Inspire Yourself on the Mat

Let's start like Aaron is sitting tall. Okay? So listen to your body. I'm gonna invite you tonight to inspire yourselves. Okay? So you know how to do that. You know how to do that. So, so our feet sits bones, distance apart or so best you can. The feet are flat. Hold on underneath the legs so that you can support yourself, right? That's one way to start inspiring yourself.

And then with the shoulders just falling down heavy, you start to feel the spine and we'll focus on moving from the spine or with the spine and around the spine, throughout class. So literally inspire. Take your first deep breath in and exhale to relax the body as much as you can. In this position, maybe you can feel a sense of lift or levity. Inhale and exhale. Sometimes I like to focus on the musculature. Relaxing.

Sometimes I think of the skin and sometimes I think of the bone. So you think what you want, but relax as best you can. Keeping our hands where they are for the moment. Inhale, exhale. Pull the front of the hips away from your legs. To roll back just a little. Get a little curve. It's going to be tiny.

I'm coming back up on the inhale and stacking back on XL. Let's go back again. Just a little gentle rock. Inhale, come back up, keeping it small so there's no sense of going down at all. You almost don't even feel like you're going back. It's just a bit of a tuck and back in, and one more exhale. Eyes are basically forward at the moment. Come back in playing with resistance.

Hands are on the outside. Now I'm pushing into my legs. My legs are pushing out, basically keeping the same alignment so we inhale right, so I'm pushing in and pushing out. Nothing moves. Exhale, we progressed as we roll back. Let's go a little further and maybe the arms will get to straight. It's okay if they slide. Inhale, hold. Exhale, push into the legs. Press out into the hands with the legs and then stack your spine.

You can kind of relax your arms there. Inhale, exhale, pressing into what you, so you creating this little wall of resistance. Look forward. Mark. Straight ahead. There you go. Inhale, exhale. Keep the resistance right and I suppose you don't really have to press hard with your hands. If you thought about pressing with your upper arms more, it would be more effective as a way of just tapping into the what power house or the area around the spine. Inhale. Exhale per RSE and stack to sit up tall. All of us could soften around our throat and neck. Yeah, right there. Here we go in here and exhale coming in and I'm going to give us a few more.

Only this time we'll switch the hands to the inside so you're pulling apart on the legs, but the legs are resisting and same thing. Exhale. When you're ready, we roll back. Just go as far as you're comfortable. Inhale. Exhale. Do it again to pull up and as you're creating that resistance, I think to pull the belly button backwards, exhale ticks us down. That's it. Soft shoulders. We have to make those adjustments. Inhale, exhale. Coming back up, giving you two more. If you want to let go altogether and just create the resistance, you can do that, right? It's just a way of reminding ourselves, giving ourselves a little message here and there and exhale coming in. Backup.

Yeah, I kinda like it. It's up to you. Last one. In fact, we'll play with this a little bit. Let go the arms all together. Reach the arms up. Keep your eyes forward, maybe just above your knees. Exhale, press the arms down alongside your legs. Your low back on is on the mat. Now let's do that part again and exhale. Press in, reach one more time. You may decide that's enough in which case you could go down. In fact, everybody hold for inhale. Bring your feet in a little closer and roll your heads down.

Arms are down on the mat from here. Inhale, same ideas how we started. You draw the abdominals in, roll the pelvis up off the mat all the way into a slap board position through a pelvic curl. Inhale, exhale from the top of your spine. Take it back down. Taking our imagery. If you like. Imagery back into the spine, somehow moving the trunk. Inhale and exhale. We roll back up. It's an articulation, one bone at a time. When you're there at the top. Check to see that you are aligned ups, straight line, hip to shoulder. Exhale. When you're ready to roll down, and again, Mark, I'm just going to give you a little pillow so it's easier for your neck.

You're welcome. That nice to meet. Exhale, rolling. Andy, just a tiny bit more inner thigh and turn your left foot out. Actually the other way. There you go. Exhale. When it's time to come down, might as well reach the arms a little bit longer. So looking for nuance, right? Look for the nuance in a pelvic curl. Exhale takes you up. Good, good. Let's stay up on this one. Renee, your chest needs to come down just so, there you go. Inhale, everybody stay up. Exhale. Just soften around the chest and throat, everybody to keep the hips up. Maybe you could even lift the hips higher. Inhale, exhale. Think to draw your hips toward your heels. Just subtly.

