no throwing the head back. Let's keep going, but make it a little smaller. And by that I mean don't go back quite as far and see if you can get back up to more. The breath really helps make try for an exhale coming up. Last one.

Slide your hands up to your knees. I'm just going to back up a little. I think you're all pretty good. And we press the knees into the hands to lower ourselves down to the tabletop position. Eyes forward. Ideally the pelvis is neutral, but not if your low back isn't rested. You can allow for a little tilt double leg stretch. Inhale, hold. When you get there. Ah, from the middle of your body. Exhale, light, arms and legs. Bring it back and hold again. Again. Inhale, eyes forward.

Instill and exhale. So enjoy the full extension right there. Get them closer together, Michelle. Yeah. Why not? And exhale arms. Yeah. Inhale, boom. And exhale. Let's put an exclamation point on it. Inhale. Exhale. One more, just like that. Focus and in four more, just a little quicker, but no less precise. One. And pull in. Inhale, open. Exhale, holding it there. Draw the knees in. Roll your heads down just for a minute. Not a minute. That's enough. Come right back up.

Recheck that you didn't Tuck. It's real easy to do. Extend the lane closest to the front of the room. Optional hands. You know them. If you went outside hand, ankle, do it. You can pull the leg in a little closer tonight. Please. Squeeze the glutes. A little change. Hold it here for a second. Pull it in a little closer.

Sink the ad's a little deeper. Izer forward and change. Here we go. Progress and progress. I'm just exhaling as you reach, right. Letting those legs pass together almost as if they're resisting against each other, but include that feeling higher up into the trunk as well and finding almost like mechanical, but within that mechanical feeling, find some ease. Last four passes, one and two. Three. Once again, bring both knees in. Let your head go down. Look over one shoulder, shoulder. Stay away from the years. Roll the chin across the chest or naturally go to the other side.

Look over the other shoulder coming right back to center. Hands on the knees to get you back yet again into a upright 90 90 position. Extend the leg closest to the back of the room. Try for a straight like you're. In fact, I think you can get one even if you hold lower and try for the bottom like all the way into the mat. Yes. Now forget the topic for a second. Length in the top of your leg that's on the ground length.

And I like someone's pulling in, almost relax the top of the leg. Press the hamstring into the mat. And now top leg pulls pulses twice. One, two, change. Take a second here. Reach through the top of the leg. Yep. And here we go. Pulse, pulse, realtime. Now and okay. A real important thing we can always do for ourselves is keep the eyes quiet. Once you know these exercises, trying just keep your eyes still unusually or at least in one like this.

It's forward. And last too. Last one. Both legs come up. Let your heads go down. Yup. While we're here with the arms down, little's kind of a break but not really little tick talk or a little half of a corkscrew. Inhale, tilt it. Reach your legs to the front. I did lift my hips a little bit. Exhale, just bring it back to center.

Other side. Inhale, so as you look at your own toes, they're not sliding. Your feet are not sliding on themselves, rather they're just right next to each other. Again to the front. Inhale. It's okay to do this with bent knees. It won't affect a big difference. Put your focus around the waist. Last one here and back to center. If you can keep the legs straight or wherever they're at, leave them. Curl your head, neck and shoulders up and support your head, neck and shoulders with your hands. Probably want to be able to see the elbows. Lightly. Squeeze glutes and we just reached the legs down. Three counts.

Not very far. One, two, three. Exhale. Think of moving from the size. If you're in not with straight legs. Inhale, eyes forward to three and up. Yeah. Some of you are going really big and it's okay. I just don't think you need to. I'd rather you think longer from the waist. Open up pest space. Only one more. [inaudible] bring it back. Bend the knees. We'll go right into crisscross. Here it is.

X Hill and thinking shoulder to hit. Perhaps letting your breath help you. It's not explosive. It's helpful and it's deep and it's strong. Six more passes. We go. One and two. Yeah, come back to the center one last time and let the feet come down. Release the arms overhead so they're straight, but off the mat.

