Class #117

Deepen your Practice

55 min - Class
6 likes

Description

Explore the body, mind, and spirit of Pilates. Amy gets class started with a great attitude and a quick set of jumping jacks reminding us that movement and "Pilates should be fun!" This intermediate class includes unique variations on familiar exercises offering your body and your mind a path to deeper exploration.
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Mar 13, 2010
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Okay guys, let's get started. I'm going to have you face me if you want to and kind of spread out a little bit. We're going to actually start with some jumping jacks this morning just to get our heart rate up and just to kind of maybe take away some of the, I'm about to take a mat class mentality and just have a little fun and whatever breath works. Maybe we'll do 20 okay. It's fun. Pilati should be fun. Movement is fun. I'm not counting. I think that's 10 and 11 just feel your heart moving.

Your arm is moving and your nervous system waking up a little differently. 19 and 20 okay. Okay. Walk to the back edge of your mat and we'll do a few little roll downs and continue the idea of motion. Let's not worry too much about all the fine tuned specifics. We know what we're doing if we look like are out of control are needed.

L of course spot along, but let's take a nice breath in through the nose. Okay. And here we go. Rounding down, I would suggest right away that we challenge the weight distribution. On our legs and feet so that we're slightly more forward than back. Maybe unweight your heel slightly. Let's take a breath and then again, exhale to roll back up nice and tall again. And breath in.

One movement leading right into the next. If it feels good, just gather some energy or squeeze between your inner thighs could do that. And the exhale to begin rolling up. Sink that tailbone down toward your heels. Feel some nice pool up through the front of the size and another breath going.

Yeah, and again, the exhale up and over. Feeling the weight nice and forward on the toes. In a breath in. Yeah, and rolling up. Leaving the head down maybe as long as possible. The very last thing to come up on top of the spine one more time and again, exhale over the low tummy muscles right there by the top of the thigh. Hip joint pulled up. I'm gonna have a stay here.

Walking out onto the hands and you can take four or five steps. Try to keep those hips nice and stable or less wiggly. Let's just hold, let me think of pushing the earth away. If it feels good. If you want to stretch your calves, this might be a nice time to do that. Gently just feel some raking in of the low belly in and up into a front support position. Broad across the chest, right. Let's take one breath together and we'll pike the hips, but in a minute or probably do something a slight different time. Way To get out of that. Walking back four or five steps.

We use those legs. Let your head hang again. Let's roll back up. Pooling from the abdominals up. What? The spine. Okay, unroll. We'll add a little arm movement out from the sides and up along the ears. Breathe in and again, like a big fountain being poured forward. Here's the pool in. Nice high abdominal scoop all the way over.

Once again, four or five steps to walk out. So keep those hips real stable, not too much wiggle. And again, maybe three breaths. Okay, yeah. Next exhale you can work the innercise, the low seat a little bit. And then on the next exhale I'm going to have us round the back up.

Okay. And instead of walking the hands back to the feet, walk the feet to the hands. So feet, feet, feet and feet. Come down to a squat if it feels okay to let your heels be nice and high. Keep them lifted him to have his pulse, the pelvis down toward the heels. All right. And here we go. To stretch the low, we're back and [inaudible] [inaudible] linked in that space from our ribcage to the pelvis and waste pool under po under and four three, two and last one. And I think we're all okay just to go ahead and have a seat. Move the feet out away from us.

Bring your hips slightly forward into the center of your mat arms reaching forward. And then a nice roll down again, just bone by bone. Take your time, keep everything you long gated. And then once we get down, I want us to take our legs also flat and adducted or completely together. And then let's just check in here with some sensations for a second of how our back feels on the, on the mat, how the back of our ribcage, sacrum, maybe the hamstrings are back of thighs and we've heard some of the cuing along the way of imprinting. We can imprint lots of different things. Um, usually it's in reference to the spine, but we can even imprint the back of the hands a little bit or the back of the upper arms. So take just about five breaths and imprint yourself to the floor and print yourself to the mat and see how the energy comes from within your body to pull in and down to the surface of the mat. You're really trying to get a more of a relationship with your mat surface.

Pull into it and pull in who add one more time. Let's actually do one more breath on the exhale. Just start to glide the heels up along the mat. You're creasing from your hip joints, your lower back is still on your mat, fold at your hips, bring your thighs towards you, and you don't even have to be in tabletop yet. Just creasing that hip joint area. I'm letting my shins hang down, but I am trying to stretch my tailbone into the mat, so not coming up into a tuck yet. We'll get there in a second.

