Class #2656

Reformer on the Mat

55 min - Class
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Your body will feel wonderful after this Mat workout with Michele Larsson. She teaches the Reformer exercises on the Mat, adding some variations that she learned from her mentor, Eve Gentry, throughout the class. This is a great way to add variety to your normal Mat routine!
What You'll Need: Mat, Theraband

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Hello, I'm Michelle Larson and I'm here with four actual core dynamics trained Pilati is teachers and we're going to do some reformer on the mat. So again, like always modify when you need to change, when you want to cut out, if you want to, you know, whatever it's loose. Alright so you can stand towards the back. Oh you need to be in camera guys. So you have to stay in a little bit. We're just going to stand for a moment on the feet and you just want to see where you are today. Okay. So just shift your weight forward under the balls of your feet and then take your weight back onto your heels. So you just go forward and back.

Little bit of rocking and just try to see where your preferences today, forward and back once more. And then try and find a center place on on your feet that feels comfortable today and now gently just shift from foot to foot. Now you can shift by literally keeping the ankles steady and you just move over or you can actually shift by rolling onto your feet a little bit. Side to side, and so it's all up to you. Don't overdo. Keep it really simple. Again, you're just working up a little bit of heat in your bottom of your feet. Nice. Now come to center. Bend the knees, place your hands on your knees and circle your knees around. Now keep it small.

Think of it as a very small skiing. Warm up for your knees, very easy and go the other way and just circle around and last one and then come center. Stand all the way up. Widen your feet a little bit. Place your hands on the outside of your hips by your greater trow cantors. And now keeping your knees soft. Just move around this joint and you're really trying to warm up the hip joint a little bit. Just move around through the hip and reverse direction. Warm up in the other direction, two more and then come back up. Put your feet a little closer together.

Now take your hands to the small of your back and again, just circle around and feel how the muscles move in your back. Easy. Keep your knees bent. Let everything be gentle. It's not a big tuck and curl, it's just a sort of a shifting through the knees, reverse direction and you'll feel one side of your spine fire and then the other side side, back and forth, and four. Then come back and let's just do a simple, almost like you could almost call it a run, but you just lift one heel and uh, at other you and first you and a second and a lift and lift and lift and a lift to war. And now let's go to the other end of the body, the shoulders and shrug and let them sink down and shrug and let them galling and shrug down, Eh, shrug. And uh, we're going to do is we're going to do a breathing exercise with arms.

So you inhale, arms go overhead. Exhale, reach out to the side and look forward dropping your arms straight into the floor. Inhale into the back of your ribs. Exhale, bend your knees, let your hands hang down by your knees. Inhale, stand up. Exhale, lift your shoulders up by your ears and release as you exhale. Inhale up. Exhale, circle around. Looking down at your feet. Inhale into the back of your ribs. Exhale, bend your knees, roll down your hands below your knees. Stand up, stack your vertebra. Lift your shoulders, and really sad again. Arms Up, arms open up.

Look down at your feet. Breathe deeply into the back of your lungs. Exhale, bend your knees, soften your spine. Inhale, roll up building blocks, stacking your vertebra and shoulders and down. Last one. Inhale, arms up. Exhale, open wide and look down. Let your arms just dangle. Inhale to the back of your ribs. Bend your knees. Let your whole body sink towards the floor. Slowly roll up, stacking one vertebra on top of the next. Lift the shoulders up and the lease. The last time you end up walking out onto your hands and knees up.

Exhale, circle around, looking down at your feet. Inhale into the back of your lungs. Exhale, bend your knees all the way down and walk out onto your feet. Good cat cow. Round your spine up. [inaudible] and arch your spine. Yeah, and round your spine up and arch your down.

Now when you round up points your feet, right? So the top of your feet are down on the mat. As you come down and arch, turn your toes underneath. You. Stick your butt out and look forward. There you go. And now round up. Change your feet and arch down. Turn your toes underneath you and sit back slightly, slightly, slightly and come up and around that spine and coming down and sit back.

