Class #1749

Magic Circle Connections

45 min - Class
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You can move beautifully with Kacie, Kristi, and Mialy, who came all the way from New Zealand! In this Mat Workout, Kristi uses the Magic Circle to create a deeper sense of connection to your core. This is a great class to push yourself and explore your limits. Enjoy!
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Oct 12, 2014
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So here we go. Finally. Um, it is a special day. It's more special than it looks cause there's half the room is not on camera, but some are. And Angie and Helen are all here and the alleys here from New Zealand in case he gets to take class and I get to teach. So I'm happy. Um, we're going to do some magic circles, so get that out. I'm sorry you guys have yours? I just met at home. You can, you can leave it on the ground for now. My fault. We're going to get it in just a second. Standing up. Um, with your feet a little bit apart, we're just gonna roll down and take inventory. Okay. So check in with yourself.

I'm going to suggest you bend your knees a little bit. Shift your weight forward, shift your way back, and then take an inhale on the exhale. We're going to roll down. It looks like this. If you've never seen it, inhale, exhale. It's as if there's a weight on your head. Let it fall forward. Let your upper back fall forward. You're going as far down as you want. Again, soften the knees so there's no real pressure there and just hang your body.

Stay here a little bit. Let the arm just kinda start to circle a little bit and be heavy. Just kind of get them going a little bit and then they'll take over. Your head is relaxed. You might even kind of need to shake out your head. Let the arms come to a natural stop. Inhale and exhale.

Feel the feet firmly into the ground. Roll yourself back up. Arms are just hanging by your side. Standing Tall, dude. Dude. Just one more of those. Inhale. Exhale. Let your head fall. Let it be heavy. This is where you'd let go. We don't have to overthink this. There you go. That's more like it.

Inhale there at the bottom and just check in when it's time, when you need to exhale, start to roll back up. That's it. Blow out the air. That's one of the things we're always trying to do is just to let all of the air and all the air at all right. Now let's go down and just have a seat onto your mats at will. You will want your ring nearby. Um, all right, let's start nice and simple. You're going to take the ring. And by the way, when you're using a magic circle, we have very light ones here. When you're using it, it's, it's not really ever meant to be broken.

Um, you don't need all your mind. It's meant to really kind of give you spacing and give you a sense of connection to, to what we're doing. So it is going to go between your knees and you're gonna lie down. I don't know which is going to be easier for you. You're gonna be lying down. Knees will be bent feet flat, head on the Mat and the ring just above your knees. All right, now bring your feet to their parallel. Hopefully, you know, pretty close to Sitz bones distance.

Chances are that's going to automatically put tension on the ring. So minimize it. But do try to bring your knees as close together for the moment. Your arms are down in long feet are flat. Take a deep breath. All you're doing is exhaling. And toward the end of your exhale. Put a little pressure on the ring, but nothing else changes to blow out there and you squeeze. Good in here.

Lighten up on the ring. Start that exhale. You might notice your abdominal sinking. Let the legs kind of come into it. Last. Inhale, release it. You're not rolling your feet though. They're staying still. Start the exhale. Feel the length even in your body, even as you don't move. Right. Nice. Nice. Sangean. Inhale, release. Exhale, squeeze in this time. Hold the squeeze. A little bit of squeeze there, right? Try and get all 10 toes down. Inhale, hold it there on the exhale.

Roll your low back into the mat. Just continue to squeeze a little and press your low back downwards to your tailbone comes up, and then fully release. That's you're not going to see much, but hopefully you'll feel that difference. We're back to relaxed. Inhale, a little pressure on the ring as you start the XL and toward the end of the exhale, round your back so that your waistline is pushing down harder. Inhale, release it back to the starting position. Start the exhale. Get a little resistance on the ring, then add more resistance and round your back. Inhale, release. One more time. Start the exhale, feel resistance. And can you, can you feel how you don't have to use all your might to get this and then release it? Now we're going to take that a little further.

We're going to roll up off the, uh, off your button into your low back. Inhale, start the XL little bit of tension on the ring. Round your hips up off the ground, coming all the way up to your shoulder blades. Use your arms a little, kind of push them into the ground. That's it. And then while you're up here, inhale, start. Exhaling. I want you to try and Tuck your pelvis more so your pubic bone is going to come towards your chest and your blow back is going to get longer. Squeeze the ring a little more. You can now you can squeeze as hard as you want. Inhale, start excelling. You're going to roll back down your spine, upper back, your middle back. Try and round your back.

