Class #18

Challenge the Basics

50 min - Class
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Description

Challenging the basics. Great flow of uncomplicated but intense exercises.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Dec 26, 2009
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Transcript

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Hello? Hello. Is there anything anyone would like to work on today? Yeah, Adam. Huh? Back extension. Back extension. Okay, well let's start standing actually and then just set your feet parallel to one another. Just underneath your sitting bones. Reach your arms down towards the floor and stand up as tall as you believe that you can stand. Shift forward and back over your feet, shifting towards the toes and then backwards towards the heels and do that just a couple of times until you find for yourself what feels like balanced weight in the middle of your foot from that place.

Take a breath in and starting with your head. You're just going to start rounding or relaxing towards the ground. Feel the weight of the head pulling you towards the ground as your body moves forward. Pull upwards on the abdominal supporting the spine as it moves downwards for stretch in healing at the bottom. Start lifting up from the abdominal muscles as you begin.

Exhaling allowing your spine to restock. Feel the pelvis shifts slightly forward in the bones of the spine. Stack on top of it, one at a time. I'm looking up at the last moment. Breathing in, breathing out as you feel the head drop down. As you roll down, try to avoid just allowing the shoulders to curl up into the years, but in said keep them slightly away from eight years. Not a lot of pressure in the upper back, but just a slight contraction of the upper back.

Breathing in at the bottom and breathing out as you lift up through your abdominals. Feel that the pelvis starts to press a little bit forward. Tailbone tucks under or reaches towards the ground so that the spine can stack over the top. I'm just going to do that one more time. Breathing in, breathing out as you bring yourself into the room. Start connecting your breath in your mind, your mind, in your body, letting go of the rest of the world or letting go of everything that you need to let go of Linkedin a little further. This time at the bottom by deepening the contraction of the abdominal muscles in the next sale. To come all the way back up. And with that step towards the center, just past the center of your mat.

Okay. Cross one leg in front of the other. Lift up onto both sets of toes. Bring your arms out in front of you and with you the best control that you can find. Sit down to your mat. Keep your knees bent. Keep your feet just separated about hip with the part. Hold onto the front of your knees for a moment and use the pressure of pushing your hands back towards your knees to first extend through the lower spine.

Feel the body getting a little closer to the thighs, and then allow the chest to just gently lift up and look up with your eyes. And from there I'll allow the I'm select go take a breath. As you exhale, we're gonna roll about halfway back. So we just want you to round the low spine. Feel the pubic bone pointing towards the ceiling as the low back starts to come into contact with the mat. Pause there breathing. Start the exhale. Use the exhale, breath to pull you back up and see if you can find with or without using your hands. That same feeling of a very tall spine at the top. As you exhale, curl back talking and starting from the pelvis.

Now just a little bit of energy reaching down into the feet, letting the spine warm up. Breathe in, breathe out. Start moving yourself back. Growing Taller this time, raise your arms up towards your ears. As the arms reach up. The spines gets a little straighter still XL. Feel the arms. Reach it down or allow them to reach down. As you roll back down, just going to go one more time. Lifting through the spine on the exhale. Shoulders reaching away from the ears. From there, bring your right hand to the outside of your left leg.

Bring your left hand on the mat behind you and just gently first, push your spine a little straighter or guide your spine a little straighter and then guide yourself into a gentle twist. Lift your arm, all your back arm off the mat. Lift your front arm up. Turn the opposite way. Okay, and then one hand down, one hand across the thigh, gently. Again, guiding yourself up taller and turning the spine, bringing the right. I'm back up. Send your body back to center. Roll yourself all the way down. Your arms will drop down in front of you.

You're going to slide your feet a little closer towards you. Allow your head and neck to be on the mat and breathe in. At the bottom. We're heading into the pelvic curl, so you're going to start by flattening the spine into the mat. Then as the pelvis lists up off the ground, feel the knees reach slightly out over the sheet. The root cage pulls down towards the ground, finding the muscles in the backs of the legs. Take a breath at the top. Exhale, start the movement downwards from the chest.