Walk your feet slightly apart like you're going to do a pelvic curl because you are hopefully and inhale. Prepare on your exhale. Start to peel the hips up. Just leave the arms there. Find all of the bones in your back one by one. Take them off the mat and adjust the shoulders as necessary. Inhale. Exhale would bring it back down. Leave the arms there.

The temptation here would be to have the shoulders come out of their imaginary pockets, right? Leave them somewhat down we go again. Inhale, exhale, ruling through picking your spine up, finding the work and the hamstrings. Now the back of the legs, the, and let's keep the arms here. Unless you find that the balance becomes more of an issue than anything, then in that case, you're gonna put your arms here or you can put your arms there cause you want to. That would be fine too. What we want to do is keep the hips level. So let's pick up one leg and then take a peak. And if you cramp, well by all means, just shake it out. All right, here we go. Extend the leg and it's worth it for just a moment to look down at your hips. If you can just make sure that the straight leg hip hasn't fallen, that's usually what happens. Kinda slowly. Exhale, kick and reach. One flexing.

Come up. Exhale, reach to your mission is to keep the body, the trunk, the core still. So do not kick so low that you are forced to thrust the hips. Um, the ribs up. All right. One more. Hold the leg up. Check and you don't need to pick your head up. This who feel for it. Did you turn the foot out on the lower leg?

Everybody? No peeling. Just lower down. If you think you did, adjust it so that your foot's parallel and push straight back up. No appealing one. Come down again. Up again. Yeah. So specifically working the glute now. Yep. Trying to get right back where you were way up there. Excellent.

[inaudible] nice and strong. Relax the toes of the foot on the floor and there we go. Keep the arms where they are. All the way down to the ground where you bend the knee. Inhale. We are appealing up this time. Roll through the spine. At any point, if you need to put the arms down, you should, right? Let's not make that the thing. I'm just trying to challenge a little bit more than what you normally do.

Other leg comes up. Check your hips. You know what to do. Exhale reaching long. My suggestion would be to consider the ribs and abs before you ever think of reaching that leg. Right. So it says if the leg is moving from right under your chest, minimizing movement. Yeah. Give yourself one more coming out. Yeah.

And just check yourself out for a second before you do anything else. Are you more weighted on the one shoulder? Try and keep it as level as possible. And from here, we just touched down. Think about the lower foot. If you'd somehow turn it out, put it back to parallel and push up. And once again, it's going to be tempting to lead with the ribs.

It might be worth it to take one of your free hands and check out the ribs. If they're getting way ahead of you, you're not gonna want that. You're gonna feel it in your low back. There's some low back work, but really not much. Shouldn't be a lot more through the glute and hamstring. Ah, get one more out of the deal here. Get up there, get up there, bring it down. Refold the leg. And with that, bring your arms down. Finally, he's heading into the rollover, so you have a choice here. A lot of people don't like the rollover. A, that's probably not true. They'd probably love it, but a lot of people shouldn't do the rollover. It's probably a better way of saying it if you're one of them.

Just soft knees do the hard part, which is that reverse crunch. All right, otherwise, extend your legs up. Aw, good. Am going to ask for a little glute. Squeeze pretty small, but look for it. Here we go from here. Do not back the legs up if you can help it. Inhale, exhale. Everybody does the pelvic curl and you continue taking that supported spine all the way over. Reaching the feet to the back wall. You're on the shoulder blades, not on the neck. Inhale, flex separate to about hip distance and let's just roll it down from there. Feeling the chest pull away from the chin, feeling the curve to the spine supported via the abdominals and that little bit of glutes. Squeeze. If you want to take the legs lower here, you may inhale, exhale, but you do it with protection with the back. Inhale, flex separate. If you have the flexibility, you can lower your feet, but it shouldn't change your spine much. Exhale down. We go.