Get a little more there and release it at the bottom. Inhale. Let's do it again. Start the exhale. So you know you have that little bit of resistance. Exhale, roll all the way up. You can squeeze a little more and a little bit more weight on that in step. So it means your ankles have to roll there. That looks great. You can even go higher summer. Yup. And tuck. So it doesn't hurt your back, right? So you round it. That's it. Inhale, exhale.

We're coming down now from the chest, from the upper back. One bone at a time. You got it. You got it all the way back down. So come down your spine and yet the bottom relax. Two more like that. Or at the bottom we inhale, start, exhaling, roll it up. The idea is just that you're sequentially getting up there and at the top, if you put your hands on the front of your hips, it's a straight line, right?

You're not having this gap in between. So get your hips up, tucked pelvis, inhale and exhale. Roll back down. Let it be a massage. Last one. Inhale. Exhale. Up we go. Notice that the ankles are not rolling out there. They're as straight as possible. Let's stay here for fun. If it feels like it's too much on your back, just come down a little bit, but always keep that tech inhale. Let's just squeeze the ring 10 times.

Exhale one and two. You don't release it much. Three, keep the butt up there. You can hold your button and make sure you're working it. Let's do five more. One, two. Here's three. Squeeze Four. Hold at five. You got it, and roll it down. Keep the squeeze on the ring. Keep the squeeze on the ring nice and long, all the way down.

Bring the knees. Okay. You're going to take the arms out to a tee position or a low v. Whatever works for you. You don't have to squeeze the ring much here, but keep it a squeeze a little bit coming towards the window. You're going to inhale and rotate. Lift those hips up just a little. It's not a huge one. Start exhaling, lightly.

Squeeze the ring and come back to center. Just waking up the spine a little bit more to the back. Inhale, start the XL a little bit of squeeze on the ring. Bring it back to center. Keep it going. Inhale. There you go. Exhale. Take it back. Get a little more squeeze. Just a little and [inaudible] an exhale. So what are we doing? Yeah, we're waking up the spine a little, but also trying to connect with those obliques. So as you start the exhale, feel weighted the bones. Beautiful. The bones of the rib cage. Go down to the mat. One more to the back.

Okay. And then bring it center. Put your feet down. Take the ring out please. And the way I like to do this, there's a couple of ways you can. I'm going to take the ring or we're going to use it almost like a pillow and place it not at your neck for sure. Not at your neck. But if you slide up or if you start at the top, you slide down, you'll feel that little shelf like the hook. That's where you want it.

If it gets any lower, it's just you'll know it's not. Good. And then with your arms you can either hold it like this, but I think you're going to like it better. Like this up to you. You can change halfway through, but notice that if you push with your hands and you kept your shoulders down and you wanted to do a chest lift, you kind of have a pillow. Agreed. Yeah. So Andy, you can bring your elbows a little forward. Not quite so wide. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so here we are. We're going to just leave our hips down and I'm not doing anything but keep the feet flat. Inhale, start. Exhaling. You're going to lift. Push with the hands. Let your head, neck and chest come up.

So you're looking somewhere around your knees, but push the head back into that ring a little bit. Your head is going backwards even though your spine is going more forward. Can you come any higher? Inhale. Exhale. Take it back down. Your arms would probably get tired, but that's all right. Inhale, exhale, start blowing out the air. That's a key thing. And then follow the hands up. Keep your head resting in that pillow.

Inhale. Can you go any higher XL? Take it back down and again, inhale, exhale. Remember you can play with the arm position, but you're essentially just learning to use that upper body in one piece. It looks great. You can go higher. Angie Mar. Yes, that's yes. Inhale, exhale down. Yeah. So you want to pull out, this is about exploration, right? To test yourself. Do it again. Where do you want to feel it? People often say, where do, where am I supposed to feel this? If you feel it in your neck, well no, that's not what I'm going for. But what could you do to ease the tension there? Come on down. I'm going to change it. Inhale, exhale up. We come.

Stay here. Inhale. On Your exhale, you're gonna rotate toward the window. So your, your back shoulder closest to the back is going to rotate towards that front hip in how come the end of the center and go the other way. Exhale. Your hips and knees do not move. Inhale, stay high as you come through the middle and exhale, right? So once again, we're working that rotation. Just keep this going. Blow out. Try to inhale as you come through the middle. If you forget the breath, it doesn't matter. Just try not to hold it in him and I blow out and deepen going forward, not just to the side in him. Great. Exhale. You got it.