Feel each bone individually coming down into the mat, the five bones of the lower spine, and finally the pelvis comes all the way down. Take another breath in. As you flatten your spine, that first movement is the naval drawing deep into the spine or pressing downwards, pelvis shifts slightly upwards. And then you rock your pelvis up. Start allowing the muscles of the legs to work starts shifting the knees slightly forward of the toes or towards the toes so you can look to create a sense of length in your body. Breathe in and breathe out as you come down slowly. One bone at a time. Same sense of lengthening the knees over the toes, feeling the arms long and straight. See that two more times.

Excelling as we lifter in healing. As you pause, paying attention to the muscles inside of the thighs of the inner thigh muscles. Your legs should be straight out in front of the hips rather than the knees being wider than the hips. And one more time to go. Breathing in at the bottom and breathing out. As you tuck the tailbone, feel the pubic bone stays higher than the hipbones. Slightly breathing in at the top and breathing out as you come down, chest arms are reaching in the direction of your feet. As you roll all the way down. As you exhale, engage your abdominal muscles. Pull up your right leg, you hold it at a tabletop position. Take another breath.

Keep everything else still in the body as you pick up your left leg, glue your legs together. Raise your arms up towards the ceiling. Inhale, spread out the arms, but keep the shoulders broad. Let them hover just off the floor. Might feel a little bit of stretch to the fronts of the arms. And exhale. Send the arms back just up over the shoulders. Inhale, allow the arms to again reach away from one another. Hover just off the ground, and then engage the abdominal muscles.

Muscles feel that that engagement helps to bring the arms together. We're gonna do that one more time. Each time the arms open or for this last time, see if you can just get a sense of a little bit of a longer reach. Exhale to bring the arms back up and this time bring your arms out again. On the inhale, stretch it a little longer. I'll look for greater stretch and exhale. Lay them to the mat. Inhale, we're going into this spine twist.

You're going to take your knees to the left and Xcel to come back to center. [inaudible] in. He'll take your niece to the right [inaudible] and exhale to come back to center. As you travel side to side. Make sure that the knees stay totally lined up right flat across. Make sure one hip isn't getting closer to either rib or as you travel to one side, it's the pelvis. Just rocking back and forth on the Mat. Breathing in. As you rotate, breathing out as you engage with the opposite side of the body to bring the legs back to center.

[inaudible] and let's just do one more like that. Breathing into turn the body breathing out to come back. Center knees lined up. No movement. Shifting from knee to knee and breathing out to come back center. Placing your feet down on the floor.

Reach back with your arms and interlace your hands behind your head. I'm gonna go into the chest lift. So starting with a neutral spine, allow the elbows to be slightly off the floor so that you can see your elbows in your peripheral vision. As you exhale, lift the head and chest. Think about lifting from the sternum in allowing the head to be heavy in the hands. Breathe in as you just intensify or look for more in that movement in XL feel work or a lengthening contraction. As you lower your body to the mat. Breathe in, prepare, breathe out to lift the front of the ribs.

Drop down and press into the mat to help us lift a little higher. Breathe in and hold and breathe out as you work your way down. So there was never a movement in [inaudible]. That's a wasted movement. We're always wanting to work in both direction. Holding here and Xcel to work your way back down.

Breathing and again, we're going to hold at the top on this one XL to find that initial lift in heel. This time reach your hands behind your thighs. Exhale, use your arms to just encourage a greater lift. Make sure here again, the tailbone is down, but also that the back is as flat as it can be on the ground on the mat and low back. Specifically, bring your hands back behind your head. I'm going to turn the upper torso to the right and bring it back to center. Exhale, lift up to go over to the left and back to center and a little quicker. Now it's XLT.

Turn and inhale to come back and make sure that the pelvis is stable, that the feet aren't shifting up and down or back and forth on the Mat. One more. One more to the opposite side. Breathing in center and breathing out as you work your way. Once again, back down to the mat. In healing at the bottom, excelling as you curl your head and chest Baca. Inhale, the hands come behind the thighs. We're gonna lift a little higher. Reach your arms straight ahead of you. As you exhale, pull your right leg or right up towards your chest and try to lift your chest into your thigh. Inhale, touch that same leg down and we're coming again with the same side. Exhale to pull up.