Point and close. Find the back of your body so you don't have to heave. That means just get the glutes involved. Inhale, flex, separate, open. And down we go. Good. Let's get one more in that direction. Point close. Inhale. Find your lap.

Good. Yeah. You sure that breath comes a split second before you go over [inaudible] come. Let me just double check. Yeah, so reverse it. So what you do now, Debra, if you don't mind, inhale, separate the feet to hip distance a little closer and exhale up and over like that. Okay, good. I heard it. I heard it. It gets real tempting. So now the feet come together and roll down on this exhale. It's real tempting, right? To hold your breath right before you go over and it just doesn't work any better. In fact, it's worse.

So slow yourself down enough that you know you have exhale to get there. Flex the feet if you have that available to you to roll down. And we're going to just get one more out. Inhale to point. Exhale before you lift off with control. Inhale, flex and close. And when you squeeze the legs together, try and feel the whole ribcage. Come a little closer to itself and down we go.

[inaudible] good. All right. Hug your knees to your chest. Then when you have had enough of it, straighten out your legs so we can get to the next piece, which is just a straighten your legs out and Yep, I'm with you. You were going right into that role at before you do the check the back of the ribs. So easy to start it from some sort of our charities roll up. Good. All right. All right. So it's just um hmm. What do I want to say? I want you to come to upright. I like how we did this.

It might've been last week or it was nice for the moment. Deborah, keep your feet apart. I'm sorry. Together. Drop your hands wherever they land. And I would recommend a settle knee bend cause I'm not really going for the hamstring. Part of, I'm going for a little more of the back, work with your straight spines. Feel free to pull if you want to, but see what you can do by first thinking of lengthening and then hinge forward on the diagonal. And then just sort of notice what it feels like. At a certain point. All of us would have to round our back. So we're just trying to feel sort of flat on both sides from that place. Literally hold on a little bit. Strong, stronger. You don't have to pull, but hold on because now we're going to ask you to exhale and pull the hipbones back. So I want you to curl the just the low back. It's pretty small, Helen landline, you might not even see it from here. And then inhale, roll the hipbones forward. So if you could see the pelvis, I'm just going to exhale and pull back.

I'm gonna exaggerate it just to make the point and then inhale to Elongate, pressing the hipbones forward and the rib cage more on the diagonal. Then forward and exhale back. Just trying to isolate it out a little. In truth. You can't really separate the upper spine from the lower fully, but I want you to be able to feel it. Last one, because we're about to do spine stretch and it's sort of the whole thing is right here. All right. Then separate your feet. Come to just your upright, natural position or not natural. Think tall arms, straight ahead. Good. Inhale, exhale. First thing to happen is your head will come down. You've started gaging the abdominals as you ring out the lungs in a way, blowing out the air, stretching the whole spine, but focus really on the lower end. Inhale, hold and exhale to roll yourself back up.

Noticing what your tendency might be on the shoulder. Inhale, exhale. Head goes first, beautiful. Exhaling, keep exhaling. Make sure all the air goes out, inhale, hold, and then bring it home, hugging the midline, hugging that imaginary midline of resistance and inhale. We'll add the back extension. Now exhale, take a down watching the collarbone, state of the sides of the room. From here, we start at the lowest part of your spine. You just like your stick, your tailbone out. Growing into a long diagonal inhale, beautiful. Exhale, reroute, and right away within this exhale you can roll up. If you run out of air, just start inhaling. It's all fine. Exhaling down, deepening the sense of somebody holding you back at the waist and inhale.

Earlier we talked about continuing the movement even though it appears to be stopping a tiny bit longer married. That's all an exhale round to come up and in here I'm giving you about four more. So enjoy work on exhale. So right there Michelle, you just reached the shoulders forward a bit. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, and I like to actually gently press the heels or the back of the legs into the ground and use that as opposition. Exhale round and up and three to go. Inhale, continue growing. Feel the length. Exhale, discharge it out. Inhale from the tailbone.