Just stay curled up. Hellein stared nice and curls. You guys think I'm talking to no one but should see the back half a class. They're even smiling. All right. One more to the front and the back and they promise me next time they'll do it on camera. Well, I'll marry over here, not me. Back to center and down you go. All right, so far so good. I hope. Yeah, from here it's where it starts to get fun.

Just put the ring down for a moment there. Soft your side. Pick up your knees and hold on behind him. So now you have to just imagine you had that ring. Curl your head, neck and shoulders up. So you're looking forward and you need your arm strength here. So I'm literally pushing my legs away. And actually now that I've got it, I'm just going to start rocking and breath helps.

So the trick to this is not letting the thighs come close and then away. If you keep that little tuck of the pelvis, you'll actually get some good momentum going. But you got to let your buck come off the ground. That's it. Don't be afraid to Martin, we're going to sit up one next to one, our next one. You can come all the way up. How'd it go? Beautiful.

So now let's just tighten it up a bit. Can you hold on top? And the trick here is it's always about playing with energy. Push your shins into your hands. So it looks like I'm pulling and I supposedly am to a certain degree, but I'm pushing away to stay curved. Now you feel that right? You could stay here all day, but can you roll and there's no goal here.

Just roll back and up in. Doesn't matter if you land, just keep rolling elbows wide though and it's, it feels kind of easy and like who cares? Now you start bringing the legs closer with the same energy. You start putting your head almost between your knees, the elbows wide, the shoulders down. Keep going. Give yourself three more. Yeah, just keep your chin down. Two more nice. And then we're going to slowly, here's the hard part. Slide your hands up to your knees.

See if you can slowly lower yourself down without falling. If you fall, whatever. Try. When you get to the shoulder blade, switch your hands to the back of the legs. Push your legs into your hands and come up. Keep the shape of your body. You can do it. Nice. Heli. Switch your hands again. Push your knees into your hands, your hands into your knees and slowly lower down. Make up your mind, Christie. Yes, that's it. That's it. Go Sumner. Go. Go ahead. You gotta go to come up.

Thank you. And switch your hands after you come. Oh. Push your legs. Push your legs. Push your legs. Push your legs. Casey. Just push him in. Oh, if you keep your hands there, you get to do it again. Now. Last one. If you keep your hands there, despite what we think is gonna happen, you can open up the shape. All you want. Keep pushing. There you go. That's a beautiful switch. So I'm working here. I'm lengthening almost my legs away. Oh, we love it. Okay, hold onto one leg and the leg can either be on the ground or slightly in the air and slowly lower down. And when you get there, leave the leg in the air.

We'll go. I won't make you come up for now. Hug the knee and close real close. Stretch out your butt. Then switch lights. Switch again. Keep going. And we're going to go. Inhale for two counts. Now exhale, she's single. Extract. Good in. You could take the leg a little higher if that feels like too much on on your back or ams, but you challenge it however you need to. Let's do a couple more press prs.

One more set both legs and let your head go down. How are you doing? Good. Okay. Yeah, I heard one. Good. So we'll go with it. Curl up again. Hands onto your knees. Push your knees in your hands. This is your help. Trust me on this, your feet and just leave them about knee height. From there, can you let go without dropping down? See if you can just inhale, let go for a second. Grab on, push in and watch your abs drop on the XL. So you inhale, just let go. Exhale, grab on. Push the knees into the hands, the hands and knees and feel your belly drops. Do it again. Inhale, like go. Exhale, push. Yes. Noticing your body. Can you hold yourself up there dude? Again, just one more like that and we'll make it a little harder or you stay like that.

Now to challenge it, keep your niche shape meaning don't straighten him. Just let go and see if you can lower the knees a little. Inhale, exhale. Bring it back up. Grab on and enjoy again. Knees go down and they come back up. Blow it out. If you want more challenge, take the arms up as the knees go down. Inhale, oh, that gets hard. Exhale, grab on. Enjoy double leg stretch. Inhale back. Exhale, come back home. Inhale, arms and legs go apart.

Exhale, come back. Your body doesn't change, meaning your spine. One more time. Inhale and exhale and then rock yourself up. Yeah, feel it kind of. Alright. Another even talking to me, sitting up nice and tall. For the US spine stretch, you're going to take your ring. [inaudible] usually I'll use it just to give you a sense of things and it's hand over hand. So it's just like that there with straight arms and for the moment flex your feet and if you need to you can bend your knees, but we want your back straight.