So hands on the Shin bones, press down, open up your chest and breathe. And then we're going to take our head and chest up and curl. And I am still trying to get my tail bone and pelvis flat, but work this as a stretch for the upper back and the neck and working a curve towards the thighs. And then inhale as we unroll, exhale and roll forward. So it's coming right from those mid abdominals, high abdominals, even the low belly and unroll. Cool. And again, exhale some off for me.

I'm really thinking about the contact of my spine into the mat to curl higher. So if I press into the mat, I'm pretty much going to get a little bit more of a curve in that section on my back. We'll take three more and press. How much contact can you have while still trying to keep the tailbone on your mat and inhale on roll. Exhale and rule. If it feels okay to pull on the shins a little bit as you stretch your sacrum and tailbone to the mat, like get you a little bit more up. And then one more and exhale. We're going to stay up this next time.

Okay, so the upper body's fixed in position. We're going to lift the legs now into the tabletop. Arms long actually lied. Let's go all the way to extended from the hips and the pulses of five [inaudible]. The arms are pumping a little bit higher than that. The level of the hips and the abdominals, not too low past the hip.

Sh the new one feels like extending from your hips to low your legs at tiny bit. Doing so without letting the chest fall back. Sh get more contact of how you're pressing into the mat. Curl up. [inaudible] full. That's fine. Steady. Two more rounds. Hold right here. Let's go right into single leg stretch real quick.

Just 10 exhale and [inaudible] demand a little more curl than your chest lift. Yeah. Last one. Bring both knees in and then just a little hug to let your head come back down. Okay. Place the feet. Level your hips.

And we're actually spread the feet. So we're sitz bones with the part, so I'm going to dig just a second to go back to one of our fundamentals. We work with a lot of the triangle, hip, hip, pubic bone in that one solid plane here in the front as well on the back. So let's take ourselves into a slight bridge like I've made a baby bridge. What I'm thinking with that is I've got about my fist can fit underneath my pelvis. My ribcage is still touching the mat, but my lumbar spine and my pelvis is tilted up. So turning on into the back of the legs. Okay.

Now I'm going to put my hands on my hips. You can if you want to on the exhale, let's take the right triangle, the back of the right triangle and dip it toward the mat, but keep the left one reaching up. And then we'll return to square horse center. The left side, it's a little bit of rotation, actually quite a lot in the lumbar and lift. And as we're taking one hip or one side of the triangle down and bringing it up, I'm thinking tailbone under, left side, down, returned, tailbone under a couple more. Anthill. Doesn't have to be too big on the external. Really pull in the left belly to get that triangle to dip and lift.

One more time to the right and press last time on the left and press. And now from here, just come all the way down to level. Not too much of a rest, just a full inhale at the tailbone. Saw the place there and exhale, curl all the way to the bridge. Unless you feel your back is not really happy going that high, you're, you're fine to stay down a little lower. Always take care of what your back is feeling, what you need.

So we'll work on tracking the right side of the spine, the left side of the spine. So we warmed up and got the idea going with the pelvis. Now as we roll down, track the right side of your spine, all the ways you will feel the back of the right hip. Make contact. Once you feel that hip me contact, we're gonna roll back up again. So again, it's the contact of us against our mat. Press into peel up and now over to the left, down the left side of the spine, whatever breath is. Since I'm talking a lot, you can breathe in and out as you need to.

And then up the left side of the spine, pull in, make contact with the Mat and press center here at the top and rolling down the right [inaudible] almost like the teeth on a zipper jacket. One side of the jacket going down and pulling back up. And last time let's go down the left side. Still holding in that Tummy and tracking up the left side until you're all the way in. The center has, we're here. Reach the arms up. I'm going to have this reach back to the wall that's behind you.

I'm okay with letting your shoulders glide up. If that feels good and it's reach, reach, reach, retreats, those. We start to roll down the spine. There's space underneath the chin and the chest. We're tilting the pelvis. We're trying to get along mid spine along, lower back and our pelvis reaching way out away from our waistline.

When you feel a level pelvis, just bring your feet and knees together. Let's interlace your hands behind her head and do a little bit more tummy work here. Breathe in and the exhale, the find a nice easy curl. Release the hands. We all know some of these variations. Smack. No. As we walk our hands up the back of the legs, go ahead and let your pelvis go into that tilt. Again. Most of us are going to be able to get up quite a bit higher and just hold on to that. We're going to be here for a little bit.