It almost feels to me like I'm reaching the tailbone out from under. Beautiful and can always modify this by leaving the arms down too. By the way, it doesn't mean the spine won't work. Exhaling down in Hilti or long spine, finding it. There's all this opposition happening. It looks so good. Fantastic. Debra. Exhale round to come up. And this last one, we'll add a couple of things. Inhale, exhaling down. Inhale, find the flat back reaching the arms alongside your ears if you're using them.

Then everybody let the arms just come to your shins. They're not really gonna do anything and up again and down and up. We'll keep this one up. Whatever breath pattern you're on, just sort of exhale when you can. Inhale and exhale. Pull it back on. So a little movement. So a little movement. I would love to see Mary's just thinking longer. Yep.

That's all she's doing, Debra. I am just going to leave cause that is really nice extension and Michelle, if you have the flexibility to lean forward to you, but your back looks good and Helen looks good. Maybe she could straighten your arms maybe. Okay, hold it in here. Oh, I need to put my arms down. Exhale round and just relax. Feels better to sit up. You may otherwise just hang out for a minute.

And then B, before we completely free up the upper back, let's sit up tall. Hopefully that's where you're feeling it in between the shoulder blades, primarily some shoulder maybe. And let's go right into it. Arms extend out. Good. Close up the feet, see if you can, once you flex your feet, squeeze the glutes enough to feel a little millimeter or inch lift. So you're tall coming toward the front of our mind. That exhale. Sure. To the back and to good keeping your head in line with the spine.

So wherever your chest is is about where your faces and okay. Nice work keeping the feet. Absolutely still every time you twist there's another opportunity gang to get up there. W you know, especially when I'm teaching a class that you all know the exercises so well it's so easy to go. Okay. Yeah, she does about 10 of these. Okay. Now she's probably gonna. You're probably right. So then what? What do you need? What are you going to look for? Last one. You knew that though. All right.

I'm sending release your toes and around. Forward. Yeah, it's your own exploration. I'm just giving you the template. Roll yourselves up. Move forward for open leg rocker, like the rolling like a ball. You're going to want to be just behind the tailbone before you pick your legs up. And I don't really have a special way of doing it tonight. Anyway, squeezed lightly through the glutes and pull the abs as if you were just about to do another pelvic curl or rolling pickup, one leg, and then the other. And before you really go, see if you can straighten your back. Okay?

That doesn't mean you're gonna have an arch in your low back. You're not. And that way you're slightly tucked, but you want the straight back. If that doesn't work, bend the knees. Here we go. Inhale, roll back a little. I'm not going to ask you to drop your head. Exhale forward and lengthen UCF for back for help. Inhale, roll back.

Exhale forward. This is another place where the eyes have a huge difference. If you all of a sudden look at the ceiling and then look down and look up, you're going to be all over the place and rather keep the eyes at staring off into the distance. So there's not much that changes. Although I will say it does help to kind of look up a little when you start to try and stop it one more time. Do you holding it up? I'm gonna play with something here. Feet together. Take your hands behind you.

You can go to your elbows for this no big deal. And we just come across. Remember that it's semi corkscrew exhaler same direction. Inhale and exhale, whatever you do. Try to keep the back pretty still and around. That's it. I'm going the other way. So I'm just shifting slightly off. One hip.

Not much though. And around pretty small. It's actually a little smaller in the hip movement than even what we did earlier. Last one here and bend the knees and we'll roll all the way down and then just turn face the front. Lying on your side. Good. So I'm just going to check positions before you should check your own in case I miss it. Shoulder ribs, hip feet, same line.

If you know you tend to arch your low back or feel pressure on your back, bring your feet forward a little bit. So you can see them. That's basically the only rule from there. Um, for just a moment, put your forearm right next to your ribs into your ribs and just inhale, relax your legs really a lot. Exhale and feel the ribs maybe even slightly. For some, it'll feel a lot. Pull the ribs backwards slightly away from your arm. Not enough to round your back, but just the intention from the front. Now if you want to balance with your arm up or up, feel free. Uh, I think I'm gonna leave my down. Inhale, start to exhale.