Tie a little bit, stretched the back of your feet. A weep at guys. When you sit back and come back up and round your spine up to the ceiling. Now Arch your spine down to the floor and sit back and re stretch those feet. Yes, and come back up. Good. Let's do a simple, relax your feet. Simple, hip circle. Any version you want, any version of hip circle you like to circle your butter around. Think of circling around your knees.

Does that give you some orientation around the knees? There you go. And then circle three or four in the other direction. Just easy and careful. Good. Now Walk your hands a little further out in front of you. Sit back towards your heels, turning your feet flat. On the Mat. Come forward on an inhale onto your hands.

Bring your weight forward onto your hands. Pull your abdominals in. Exhale, turn your toes underneath you and sit back the other way. There you go. Inhale, come forward. Exhale, flatten your feet and sit back. Inhale, come forward. Exhale. Turn your toes underneath you and sit back. Inhale, come forward all the way back and sit back and just stay and just breathe into your spine. Easy. Don't force anything. Take your arms out to your sides. Now this is literally called flying. I think you just get a bay.

Make it with one another. Yeah, move up a little bit. There you go. No, Yoshi, stay back. There you go. Nice. Now you literally fly like you're a big bird. So the, the arms become wings and up and flied up. And then do it from your shoulder blades, shoulder blades, up, elbows, wrists, down blades, elbows, wrist. There you go. Yeah. And, and, and, and very nice. Come back up onto your hands and knees for thread the needle. Start lifting your downstage arm, which is the one facing the camera.

So inhale, lift, add up. Exhale, slide down underneath and put your shoulder on the mat. And again, inhale, lift up. Exhale, slide underneath. One more only. Inhale up. Exhale, slide underneath and change sides, eh. Inhale up. Exhale, slide underneath. Inhale up. Exhale, slide underneath.

And exhale, slide underneath. Last one. Inhale up. Exhale, slide underneath. Come back onto your hands and knees and scratch back your toes. Just do this scratch back, just back and forth. So you just get those feet warmed up. Just a little bit more.

Good. The last things we will do on our knees, you just relax. Your feet is hundreds, so you're on your hands and knees and you're going to go into a percussive. Hundreds of breath pattern. So support your spine in a tabletop or neutral position. Supports your belly and use your diaphragm. Percussively against the support of the belly. So you have sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, sniff, blow. Extend right arm and left legs slowly.

Alright, change sides. [inaudible] come back down. Stay flat on all fours. Keep breathing right. Last one [inaudible] and all the way back onto your heels. And just breathe into your spine. Gonna come back up. Turn your toes underneath you and sit back on your feet and push yourself back onto your feet. Keep your hands on the floor. So push yourself.

Your hands are right next to your knees and push yourself back on your feet and squat. Squat, squat. There you go. Now can you straighten your knees? You too. Can you already have [inaudible] just straighten up. Good. Now Roll Up. Bend your knees slightly. Roll the web standing. Okay, we're gonna do footwork from that upside down position with your hands on the mat. If you get dizzy with your head upside down that far, literally just lift your head up like this, right? I know it's not proper form, okay? But that'll keep that sort of inner ear thing going on.

So we're going to do, we nicknamed him squat A's, right? So you roll all the way down. Put your hands on the mat. Pilati Zvi sorry. [inaudible] put your hands on the mat that you do have weight on your hands. Now Bend your knees down, squat and straightened up and put, lift your heels if you want to. And up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and up.

Two more and down and up and down, all the way up. Slowly roll up to standing. Let your head hang if possible. Come all the way up. Right. And still staying in Pilati, Zvi lift to heal. And uh, other Hugh and uh, he and uh, he'll and he'll hear one more set and he and um, and he'll add down.

Turn your feet parallel so you're in a parallel position. Roll all the way down, putting your hands on the mat and squat and go down and up. You can take the heels off if you need to and go down and up. I see two of you can keep your heels down and that's great. And up and down and up and down and up. Last one and down and up and slowly roll up to standing. You can soften your knees if you want.

And again, he'll lift up and yeah. And um, pick up the pace a little bit. And the old dance teachers coming out and down and up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Good. Yeah. Nice. Great. Okay.