So trying to find some ease in the neck and shoulders, but the intensity down in this lower part of the belly and the upper belly. Don't forget the lats. Okay, big challenge. Now for a few of us to let go of the pelvic tilt, find more level but not let the whole spine collapse back and it may not get all the way to level, but we're making the effort to. So let's use an inhale. I'm going to think about reaching my sits bones toward my calves and my exhale, the curl again. So my sits bones more off the back of my thighs. Inhale to Linkedin, sitz bones toward my calves and exhale, help them more and exhale way up underneath those ribs. Pull the tummy muscles up.

One more guys. Inhale and exhale and then lets everything go and just all the way to rest, all the way along with the legs, getting ready for some roll up. Do what you need to do if you have some tight spots in your lumbar or your mid back. And I think today, let's go ahead and turn our palms to face into each other, arms back as far as you can without Archie nut spine. Unless do arms, chest follows. Exhale and curl. Feeling that continuation of tell me contraction. Just keep it going. Breathe in and palm spacing in. Exhale and roll back. I'd like to think about my legs getting longer away from me as I roll my body back away from them. And again, we'll go up. Inhale, arms, chest, and exhale. Never letting go of the tummy contraction.

Take a breath in and exhale. So pulling the back of that triangle back as quickly as you can, yet that pelvis back, long size all the way down. And again, breathing in, he put going nice and continuous. Inhale at the top and exhale and pull back. Rotate the hips, rotate the back all the way. Let's just take it one more time this morning and breathing.

[inaudible] all right. Single like, Oh, you know what? I don't think I'll have us do as our bicycles first. A little bit of just all the way down bicycle. So draw the right a heel along your mat and then just leg up to the ceiling. We want a 90 degrees from the hip.

We're a little less trying not to go too high cause we could fall back into that pelvic tilt and all that stuff. So that leg goes straight down as the other heel drags in, it reaches the ceiling by the time the right leg is long. And let's do a breath. Inhale, exhale and [inaudible]. And so the heel that slides to us really feel the bat pool against the mat and reach. So you're trying to retract and pull from your hamstrings slightly in the back of the sign. And uh, working parallel legs.

Keep going and reach a little moon belly down. Leg up the one more, right? One more left and last one and we'll start her legs. Circles with the left leg so we feel the back of the hip imprint contact again, the back of the pelvis, the legs slightly turned out. Let's cross over. Inhale and exhale around. I'm feeling the back of the hip in the mat.

Two more. There we go. Other direction. Nice breathing guys and good flow. The other leg is still very solid. Pressing down again, making contact last time and then just the bicycle change. Cross the leg and cross six heeler round back of the hip, four and five other direction in, open around, lift that big strong tummy pool as we live right now. Lets do another bicycle change when have this hole behind that left thigh.

Curl your torso up again into the uh contraction. See if we can get a little bit more of those stomach muscles in, up to curl higher. If anyone wants the leg at the, or the hands at the calf. So scissor the legs, you're going to think of pulling this one toward our forehead if that works for you, increased that stretch as the other one is reaching long in a way. Just hold the stretch, not the full scissor yet, but the idea of it now leave the leg where it is and let the torso come all the way back. Keep the bottom leg long and long and long and long. So we're increasing the hamstring stretch.

Okay. So I'd like to think of, we're going to do a little pulsing of this left leg toward the chest, but we don't need our hands to do it. So as you let go, yes, your quad is going to work a little but a lot in the belly and we pull it toward the chest. It's a inhale. Inhale, thank the leg to the ceiling as well as back to the chest and the stomach. Up and in here is four, three, two and lower the leg bicycle though, right? One up. Oh, it feels good to stretch the other one. Now hands behind the thigh and we curl on the exhale. Hands in the calf again. If you'd like that deeper flexible concept or focal point, bring it in.

Keep the awareness of how you're making contact with your mat, with your spine. So press into curl higher. Press in a curl higher. Bring your thigh up towards your head. If you like that you don't have to go there. Keep the other one long, long, long. Okay, we're going to take our d, Our torso back without letting this leg leave. Hopefully I wish I could pull on everyone's lower leg and just get a little longer sensation or have someone do it to me so we hold the leg. Let's put our arms down and pulse and inhale. Inhale. Okay.