I don't want you to pull your shoulders up to your ears to do it. Inhale and exhale. When you're ready, come down. Upper back, middle back, lower back, and you're there. One more like that. If it's uncomfortable, you can bring your feet a little closer or moving them away. Go ahead. Exhale, Rola. Good staying there. Hopefully feeling the hamstrings a bit. Yeah. Inhale, picking up the right leg without changing anything else. That's your exhale. It stays bent. Inhale, it almost gets to the ground as it goes back down.

Start to scoop the belly and bring it back up to inhale. As you press it back down. Think of the inner thigh and I'd say both legs, just three. As we go down, we'll transition to the other side. Make it smooth. It's not about how fast you get there. It's about making it look effortless. Simply. Hey, how are you guys getting up so fast to inhale? It takes you down. Here's the third one. Three, generating it from around the spine, not the hip joint. Put it down. Inhale. Exhale. We rolled down CCU. You fast.

People had to do an extra one. Ha. That'll teach. Inhale. Go on up again. Last one. Exhale. Roll. It's worth a quick glance down your body. Is it a straight line across the hips? If it's not and you feel yourself piking down, it'd probably be better to come down and smooth it out a bit in front of the hip joint. All right, everybody, arms off the mat this time. This is just an option. You can put them back down. Just think about lifting your right foot, but don't.

Okay. I want you to feel the energy shift to the left leg, hopefully back of the leg and maybe some inner thigh and now we will lift the leg, right? If your hip dropped instantly, you want to put your leg back down, extend the leg, reach the leg long. Keep those arms up and still and then slide it back into place at the bottom. Same like again, it's bent to come up. It extends at the top. You reach from right out of the chest until it gets almost to the ground or maybe it will get to the ground and slide it back in. One more time. Reach it up. It starts to go to your low back.

Either come down a little and round out the back or bring it down altogether. From there. We roll halfway down. Shoulders are still where they started. Hopefully a straight line across the collarbones. Exhale, roll back up when it feels right. Just think about taking the left leg off. It's different, right? It's different each time. Pull into that opposite side so you know you're ready, right?

So much of what we do when I picked the leg up a extent. I appreciate that though. I do. Reaching long reminds me to tell you what I want and bring it back. Bend the leg to bring it up. So much of what we do requires, well everything we do requires stabilization before we move. So it's worth kind of putting the thought to, okay, I'm going to lift my leg.

Am I stable or am I going to fix it later? No, go up so you don't have to fix it. That's three, right? Put it back and exhale. Just leave your arms up, roll the body down, take your hands behind your head, fully lace your fingers together and for the moment rest your elbows on the mat for probably everyone in this room. And most people in general, this is going to be too wide despite what I might have told you in the past. Lift your elbows off the mat to where you can see them when you look straight up to the ceiling. Okay, so I don't mean the elbows point to the ceiling. I mean you do with your eyes, but you can in your peripheral vision, you can see your elbow points. Yeah. Alright, think to lift your head. Wait, how do I want to say that? Well, I won't. Shoulders are down. Inhale, exhale, roll your chin to your chest. Literally just that. Okay. Then gently, I've, I've just like checked my chin, right? That's it. Then press the back of your head into your hands easily.

Sort of like a gentle pressing into your hands and then pull the shoulders towards your waist. From there. Inhale, exhale. The spine does the rest. Really the ads, you're going to roll a little higher. Folding right at the chest line trying. That's great. Mark. Trying to come high enough that your low back is fully rested. If it's not, you might have to tuck a little inhale, exhale, and unfurl your body back down. So it's worth re looking at some of this stuff, even if you've done it a million times.

So we're going to do it kind of slow like that again, not that slow though. Elbows are ready to go. Inhale, exhale. Think to just draw the chin toward the chest a bit. Continue it feeling the curl happening right under the chest line. Inhale and exhale. Lengthen yourself back down.