It's as if the hips reach the abdominals, engage the ribs, have already done their thing. As you float the legs up. Legs are quite soft. Inhale, reach them further, barely touch Xcel. Re lift muscle focus. This is the side lift. The muscle focus is going to be obliques. Dominoes, really, in fact, it's the whole powerhouse, right? But if I had to say where most of the emphasis is top side of the apps, so if you don't feel it, you ask yourself, how much tension are my legs?

Hopefully not a lot. You might feel old. Fair amount in the lower one is it pushes up. That's cool. I'm doing, you feel it right under there? Yeah. You had a cue. It was maybe just recognizing that we're the legs from right under the ribs or under the chest. I think. I think of it trying to feel where the leg connects there.

Let's just do one more and on the next one we'll stay up with both. The top leg now reaches longer. And again, the natural thing to think of as a, well my leg stops at the hip. Pretend it doesn't cause it Kinda doesn't. And up here, so I'm doing little puffs of air. It's not a huge inhale or exhale, but each time it's, I feel a little bit more happening in the trunk. Look for it. I'm an exaggerate. But if I sort of coughed that exhale, I'd really feel it. I don't need to do that to get the work. Just do one more good.

And then I'm going to leave the inner thigh out of it for the moment. Come all the way up to your, uh, tip of your elbow would be sort of the most challenging way to do this and by tip at basically mean so you have to balance before you completely set up. Draw the shoulder down. Yeah, that, that's like the most challenging way you could do it. If you don't want to do that, don't rather forearm. Okay, look at me. Okay.

Not if you are on the tip of the elbow. Put your other hand up too and really balance. Okay. Alright, here we go. Top leg is up. Stretch it out and check. It's so easy to think you're not doing this, but doing it. Check that you have not gone into sticking your butt out and your ribs out.

Cause that's a very normal feeling and natural feelings. So just look down your body. It should be at least long right here in front of the up. Here we go. Come forward. Side kick forward, forward and back. It's like kick, kick and back. So depending on which class you're in, you might see this as a one kick to kick. Then back, right walk, walk. Fine.

I like to get you there and then pull a little deeper from right where you said Debra, right under the chest so you get to the far one and then see what you have left on that second exhale. Horse second pulse. Either way. Cool, but that's what I'm asking for tonight. One more time. Pulse. Pulse. When you get back, stay back. Once again, feel this may be stretched through the hips. Squeeze the glute a little and from there we lift up one. We lift up two, three, four. Hmm, one more fabulous. Okay. Just come on up. Take that leg you just worked. Put it in front. If that's enough of a stretch, leave it there.

He might be able to come all the way up and all we're doing is just guiding the knee backwards for me, it's a little bit of a sticking my butt out to really feel it. For some that just doesn't do anything. You're welcome to do the stretch here as well. It's the same stretch. Yeah. Okay. Let's go to the other side. So still facing front.

Just flip your head to the other end all the way down. Rusting on your upper arm. And I think sometimes we look down just cause we're checking your position and then we forget to come back because I think sometimes people do it because it's too hard to keep your shoulder there. If that doesn't work for you, bend the Elbow and point the illustrate ahead or grab a towel or pillow. Here we go. Inhale, check your ribs. Do the balance you did the last time. If you are going to do on an exhale to lengthen and lift, inhale, maintain the tension around the abdominals as you lower down and exhale relief two though the lowering is clearly, I'm a little bit easier. Um, try to make it equal like your, the air was thicker than it actually is in your work. In both directions. Both up and down.

[inaudible] yeah, cheeto. Go Nice and long. There should be a little bit of awareness around the glutes though. Not a lot. Just some that you getting support from back there. Next one you stay up, reach the top leg a little longer and then re relax. The leg itself and from high in the trunk. Lift and shift. Hey, trying to almost feel, I don't know.