Feel that the work in lifting the leg is coming from the abdominals, not from the thigh muscles going two more times. If you ever need to hold on to your legs to help yourself lift up or to minimize any tension in your body, please do. One more time and going five times to the opposite side. We lift, left leg comes up and it goes down and we lift pulling from deep within the body. As relay comes up, try to reach your arms in your spine further. Just two more times. [inaudible] and the last one, [inaudible] leg goes down, arms reach back overhead and the head down, keeping your arms hovering off the mat. Lift one leg followed by the other. Wouldn't just going to do the hundred prep today. So as you breathe in, prepare for the movement. Exhale to lift the sternum.

The arms are going to reach. Just pass the hips like they just were reachable. Way Up. Try to flatten the back and neo. We come all the way back. Touch the back of the head, reach the arms overhead. Exhale to lift the head and chest. Note that as you lift, inhale to lie down. The entire back stays on the mat. Exhale to lift, Huh? Or more importantly, the bottom of the ribcage. Inhale to come all the way back down. Exhale.

So lift up, hold please. There. Inhale, exhale, stretch the legs and breathe in again. And the 104 one, two, three, four, five feel that the arms are row laxed and reaching your bullets. Spring the legs all the way up for five and then press them down on the XLT three they don't have to go very low. Pull them more towards your body. Two, three, four, five and press them away. Two, three, four, five and do three more today so we won't have a full hundred. We'll have about a 50 and one, two, three, four, five and two and down last one. And Bend your knees. Hold your knees in towards your body.

Hug your knees into your body as you lay your head and chest down. Bring your hands behind your knees, lift your head and chessboard you're going to go into with a small rocking motion. So you're going to curl up just as much with your abs as you are just doing. Bring them the legs to about a 90 degree angle from the Mat. And then you just engage in the ABS.

Begin to rock yourself up and down about the shoulders to the pelvis. And as you do that, just look for evenness in your body. See if you rock for two, one side rather than the other, find a moment at the top and see if you can't balance just behind the hips and let's see, three. Notice that the work or the control doesn't come from the kick of the feet or a movement of the head. It's all coming from your powerhouse. One more time, and with that, come all the way up and just place your feet down on the ground.

Stretch the legs out. We're going to head into the spine stretch, reaching the arms straight ahead, taking a breath in, sitting up as tall as you can see. Feel the top of the head pulling upwards towards the ceiling. As you exhale, start with the head. Allow this chest to start following the head round over an imaginary ball, or I'm an imaginary pole, and then start to link. Then forward. Breathe in there. As you exhale, start to cruel your spine back up as those stacking up against a wall, so sitting up as tall as is possible for your buddy. Breathe in again. Breathe out. Start with the head. Feel the rib cage drawback.

Notice that as you round for their space between the shoulders and the ears, go as far down as you can. Take a breath. And as you use your abdominals to curl back up, create length through your spine. Create a sensation of growing taller and taller. Let's do that three more times. Breathing in and breathing out. As your body moves forward, your abdominals, pull back your shoulders, pull down towards your hips. Take a breath, hold and exhale. Just creating space, creating a sense of being pulled up towards the ceiling by cables attached to your ears. One more time. Rounding down.

Inhaling in your low position and exhaling, undulating through your spine, working the front of the body to bring yourself back up, right. I'm going to head into this spine twist. So bring your legs together. Uh, if ever it feels too hard or too uncomfortable to keep your legs straight out in front of you. It's always fun and in fact worthwhile to bend your knees if necessary. So with either straight legs or a slightly bent means bringing your arms out to your sides. With your palms facing forward, stretch the arm slightly further away and make sure you can see them in your periphery and then turn to your right dude. Two pulses on two x and come back to center and turn to the opposite side and center.

Feel as you move that your spine is getting longer and taller or it's a spiraling upwards sort of sensation, rotating the spine and come back and training. Continuing to reach long through the arms, making sure that the feet don't shift back and forth on one another. Generally, if the feet are moving, it says that the pelvis is moving too much and, and we're looking for a still pelvis and movement from the waist up. I mean back last time, I mean back. And then just have a quick stretch forward or pulling your abdominals back as you. Yeah, reach forward over your legs. Take a moment there. Let your neck relax, engaging deeper into the abdomen. See if you can't pull yourself slightly further forward and then come all the way back up. And let's do a modified saw today.

So bend your knees, bring the bottoms of your feet together, bring your arms up over your head. So we're going to turn to our left. Keep both sitting bones anchored. As you exhale, your left arm is going to reach behind you. Your right arm is going to reach way out forward and you're gonna bring your body out over your legs. Inhale, lengthen the spine up on the diagonal. Sit all the way up, still twisted.