Roll all the way down to your hands and knees. One more time. Go all the way out onto your hands and knees. Your hands and knees. Yeah. And one more time. Walk your hands further forward than your shoulders. Sit back towards your heels on an inhale. On an exhale, come forward and bring most of your weight onto your hands. Exhale forward.

Drop your pelvis. Inhale. Sit all the way back. Don't think swan so much as, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Just really control through the center of the body. So it's not too much of an arch. It's just weight bearing on the arms back and one more at, I love it. Whole rooms where it was going this way and now everybody go back and sit and just relax, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.

So you're going to turn around and put your feet facing one another. So now we're going to do a more traditional hundreds. All right, so scoots so you're comfortable on the mat. Eye Roll all the way down. Draw your knees into your chest. Hands by your side. Roll your upper body up off the floor.

Extend the legs and begin. Yeah. Now make a fist just for the fun of it. Yeah. Don't lock into the elbows, but really weight into the hands. There you go. Eve used to have me make a fist. I don't know why.

Try it out right now. Extend the fingers and do little more and last one and roll all the way down. Yep. Bring your knees into your chest. One or both at the same time. Put your hands on the knees. Circle in the same direction. Just loose, easy circling around and rivers. Good. Come to stillness. Take your hands, interlace your fingers.

Place them underneath your skull. You're gonna do foot work from this position. So roll your upper body up off the floor. Extend the legs turnout, plot these V and bend into frog. And inhale. Exhale. Pull the knees in. Inhale, straighten. Exhale, pull in. Inhale, straighten. Exhale in, out, in, out, in, out. Last two, last one. Good. All the way out. Full the knees into your chest. Roll your head down, release your arms, put your feet on the mat and let your knees go side to side.

Okay, now we're going to do a version of short spawn. Okay? But in order to warm up a little bit for this, bring your knees up to your chest. Put your hands in front of your thighs. Lower leg is parallel to the floor and hes out through your teeth and push your hands and knees towards one another. So easy, easy, easy. You find that little curl, that action and relax. And again, press everything together. Gently, gently, gently, and relax. One more precip.

Be Gentle. Just float everything up off the floor. That's it. And relax. Hold onto your knees, wiggle wag alum, and then put your legs back into that position. So you're parallel. Now you put your hands on top of your knees like this, and you press your thought up into your hands and his out [inaudible] and a very gentle his out. Press the thighs up, you feel you're curling your tail into a basic coxix curl and a and press up and uh, and then relax and wiggle your legs around. So there's the beginning action of your rollover or your short spine or your whatever you want to call it, right? So there you are. Arms are by your side, knees into your chest. Now this is for a version of short spine.

So the legs are straight. They go overhead, they bend into frog and you roll down. Okay, so your legs are straight to begin with. Take them away from you a little bit on an inhale. Exhale, roll those legs overhead and follow with your body. Bend into your, into frog. On an inhale, roll down, away from your feet on an exhale. Inhale, squeeze those heels down and straighten the legs out. Exhale overhead. Inhale, bend. Exhale, roll down. Inhale straight now and again, overhead and bend and roll down with as much detail as you can and straighten out and going overhead.

And bend the knees and roll down. Bring the heels to your Tush and stay there. Put your hands on the knees and do whatever, right? Just loose. Loosen up your hips, wiggle around. Do what feels really good. There you go. Right now we get coordination, right? So your knees are up to your chest.

Elbows are on the mat. Upper body rolls up off the floor into a small, he really trying to get the knees and head together. Now on an inhale, extend the arms and legs open. Close. Exhale. Bend the knees, bend the elbows. Come up even more and go out. Open, close, bend, bend. Come up and out. Open. Close Bend. Don't open too guys and out. Small open chicken. Chicken in and come down and relax. Yeah, we're a little packed. Packed in here. A little close. So don't into your neighbor right now.

I want to put a challenge which I would do on the reformer and I've never tried it on the mat you so you don't have the support of the ropes. So I would say go tiny. All right, go tiny. You only open one leg. Okay, so you come up into your little dead bug position, right? Everything's coming up to here. Head, shoulders off the floor, Yoshi, there you extend everything out. Open the downstage leg. What little bit? Come together. Open the upstage leg a little bit.