Come from the core and in and four, three, two, last one and we'll just lower it down when your legs get down there. Jake, rumble, rumble, rumble the floor. Okay, here we go. And just tossed the knees up to the chest. Will Roll herself up for the ball if you want to come a little more to the center of your Ma, your mat. Okay, so the rolling like a ball, hands near the ankles were one on each ankle. I'll let you decide if you want to cross them and then find our center of gravity. Pull it back beyond the back of the tail. Elbows Open. If you want your knees apart, you can. Some of you like the knees all the way together, that's fine.

And just take a second and feel the stillness. Just in the curve position. I'm to have this two, six this morning. Inhale. As we roll back. Think of lifting the sitz bones up and come and be right on the sitz bones. And again, if it helps to pull the shins in toward the legs. Kind of opened up with that in our warm hole and the shins.

That does help my lower back. Last one, we're going to balance out the top. Hands behind the thighs. Let's just roll very slowly down to the shoulder blades. When you get down there on Tuck, the pelvis might be tucked five of our double leg. Inhale, open. Exhale, close, right.

Beautiful fluidity. Guys that open and work harder. Ask more in that chest. Lift, curl and curl and curl. I think we're at five and last one. We're not going to do single cause we already did it.

Let's go into our crisscross. Hands back now. Move your left thigh away from you. Turn to the right thigh and before we criss cross, curl a little higher and rotate just a little bit more. And here we go. We'll exhale this morning in one n be interested about the stretch from your thigh. Yeah, nice hip. Tried to touch the other person. They are touching at brief from your hip.

Let's speed it up for eight Morando one and two and three and four. So funny how the teachers just kind of get up and oh we finished at the end and let's come back and rest for just [inaudible] second hands around the back of the thighs while we're down here, let's go ahead and go up to the scissor. The real scissor and I like the double pull. Pull and pull. Pull. [inaudible] can that exhale? Exhale. Come from Tommy.

Tell me rather than hand. Hand [inaudible] way up underneath the ribs. [inaudible] I remember the hands. Wait for the leg. The hands are up there. Wait for that leg. [inaudible] more, more. Press your spine against the mat. Curl up. Pull. Good. Cathy, last one. Now I think all I want us to do legs up to the ceiling. Flex the feed and just have your hands behind your head and just hold here.

Drop your sake room. So three, three times the straight leg. Lower lift. I'm going to go to 45 degrees. Is that from scraping my heels? On a wall and a point and pull on my thighs up, heels down the wall opposite me. And exhale and pull. Leave your sacrum on the mad. One more time, man. Inhale and let's come back and rest. Oh righty. Okay. I think does, do you all have room to take your arms to the side of you?

Yeah, if you need to, you know, lower it a little bit. That's fine. So go ahead and just open up the arms. So we have some expansion in across our chest muscles. All that forward. Flection sometimes can get a little bit, Huh? So if we open up and let's do some spinal rotation with a little leg cross.

So take your right leg up to this ceiling. I like these and cross your knee over knee. So it's very ladylike cross. And we'll take both of our, the knees to the left across your left. And it's up to you. If you want to turn your head, let that you decide what you want to do there. Just breathe into that. Oftentimes we'll, we'll rotate and they might, there might be an arch in that back.

So do what you can to take your arch out of your back. If I could, I would do this to everybody. Little bit. Press down on the rib cage. Yes. So getting a lot of stretch in the side body. Maybe some of you in your sacrum, glutes, hips, and then we'll breathe. Use The exhale again. It comes from the belly. Pull back.

Feel the weight shift back onto the center of the sacrum and just simply unstrap that leg. We'll do, we decide again, it's a little extra next time. So we cross and rotate. So yeah, there's, so I'm looking at Michelle, take dicey your lower back and the side of your back. There's a little daylight pocket now and you're trying not to arch your spine. Almost thing for you. A little pelvic tilt. There's less daylight. Yeah.

Yeah. The abdominals again, doing their work pool into the back. The contact of your body on the Mat. It's our friend. Breathe. Let's use the exhale to come back to the center. Okay. And then just unstuck the leg. We're going to do it again. Left, right leg up. Cross. Now your body knows what's coming. Rotate.

Let's not turn the head if it was the last time. Pulsing again, the knees toward the floor. Here we go. Let it be abdominals, opposition. Reach with the right arm and for three, two. How do we like that? Is that okay? And back to center and just upset. A step. The leg left over right. Breathe. And here we go. Cross over imprint and pulse.