Bring the back arm up and turn back to center breathing. And as you turn the spine, breathe out as you reach your back on back in, pushing against an imaginary wall to increase rotation in heel. Lengthen upwards. Bring the back arm up to meet the front arm and unwind and center. And let's do that a little bit faster. Breathe in, breathe out to dive down.

Allow your breath to create the rhythm or or let the rhythm. Let the breath be the rhythm for your movement. Lift and center. Breathe into churn. Breathe out to reach back on, pushes back as a phone, arm reaches forward. Lengthen the spine out enough. Bring the back arm up. It's and turn to the other side. You wanna sit up in, still in a twist and then bring your body back to center.

Let's do three more actively working both directions with the arms. So the Wa arm that's in front is reaching forward as the arm that's in back, pulled very much away from it, lengthening out on the diagonal back arm, comes up and sent her last time. Breathe in, breathe out to move. And we then to lengthen arms up and then both arms come down and just reach your hands behind your body. Fingers facing inwards. Lift your chest up and from there trying to keep your shoulders away from your ears.

Just bend your elbows a little until you start to feel a stretch through the front of the chest. As you're looking for that stretch, try to lift from the abdomen, from the spine. Allow the eyes to go up towards the ceiling. Potentially you'll be able to bend your elbows a little bit more, but definitely do what feels good in your body without creating a lot of neck tension or or lower back tension for sure. And then stretch the arms back up. Stretch the legs out in front of you. Reach the arms forward for the rollout, pointing through the feet, shoulders, or away from the ears.

We're going to exhale and start to move the spine backwards. Imagine being pulled back through the with a rope around your waist. Tuck the tailbone under. Come all the way down onto the mat as the back of the head touches the arms. Reach overhead. Breathe in, lift head, chest and eyes.

Arms reach forward. Try to keep your gaze forward as you roll through your spine. Shoulders end over hips. The spine is long and round XL to start rounding down again. Shoulders are reaching down away from the ears.

We're going bone by bone through the spine, back of that touches. Arms up and inhale to lift. Look forward. Draw deep into the abs as you curl forward and sitting tall, but round one more time. Rounding down. Inhale, lift, head lift chest. As the body comes forward and starts to come to a more upright position, continue to pull the abdominals pretty deeply back so there's work at the top as well. Let's do four more faster. So we're going down on the count of four, three, two and done. Lift and we're up on four, three, two, two, hold.

Try to keep the gaze slightly forward as you're going down. So the neck is there. Space between the ears and the shoulders. Inhale, lift. Exhale. Four, three, two. And we're lifted on last two here. Mobilizing through the body, feeling the connection through the insides of the legs.

Yeah, last one to go down and stay. And then as your arms reach overhead here, allow your back to ards. Just the littlest bit. Let everything relax. Reach the arms, stretch way up overhead. Even allow the shoulders to creep up into the earth a little bit and then draw the shoulders back down. Press the back of the ribs back down into the ground and bring your arms just over your shoulders. Slide one knee in, followed by the other knee.

And then lift the legs back up towards tabletop. Reach your hands towards your knees. Press your knees into your hands, curling your head and chest up off the mat. From there. Reach one hand at a time back behind your head, holding onto your head. We're going to just do a modified double leg stretch. You're gonna take your legs down towards the ground.

Want to make sure that your backseats totally flat, so depending on your body, that's going to depend how low your legs go is going to depend on how flat your spine can stay. It doesn't matter if it's a very tiny movement, you can go three inches and come back those same three inches, or you could go all the way down if you can. But what's important is that the low back isn't straining or lifting. We're going one more time here. Down and lower the head and the chest. Hug the knees into the chest, lift the head and chest back up. Looking forward, pressing the knees into the hands and a reach. Again, hands back behind the head. This time dropped the right toes towards the Mat. Turn to the left leg, rotating the ribs.

Inhale and exhale. We change coming across to the other side and change. Inhale as the body passes through center. Exhale. As you look for intensity lifting up towards the leg, there's always an option of holding onto the outside of the leg as you turn to help you feel better work or more intense work. Okay, three more.