Come together and come down and rolled out. So your, your hands are here. Roll Up. Roll down everybody. Just think, think, uh, relax. What do you call it? Coordination. Okay. So you've got straps in your hands. Elbows are on the floor. And instead of opening both legs, you're gonna open one the other. And Bend. Bend, right? And the opening can be as small as you like.

You open big, your body's gonna go all over the place. Okay, so roll up into a little bowl and inhale, extend open. Close up and close. And exhale, I should've said. And go out. Exhale and come and go out. Straighten the arms. Exhale. That is a trick for you. And one more out. Tiny, tiny. Oh, I've found her exercise. You can, you can spend a long time learning that one and come down and relax. Good. There's always one, right? And that's yours. Okay, great.

Just a wiggle. Wiggle a little bit. Alright. Everybody's okay. We're gonna do some sitting rowing. You may choose to do the, the uh, theraband if you like. Or you can do it without, I think it's just almost just as effective. Okay, so sitting up facing one another, the therabands or to your side. You can hook your it around your feet if you like. I love it. Nobody wants therapy. Here you are, right. So it's just like rowing on the machine the way I learned it for me.

So you roll back, hands come in knee legs. You open up, your palms press backwards. You press back in the space, you roll forward, head to your knees, you circle the arms around, you reach for your toes and you sit up. Very simple, right? Oh yeah. You might need to stagger a little bit. You want to okay. And roll back. Inhale. Exhale, open. Push back. Inhale forward. Circle around. Reach for your feet and stack your up.

Rolly back, open. Press back in the space. Roll the arms around. Big Butterfly stroke and sitting up. Now the other version I learned was this one. Okay, you want to tilt back from the pelvis so you tilt very high. Then as you come forward, you lift your arms to the ceiling.

Make a big swoopy motion with your arms. Woo. And reach for your toes and sit up and inhale back. Exhale. Inhale around and reach one more, Eh, ah, and lift. Inhale, round and reach.

Nice. Then we have this one. You know where you've got your thumbs inside the WHO's it's right handles. So feet flexed. You go eye level, thumbs down to the carriage from the Tush. You left to reach up and around and you come in at your shoulders at eye level, thumbs down from your tush length and your [inaudible] body and come around and come in up. Thumbs down and length in your body.

And the last one, hands on the mat and shoosh in all the way up and around. This is the most fun and shoot. There you go. One more and and coming up. Nice. If you like sit cross legged, if that's a comfortable way for you. Four, hug a tree and salute or keep your legs straight. Your choice. So your hands. Let's do this one first.

So it's like you're serving a tray for serve a tray out. Open the arms to the side. Now keep your palms up and think little fingers together and open. Ring finger comes together and open. So your palm starts to turn middle finger and open and pointing.

Finger and open phones. Oh and open end pointer figure. We'd go back the same way Kate went forward and ring finger or middle finger. Now the ring finger and now palms to see. Lean up at open. Nice.

Put the hands behind your head, shave your head and go. Inhale. Inhale. Inhale up in and inhale and out. Good and relaxed. Nice. Okay everybody. All right.

For long stretch series or long box series. I guess it is long box. Next. So we're going to start with a swan. Well here's the issue with the swan that I was thinking of doing is that you need to be able to slide on the floor that the sticky mats are a little sticky. Yes. So she's good. Very good choice. I knew if I said something someone would be intelligent. Good.

So you want to be facing each other. Arms out straight, fingertips almost touching, okay. Or You could have your hands into whatever. Right now what you want to do is pull your elbows in to come up into a sphinx position and really pull. There you are now round your spine. Look at your belly around it. Now Arch your spine. And as you are at your spine, straighten the elbows only as much as you want to.

It could be very small. And now slide out. Reach for your partner. There you go. Inhale into thinx. Exhale into curl. Inhale into extend. Exhale as you slide out.

Inhale and the thing exhale. Really look at your belly. Round your spine. Now extend the spine as you inhale, straightening the elbows only as much as you like, and go out last one and coming up round, Eh, come up and calming down. Nice. Sit back and rest position. We have backstroke and Teaser, right?