That's a sense of traction as you pull your head back to the ground. Inhale, adding on. Exhale, it starts the same. This time. Inhale, reach to the leg. We know this one yet, so what we do here is pull a little closer, not higher. For most of you, it's going to be more toward the hips. Keep the height, let go the arms. Inhale, reach them up. Keep your eyes forward. Nothing changes. Put your hands behind your back, your head. Exhale and go back down. Oh, this is where it starts to be. A lot of words. More. Inhale, exhale, roll your chin to your chest. If we do this well, likely going to fatigue before the fourth rep. inhale, reach to the back of your legs. Let's see, you compressed to go towards your hips as you pull with your arms. If you didn't, Xcel do. Inhale, let go. Arms go up, up, body stay still, hands behind your head. Very nice Renee and the length and yourself back down. Lovely. Inhale. Exhale. Let your chin go first. Sometimes we float the head and it kind of turns into something else. Inhale, reach to the back of your legs. Exhale, pull towards it. That's it.

Keep that height and nothing changes. Inhale, arms up. Good. Helen, hands back and down we go. So next one I believe is four hoping I'm fatiguing you a little bit. Inhale, exhaling. If not, look for it. Inhale, reach to the legs. Exhale, sink and feel the health solid. You can be. Inhale, arms are up. I will add on. Put them behind your head. Exhale, rotate to the front or inhale, stay high. As you come through center, go to the back to remember the feeling. Keep going that you had. When you gently press the back of the head into the hands, right?

It wasn't like you're lifting out of it and supporting your head in that place. No, you're trying to drop the head back and hold yourself up more from the spine, not just the upper spine. One more. Come back to the center. Reach to the back of the legs. Take the inhale you deserve. Use the arm strength. All you want. Let the arms go up. Keep them straight this time.

Turn the palms away from you and reach back to the mat. Arms will stay off the ground. One leg up to tabletop, other leg up to tabletop. So quick reminder, I'm about to go into a fairly large AB series. If it goes to your neck or back or don't let that psych you out. It's never as bad as you think is it? Um, if it starts to go to your neck or low back, it's just not worth it. You should take the break and then come back and you'll be effective.

Here we go. For the hundred. It's an inhale. Exhale, curl yourself up. Go ahead and go to your leg position if you want, Mark, we're just going stay here for a minute. We inhale five counts. It's inhale two, three, four, five and exhale two, three, four, five. It's a breathing exercise. That's all it is. Good. And so the the arm pumping is traditional. Feel free to do it. You know me, I kinda like the version where we slowly reached the arms up. Two, three, four, five and PRS to the legs are either up, they're bent, they're on the floor, they're one. It's up to you.

Most important thing is that the backstage is still in, down and exhale, two, three, four, five and into three, four, five and out. And don't be afraid to see those ribs move on. This. They have to expand. You're going to tell me three more of Jesus. Pete, two more. Thank you. And in, and one more time for 10 rounds and draw the legs in. Set the feet on the ground, then reach the arms back.

Slide the legs out to straight. Oh, the hundred we love that hundred. Alright. As you're reaching overhead. Can you imagine someone's pulling you by what? Your wrists and your ankles and instead of holding your arms and legs in their sockets, rather hold from the middle. Connect the rib cage to the hip joint, not the hip joint. The upheld the top of the pelvis. Hang on there. Everything else is relaxed for a roll up. It goes like this. We inhale. I'm going to stop you, so hang. Hangout to the chest. Lift right arms are low.

Bend your knees, a little pressure, heels into the ground. Start exhaling. Grab your legs if you want to and come back up. Straighten the legs out. If you've been good and you're in a curved position, lovely. Actually you are better where you are in the first place. You just dropped into it. Come tell her like you are. That's better.

Inhale again. The spinal leads that we're laying back down, leading from the hips, reaching all the way back. I'm going to do one more slow like that just so that you can kind of really milk it. You inhale, bring the arms, head, neck and shoulders up. Look to your legs. This is sort of the standard. Bend the knees just for this one. Build the hamstrings. Engage, blow out your air to lift off. Legs will be straight and you end up shoulders over hips in this nice long line.

Inhale. Exhale. We go down. Now there are harder versions of it. Thank you. Feel free to do a harder version if you know it, I'll correct you if I need to. Otherwise, exhale, rounding. Oh, good. Inhale. Now there's energy here, right? It's not wasted time. You use it.