So I'm going to watch for that. You're tall, you're going to press the ring down, but you're thinking to get longer in your spine. So there's your inhale and now exhale, let your head go down. Try to round your spine and applying a little more pressure on the ring. It is not a big move. Then inhale, sit back up. Good. I love it. Inhale a little pressure XL.

The reason that the ring gets more pressure on it as you round. That's it. That's, that's great. And then inhale and exhale back up. Slight change. You might have to wiggle the ring slightly forward cause I'm going to push it forward a bit. Inhale, fly pressure, exhale round and reach forward a little more. So the ring kind of gets tipped strong, flex of the feet.

And then just inhale right back up. And again, exhale, press the ring and round over. Go, go, go, go and inhale up. So that's the general idea. Set the ring down. And for this next one with your hands on your knees again, if you're getting tired and the hip flexors, just bend your knees a little. We're going to round forward keeping your hands on the shins. Same exercise. Inhale, exhale, we go, we go rounding over, rounding over, rounding over it goes far as you want in your hands. There's a slide off your legs. If they do, then find some place to hold on.

Shins or ankles is probably appropriate. The elbows can bend and straighten your spine on the diagonal. So check me out. I've got my knees bent just to show it to you when I'm holding my ankles to Linkedin, my spine. On diagonal, not just to look up. So you want to feel the back of your head to the low back one line and then we'll round over and come back up. I'll give you a breath pattern hits. Inhale, sail, rounding forward. Jus It's you're meant to draw in and up on the abdominals, so it's as if you're going up and over a ball. Now we flatten the back. Inhale, hold onto the thing and if you can straighten your legs, do flood spines more.

Just Xcel round and roll up and I'm going to change it in here. Sail round. It starts the same. Just come with me in. He'll find the long line. If it's getting to be too much in the quadriceps to the front of the legs, bend the knees, stay there, pick up one arm right alongside your ear if that's available to you, but you're looking between your feet, not in front of you. Most likely. Beautiful. Bring the other arm up right alongside the ear. First arm goes down, second arm goes down, both arms go up together, lean into it, flex your feet, flex your feet, flex your feet.

And then just round forward and roll it up. Okay, good. Next thing, place the ring. It's going to be on the ground still. And um, if it's halfway on the yoga mat or halfway on the mat and halfway off it, it will grab the Mat. So you'd probably want to either all the way on the mat or all the way off and I'll, I'll show you what we're going to do. I'm just holding it with the heels and let's start the first one with knees bent. Yeah, so come forward. That's good. We can come plenty forward. You've got a little squeeze and if you think about how you could squeeze this ring, it's not just the heels, right? Cause we're all strong that way. This, think about the upper inner thigh, the whole seam of the leg. Hold on. If you want to, we're going to roll back to about back. Take an inhale, a little squeeze of the ring. It helps you. So use it as we roll back.

The knees may straighten out a little. It's okay. And you're, you're looking forward a little bit at this point. So let's not look way deep. Then inhale a little more inner thigh. You're going to come up. Exhale. When you get near the top, straighten your spine up. Lovely. Inhale, exhale. I think a squeezing the ring. It's almost like I'm sending the legs away. As we round down, you could let go with the arms. That's fine. You could even straighten the legs. Inhale and exhale. You stay curved. Stay curved.

When you feel your shoulders over your hips, you sit up tall. Lets see it. Inhale. Just keep the arms out in front of you if there, if you're not holding, exhale, roll back. Lovely. Round the back. Round the back. Yes. That's it. That's it. That's it. Inhale, you're walking right off the mat and exhale. Come back at OIC. Y Good. Use the breath. Use the breath. Last one here. I'm going to change it though. I'm adding on. Go back. Exhale. When you get to where you're in almost no man's, then eyes forward a little bit. Casey. Inhale. One arm goes up a bit.

Don't change the body. They'll put the arm down. Exhale. You can hold on. It's not cheating. Other Arma and put it down. Definitely hold on. Inhale and exhale. We come forward or keep the curve. And one more time. Exhale, go down. Squeeze the ring.

You could again, keep the knees more bent and maybe don't go as far if you want. Pick an arm to go up. Inhale, exhale, eyes. Stay forward. Other arm. Inhale and exhale. Just hold for one big inhale. Start the exhale and curl yourself all the way back up. All right. Move the ring for the time being. Um, if it's, if it's been a lot of sitting for you and getting uncomfortable, you can roll up your mat and sit on the edge if you want. Or you can sit like, so for this, in fact, I will sit this way for this next one in the diamond position.