If we're on the reformer, we're not gonna try horseback. Sorry about that. I mean, there are ways we've all tried to do horseback on the bat and they're all, huh? You could get on her, right. So let's just do backstroke first, right? So just do backstroke. The knees are into the chest. The hands are at the forehead.

You pull yourself up into this position. Hidden shoulders off the floor. Yeah. And now inhale, arms up open. Exhale, squeeze and hold to three and come in and inhale. Squeeze. One, two, three. Income in ceiling open. Squeeze.

Two, three, income in last one. Ceiling Open. Squeeze two, three. And come in. Roll your head down and just relax. Everybody. Okay? Yes. All right. How about teaser? I'm going to say this. Everybody does the teaser.

They think they do best, right? Some people like to do one leg. Some people like you know at a time to warm up. Other people like to start with their knees into their chest. Other people like to start with your knees bent, come up into teaser and then straighten the lower leg. I mean, whatever modification you want, you get four tries. The fourth one, I'd like to be a full teaser, but warm your back up your own way. Okay. Give these people options.

All right. How's that? You Ready? Okay. So now we're here for Teaser, your version of your choice. Number one, coming up into teaser and coming down. Good. Version number two, and coming up into teaser and coming down version number three and coming up into teaser. Some people changing their arm and come down. And now the perfect, most beautiful teaser you have ever done and coming up and calm down. Beautiful. Great. All right. Wiggle, wiggle. Just just do whatever feels good. Just let everything hang out. Long stretch series, you all were up for it.

Okay. Leg cold. That's always a hard one, right? Because we don't have a machine to work on. So just to make it in some ways harder, you're going to go on to the mat in this position or this position, not up on your hands, cause it's harder to hold here, right? And then you're on your legs or knees or straight and all you do is rock forward and back on your toes. So your heels go up and down a little bit. Big Deal, right? Okay. So come to that plank position on your forearms, straighten your legs behind you and make four little rocking motions, eating up, push into the elbow forearm so that you really round and get into your upper back. So your upper back really holds that shape. Good. And now come all the way down and completely relax and just wiggle.

Wiggle. Okay, now come up onto your hands and knees while the train goes by. Okay, well wait. Some of them going to take that train and I know. Good to know what it's like on the train to see this studio wiz. Bye Bye.

Okay, come up on into a pushup position. Yeah, a little pushup position. And now round and lift your pelvis, round your belly and lift your pelvis and push your way back to your heels. So you almost could do down dog right now, Tuck your tailbone underneath you and move your body forward over your shoulders and then pelvis up. Good. Tuck the tail forward and move the body over the shoulders. Don't go too far down. That's it. And bring the pelvis back up. One more.

Tuck the tail round. Everything over the shoulders. Stay here for a breath and now dive headfirst to round up. Got To do it one more time. Tuck the tail forward round. Come over the shoulders, come into a flat position, dive headfirst. Boom. Good. And come all the way down. Knees down on the Mat. Sit back, relax your arms.

Breathe into rest position. That's actually harder, isn't it? [inaudible] it's harder in the than the reformer. You don't think so? Same [inaudible] I always thought of elephant is being rather silly on the mat, but you want to do it anyway. Okay, we will start in long stretch position and you walk your feet up to your hands and you walk your feet all the way back. Yeah, I mean you're an upstretched position. Does that make sense? Or elephant position? Basically speaking. Right?

So you're basically up an elephant, so your butt's in the air, your heels are as down as possible. And now walk your feet forward, Church and walk your feet back. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, and feet forward. Silliest exercise and feedback. I mean, didn't even look silly and walk forward and stand all the way up. Oh, oh, oh, okay. We're going to do something. I just always call a mule kick. Okay, so you're on one leg. Both hands are on the floor and the other legs up in the air. So the one legs behind, like you were an elephant position. There you go.

And the other legs up in the air, up in the air, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Good. Now Walk your hands. Way Forward. Way Forward there. Now bring your knees to your chest and your shoulders over your hip. There you go. Here's your, they've got it. She's got, there you go. Yeah. And kicked back up. There you go. And go forward. Now try not to your pelvis so your kickup is smaller than you think.