More work from just into the rib cage. One more here and then just draw the legs together. Set the legs down and up we come for sidekick. Choose whichever side. However he did it on the other side, elbow or farm. In either case, you've got to have the shoulder away from your ear.

So rather than pushing into the ground to get up, lift away from it. Make yourself light. Alright, everybody's ready. Here we go. And exhale to en in axial, t u n n and [inaudible] monitoring what happens in your body as you swing this lay right? It's how much control can you keep as the leg itself remains relatively free. Yeah. Key thing for all of us is to get the leg behind the trunk when you go back without shifting forward so that you get that good hip extension.

Last one's coming up here. Press press, hold it back, reach it. And I'm just caught myself. So I'm going to make an example of myself, um, Lalanne and how you might not be able to see it. I'm going to turn just a little bit is I've sort of shortened here when I really could be. They're getting way more. I didn't even go further back. I actually just sort of lengthened my waist. So just a thought that it can get contracted. All right.

You lifted for den one and two. Check your bottom shoulder Debra. Oh Christie. Alright. Rich and reach. Reach and take your stretch.

So come out of that tip of the elbow if you're on it and either just push the leg back if that's not enough. Sit up a little higher to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. Coming onto your hands and knees. Ease hands right below your shoulders again, just like you said, lift up out of, they aren't hands. Stretch one leg back. Going into a plank before you put the other foot back. Draw the abdominals in like you're about to tech so you can feel both the hamstrings and the glutes and the ABS.

And then all we do is for slow breaths here. If you're risk, need a break, you can do this on the forearms feeder slightly apart. Yes, thank you. And I'm just exhaling and inhaling, give you about two more full breaths. What I would do is on your exhale, how light can you be without bending your knees or elbows and where could you put that energy? One more time from here, the ribs, the front ribs pulled together to lift you up. It's going to feel like you're rounding cause you are lift up and then go into a pyramid. So then you might end up reaching the tailbone to the sky, walk your feet a BB step or so forward and then look for the longest flat back you can get. It's okay if the heels are up. It's okay if the knees are slightly bent, go for the back, the stretch in the back, keeping the shoulders away from the ears even here.

And then from here, come up on the tiptoes again or the high on the ball of the foot. You'll have to take that baby step back where you just came from a little bit and roll yourself forward. Finding the hamstrings. And glutes again, and then from here, pick up the lake closest to the front of the room. We'll leave it flexed. No, we won't. This point. Let's make it look good and from the glute, first of all, relax the knee. Keep it straight, but relax it and lift up from the thigh. One that's it, and two and three, four long in the body of eight.

Number seven and put the foot down. Check your hip alignment and just feel for it. You shouldn't have to look around. Much other foot comes up, reaching up one reaching up to back remains still. That's it, but the foot down. Lift the ribs again. Lift the hips, stretch yourself back. Okay, I'm going to try to be clear since your heads are down, what I'm going to ask for is first to just shift your weight a little bit more forward towards your hands, about two inches forward so you're not in a full nice, perfect pyramid. Make sure your shoulders are away from your ears. Fingers are pointed forward.

And then bend the elbows a little bit straight down. So it's like you're going to try set, push up from up here, then straighten them. Bethany. Good. Helen, you can actually walk your feet more forward. You're a little too spread out. There you go. And this can even be done on the knees. Yes, exactly. Just like that. Deborah, elbows down. If you can touch. You do. You don't have to though. It can just be a little millimeter pole.

Good. Good. So what you can do, Michelle, is you're not gonna see anything, but you just push into your hands and release, push into your hands from where you were. Just push into your hand. How about one more for everybody and then lower to your knees and release. There you go. I went through kind of fast. Was there a question on it from anybody? We got it.