Oppositional reach of the left chest, the left bosom, the left arm, and for three end to last one. Inhale and come back to center. And then just placed the feet once again. Hands behind the thighs to roll ourselves up. That'd be okay. Yeah. You all know I love those. I do them all the time. Okay, let's do a little low spine stretch forward. No, no extension to it. Let's just do it as a breathing exercise today. So if we sit nice and tall on our seat and pull the waist back on, a little bit more flat. I'm going to look at Michelle right here. Tada.

And breathe a little taller. Shoulders down. How long can we exhale? So here we go. Squeezing every atom of air out and out and out. Kathy usually wins this game, so we have to wait for her. Inhale all the way up.

Exhale. Oh, versus time. It regulates your breath. Ah, squeeze it, squeeze it. It might even carry your flection farther forward over your thighs. Inhale all the way up. Doing a total of five of those regularly. So the waistline you becomes maybe a little bit more close or contracted, narrow, bending the spine. It's about the bend squeezing out.

Two more an articulation and one more. Whoa, a little lightheaded. Woo. X. Yeah. Squeeze. This time I want us to continue. Exhaling. Stay down there. Let your hands find the feet and just go back to regular breathing for a second and pull yourself closer towards your legs deep and the flexibility, but also pull those belly belt muscles back and pull up in and up. So we get that lower back. Lights and law. Okay. Bring the spine up to sitting up, sitting tall.

I think we have enough room on our mats not to do too much of a transition. So arms forward and just contract yourself back. So we're back at the back of the sits bones. We're going to do open like rock or try not to move your hips up. Let's just see if we can bring the legs up to the hands.

Whoa. So what's going on here? I know we're how we're organized on our mat. If you roll too far on your shoulders in your head, you're going to feel the wood floor so we know not to do. Go too far back, right? So stay a little bit modest and maybe how far you roll back. Let's just be, get a little more interested in the up feature right now. There we go. Okay. Parallel our legs.

We roll back on the inhale. We come up, exhale, interested on the up. Be Interested, not forward with the ribs, but up in the back and roll up. Yeah. And rollback. I just found myself with a bit of a death grip in my hands, so I'm trying to lighten up my point of contact there. How about two more time?

Yes. W W whoa. So I just did what I told you. Oh, what I told everybody not to do. Whoa. Back. [inaudible]. Okay, let's hold there for a second. Let's bring your legs together. Okay.

Sorry. Hip flexors. You're going to hate me, but oh, let go. Yeah. Little beats because we can four, three arms up and roll all the way down. Let your legs stay long. And once again it can feel your whole body in contact. See if you can allow your lumbar to meet the man a little bit.

Slide those heels up. Separate your heels again in slime with your sits bones. I'm going to move myself forward. Get on my mat. So some more work in the bridge position. So here we go. Breathing in, exhale and roll under. Hmm, I know which one we'll do. This is awful. How hard I think. So if you stay, stand on your right foot, extend your left leg up. It's in line with the left, the right thigh.

And a lot of times our shoulder bridge, we work, delay going up and then down just at this level, let's work on the opposite. So the left leg is going to go down a couple in just only a couple inches. Exhale just up to the right thigh and down just a couple inches and up to the left eye. If you can go down without that feeling again, it's more about the length. Stand solid into your right foot. Tailbone under a couple more guys.

Okay, now the lake can come up. Flex the heel, push from into the bottom foot, push from with the top foot. We're just going to push the ceiling up. We know these just eight exhales and one and tail under two, three, four. Can you get a little more pelvic tilt? A little more rude, Cajun. So your long spine is happening and last one, bend the knee foot down and let's roll down all the way to level. Regroup breeze, make contact with your map for us into it.

Rolling through to the bridge we go. Alrighty. So as you see on your left foot, hamstrings, glutes, back extensors, some shoulder, right leg along. It's in line with the left thigh. It's only gonna go down a couple inches. Or if you can go lower without stress, that's great. We would love to touch the floor. Sunday. Here we go. Down, belly up, rib cage and tailbone. That plank line, rear hip, all the Hughes. Good Brittany, you guys so good and last time and up. Now it comes higher. We flex the foot. Let's push and [inaudible] equal effort in both feet. One Up, one down, four Morin. Lift. Press the arms on the floor might help you go higher. And last one, a high pelvis, bend the knees, step the foot down.