You find the motion within your body. It's always moving. You better hope it is anyway, as motion is life, so find the motion even when it appears still. Aaron, you get this tiny bit of like a near the top of it almost looks like you're rolling up and over. It's okay if you turn your arms, but just don't take the shoulder girdle with it and we come. Good. Nice Helen up there and Hey, loving it. Let's go back down just to the shoulder blades at Mark. Do you want it? These just gently put just a little [inaudible]. There you go.

To the shoulder blades. Okay, one more. I wasn't clear with that. So we'll come up once more. [inaudible] and we go down just to the shoulder blades. Here it is. When you get there, you're looking forward at your feet. We in him, if you can imagine drawing the leg bone deeper into the socket so it's light and it floats up. Same light goes down. It's coming back up and, but find it not at the hip higher somehow. It's like the breath almost as it. One more. Put it down. We're going to the other side. No, a seamless transition.

One very little tension in the leg. It's, it's, I'm simultaneously trying to reach out on my foot and hold the leg into the body. Last one. Good. And the knees a little. Press the heels into the ground. When you're ready. Exhale to come up. Keeping those shoulders down, right. Slide the feet in or pull the feet in a little bit closer, holding onto the knees and lengthen your back. Okay. If you find that the knees become a PR, the legs become a problem.

You can go wider. You can go into a butterfly position or whatever that is, but we want from here, from the low back to lengthen up. You're welcome to use your arms. I recommend it. In fact, I would even kind of push and keep the elbows wide instead of here. Push and find the upper back. Really just the upper back you're looking for. That's great. Really good. Really good. And then exhale round back just for a second. We're coming back in here.

Leave your head down for a moment. Start at the low back, straightening up, looking for just an upper back arch, being mindful not to throw the head too much. It should feel pretty good. And we'll roll back. Switch the hands to underneath and bring the legs to tabletop or parallel, right? It's a double leg stretch ins in a really small but big way. All you're going to do is inhale on the exhale. Push your knees into your hands, but don't let your hands move. Elbows are still wide. So you're going to look at your abs and going to sink.

Inhaled won't look like much, but you might feel that. Exhale, push the knees into the hands to press the belly down. I'm going to exaggerate just for effect, but it doesn't need to be this fast. Inhale, you can even let go on the inhale. On the exhale, push the knees into the hands and watch the abs drop. One more time like that. Either you stay like that or you let go and let the knees touch or the toes touch the ground in the bent knees. Exhale, bring it up and push it. Inhale, let 'em go down. You don't have to touch the ground. That might be too far. How do you know the back will move?

The back cannot move in order to make this effective. The legs are weightless. The tailbone is down and back. If it's too easy, keep doing it, but what you'll do is stretch the legs out low at the bottom and bring it back right. You'll touch down first. You'll skim them out, then you'll bring it back, but you know that your low back doesn't change, not even a millimeter. One more time. I'm perfectly content up here. Hold the knees, roll your head down. Have the knees in briefly. Chin towards your chest as you roll right back up. Elbows are wide, so you feel the shoulders reaching to your waist extent and not extend. Draw, take one foot to the ground. So it's the same idea.

Single leg stretch and change. I almost guarantee you can make this harder than the normal, so enjoy. Good Zen face, Sam days. Good, good, nice. Very nice. Beautiful. Mandy. Good. Little more inner thigh and a more inner thigh. You're focused. You're looking forward. Okay. We started on the right leg. Is that true? Yes. I mean, sorry. A both thing.

I guess I didn't tell you that. Did I let your head go down when it's even, but we did. Is that true, Wendy? I think so too. I almost always do. All right. Coming right back up, right back up. Same exercise. Different now is going to be, we'll go to the regular where you straighten the leg and you're going to press your hands into the shins. You can do it the normal way if you want, but yeah, what we do there. That's right. You're going to go just like that. Extendible one leg, your left leg, let's say, and really push. Yeah, and change and hold that for a second and hold good. And now let's go and change and good. Very nice.