Soles of the feet together. You're tall. I'm going to take the hands behind her head. Um, elbows wide but not so wide. It's causing a lot of tension for you. Imagine just getting real tall. We're gonna rotate up here to the front. Just inhale. As you come up toward the front, your backhand is gonna go to the forward. Um, I'll show you if it's going to go to that forward knee closest to me. So we're here. You sit up even taller, put the hand back in place and center.

So here's your breath going the opposite way. You inhale to rotate. Exhale, set that hand down on the side and use it a little. Help you sit taller. That's it. Now keep the rotation. You just got, it looks great. We'll place your hand behind your head. That's it. That's your inhale. And exhale, come on home. Good. So the object of the game. Get Taller. You can spread out the legs if you need to. Inhale, exhale, either pushed down or gently pulled to go up, up, up. Keep looking.

Keep rotating in. Now return your hand and exhale. Center to do it again. In how rotate hand, thigh, or knee. Use it and help you. Yes. Excellent. When you let go, you shouldn't snap out of it. Inhale, return your hand. Beautiful and center. Now last to feel the length. So you've got to look for it, right? Don't just listen to me. You want to get tall, tall, tall. Hold it.

Inhale. Return the hand. Exhale, center. Last time did the back in here. Hand to thigh. Exhale, grow. Toff feel the whole back working for you. It looks great. Return your hand and back to center. All right, we're going to roll down and kind of loosen up the hips of it. So similar position we were in before, so the feet flat sits bones, distance apart. You're gonna roll yourself up. Here we go. Exhale as you peel the hips up off the mat.

And then from here, just check in again with your position. You want a straight line, basically shoulder to knee. If you drop your hips, you're most likely gonna feel that in your back. So I would encourage you to really curve and then, and then step into it more. So your feet are working. Pick up your right leg. You can keep the knee bent for now. Check out your hips.

Did you drop the one side? Put that leg back down. I'm going to change sides but anticipate at this time. Let's make sure you don't drop the opposite. Hit the left leg coming up yes and down. So no big deal. You could work the down like more s, push into it more. Pick up the first side, right leg and down. One more time. Working on stability. A lot of good happens out of that. All right, we're going back to the first side. Here comes, pick it up, stretch it up when you get there and now you're going to reach the leg down to about the knee. Maybe you would go lower but don't change the spine.

Flex the foot and bring it up. Point and go down for two and quicker. Now up and down, up and down. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Two more. Lift, lower lift. Come back up with the leg. Sorry for the leg cue and return it. Roll halfway down. Take a breath where you need it. Come right back up. Stepping into both feet strongly. Keep them underneath, your other leg comes up or the left leg up and lets go. Reach it down. One flex, bring it up to up three nice and long, reach four and five.

I'm going for eight, I think. One more. Bring it back up. Return the leg. Inhale and exhale. Roll it from here. Just turn onto your side. Facing up front all the way down. And for this first one, your hips are basically stacked. He might want your feet a little bit in front of you or we're going to be thinking now about the waist or the abdominals are really the whole body, but that's what you'll probably feel. So from here, zip up the leg.

So they're pressed together strongly. And if you look at your feet, the big toes are lined up so the top foot isn't short. Thank you. Exhale, lift both legs. And if that doesn't feel good cause your, whether it's your hips or um, you can adjust your position, chances are the legs would come more forward and lower down, barely. Exhale, lift. Again, what I like to do is take a two fingers and really kind of poke in to the top here and you want to feel that working, that hardening of the muscle. Exhale, lift. And when you lower it down you could let go. But that's kind of a waste of time. We're not gonna be here long, so keep some sense of engagement the whole time and and list and down. Good. Trying to keep those feet lined up all together. Looks Great. Lift two lower. One more time. Lift from here. Flex your feet, try to keep the legs together.

It doesn't work for everyone, but you can still keep the inner thighs together. Point Flex, just making these connections. Just one more flex and point. All right. Then we're going to come up, grab your ring and put your feet in the ring. So it's not the easiest thing to do. She haven't done it in a while or ever and then come on down, which is exactly.

See there are people in here and you hear that crash of arraying to the floor. Although he'd, yeah, you got it. Happy to get up. So knees are pointed forward. It's really tempting to turn the legs out. We don't want to do that. Let's get the side of the hip and reach both legs from here.

You've got the top leg touching. The bottom leg is staying down. Just push into the top. One, two, three, keep connection, Helen. Yup, and then barely release it, but don't, you're still touching it. Push in and up to three and release it again. [inaudible] two, three and release it. Flex your foot and push. Push, push, push. Yes.