I'm going to have this go once again into the RM reach. I like letting the shoulders go. Let your shoulders come up into the neck area. Oh my goodness. Stretch. And then as we roll down long arms, Chin is lifted. Sigma lassis just being poured right on down your back. Ah, longer spine, longer Fatia more space and just find level.

Circle the arms, right? I always love to hear when someone goes, ah, I feel so good. Okay, let's rock our knees up again. Twisting. Let's do some twist. I think we'll go into more of a seal. Sit position. So the silt, let's do folded. Thank you Cathy. Love it. Unfair fact. Let's fold this way. Oh Mama. So as we have our hands behind her head, that's your shoulders drop down. Push the, pull those ribs back in so we're not sitting with the ribs distended forward. Okay. And let's all take a nice full inhale.

We'll do our three percussive contractions towards the open wall over here. Here we go. And exhale away from the white wall. One doesn't have to go too far. The first few repetitions and three up and around and going a little farther and a little farther. And two and three on our central axis, our barbershop pole sh, our eyes are open. We see our space. Keep going at a dance teacher that used to talk about the eyes a lot, laser beams. She talked about coming through the pupils, carving through space. She was pretty dramatic teacher. It made sense for me.

But I that made me really be aware of my head as much as possible not to overturn. Yeah. See your space. One, two, three. Her name was Judy Hoffman Bay. Herano spicy. Two and three. Now let's go back away. One more time. Rotate. Just hold that for a second. So the arm that's closest to me, take it away and just reach it out into space. So with equal efforts, if we try to gain more rotation, it's the spine that's going to turn.

But perhaps the back elbow can help us and maybe the reach of the front arm and maybe not. But there's this little opportunity for something to try and then we come back to her friend and we outsell to the wall and one and two and three [inaudible] equal effort reaching forward and turning around. Keep your laser beams going and find center. Okay guys, round four. Just ease that work in the spine. Alrighty. Come all the way up.

Let's go. Prone. We'll go all the way down. Adjust things might pop. Okay, so we'll build on the swan dive preparations. We'll do kind of piece it to part. So a hands open, feel a little bit the hands pulling on the mat and the reach forward of the chest. Shoulders are down, uh, legs at this point. Let's see if you can get them all the way together, if not, just a tiny bit of space. And again, the weight of the pubic bone from way to the top of the fight dies from stomach is pulled up. So we'll first lifted the upper back. So let's breathe in to get ready. And the exhale says the upper back.

We're not going to go any higher than just the four arms or elbows. Yeah, so as high as we can pull up into that back extension. Take a nice breath. And as we come down, we're gonna get a little longer. Now the Chestie's down, let's breathe and recruit the, the lower half hamstrings and glutes. But without shortening the lumbar too much, just as much as you can, keep your weight on your pubic bone or that bottom piece of the triangle. Breathe in, and then the xls. Bring the legs down. Okay.

A little more flow on my part. Breathe in, exhale. And here we go. Upper back, breathing hole coming down as if the abdominal [inaudible] shouldn't touch the mat and breathe [inaudible] and the lower half. Exhale hamstrings up into the glutes and up into the lower back wreath. And exhale legs all the way down. We'll do two more of those. Just piece it to part [inaudible] and exhale, upper back. Breathe in hold and exhale, lower back down as if you shouldn't touch your bellies.

There's a little bit of suspension happening and breathe in at the bottom. An exhale. Weight toward the pubic bone. There we go. To keep the lumber longs are really pulling the hamstrings up to the ceiling up. And exhale, come down. And guys, one more time. Inhale. Yeah, next. That's a reach of the chest.

A lot of shoulder blades down. A lot of breadth and openness in the chest. Breathe. Looks really good. Actually I'll get a little longer, longer, longer as we come down last time for the lower half. [inaudible]. So again, as we go to the one Dave prep in a minute or the dive catch, I call it, um, ideally we end, we can bring the legs down who won our chest and our legs rocking at about the same height. All right, so let's give herself a false one and we come up, same precision that pressing that toward the legs. Now when we rock really feel the hamstrings pulled to the ceiling.

So we let go and we catch the hands underneath us and we let go wherever it feels good for your hands and let go two more and let go. Good hamstrings, hamstrings. And then you let go. Beautiful Work and come all the way down. And you know, it's so nice. I'll tell Ya. And I, I love, I love, I love to not hear that recovery. Of course you guys are so skilled, there was like no landing sound at all so nicely. That's just something I remember. Of course earlier teachers were, they would talk about that, be quiet, work with your mat, don't make so much, you know, sloppy sound. And that puts you more in that element of control and presence. I think we did for me anyway. Okay, let's come up to your hands and knees and just give yourself a good cap back.