And up change feet, leg up in the air and come forward knee to chest and up and need a chest and up. Inhale forward. Exhale, back. Put the feet down. Walk yourself together and stand up. Oh, feels fun. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's do some short box. So a lot. Sit down. Everybody's going. Short bar.

Basically rollbacks, right? Legs out, straight arms here. Roll yourself up in forward. Inhale, start back. Exhale, do a little pause. Inhale forward. Exhale. Inhale back. So you stay round. So stay round. So let's start again. Everybody think of stomach massage.

Okay, that's the kind of round you want. So you're up forward. And here you start back on an inhale. You stay here. As you exhale, you come up and forward on an inhale. Exhale again. Inhale back. So the inhale lifts your ribs off of your lumbar spine.

Inhale and come forward. Good. Inhale, roll back. This time on the exhale, lift your head. Inhale, roll forward. Dive the head forward. Exhale. Last version. Inhale, back, head and arms go up. Challenge Yourself. Go Up, hold your belly and forward and coming up. Yeah, yeah.

I mean we can't go died for death off the box here, right? So all right, so flat back. Now. Actually, let's put our hands right here to begin just for the first two or three because I find that when you're not on the box and you're just leaning back, everybody tends to arch and don't want you to arch. I want you to hinge back from your hips. Okay? So put your hands right here and on an inhale just hinge back from the hips. It may not be far. Exhale and come back up. There you go.

Hinge back from your hips. Exhale. Nice. Put your hands here, hinge back from your hips. Keep it small. Exhale forward. Keep it. Yeah, Tony. Inhale, arms straight up. Keep it small or even smaller in hell. Keep it tiny. Left and up. Inhale, lengthen up and round. Forward and stretch. Of course, I've changed the order already, which I didn't mean to do, but that's all right. She's nodding. Yeah, you changed the order or you forgot already, but that's okay.

It's on the mat anyway, so you know who cares. Right. Okay. How about a climb a tree? Since we're pretending we're on the box 10 like let's pretend we're on a tree. Take your, you continue the pilot Bush. You can climb your thigh up to your knee too if you want to try.

You know the whole thing is just whatever it is, right? Stay here for a moment. Yeah, just let this leg actually, let's do this. Turn. Turn around. I'm turning around because I can't do the you stay where you are both legs like this. Right. And just let your lower legs dangle. Okay.

What you want to do is extend the leg up towards the ceiling without gripping your hip and then dangle right and extend without gripping the hip and angle and extend. So you really feel the length and the dropping of the femur down into the hip. Not pulling away, but down the hip and drop one more each side. That's better. Let it drop. If you can't drop and hold your u shape, drop the leg. Whoo. There you go. That's it. Now both both legs and drop him.

There you go. Up Legs into the pelvis and drop him. There you go. And up and drop. Yes. Okay. Just release. Now you can do climate tree right, because now your leg hopefully is dropped into your socket. Okay, so we're gonna start up. I can't do it cause I've got stuff back here. I would not. Great excuse. Okay, one leg out, straight. Other leg bent. Okay.

Straightened leg up to say crawl up to your ankle too. Good. Now walk down. Lower your spine down. Walk down that leg. That leg is a tree trunk. Don't move it. Try to keep it. That word is in space. That's it. Now walk up that leg. Keep your breath coming in, out in, out in. Then start down, out in, out. That's it.

All the way down and walking up good. And walking all the way down and walking all the way up. Good. You have to change legs. Well I will. We did. Did we tell you about war? Our walking thing on the phones. We walked around all day together. She took 2000 more steps than I did and we were together all day. Just think of, put that in your brain and think about it.

Why wouldn't she have taped? I'll, we'll stand up next to one another and you'll figure it out soon. Straighten the leg and relax and let it release. Straighten. Yeah, straightened it up and crawl up that leg and now walked down to, she's got a shorter distance than I would to go. And for this girl, right? Come up. There you go. God. Two more and, Huh?

Coming. Huh? Good man. Bend your knees and petite down. Let your knees go. Wobble side to side. Okay. Kneeling, chest expansion. Do you that you may use your therabands if you like, or you can just do for free with no band.