And release. Again, push. You don't have to be on camera, but I'll still come to you and keep the foot bottom foot on the ground. Much easier. Well, not really, but do it anyway. All right. Now do 10 pulses into a top. Like try not to turn the toes up. One, two. You don't have to see it. You'll feel it for five. Don't forget the ad. Six. Seven. Here's eight. Here's nine. Here's 10. Wasn't that fun to sit yourself up, placed the ring on the inside.

Teach you the fancy way on the next side. Back Down again, down, up, down. All right. Again with the feet forward, knees forward. Now you're pressing top like down one, two, three. I'm kind of just continuously pressing down. Here's two to three. You can check that same area we worked earlier. It's a different focus, but it's still happening and yeah, it's um, [inaudible] I guess it's rail. Who says maybe, I don't know. I heard it from Lisa who says that the inner innercise are the gateway to the, maybe she says pelvic floor, but abdominals in any case, try to connect it all together so that you know where your whole body is.

Tip to toe. Next one, hold it down. And now a little extra pressure for ten one you can relax the foot on this one, two, three, four. Press five, six think long. Seven, eight, nine and 10. Okay. Here's the fun sort of part. You're going to, you're going to turn on your stomach and try to keep the ring and then you're gonna wiggle. So you're back in your mat and put your forehead down. I can't lay fully down cause I'm gonna talk to you with this mic on. Yes. Bend your knees. Pretend I'm my forehead is down cause it, it is. But I've got to look at Ya engineer's all the way to 90 degrees.

So feature the sell a ceiling. That's at Casey. A little more, little more, right. You know it's coming, right? A Sumner, you can bring your heels closer to you. Get your feet a little closer to you, but all right, their abdominals are drawn in. Just squeeze the ring a little and lift the knees up. Yup. And now keep the knees up and squeeze the ring. Ten nine, eight not just at the ankles. Six by four, three, two. Keep the squeeze of the ring. Straighten the legs. It's okay. The ring will touch the ground. It's fine. Straight. That's it. Keep doing it. Keep doing. You're going to feel that ring. Touch the ground.

Go ahead. Almost there. Now those knees are up in the straight. Yep. So keep, keep the legs straight, but the knees are almost lifting to the sky. Straighten the legs a little more. [inaudible] you don't have to lift in quite so high. Squeeze for ten one, two, three and four. Abs in five. Relax your shoulders. Seven, eight, nine. Hold 10 Ben. Again, you can relax for a moment. Just bend the knees. Here's the fun part. You're going to squeeze and lift for one, stretch out as high as you can.

Squeeze all the way out until you get to straight legs. And then bend in, relaxed, starting over. That's it. So you bend, squeeze, lift, and now start straightening the legs out. As you get straighter, squeeze more swoops, squeeze more, squeeze more, squeeze more, all the way to straight. Prove it to yourself. And then bend and relax. Three to go. Squeeze little lift. And as you stretch the legs out to straight, you squeeze harder, harder, harder. And I sell it. And Bend.

I said three more of this must mean two more lift. Keep the front of the pelvis. That's nice. Good. Squeeze, stretch. Come on. Reach up to the ceiling as you straighten the knees fully. All the way mealy. Yes. Last one. You love it. You got to tell yourself that sometimes we go stretch it out. Stretch it out.

Yes, yes, yes. And Voila. Okay. Just bend the knees so that you can reach back and get rid of that thing. Stretch out your back by pressing the hips back over the heels. Right? And then we're gonna throw to the other side. So facing still front, sorry, you're just going to your head to the other end.

There you go. And we didn't use the ring right away. It'll be nearby, but we're all the way down. Okay. So quiet bunch feet slightly forward is probably a good idea. And then from here you're just lifting both legs. So it's on an exhale. It's like the energy goes right up through the feet and you lift, inhale, lower down, exhale up.

And if you mindful that it's um, the body tends to want to pull the legs behind you. That's just because the lutes wanting kick in. So we just be careful for that. Keeping them more, they started hand down, you feel it. You got to kind of mindful of, go for some of the stuff at the beginning and [inaudible] and sometimes it's just more efficient if you start that exhale right before you move. So exhale and lift. Lift, lift. Let's do two more. One more. I'm going to stay up on this next one. Stretch that top leg.

Let's just do 10 little lifts here for one, two, three, thinking out. Four, five and six and seven. Eight, nine and 10 right? Sit yourself up. Oh, nope. Sorry. Give them back together. My fault. Flex. [inaudible] we did three or Aleks. Trying to keep them together. One more time. Strong through the inner thighs and point. Okay.