Just round up into the spine. We're going to do that little elephant walk again. Don't know why I'm doing that these days, but here we are on a round back. Tuck your toes and then stretch through the calves. And some of us, no wonder. Of course on our reformer, different elephants, different round backs, things like that. So I'm looking at my feet. I want to sink into my heels. As much as I can. Pull the fronts of the toes up.

I'm going to walk in my feet four times, right, left, right, left. I'm gonna walk my hands out. Then away, four steps so that I can do for my walks with my feet. Trying to keep my back round. I know this is silly. Now turn around. We're upside down. Let's turn around and walk the other way. So it's going to be hands about four steps and feet.

Maybe start the other leg in hands and feet. One more turnaround and just one more for hands and just stay there. Just stay working in the stretch into the heels and the calves and then bend the knees and come down. As we sit back toward what we usually do for rest pose. Turn your palms face up. Just a different stretch in your shoulders. Let's take about three breaths. Three or four [inaudible] [inaudible] all right, let me think. I do want us to come back out on tour.

Elbows in a front support or plank if you think of it that way on your elbows. So Dan, let me go and work with a complete leg, a abduction, so legs all the way together and that nice sense of length. Pull that low belly up off the legs, long through your sternum. We're going to do some calf stretch right here. So some of the rocking on the, the front of the foot to the back of the foot or the ball of the foot. So right now if we pull our chest forward toward our fists, really close to the top of the toes. Now as we reached back, I think of it as a calf stretch.

Now do five all together so we pull forward. Try not to collapse the low back and exhale, stretching the calves and again pool forward and and exhale some of my upper back form is, I'm getting lost a little. I think I'm starting around my back tiny bit and I'm after the stretching my ankles and my calves. One more time and pull forward and rock back. And then just bring your knees down, head and chest down, hands down and let's put the forehead on the hands.

Now let's go into where single leg kick way down low like this today. So hover the thighs about two inches above the mat in weight shift toward the pubic bone. Let's start. I'm going to have you guys flecks or points or feet, whatever feels best for your knees. Here we go. Breathe first, right heel n, n, n, n, reach it back, left heel in in n, reach it back. [inaudible] [inaudible] I think again about the point of contact or how we're making contact with the matte surface. I'm thinking about my pelvis and my thighs and the front of my ribs, but not my tummy.

This exhale on the pool pull. Inhale, stretch. [inaudible]. [inaudible] we should way back and left. Four more to go and write and read back. [inaudible] last one on the left and now lengthen the legs. Keep them lifted. Is Holding there.

This turn and remove our hands are the small of our back or middle of the back. Preferably clasping the hands drop. The elbows were on our right facial cheek. Just take a second. Keep the legs integrated and really check in. Are you relaxed in your neck? Can you let the weight of the head really hang to the mat?

Take a breath. Three kicks for AA again, one, two and three and thinking long arms. I like to have this. Think of the arms going higher above the back. Lift from the mid back turn. Don't go down yet. Place the hands. Then we go down to kick and one, 2:00 AM three and I like that. Arms of high or mid back lift. Turn please. The hands first and one, two, three inhale and as long and up. Other side down. One, two, three.

And how can you get higher guys? Go, go, go, go, go, go. For more. [inaudible] work your back and work your back. Last one, each side. [inaudible] and back. Shoulders of course too. Last one and one, two, three are lift. Just keep the body up, but release the hands. Bring right underneath your shoulders, lower your legs.

Tuck your toes. And let's press up to a front support. Just hold right there. No take three pushups. Why not? [inaudible] down. And let's go for piking hips. More of a flat back. Reorganize. Thiede if you need to feel the breath. No hiking, no sits phones. Go chest is reaching for the legs.

Okay. Now as we come back down to a front support position, turn and whatever hand is closest to me, put it next to the other one. Just pivot your feet and just come into your side position. And let's work a bend of the spine. So pull your waistline up. The underbelly is pulled up, the top belly pulled up.

Let's go ahead and take the arm over. Make a rainbow, maybe drop your head a little bit. See Life upside down where? Contraction on the obliques. If you want the muscle focus and then we come down into a plank. Turn your hand step step. We'll just do one side the other side one time. So what's a band? A curvature of the spine that includes the head, that includes the pelvis and the tailbone. Ask yourself if you're really letting your head hang. I can't see you now. So push that earth away.