Two more and last time. And with that, bring both legs up where each, again, behind the thighs, we gently rock yourself back and forth until you can rock all the way up. Arriving at sitting, I'm moving into the rolling like a ball, so you want to hold on to either your ankles or your shins. The tide of the ball is the more challenging. The rolling work will be once you slide your feet towards you and then shift back just a little bit so you're leaning just slightly behind your tailbone from that place.

Dig down deep in the ABS and hover the legs up off the floor without shifting the shoulders or kicking with the legs. That's an inhale to rock back and an exhale to God. Come up and hold your balance. I got left in rock back and exhale to come up. In balance. We're looking for depth, trying to keep the shoulders reaching or away from the ears, trying to keep it deep. Sea curves through the spine. Do three more, two more last one, and then just come all the way up to put the feet down. Separate the knees and go back into a little bit of a twist.

So we're going to go hands behind the head. Knees are bent spine. As long as you inhale, you're going to turn your body to towards your left. See that no movement happens in the lower body. Exhale, bring the right arm towards the left knee or thigh and turn a little bit more. Inhale, bring the right hand back, lifting a little taller and Xcel as you travel back through center, going around to the other side. It's an inhale and an exhale to turn, rotate and stretch upwards in. He'll hand comes back behind the head and so you use the opposite sideways or the entire waist to bring you back to center. Couple more times to go.

We turn first. We bring the arm across. Analyst [inaudible], bring the hand back behind the head and Elongate even straight or even taller as you come back through center three more times. Breathe in, breathe out to turn in, stretch breathing into. Bring the hand back and out to come back through center. Last one to high the side, feeling that your spine is going up or then forwards as you look for that assist and last time for the day. Yeah, come back and bring it all the way back to center. Stretch your legs out in front of you. Keep your left leg straight, but bend your right knee so that your right foot comes just inside of the left thigh or just up against the left knee or really wherever is comfortable for your body.

Rotate your chest so that it goes just in front of or just over the left thigh and start to walk yourself forward. Just going into a stretch. The more the abdominals pull back and support the spine, the bigger the stretch will be or the further your body will go holding onto your foot or your ankle or your Shin or whatever. Makes Sense. Continue to hold on wherever you're holding on with your left hand. Then re let go with your right hand and reach further outwards. Start to turn the right chest towards away from the left leg.

Spiraling the spine around, reaching the right arm overhead towards the left toes and Nice, good stretch. See if you can just breathe into it and let it go a little further. Exhale, start to turn the body back towards the bottom leg and comes down and then using your abdominals, just curl gently and with control up and then we're going to change sides. The right leg goes out straight, right foot flexed, left foot up against the thigh of the nature or towards the leg so that your chest is just in front of the leg or just in line with it and then start to walk forward supporting the spine with the abdominals. Reached down and tried to reach down with the forehead or the tip of the nose. Continue holding on with your right hand as your left hand reaches even further and then spiral the left chest open. Breathing out.

Go where your body will let you. Never try to force anything or push past what doesn't feel good. Spiral the body back downwards. Enroll yourself, bending the knees. We're going to do the open lake pro rocker prep.

So holding onto the backs of the legs are you just gonna shift again behind your sitting bones. Lift the chest through the arms or, or look for a straight back pickup, one leg followed by the other. So in this position you want to kind of put a little bit pressure into the backs of the legs. Put a little pressure into the abdominal. Supporting the spine is a spine list. Try to keep this long collarbone position as you run. Just the lower back and rock back towards your shoulders.

Roll up and then at the top, stretch the back out straight again. Round the spine, rock back, Roula and lengthen. I'm going to see three more like that to the best of your ability as you rock back. Try not to hunch the shoulders around the shoulders in warrants and as you come up, lengthen the spine. We're right up close to the legs or to [inaudible] unless I'm looking for upper back muscles.

As you come up and put the brakes on at the top. From there, bring the knees together. You have two choices. You can either just let go. We're going to do the teaser prep or you can hold onto the backs of the legs and walk yourself down. Let's all hang on for now. So start to slide the tailbone under. Look for the low back first. Walked down your legs or just touch the outsides of your legs just to the shoulder blades and then we're going to exhale and come back up using the arms if you need to. But try to keep your legs as still as possible.