Now sit yourself up and we're going to go in reverse order on this one cause I want to teach you how to get out of this or at least fun party tricks. So first we're doing the inner thigh. Yup. We're back down and we'll just reach and press the top leg and release. So it's a constant pressure down to three and reach to three.

Trying to connect that sense again. If you start the XL a split second before you move the foot, you can, you may find that you can connect to the abs a bit more and [inaudible] [inaudible] yeah, stretched [inaudible] let's get one more here. Staying there and now it's extra 10 right? So it's down. It's all you're already there, right? So what more can you get? Three. Here's four. There's five good, really good. Six, seven, eight, nine and 10. Okay, so now we've got to go inside. So here's the, Oh actually, you know we did that. So what you do is you back your feet up a little bit and then I'm just gonna roll the ring forward until it touches the mat and I free that back foot. I know it doesn't work the first time usually, but give it a try. Trust. Just let them ring then roll it back.

So I rolled it forward so I could free that bottom foot. I rolled it back on. I stuck my foot in there to pin it. Walla, I can free the other leg. I didn't hear it free the other than put it in la or u s or you sit up and just fix it. That works too. All right, here we go. Almost. You got it. Nice parallel reach and press up. One, two, three, slight release. Do it again. Reach one to make sure you're not arching your low back beyond what feels normal. Three to three.

I like to flex my foot here partly so that I can see if I'm turning my toes up and I don't want to. And reach, reach, reach, light. Release one more here. Maintain the contact at the top. And now we do our 10 reaches up one. It says if your leg is going through the ring a little further each time.

Three here's four, five, six, seven and eight and nine and 10. All right, here we go. Reach back and get rid of it. Turn onto your stomachs. And maybe I'll show this to you first. Um, now I can talk you through it. A little, a little swan with this. So you're going to take the ring out. Um, yeah. And your hands would go on either side. Now if your shoulders won't allow for that, then don't do it. Meaning if it's, if you have a impingement of any kind or if it just feels painful, painful, you can take your arms wider and do this exact same thing. Really?

So let's, let's go for straight arms. Otherwise either way your head is down. So mine would be lower. If you could put your forehead on the ground, do let yourself take that stretch and straight elbows. Nice. From there, you start to look forward through the ring without putting pressure on the ring. If you can help it, you're going to start lifting your chest, lifting your head over the bar.

But that means your chest has to come up to when you need to apply a little pressure. You can, but we're not getting real high. You're gonna keep your ribs on the ground and now imagine someone were pulling your legs and then come right back down at the same way sequentially. Take a little stretch by putting your forehead down. If you can starts like this again, same thing. Start to look forward, lift yourself with just your muscles in the back and then if you want to apply a little pressure for help, you can come up with a tad more. That's nice for good. And then as if you're pulling yourself further down the mat, come on down and again, head comes up at any point. If the ring is too much, you can just, like I said, move your arms to the side and get rid of the ring all together.

What do you got? What do you got? Can you come any higher? Seek the ribs down first, then the chest and one more. I'll give you a challenge if you want it. Here we go. Lifting up, up, up. If you can start to take off one arm Arrow that you just unweighted and put it down, you feel the change in your spine. Now let's try it the other side, but you're ready for it so you don't shift much in the body and down and then lower your body down. Okay? You can set the ring down. Help yourself up into another little child's pose or rest position.

You could always do this stretch just on your back or even just round your back up, up on hands and knees if that feels good to you. Okay. Almost there. I'm going to do one little farm thing here, so we're going to come down to our farms and I'm not real particular about where you put your poems. I tend to go flat palms or on the side, whichever feels better almost right underneath your shoulders. Then depending on, um, your strength and depending on if you've ever done it, you were gonna take one foot back and the higher your hips, the easier it's going to be with the exception if you have a shoulder tightness. Okay. That's that there would be one way to start, but then what I'm wanting to end up doing is going out to a plank so you would shift forward and come into a nice long line. Okay.

But be nice to you backwards. You can't sink. You have to be up nice and long as if you're stretching from your heels to the crown of your head and breathe. That's all we're doing. Just breathe in, hanging on, trying to relax in this position. Yup. Strong legs. Okay. You're going to need that for later. And then bend the knees, let them touch the ground. Unfurled your toes and stretch back again. Okay. We are going to end standing with a little bit arm and balance works as stand up. Yeah. With during, sorry.