Both of you look pretty good. I'm going to say, let your straight legs be higher. So it's up there. Yes. Here's your, yeah, there you go. There's your target somewhere in there. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. And what you can do, keep going. Your knee slightly veers out. Just don't let up. You're out. How are we doing? 402 when it's even, which I think is there. Rest, rest, distressed. Okay. Hands go behind your head. Extend your legs straight up if that's available to you. Otherwise the knees are bent. No big deal. Okay, devil straight like that.

So we either you can stay here. So in fact, let's do it. This is a hard way to do this. Squeeze the inner thighs together. Make sure your low back is down. If it's not, don't stay here. Rather come to the normal positions, which would be head up. All right. If it back is down, keep it down and reach the legs out on a diagonal.

You're not going for down. Exhale, pull up. I suspect with your heads down you won't be able to go far and if you do, I'm going to bring the heads up anyway because it makes me a little nervous to Andy. Why don't you just bring your head up if you to go that low because I don't, I don't, I'm not really looking for neutral spine here at the moment. Just for this one. One more time. Everybody bring head, neck and shoulders up.

You can either bend the knees if it's gotten to be too much. Now if you want to go lower, go ahead. But same rules. Legs are weightless. They're reaching long out of the hip joint and Oh, and by the way, the goal is not necessarily to get to the floor. It's like, am I still working my abs? Last one coming up, we're going to move into the criss-cross, but with bent knees, so coming towards the window first you twist into it. One, squeeze. The inner thighs change too. You can draw the knee in quite close today as we're doing it.

Don't let that be an excuse not to come up to it though. Still looking for that feeling of the head being back in the hands. You're just being carried from side to side at this point. If you want to extend the leg, do that now. One, two, three. If you do it, we'll line up those legs like they're sliding against a wall or something in between the inner thigh. Last two here, one back to center. Both knees bend and let your feet come down. Reach the arms overhead.

The feet are apart in a pelvic curl stance. So there again about sitz bones distance. That's great. That's great. Stretch your arms guys. Stretches. Stretch. I want them straight. Straight arm, straight arm. Straight arms. Okay. You can go back a little further, Jim with your arms. Ah, lovely. From there we exhale. Bring your arms through the air. Peel your hips up. Sorry for the late call Mandy, so they had to stand down. Hips are coming up.

There we go. Good, good, good, right. Inhale, exhale. Feel where your arms connect your back, roll the spine down and reach the arms overhead. So working timing, not just for timing sake, but it's not a bad idea. Be aware of your feet, their level. Hopefully flat. Peel up with the arms going through the air. Yeah. Good. Go ahead and bring your hips up, Mark. Yes, let's stay here. Let's stay here. Same thing when they just bring that, it might be ribs. That's it. That's it. Whatever that feels like. All right, so with the arms floating off the ground, thank you Andy. Good idea. In gym, reach a little further with the arms. Feel the back. Extend your right leg up to the ceiling. If that throws you, you should put the triceps down and feel free to use them. I mean it should throw you a little bit. Exhale, kick the leg down one in, he'll bring it up, kick down two and bring it up. Three. The leg is straight. Keep the leg straight the whole time arc. Even as it goes down, I want six.

So when you get to six, keep the leg at the top. So I know where I am. I think that's it, isn't it great. We've been the leg. Put it down on the ground. Adjust yourself. If you need to fear a real out of whack, you should put the triceps back on the floor. Other leg comes up, reach the arms and we go. Whole one. Be kind of aware of that leg. I'm seeing some sort of loose knees and I don't mean that they have to be rigid, but they are not to bend and straighten. They can start Ben.

Statement six one stays at the top. Good. Stay there. Flex that foot. Let the hips drop to the mat. Not drop it. Touch and backup. No peeling. Just up and down. Good and up and up. Try not to jet one side more than the other is the next one. Five. Great. Let's do six. Next one up. Hold. Put the foot down.

Roll the spine halfway just because I want to readjust it. That's a bit long to not your back up when you're ready. Arms are reaching or if you're over that part of it, put it down. Take the leg up, flex the foot, touch down, and push up one and touch down and push to feel the leg bone. If you're into that kind of thing. Moving in the hip socket, right?

It's not always about the muscles gang. It really isn't. I don't know how many of that is. Okay. Put it back down and with the arms, you're going to reach them overhead as you roll the spine to the mat. So you end up sort of how we started. Yeah. Stretch the legs out. Put them together, turn the palms toward each other, feel the back of the ribs on the mat, and we roll ourselves up.