Lifting your spine up at the top two more times. So if you don't want or need your arms let go. I personally think it helps quite a lot too, to feel with how much the abs have to work and how much your spine has to round in order to allow your legs to be still in space. Go in one more time there. Rounding down, um, and coming up. And then as you get to the top this time, see if you can't let go. If you can't raise your arms over your head and then transfer the arms back down, you can keep them off your legs. You can hang on again.

We're going all the way back down to the mat. As your spine comes down, bring your knees into your chest. As you hug your knees into your chest, relax your shoulders, turn your eyes and look over your right shoulder all the way across the children into the ground. Come back through center, turning the eyes and look across towards the other side, and then come back through center. Placing both feet down on the ground or arms at your sides. We're going to go into the shoulder bridge prep. As you begin to move into the position, you're going to come through a pelvic curl position. The ribs want to stay slightly lower than the pelvis, the knees, the highest point in space. As you curl up into your pelvic curl, breathe in at the top. Let's just go through that movement once.

Just roll yourself down and then roll yourself up again. So finding the pelvic curl position and do a bridging exercise. They're going to keep your left leg down on the ground down. Okay, so pick up, once you're in the position, you're going to pick up your left leg. Just go to your toes first and then pull the leg up towards the chest. Any to reach down, touching the tippy toes and Xcel to pull back up again.

You want to just keep in mind that the knitting together or the pulling downwards of the rib cage towards the ground is worthwhile to not put too much pressure in the lower back. This is going to be our last one. Replace the foot down on the ground. Do it with as least amount of shifting through the pelvis as possible. Rise up onto the right toes. Find some stability in the left leg and hip and XL though, right? Like comes up and uh, and and [inaudible] drawing the ribs down, the abdominals in as a lake travels upward last too.

And yeah, and last one, placing the foot down. Stable. Can you stay? Exhale, roll. All the way back. Yeah. And take your right leg and stretch it straight out along the mat. Bring your left leg towards your chest, reach around the outside of the left leg with the right hand.

Pull the leg across the body and turn your eyes to the opposite direction and come back to center. Stretch that leg out and change direction. So the opposite leg comes up, which was to the opposite side. And then he come back to center. And then from there just roll over onto your side so that you're facing this direction. And I'm bringing your bottom arm straight up overhead and please your head on it where you can just going to do the side lift.

So in this position you want to look for a long line from the head to the toes. You can have your leg slightly in front of you if you'd like, or a straight out to the sides. You want to make sure that the abdominals are functioning and working hard. Have your hand down on the mat in front of you or on your thigh. Taking a breath and engage the abdominal muscles.

Reach away from you to lift the legs up and then reach away from you to lower them partway down. It's not at all about how high or how low the legs go, but about how much work we can find. Focus in the in the front of the body, in the abdominal area. If your hands on the mat, put it just in front of your belly so you can really feel the sense of the abdominals pulling away from the arm as as the legs go up and down. We'll just do that four more times. Yeah, three pulling deep within the absolute lift the legs, getting always a, a whole reaching away sensation. And then the last one, bring the legs all the way down and then slide them forward and to turn your bottom toes towards the ground in your top toes. The ceiling. Try to find that sensation, not just from the feet, but from the hip joint itself. I'm just going to do some great big leg circles. So you're going to take your top leg forward. It's gonna reach up towards the ceiling, goes behind you as far as you can without a lot of movement in the spine.

Forward on the inhale, exhale as you reach up and around behind you making finding a range of motion that is appropriate for you without arching the back to bring the leg behind you or rounding the back to bring the leg in front of you. If you need a a more balanced, you could bend your bottom knee. Okay, mean I said choice last one forward Ana and back in, down. Go the other way. Brushing the heels together, reach back up, forward and back again. Just five oh three using the abdominals for support, keeping the middle of the body still too. And last time and then back with the legs together. You're going to take your top like straight up and squeezed down.

So feel that the like floats up and then it pushes down from the insides of the legs. Excellent. As you squeeze down, we'll just do two more. Plenty. A little bit of freedom in the hip joint and I think that where this is still, and then just lower the leg down. Rest, take that top lake, reach it out behind you, reach your top arm forward and then it's going to be different for everyone. You just want to reach your fingers and your toes and opposition and see if you can't find a good stretch for you and oppositional reach. Maybe a stretch to the front of the hip or definitely a stretch to the waist.