[inaudible] and then come down to level. Step that hand down and just face your mat and let's bring your knees down and come off of our wrists. Oh righty. I must do a little seal. Okay. Oh my realizing you done fastened my mat. Okay, so it's going to fall away from me.

So here we are in a sh pose for a sec or shape. Just find some stillness after all that and focus on the abdominals coming back away from the feet where you can think that your feet are pulling away from your belly. Little Tug of war in the center. I use you guys and, all right, we'll roll back to the shoulder blades. I'm going to have you make a choice. If you want the clap, clap claps in each time we come up to the center and we're pulling our stomach away from our feet or reaching the feet away from the stomach.

Head. One, two, and three. Pelvis one, two, and three really reached the pelvis up and one to the realistic. Three more. Good. We're having fun. We're laughing. Seal is funny. One, two, three. We got two more. Lengthen the lower back. Now the last one, some of you know, let go of the knees. Talk him into your chest. Roll yourself up to standing all the way. Turn 20 jumping jacks. Oh my gosh, Dan. To me, we did it. We had some fun. You don't have to count and then we'll do just do a little stretch after all these eight we can't take ourselves so seriously. Okay.

I'm going to turn to face this way and come down to do a little hip flexor stretch. Okay. I'm gonna leave it up to you. Also a few. What's going on with your back foot? You could took the top of the foot down or you could tuck your toes. Let that kind of be your choice. Focus it here and if you want to lean that weight forward, by all means, let's give our our a arm a little something to do.

So the arm that's connected to the leg, that's back. My right leg is back. It's my right arm. I'm gonna reach it up. I'm gonna think of lifting. My girls did the ceiling up to the ceiling. Not necessarily back bending or throwing force in my low back cause we're trying to cool down a little bit. Nice you guys. It's the up the up eventually goes back.

I think we all know might feel good to press the Shin into the mat. A little more work in the quad stretch and the hip flexor stretch and that's plenty. Come all the way down. Just that on the other side. [inaudible] nice class guys. Okay, so find some calm as much. Lean forward as you'd like. Open the front of that hip joint with support, and then the left arm or the right, whichever knee is down, little press down in the downward shin. Again, think of lifting the chest, lift the girls. It's how much can you get? Breathe in. How much can we breathe out to more of those? Inhale tail under as much as we can.

Uh, and then bring that hand down. Okay, step that front foot back. We'll walk back with the hands to the feet. I lied. There's one more thing. I seem to always like to do these after. I think I'm not going to do them. So hit some heel lifts again. So as we're folded over, rounded forward over the legs, still have some activation in the abdominals, so we're not just flat back and hanging on the, the tendons there, there support. Let the head go and then rising up to the balls of the feet.

So as you pull your heels up, you have a chance to just really stretch all the way up into the tendons of the hamstrings. Now when you lower the heels, just a real small kiss, almost almost. They don't even touch the mat little and then press up again and up. Let's inhale, lower the heels and exhale, lift them. [inaudible] two more. Exhale and lift. Inhale, lower and last one. Lift as high as you can.

Keep them lifted even more. Lift as you crouch down in squat, high ankles [inaudible] and then just one more time. Extend the knees leaning, reach the hips up. Your feet are flat at this point and we'll do a nice 10 counts to roll up to standing in one, two. Just take your time. Three finding yourself very centered on the feet. Re articulating restacking seven and eight, nine and 10 and before you walk away, just kind of feel what's going on. Can listen to yourself. Maybe you, you're here, your heartbeat, things going on outside this feel how your feet are against your mat, maybe some sweaty areas of your body.

What do you smell? What do you see? [inaudible] Oh of course. What do you taste? And just one more gesture. Mr Re job. Just taken the space. Taking the air. Thank you guys for being here to help me teach and wanting to be here and then just bring those arms down and make a beautiful day out of this one. Thank you.

Comments

Loved it. Amy, you always manage to give such an excellent class. The careful instruction, breathing and flow are awesome. Very good alternative to higher intensity classes with great results. Thanks.
Hi Jeff, thank you so much for your kind words. I really appreciate your feedback!
Superb as always!
Thank you so much Valerie. Always nice to hear from you!
1 person likes this.
Wonderful class. Thanks for bringing so much ease into my life Amy!

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