So you're kneeling facing one another where you're going to do Eve's version. We'll do first to standard, then we'll do an Eve's version. So you're up on your knees, good. And you just pull the band back a little bit. Inhale, turn the head, turn the head the other way. Center the head and release. Inhale, pull back, turn. Exhale.

Inhale the other way and center release. And again, pull back and turn and turn and release. One more pullback, turn and turn. And he really said, I'm not gonna do Eve's version. I don't think. I think it's too much on the, could be too much on the knees. Okay, so take the theraband away and we're going to do a Hybridge so you lie on your back.

Let's do wrestlers bridge just for the heck of it. So your feet are to the sides of the Mat. Your hands are facing your shoulders, your elbows and upper arm are on the ground, your elbows are bent. So you're using the whole upper body from the elbow up, the back, the arm, across the shoulders, and down to the other elbow as your upper foot. Does that make sense? And on an inhale, you lift your pelvis up and you press the whole upper back into the floor and exhale, roll down. Good. Inhale up.

Exhale, roll down. Inhale up. Exhale, roll down. Inhale up. Exhale, roll down. Put your hands by your side for a moment. Keep your feet where they are and do a wide foot. Nice way. So take your left knee to your right toes or vice versa.

And then come up and go the other way. And then come up and go the other way and then come up and go the other way. Good, good. Some version of long spine or Jackknife, right? Whatever version you want to do.

You want to do a total knife over towards the floor, up and roll down. Fine if you want to do what it Matt is rollover comes early in the mat. Work over legs, open, enrolled down choices. Yours. Okay, so bring your feet and knees together or doing nothing. It's also a choice. Legs up to the ceiling and go over you. Go and come down. You all picking Jackknife. Very nice.

And again, over and up and coming down. Beautiful. Just one more. Oh, oh and coming down. Nice. Hug your knees into your chest. Release everything for a moment. Wiggle, wiggle.

You're going to roll over onto your Belize for a rocking or a pre rocking. So heads towards the center. Just for a moment, take both arms out and your legs out. Gently. Keep your legs a little closer together than you might than an ex and bend your right knee and flex your right foot and just stay there for a moment.

Just stay. Slide your right hand along the floor, reaching back towards that ankle. Grab the ankle if you can, and lift the foot, the knee off the floor and the head. If possible, press the left arm in the ground. Try to stay as square as you can. Easy Open, easy breathe easy though. Force One more breath and come down. Slide that. Let go the foot. Slide the arm up, slide the leg out straight.

Stay here for a moment. Take a breath and bend in the opposite leg. Slide the opposite hand the same hand down. Grab on to your ankle and just stay here for a moment. You want to be nice and square both hipbones on the mat.

Then press the foot and hand together. Lift the knee, lift the head and come up. Very easy, very gentle. Open up that hip. Take one more breath. Come all the way down. Release that foot. Put the foot down, slide the arm up back there and just breathe for a moment. You're going to lift up the hands and the feet and you're going to swim and coming up and swim.

Nice. One more deep breath. Good and coming down. Good. Wiggle, wiggle and sit back onto your feet. Years ago I studied some movement from amends and Dick Trainer. I think that's the way you pronounce it.

Dutch lady from a hundred years ago. Okay. And one of the things that she felt, I mean there's a whole little routine you had in getting down to the floor and up from the floor one. And she felt that if you could get down to the floor, step back, Neil, put your feet together, sit to the side, roll down, boom and get back up in the same way that was you were fit. Okay. Well one of the challenges with that particular exercise is going from this position to one hip, right? So let's just do that for a moment.

So cause we're going to go into Mermaid and so mermaid would be on one hip. Does that make sense where I'm headed? So turn and face this way. And what you want to do is you're just, you just sit back and then you want to shift and sit on your right hip for Mermaid. Right? Good. Now stay here for a moment. Bend over to your right, left arm, up overhead. There you go. That's it. Come back up. Hold onto your shin. Bend the other way. Yeah, come back. And now gather this all up. Come back onto your feet. Oh, and shift to the other side. There you go. And Bend over to the side and bend over to the other side and come back and lift up and go into the center again.