And then, yeah, just kind of stay in the middle of your mat. You guys can face up front, look at the water. Okay, so the first thing we're going to do is I'm stand wide so we'll do a little squatting like exercise. Um, if ultimately we would want to be able to go all the way down. Okay. Sort of just like we would on the reformer. If that doesn't work for you, what you get to do is go as far as you can, meaning if the knees won't support that right now, then you can hinge forward at that point and the arms will be here. Everyone else be there. That's all we're going to do. So a little bit of squeeze here and again, you don't want to squeeze it all your mind, get just a little bit of energy so that you can still feel the back. Here we go.

We're just going to bend and reach forward when the further away the ring, the harder it's going to be to squeeze. So don't worry, I'm barely squeezing it, but I'm trying and up and go and up. I don't give you that much time. Do I do up and down and up. Just a little tiniest bit of resistance just so you're keeping your arms connected to the rest of your body. Feeling a tiny bit of chest work. Nice and easy in your neck and shoulders.

Good down and up. Hanging out there. And one more time. All right. Stay up and just squeeze the ring. You can lower your ring says about chest high, right? Don't get a too high. And press and press.

I start walking the feed in press press for us. Good. Keep going. You can take your elbows up a little higher. And the reason I'm doing that is because as you press, you can drop the shoulders a little and less elbow pressure. So lighten up here and now just the, it's less isn't it? I mean it's, it's more here and less in the arms, which somehow actually get the arms working a bit more. Okay. Pick up the right knee. Hmm.

I didn't tell you to seize your on the wood floor. Did I? Sorry. Take the knee to the side. If you're on carpets even harder, are you back? Set it down. Just keep squeezing. Switching legs, get up, open it to the side, squeeze, squeeze. Keep the chest up, squeeze. Beautiful. Come back. Set it down when it's when you're ready. Let let your arms rest for a second. Next thing is going to be simple. Just stay forward.

What you're going to do is take your right leg back and toes under like strong, like you're pushing off. Okay, so it's not just loose there. Then I'm not going to squeeze the ring, I'm just going to hold it to let it come out in front of you and you'll decide how far forward do you want to go. But as you raise the leg, you can either just leave the arms hanging or you could raise the ring as well. Okay? And ultimately aiming for nice long line. Either way, whether you're fully perpendicular to the standing leg or not, and then let the arms come down. If they're up, let the leg come down and change sides. Let it go. Here we go. Another thing you could do if you bend the support leg, you could put the ring on the ground and do it that way.

If you want a little more support. Back leg is strong though. The key really is the back leg, so it's like a lever. All right? When you're ready, start to hinge. Might be different. Do what you want with the arms or nothing. Only go as far as you feel like you can support and and challenging.

The balance is good. So if you don't stay up, that's all right. It's in the effort. It's enough for me. Bring it back, setting it up, and then just like we started, take a deep breath. We'll get rid of these at the bottom. Inhale. Exhale. We round over. Okay. You can just set the ring down in the knees so your hands can come to the floor. Now that you've done that and if you can straighten the legs from their do or get near straight, bend them again. Bend the knees and let your back Herve and straighten.

Maybe a soft knee bend or a big knee bend. It's up to you, but we're rolling back up. Take a big inhale and just with ease, start, exhaling, connect, feeling the tailbone get heavy, or the backgrounding, however you see that. Pressing the hips right up over the heels. Okay. And then from there, just take a deep breath. Exhale. One more. So glad you came. Oh, just in time for the freighter. That's it. Thank you.

Comments

Lauren P
2 people like this.
That was so fun Kristi - thank you :)
Yes! Great duration for using the Magic Circle. I especially liked the variation of spine twist. Very nice class!
Thank you both very much! Glad you liked it! -)
1 person likes this.
Taking class with you ALWAYS makes my day! Thank you.
It would make my day if you would come be in class with me Annie! Miss you!
I always love your classes Kristi!
Dear Kristi, what a great class! Perfect for those "moderate" days with moderate amount of time and energy :) Nice ideas for using the magic circle and great cueing, love it!
Thanks so much for a magic circle class. Wonderful!
Such A nice flow to this! thank you Kristi! I always love your classes too! I really liked your version of the seated spine twist! Always learn so much from this site thank you for making it available!
Lyle H
2 people like this.
Kristi, This is a fantastic class. It's especially good for building quad strength, and easy on the knees. I am using this as part of my physical therapy program to rehabilitate by knees. You are great at giving cues for breathing and tightening appropriate muscles.
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