And just before we finish it, we draw the knees. Zen, float the feet off the ground. If you've never done rolling like a ball, it looks like it should just be fun. And it is. But it might be a little more challenging than you thought. So let's just all do this really quickly. Let's press into our our hands. Okay. The legs totally relaxed and they're not going to move, but they're there.

They're not held out there. They're just dropped. Squeeze your inner thigh. Okay, rock back to the shoulder blades and in rock back to the shoulder blinds. You don't have to it just don't let the legs move. Don't let the thighs come any closer to try not to move your eyes. Okay?

Try to make both ends of this rocking even so it's not [inaudible] sort of up, right? It's equal. Equal, equal, equal. Okay. Next time you can come up. Stay at, so the trick to this is not what is, there's lots of tricks. If you change this distance, you're going to flatten out. I'm going to say keep it a little curve to the low back as best you can. Next trick is depressed the shins into your hands. For the pros in the room, you bring it as close as you want. You can let go if you want, but if you're, if you're learning it and you want a smooth ride, you press the shins into the hands. Here we go. Nothing changes. We inhale back, exhale up, inhale back.

So you don't have to [inaudible] when you get going again, you have to think about falling back and you will. The smaller the ball, the more challenging it is. One more time. I leave mine open. Next time you come upstairs. Okay, good. And now set the feet down. Stretch yourself out. It says men don't do the lattes. Yes, right. We're going to get them. Mandy. We're getting them. Why don't you tell your friends?

You just don't want them to know. Right? It's a secret. Tell your friends. I mean, I know you have girlfriends, but still everyone's, exactly. It's your edge, right? Okay. We won't tell them. Oh, that's it. That's it. I'm going to start spreading that with Helen winning. Yeah, we're good. We've got to just keep signing Helen up for golf.

Well, the moment if you can get it, you hear that they're working in on your money back there, Helen. All right, spine stretch. So arms on an imaginary table and I think focus, forget the lower arm right there. Press on the table, but do that not to press on the table, but to get longer in your spine lifting in your spine. You don't have to try to do anything in your spine. It'll happen for now. Feet flex knees can be bent. Exhale to draw the abdominals in like you're doing a chest lift, cause in fact you are your arms for the moment are just going to go straight ahead. Let's not even go down with him. Chess like you're feeding yourself in between the upper arms.

You still are pressing down on that imaginary table. Beautiful Annie. Inhale, exhale as you roll back up here, using that imaginary table as leverage. Not a tremendous amount of strain, but there's some inhale, nice Mark and exhale forward. We go. Okay, so this is not to do with anything with collapsing. Inhale, nice and exhaling. Lovely, beautiful Mandi. And inhale, nice, gentle exhale round forward. The head would be the first to go. I should have said that. Good. There you go. There you go. There you go. And just pull your shoulders backwards. There you go. And now roll back up.

So the challenge is letting the arms move separate from me. The spine. Exhale round forward. Good. So it's just your head, upper back, middle back. And now you're starting to reach with the shoulders there. So just pull them back. Yeah, it's a funny thing. I'll show you what it looks like cause it doesn't feel that way. Adding on exhale to round forward. Looks like this.

You start out nice and then to to feel like you're going further. You do that but you don't need to. Okay. So here we are from your drop the hands to your shins. I'm gonna encourage everyone to bend the knees for the first one so that you can feel the pelvis roll forward. You can feel the spine straighten on this diagonal line and you're pressing downward.

Deborah, I think you can get flat or in your back. Pretty sure if you bend your knees like the rest of us. Ah, she knows what she's doing. Okay, fair enough. So then we raise the arms up. I'm still thinking if you bent the knees it would help. But I dunno, you know, your body, we round over and we roll back up. That's probably the trickiest part in terms of coordination. Let's do it that way. Again, I'll kind of like the palms down tonight as exhale.