And then bring the leg back. Help yourself up to sitting. Take the leg that was on top, bend the bottom knee. Just bring that leg across front of the body and then reach your arms around your leg, your knee just sitting down into both hips and trying to guide that nail hole closer to the body. This also works lying on your back. If that's um, would look like this, if that would be a better choice for you. Okay. And then we're just going to turn around, go straight across to the other side, still facing this direction. Still lines straight on that bottom arm, legs straight, either slightly forward or directly out to the side.

Arm on the side, ran in front of the body, breathing in, starting, engaging through the abdominal. Stretch the legs out and away from you and then lower, then partway down and then reach out in hallway and lower down. Not a lot going on in the legs except for perhaps a inner thigh connection. Try to avoid pushing up with your shoulder as you lift your legs, feeling the ribs, the abdominals. Pull away from that arm if it's in front, just into the spine. If you're balancing, see how much work you can get out of such a simple movement. Well, go three more times and uh, to not only working on the way up, but also creating work.

They're creating length on the way down. There's one little row all the way down. Bring the legs slightly forward, externally rotate. Turn the knees away from one another. The heels together, the toes apart. Here comes our circles. We inhale to go forward up and exhale to go back and down. King for stability in the hip. Stability in the waist, itching away or out of the hip joint as the leg travels through space, especially as it goes behind you. The last one in this direction. And then we're going to go the other way. So we use the back of the leg.

As you press back up, feel, feel the frontal leg as you come forward. I'm going to try to find a sense of rotating the bone of the thigh in hip, in the joint. Finding freedom there. Last too. One more. And then back to center. Continue turning out. Reach the top like street up and squeezed. Yeah, and straight up and squeezed down.

The degree to which the leg lifts up is determined by your ability to stay stable. So smaller's not ever wrong. Last time, stay at the bottom. Take the back leg away, the front arm away, and just reach into the stretch. Put your leg on the ground. You can lift it up into the air. You can just basically do what works for you so that you feel, uh, a nice, good stretch through your body. And then we're gonna come back to center your hand.

On the mat and help yourself up. Bend your bottom knee, bring your opposite leg across. Hug the knee towards the chest and sit down evenly into both hips. Front stretch again, it works just as well lying down. That's better. Okay, I'm then go ahead and just uncross the like turn over onto your front, onto your abdomen.

Okay. We're going to start with a basic swimming prep exercise. So what I'd like for you to do is bring your arms out towards the corners of your mat or just beyond the corners of your mat. Depending on where you're laying on it, your legs would be going to be pretty close together and, and you want to lift your chest so that you're just about on the ribs, just at the bottom of the rib cage. Pull the shoulders towards the waist and hold from there.

Pull your abdominals in. So you want a sense perhaps of trying to lift the belly off the mat, although it may not. And with that on your exhale in a stretch, your left arm and your right leg away. So they reach away away from one another and then they reach away to come down and we change that. So to stretch arm, we'll stretch leg and one on one lake stays on the ground. I was working oppositional movements, oppositional forces in the body. If it's better for you to lower your body more, you'll do that.

[inaudible] try. If you're thinking about heights of the limbs, not to worry about how high the leg goes, but to think about how high the arm is going, the legs just mostly reaching away or looking for like, let's do two more and one more. Tie this sign and then lower both arms down, lower your body down, let your back settle for a moment. And Ken back at into the same position you've just left. We're going to do the swim. With the swimming, you can go as fast or as slowly as you want to, but it's that same oppositional. One leg, one arm movement. Let's pick up the hover the legs. Don't lift them very far at all and then hover the arms and then one on one like breathe in, two, three, four. Breathe out.

Avoid kicking at the knee. Make the work happen right from the top of the hip. It looks really beautiful. Just do one more breath cycle in two, three, four and out. Two, three, four and with that, once again, allow your body to rest and bring your hands. Just bend your elbows in. Rest your forehead down on your hands.

[inaudible] bring your hands underneath your shoulders. Push yourself up onto your knees, round through your spine, and travel back towards your heels that you arrived sitting on your heels. Your arms can either be out in front of you in that position or they can slide back and rest just outside of the length. Just taking a couple of breasts there. Align the spine to open up with each breath.

Think about the tailbone sinking a little bit lower towards the heels. Yes, spiny elongating as much as it can. If it's a very pinchy position in the hip, you can open up the net. I'm going to help you just a little bit. Okay. [inaudible] okay. Just lengthening the spine and then when you're ready, come back with onto your hands and knees. I'd like to do one more back extension exercise.