Look like we did. All right. Rolling ourselves up to a kneeling position. Um, use your hands however you want to to bring, uh, let's, I'll say you're right, like forward for stretch. And I would invite you to do what feels best for your body tonight. Whatever that might be. I'm going to incur, I'm going to be teaching all the way through a lifted hip flexor stretch. So before we go anywhere else, just make sure that you are, we're about to lengthen the front of the body by somewhat arching, but make sure you're also lengthening the back of your body, that you're not just shortening rather almost to lift. Okay.

If you want to take the arms up, do, if not keep them down. That would be fine. And I will um, check in your body. Is is all the weight forward or is it somewhat evenly distributed? It should be evenly distributed pretty close, so you could almost just lift straight up. And then with that, use the forward leg, actually put weight into it to lift up, to take pressure off the back leg. A little pressure that is to come into hamstring.

If you want to move the foot forward, you can pick it up and move forward. I'm looking for a flat back, so everybody for just a moment, bend your forward knee. Just a little bit or maybe even a lot. Yeah, that's good. Keep that Michelle. And then flatten the back. There you go. There you go. And you're reaching the tailbone out. Good. Good.

Now you keep the flat back and if you can straighten the leg a little do. That's about it. Okay. You're getting a hamstring stretch, aren't you? Good. Perfect. I know, I know one. I was just noticing we need blocks for you. That's exactly what you need because this position is way better. And look, you get some balance too. Yay. No, next time we should have something for you.

That's a bit much. Okay. I'm just going to transition to the other side. So use your hands. You don't want to roll over that. And you kept to challenging the maths aren't sick, but probably not quite thick enough so that I will get you something different. You like it, you're fine. Alright, so finding the hip flexor stretch first. You're right there in front of the hip. If you want to go right into up overhead, go ahead.

I always need a minute and I always need a second to get there. Yeah. And take your arms up whenever you feel ready. Ask Yourself, does my low back feel supported or am I just hanging out? Usually the people that are more flexible, we'll just hang out. So we're going to ask that you feel both sides of your body a little.

Yeah. Like if you had poles, exactly. If you had these polls. Exactly. It's pulling you but not backwards upwards. Exactly. And then using the forward foot to unload the back knee a little come down, keep the knee bent and along enough to that you feel the back is pretty straight.

And then feel free to continue straightening. And if it works for you [inaudible] yeah. Way Better. Way Better you. So you're not having to grow. Well now as I talked to you and throw you off, you're not having to tighten everywhere if to hold the balance. Right. Okay, good. Cause we'd want you to be able to sink into it. Right. Um, street, it could be a little straight shell. So you know, you don't even have to bend that much. Just right there. That's perfect. That's good. You know, uh, one last piece. Don't change your low, mid back. Pull your shoulders down your back a little more. Okay, let's go. We're going down to the floor all the way, all the way.

And I'd like to have you do the double leg kick tonight. So turning your faces to the front lace. The fingers are, grab a couple of fingers if anybody wants to tell her, but band let me know so you can not have to hold so close. Taking your hands as high up on the mat as you can. Allow the elbows to release to the floor. Okay, I'm just going to get up to watch any from there. Draw the um, abdominals episode. It feels like you're lengthening your tailbone.

Bend your knees for now. Go ahead and bend them. Try to keep feet together. It's okay if the knees need to come apart. And then from here we're going to kick three times. Exhaling. One, two, three. Inhale, stir etch. Opening up the chest. Good. And turn your heads the other way. Sorry, Deborah and kick. Go. One, two, three.

Inhale, stretch, open. Excellent. And hands get nice and high. Trying to relax the elbows in between and stretch long. Here's a nice inhale, not so much about the height and switch and kick one kick to kick three and stir and again and let's go last two rounds, two, three. Even here the abdominals are ever lightly pulling up and last one, press two, three and reaching out there for a moment. Okay, feeding out tops of the feet on the floor. Pull the abs up again and just gently try to raise the arms.