Yeah. So it's a little bit like the thing that they say. Well you need to be able to sit like this and go right down and come right back up. And these, well this is a similar kind of test, right? So you just shift over to the right, do a mermaid to the right all the way over. Come back up, grab onto your Shin, go the other way, just for stretch. Come back center now from your Tush, lift your weight up on transfer to the other side. There you go. And Ben side and bend to the other side, but come back center and come back up. Good.

There's one side, it'll be a little easier than the other, right? Okay, great. Let's do a little running. So you lie on your back with your feet facing one another. Hands behind your head, knees into chest, hands behind the head. Roll the upper body up off the floor. Extend the legs and now run of, figure it out for yourself. We flex one, you point the other, or you flex them both and you just do like as a stationary bicycle. You know, just figure out what goes with your feet. There you go. There you go. That's it. Breathe.

Inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale. One more breath. Inhale and exhale and roll down and relax. Whew. Great. Put your feet and knees absolutely together and do a simple twist.

Feet on the floor, on the mat. Simple twists. Take your arms down, be a little more comfortable, I think. There you go. Just simple twist. Ah, everybody. Okay. How about we do a little seal? Rocky will just steal something from Matt. I think seal rocky would be great.

So roll up and just do a little seal rocking. Oh, off you go. One more and stay good. Put your feet down. Roll around. Hands and knees. Head to the outside. Feet towards one another. Cat. Cow.

Very simple. Cat. Cow. Just easy. Round your spine. Flex your spine. See how you feel now versus in the beginning. Round your fine. Flex your spine. Next time you flex your spine, turn your toes underneath you and sit back towards your feet. Come forward to your hands and round your spine the other way.

Turn your feet the other way and sit back. Turning your feet underneath you. There you go. And stay here. Push yourself back into a squat so you hit toes. Have to be underneath you guys. There you go. Sit in a squat and slowly stand up. Good. Now you're facing back to one another, which is great.

Put your feet absolutely together. So this is not your comfort zone. Okay? Absolutely. Together. So fine. Like you're zipping up your inner leg. Yeah, feeder. Absolutely. Together. Now turn your head to one side. Turn your head to the other side and center your head. Now Walk your right foot forward. Stays in the same line, but the heels now in line with the toes. Yeah. Okay, I'll stay there. You find that inner line, that connection up through the n's inner leg up through the middle of the body.

Turn your head one way. Turn your head the other way. Center your head. Walk your left foot up to meet your right foot. Turn your head one way. Turn your head the other walk out. Left foot. Center the head left foot forward just a little bit right by the, by the much, much smaller. There you go. Turn your head.

Turn your head. Center your head. Bring your feet together. Now what you have to do is put your right foot directly in front of your left foot, so it's like you're on a tight rope. On a tight rope. Looking straight forward, find that center space. Find that control. Turn your [inaudible].

Okay. Turn your head. Center your head. Put both feet together. Other foot comes forward directly, like you're on a tight rope. Turn your head, turn your head, center your head, and put both feet together. Oh, you're done.

Comments

3 people like this.
I love just how relaxed Michelle is throughout this. Great class.
1 person likes this.
I Do not like this sequence - there is nicht Flow, no red line
2 people like this.
Michelle's classes are always so divinely yummy, breezy and integrated. Always excited when she makes an appearance on PA, cause I'm sure to uncover an extra bit of giddyup in my step, afterward. :) And oh my lord, that end sequence! Lining up my feet and turning head w no arms! Oh my! That there offered some surprising feedback! Almost fell over on my bum! LOL!
1 person likes this.
Nice class to complement dance classes.
It's great to "see" you again Michele! I miss you! One of these days I'll make it to Santa Fe again to take some of your wonderful classes and workshops!
Awesome job yoshi!!
Thank you, Michele! I was stuck in a mat rut until today. Your class was the ticket out, as you provided such a fun and unique way to add variety to the matwork. I enjoyed your energy and the light-hearted and beautiful way you presented the MATerial! Love the leg drop during climb a tree. Fabulous class!
Oh I love the reformer variations on the mat 😻 thank you great class

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