The cat stretch [inaudible] so you're going to be on your hands and knees. You want to look for the hands to be just directly under the the shoulders and the knees to be directly under the hips and know here that we're trying to separate the upper and the lower parts of the spine. So as you prepare a draw the shoulders down away from the ears. Pull up on the abdominal so that the spine is flat and supported. As you exhale, bring the pelvis towards the bottom of the rib cage or the pubic bone towards the ground and allow your eyes to look down at what's happening in the pelvis.

Don't round all the way through your spine, but just round partway, or look for the round in the low back. Only inhale as you travel back through center, looking for a straight back. Exhale as you feel your shoulder blades draw down the back of the chest reaches slightly forward in the eyes. Reach slightly forward. Inhale back to center. Exhale as you start from the lower body. So tucking the tailbone under, looking for [inaudible], a flection in the lower back. Keep the shoulders away from the ears.

Inhale as you head back towards a neutral spine. Exhale. As you feel the shoulder blades draw down and back, the chest reaches slightly upwards. So go into upper back extension here. Yeah, so it's in my mind the field feeling of trying to pull forward with the head. Inhale, come back through. Center ribs come up. Exhale now the lower body round, so it's just low back rounds. Had slightly affected. Inhaling as you traveled back through neutral, keeping the pelvis level and steady. Exhale, extend through the upper spine or arch the opera spine. Lovely, lovely job. Inhale, come back to neutral. Let's do that two more times. Rounding the spine or we'll do one more. Full range of motion.

Inhale, coming back. Exhale, extending the spine. Good. And then coming back and just going from here into one balancing exercise. So it's very similar to the swimming that we did lying down. We're going to stretch one leg out. Let's go the right out.

Start to raise the right leg up and as it raises, lift the left arm up. Pull the knee back underneath you by engaging through your abdominal. So it's just coming back to the mat. The hand comes down opposite arm, opposite leg. So changing sides, looking for the contraction just below the hip on the leg, just above, just below the shoulder blade on the arm and come back. And then try to feel a sense of stretching, not only lifting, but stretching the limbs away from one another and bring that back and to the other side. See if you can avoid dropping the pelvis. And by that I mean d trying not to allow one side of the pelvis to go lower than the other. Let's do one more on either side and then changing to the opposite side. For shoulder stability, definitely a lot of abdominal work necessary to to hold stability in the in the trunk.

Come back with that round your spine to the greatest degree that you can surround right up through your spine, pressing the chest towards the hips, the spine, towards the ceiling. Set all the way back onto your feet. You can bring your arms again, they can stay out in front of you, they can come back towards your legs, can open out your knees. There's lots of choices here. So make it into a position that works for your body.

And when you're ready, start to um, carefully bring yourself back up. Put your hands just near your knees, Tuck your toes under, shift back over your feet so you are using your arms a little bit to just transfer the weight of your body back over your feet and then push up with your heels. So pointing all the way up onto the feet, feeling a nice stretch to the middle of the foot and then drawing the heels down towards the Mat. A lot of the stretch to go more behind the the ankle or in the calf. From there, start to press the heels down and lift the hips towards the air.

We're going to end the way we started hanging forward over with the legs. Let the neck relax, completely bend your knees a fair bit. Then it'll kind of a lot. And then just really engaged or really stabilized, who the ABS. As you let your spine just get a little longer, let your body get a little heavier. Use this moment to release any tension that you still have in your body or that may have been created in your body. And as you exhale, start again engaging your abdominals. Let's let the knees stay soft here as we just peel the spine, one vertebrae at a time.

And as you come all the way up, raise your arms up towards the ceiling. Really look up at your hands, lift the spine a little straighter, and then allow the arms to just circle down to your sides. And we're all done for today. Thank you.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Great class with easy to follow cues. Thanks!
1 person likes this.
Thank-you for a great teaser prep, Meredith!
Thanks for taking class with me, Christine!
1 person likes this.
Great class for beginners. This felt great on a Monday. Thank you! 
Babette H
1 person likes this.
Great class for wakening up everything very gentle!
OH MY!! Lacey M  and Babette H I am so grateful these very first classes are still being viewed!  

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