You do not have to keep clasp tear if you don't want to, you're welcome to let the hands part a little bit and just press the palms to the ceiling. That's absolutely fine. I only want one more. Release the hands. Bring them around by your side, press yourself up and we'll take the rest up at the top or turn over onto your backs if that feels better. Just a quick word about this rest position. We always say we're going up to stretch out the backs, but for a lot of people, if you get up here, and I don't ever say this, I'm just going to make sure you know this, if you get up here and just rest on the thighs for a lot of us, it doesn't do anything to release the back other than, I mean it doesn't round the back at all. So if you feel like you need more, like you might be a good candidate for this because you're a little more arched. Um, if you felt like you needed more, yeah, you have to touch about two hills. Okay.

And that probably requires a little bit of a Tuck for you. Okay. And if that didn't work for you, she comes up to her elbows to Kony. It almost gives her, um, leverage really to push back. If that didn't work, all you really have to do is keep the abs slightly contracted. So there goes your rest, but it would help. All right. With that.

Let's come to sitting again. Again, back to our starting position and I'm going to end it not with this seal puppy, but just a nice open rolling rocking suit. So if you'll hold just behind the legs, leave them slightly apart. If you want to do a puppy, go ahead. That would be a natural place to do it, but I'm feeling like we need to just sort of level it out. Sorta end like we started. So just behind the tailbone, no kicking or anything back there. Just rock back in here and up. You don't even have to land it. I'm not going to land at Jess. Rolling. Keeping everything as it is. If you make a big one, make a big one.

If you keep it smaller, that's cool. What would feel good in your body as far as this is concerned? Let's go one more time and when it feels right to come all the way up, come all the way up. Sit however you're comfortable to not have to land it. Especially at the end. Could I actually, there's this flicker of, Oh God, they're gonna be all bombed. I ended like that. No, good, good. I this just how for me, it felt like it needed to be bring it down. Sit. However it works for you, right? If you want to be on your knees, you're on your knees.

If you want to roll your mats up and sit on the edge, we're just going to breathe right and it even more calm yet hopefully somewhat rejuvenated. So if you are a visual person, maybe close your eyes and visualize the column of your spine and on the inhale, let the spine of the space get taller. Let yourself just be, and I do mean let, if you try, I guarantee you're going to get shorter and exhale, let go of whatever is there. If you're not a visual person and you need to know what you're doing, inhale and fill the lungs. Feel the hurt, move forward. Fill the entire rib cage three-dimensional. Expand like a balloon and let go of breath.

I'm not going to tell you exactly when the breathing, if I'm expecting you to just do what you need though. Do it big and in a way that feels nurturing and a way that might support you when you leave for whatever you want to do, whether it's relaxed or gear up. I'm taking two more with that intention. We started the class feeling somewhat heavy in our bones and that's what I'm hoping we feel at the end. Heaviness though weightless at the same time. One deep breath altogether and with that, let whatever else go.

Yeah, it's cool. Thanks guys.

Comments

Great tuition in another great class. It's so good to be able to do classes of this calibre in your own home. Thanks Pilates Anytime!
Way to go looking back in the library Helen... there are some good ones back there. Thank you for your positive feedback!
Excellent workout! Your such a great teacher!! I love Pilates Anytime! Thank you so much!
Thank you Jeanne!
1 person likes this.
Perfect!!!! You ARE a qreat teacher, Kristi!! Perfect balance of strenqth and release, here. I always find the deepest of places w/ you and the other Pilates Anytime instructors!

What a qift you've brouqht us!
Awesome workout with excellent cues! Thank you Kristi!!
I so appreciate these comments. Thank you very much. More to come!
Revisiting this class today was just what my spine needed! Thanks Kristi for your spot on cues and for the lovely breathing & visualization of the spine at the end of class. Ahhhhhhhhh!
Today will be the 3rd time I have done this routine and I loved it again!!!! Thank you so much Kristi!!!! Vidya M
So happy to hear it Vidya! Thank you for checking the older classes!
1-10 of 16

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin