Improve Your Posture

Today, we are Monica focus on posture. Friends, family, and clients are always asking me how they can improve their posture. Often, they are hoping for a few pearls of Wilson, a quick fix perhaps just a few exercises that will have lasting effects. Maybe improving your posture is why you decided to try Pilates. Well, today is your lucky day.

I am feeling nice and willing to give you a glimpse or a taste. Of what you need to do to improve your posture. For sure, Pilates is a discipline, which if done regularly will dramatically reshape your body and, of course, improve your posture. But you want results today, you say? Well, let's jump in. First, we are going to do a basic mat just to warm up our muscles and get our blood flowing. We will not be concentrating on precision but more on flow and imagination.

If you feel like becoming more committed Pilates and your Pilates method, then check out my basic mat if you're just starting out and that there's a whole mat series 10 classes and you're gonna get from beginner to intermediate in no time at all with the strong foundation. But today, let's just move. Okay. So we're gonna start off with the 100. I want you to lie down on your mat. And I want your feet to be bent.

Hundred

Want you to take a big breath and exhale and bring in the right knee, pulling in that belly, and then you can even hug it. And then we're gonna add the left knee, and then you're gonna pull your belly in and lift your head up. So this whole exercise is about pulling my stomach in. I'm gonna let my knees go a little bit, kind of push into my hands. Now I'm gonna reach my arms and pump. Big breath and big exhale.

I only care big breath and big exhale, but your belly pulling into your back. If your neck gets tired, lower it down, but keep pulling your belly in. Exhale pulling it in. Can you pull it into your back and make it disappear? Inhale. If it's easy to keep your head up, keep it up and looking at your belly.

If this is hard, keep it here. If it's need more challenge, stretch your legs out of your hips as the belly pulls in more. All about the belly pulling in to your back. Okay? And if you've got the powerhouse, you can fix your posture. One more.

And enough, hug in your knees. Okay. So again, on that one, we just wanted to feel like there was a like almost a strap holding us grounding us or a tree trunk rooting us into the mat. I want you to sit up any way you can and we're going to do the roll back. So we're gonna have our knees bent and our hands underneath your knees sit up tall. What is sitting up tall to you? We're gonna find out about that, but we're gonna sit up as tall as we think we can.

Roll Back

Pulling back. If this is easy, we can go further and pulling, but I hesitate because I want you to just work with control. So even if you're more advanced employment, I want you to just be super aware that you're rolling down one bone at a time and coming forward one bone at a time. Not five bones fused together. Two more. Squeeze your legs together if you can.

Pull your belly into your back to stretch your waist. Taking a breath and exhale. Expanding the ribs and lungs even though I didn't say anything about precision. I just wanna give you some cues. One more.

I just want you to move though, right? And take a big breath and exhaling forward. Now we're gonna go all the way down to our head. So we're gonna pull back rolling down through the neck, and then just lower my head through your head. Draw the belly in like you're glued here.

Leg Circle

Press your arms down by your side so that you can feel stable. And we're gonna circle the leg drawing a circle on the ceiling cross around a cross around a. If this is easy or you're more flexible, you can straighten this leg. You can make it as big as you want to if you don't move your Pilates box or frame. And last one, there's five and reverse, reaching out Scoping. I'm moving the entire time from my powerhouse, keeping my lower back anchored, keeping my Pilates box square, last one, and hug it in. And you are trying to just move. We're gonna bring the left knee in.

So again, this you're gonna stretch the left leg. You might do this with this leg bent. If it's hard to get your legs straight up, that's why you would do it bent. Okay? If it's easy, you can straighten that leg and cross around them. You can keep it small and it's super important to feel your stomach. If you can make it bigger, go for it. One more.

And reverse. I am not letting my back come off the mat. I'm reaching out of it, stretching two more. Using my powerhouse, last one. Alright. Hug that knee in. Good. We're gonna put the foot down and we're gonna bend the right knee.

Single Leg Stretch

So pull into the mat and then put your foot down and pull into the mat. And that was easy. Pull in maybe not on your neck and head. You can again lower it down but if it is okay now we're gonna reach your left leg out of your hip and switch. Pull your belly in and switch. It's not a leg exercise pulling in.

It's a powerhouse exercise. It pulls below the line of your hips. It scoops into your back and switch and pull in your stomach. And pull in your stomach. The arms are there just to add an extra stretch.

Pulling in your belly. Feel the back on the mat. You wanna fix your posture. Make sure you know what your powerhouse is doing. One more set. It has to pull into your back, last one.

And now bend both knees and rest your head down. Let one more, exercise here, double leg stretch, and then we're gonna do a little shoulder bridge and spine search forward. I'm gonna pull my belly into the back underneath the line of my hipbones and I'm gonna lift my head up. Okay. As I straighten my legs, I picture an alarm is gonna go off if I let my belly poke up So I'm gonna reach my legs where my belly stays below the line of my hips and I circle back scoop into my back, support my back and pull in, reaching my legs, challenging that back and you might just go to here. You might keep your head down, but pull into your back.

Double Leg Stretch

Okay. We're gonna add shoulder bridge right here where you're gonna just put your knees hips with the part and feet under. The advanced shoulder bridge your hands go underneath your hips. We're not doing that today. I just want you to gain some awareness of some back articulation. We did the roll back where you rolled your lower back down. This time we're gonna lift up.

Shoulder Bridge

Just draw your belly in so much, and then you can squeeze the seat to pull the pelvis in this tilt. Now, Still don't want you to push your feet into the mat. I want you to squeeze your seat up off the mat. Two different cues all the way up until you're a straight line from your shoulders to near your knees. Be aware whether you lifted with your upper back. That's not good for posture.

And now we're Monica roll down not your bottom, but your chest bone, the back of your ribs, and then the next bone. See if you can get your waistband before your tailbone. I'm sure you did a really big effort. Let's do two more. So we're gonna pull the belly behind this line.

We're gonna scoop it towards us as if you could almost tuck it onto your chest bone and you're going to squeeze the hamstrings and glutes avoiding using the feet, lift that tight seat until you're a straight line from shoulders to knees and then roll down. Can you feel the back of the ribs going down? Can you feel the back of the shoulder blades down? The waistband and then the tailbone. Make sure your feet aren't too far in front of your knees. They should be almost right underneath your knees or there. Okay.

One last time. Belly pulls in, bottom helps squeeze, hamstrings and glutes, lift. There's an exercise that we do on the one to chair where your feet are on a pedal and that pedal doesn't get to push down. So imagine you're on something that you can't put any weight on and now hold and you're gonna roll down. Pulling your back of your ribs and shoulder blades down first and then your waistband and then your tailbone. Great job. Let's do spine stretch forward, but I'm gonna teach it to you against the wall so we can get a lot of feedback for our posture.

Spine Stretch Forward Against the Wall

If that's really hard to sit up tall. You're really feeling your hamstrings, bend your knees. If not, keep your legs like that. And then pull your belly in. Remember that cue? Draw the line from one hip bone to the other. Pull your belly and start rolling up your back against the wall. I'm gonna move my ponytail a little bit so I can get the back of my head. Okay.

And if you can add flexing the toes. If you can't, that's okay. And we're going to pull our belly so our waist is against the wall. Is it there? And then I want you to try to squeeze your bottom. Pull your belly in and try to grow as tall as you can as if someone's maybe pulling me up by my ponytail.

Or like a marionette pulling up. Now go ahead and slump. This is bad posture, right? Rolling forward, nothing's working. It's also we just need to get a little courageous with our posture. Sometimes.

Gotta kinda walk into a room with a little bit more courage, and that helps our posture a lot. Cause a lot of posture and this is your little quick fix is more about your presence when you walk in that you're trying to be a little more casual, a little bit more just relaxed. And you wanna give yourself a little bit more than that because it's amazing. You can even lose about five pounds just if you pull in and lift up tall and use those muscles. Okay. So can you feel yourself growing tall, tall, tall.

Now go ahead and slump. Okay. And we're gonna stay on the walls. You pull into the wall and this time stay on it, like try not to have any vertebra come off the wall. Here's vertebra's off pulling in. Okay. So we're lifted. I want you to go ahead and reach your arms up at shoulder height and we're gonna roll off the wall like a banana peel.

The walls the banana and I'm gonna peel my head off just my head. Okay. And then I'm gonna pull into the walls. I roll off my shoulders. I even feel like my back of my ribs are spanding. Okay. And I'm gonna pull off the next bone to the bottom of my shoulder blades and I'm gonna go as forward as I can without losing my waistband.

Two, three, and then I'm gonna roll back up. Shoulder blades through the neck and then rest. Pull your belly in, lift off your seat, grow tall on that wall because we're gonna take the wall away in a moment and you're gonna bring your head forward then your shoulders, then the back of your ribs, but the waistband stays back back back as you reach forward and challenge it and pull into the wall to roll up one bone at a time. Rest. Let's add some breathing for the last two. In with the air.

Here's my ponytail and exhale. Empty all the air. Squeeze out all the air. Inhale up and exhale forward. Really use the wall to give yourself feedback.

Okay. So I'm now gonna go a little further for a nice stretch. You deserve it. So go ahead. Now make sure that your hip bones are back. Here's our feedback. You wanna know where your sit bones are.

Find them and get your hip bones. Those are the ones here, not the ones in our cheeks. Over are sit bones. And then you want to roll back your waistband and your ribs and now you want your shoulders over your hip bones that are over your sit bones. How's that? Are we sitting tall? I hope so. Well, let's take that to a regular chair. I'll be demonstrating it on a high neck.

Abdominal Lift

Because if you only focus on your shoulders and your chest, well, that's the only thing you're gonna fix is your shoulders and your chest, not necessarily your posture. If you focus on your powerhouse and then your shoulders well, you can change everything. So you just sat against a wall, pull your belly in as if you're against that wall. Remember those sit bones. Be aware, where are they? Make sure the hip bones are right over your sit bones. Okay? And draw that line that you did when you start off with the 100 and pull your belly behind that line.

And then make sure your shoulders are over the hip bones. I'm gonna actually slide back a little bit to get better feedback. And so posture is a lot about feedback. What do I mean by that? So I have my hip bones over my hip bones, my shoulders, and I'm pretending I had a wall again behind me so that I have feedback about the alignment of my spine. I'm now Monica gently push my feet into the box for you into the floor and see if I can feel my belly not just pull in, but pull up off against opposition against my feet and then relax. I'm Monica pull in my belly, push at my feet, and lift my weight up, two, three, and relax.

Fox is moving a little. And I'm going to pull in, and I'm gonna lift up up, up, and relax. Now, I want you to relax, but still pull your belly in, not necessarily push with your feet. And now I'm gonna let you do your shoulder rolls. This is the moment you've all been waiting for.

Shoulder Rolls

And up and relax. Alright. So what I'd love to see is we're gonna reverse it one time where we go up by our shoulders. Back behind, so now we have a nice open chest, but here's the most important part. Picture your shoulder blades. Belly is in and I want your shoulder blades to slide down your spine towards your tailbone.

Leg Lifts

We're not gonna sway from one side to the other. We're gonna lightly and easily use your belly to just raise up your right thigh. It's almost like there's a sling and it's just gently being pulled up and it rests. We're gonna do that two more times. So I'm gonna pull into my back and my shoulders are bent down and I'm gonna pull my belly in a lift, two, three. Monica, I'm barely gripping with this leg.

It's very important Pilates work. I'm pulling in. Keeping my posture, my ponytail is being lifted to the ceiling and down will switch to the other leg, you won't even know that you're switching because you're so square and balanced hold to three, and you're square and balanced because you're using your powerhouse. Not your quadricep, not your thigh, hold two, three, but your powerhouse. And that's what you need to change your posture.

One more. Stomach in, two, three, and relax. Okay. Finally, we are gonna get this show on the road. We all want really good posture and learning how to do that while standing and maybe walking. So let's go ahead and grab a broomstick, a swiffer stick, whatever you have at home. And if you don't have anything like that, just grab onto a wall. But I'm gonna grab the six foot pole that we have.

Standing Posture Check

I love that feeling. My feet are in a pilates stance, which is like a tripod for your body, and it really forms a nice foundation for your the rest of your tower, and we want it to be a strong tower. So we're not Monica stand ever with our feet wider than your hips. If you do that, you automatically send your tailbone behind you. You're you're something has to go in opposition, so your lower back goes forward, your belly distends, then your upper back goes back, and you're just a hot mess. So at the very least, stand with your feet in line with your hips, but even better for most is if you stand in a pilates stance.

Okay. So another thing that we love to do when we stand is we like to have our bottom, like I am right now, behind us, and I loved my aunt Ramana's saying that you need to have your bottom, be your bottom, and not your behind. So that means we draw a straight line from one shoulder to the other, they should be right over those hip bones. Right? Well, it's not right now because our bottom is behind us. So let's make sure our bottom is squeezing forward so that your tailbone actually gets to hang down instead of pointing at someone behind you. And then you have to use your belly to kind of pull up from there. So see if you can get a that feeling. Okay.

So the bottom actually has to work. And this again goes right back to what I was saying. Just a quick fix is you have to walk into a room with confidence and with presence because this yes is much more relaxed and easygoing, but it's not good posture. So you wanna just squeeze a little bit and pull your belly in and pull those shoulders and you have beautiful posture. Can you feel that? If you wanna get a little more complex, there's a lot of things lifting right now and going against gravity. I have the arch of my foot.

It's like there's a little grape under my arch and I'm lifting it. Which sends a message to my inner thighs to help lift, which sends a message to my lower belly to help lift, and everything's lifting up to the crown of my head. And that is what lifts my chest up rather than just leaving everything and just sticking my chest up, that wouldn't be good posture. So revisiting that we lift everything from our powerhouse and that is what lifts your chest. Be careful that when you're in this position that you're still not back here, make sure you're lifting up creating space between the top of your pelvis and the bottom of your ribs.

How does this feel to you? A lot of work, it is a lot of work. And it's going to be a lot of work, but you want to keep practicing it, keep working because before you know it, it's going to become instinctual. But if you just are lack of daisy all the time and sticking out a hip, you're gonna always be in that posture instead of nice good posture. So I hope this gives you a few good tips. And if you keep practicing it, you were gonna gonna are gonna be walking around with beauty and grace all the time.

Thank you.