It's your head that moves first, but in fact, you're lifting up through the front of the body of the stretch, the back of the body. Then drop the arms as you lengthen the back bend or not at the knees, whatever you need. Then your arms come up to inhale, looking somewhere probably from your feet. If you can challenge that stretch forward more, you should then from the low back or the low adds, which however you see it, you roll forward and up one more like that. Hicks Hill. We round forward the collarbones. If you can see or sense your shoulders in your peripheral vision, they're not creeping forward at all. Hands go down, body gets along on this.

Inhale. Exhale, float the arms up or just stay there would be fine to lean forward to everybody. Uh, I don't know what the breadth is. It's somewhere in exhale to roll all the way up. Good from here. Let's take the hands behind the head.

It's the exact same exercise with a minor change, elbows or forward. You can see them, right hands are almost below the base of the skull. Exhale, rounding over. It's the same thing. We use all the air out from here. We inhale on that diagonal line looking for backwards, backwards.

Extend the arms on the exhale. They're easy. Inhale. Refold the arms as you allow the spine to get longer. Do you see your elbow? Good. Exhale, round and roll up. I appreciate that answer. And down we go. It can be awfully lonely up here. Sometimes in here. Good, good.

I'm going to hang out there. Go ahead. Go ahead and extend your arm so you can exhale. And let's hang out here. Breathing. And my advice on this one, I think it's the hardest exercise in the repertoire actually, is to relax. Not saying don't work. I'm saying relax almost everywhere you possibly can, holding the shape and you will most likely get what you need in your back. Right?

Can you be any longer without trying so hard and I'm just projecting. Yeah, yeah. So Mark, can you take your arms any further back by your ears? Yeah, like that. And lean forward. I'm gonna say bend your knees. Are you guys all right? Good. That's it, Mark. Right? I'd been at your knees even more, Mark. You'll enjoy it.

You'll like it like that. There you go. Big inhale. Next time it feel just round over. I was at a stretch round over and roll. Rollout. A bit of a stretch. Well, I'm talking to a spinning instructor. He likes suffering. All right. Can I move on? I don't know. I didn't do it. So are you really sorry, not so sore. Moving on. Okay. Here we are.

I'm like so right. Put your feet together and it's going to be a while that we're sitting up here. So the minute your quads and hip flexors take over their mentor, but if they take over, just bend your knees. Rhomboid yeah, among other things. Okay, so that's enough. Okay. Rotate to the front. This'll be an inhale. Okay. Exhale. Thanks Sandy. Good thing for the mirror. Inhale, float.

The arms are just effortless, right? The shoulder blades are heavy. Exhale, we come center and on the same exhale we fold back to the starting position. It's the spine that rotates. You extend the arms and I'm thinking that to the side, to the side, to the side. Now they float up. Good. Lifted your chest a bit. Nice. Rene and back to center to fold. I think of the Michael Jordan.

It's an old poster. But the wingspan thing, it's not just here, it's there, right? It's long back to center. Not suggesting we'd have that long of arms, but we can pretend we can. We can know it differently in our body. Extend the arms to a T. they float up. The Palm says if they're gonna clap it. They don't cause we need those trapezius. Relax back to center and fold.

So now I'm still working with the spine, right? Feel the shoulder blades. I'm sorry. Fall as your arms go up. Keep it QB. Take your time. Pull yourself to center. Now when you read bend the elbows, it's like the shoulder blades melt down your back. Lifting your chest a tiny bit right to the back. Inhale, rotate. Exhale, extend to a T. shine the chest up a bit. Nice. [inaudible] and then arms full oat to the ceiling.

Exhale your way back to center and release. Lovely. Lovely. Okay, I'll come back to that, but let's give her legs a sort of a break. Come to a table. Top first. My feet are a part fingertips. If you can face your heels. Okay, you're welcome to do it. Straight leg if you want to. I'm going to give it just a little stretch first.

Um, if this isn't good for your wrist, turn your hands to the side. Some people will prefer this on their fist, right? But what we want to do is straighten the arms. That's probably the hardest part. Try not to go to the back if you can Rene. It just won't stretch what I'm trying for you. You can go to the side.

Would that help enough? Yeah. Okay. Otherwise we're here. All right, so try and feel the back extensors here. Not an easy thing to do. Can it ends up all on the forearm if you don't try to pull the shoulder blades down. All right. From that place, lift up. You can put weight and please do put weight into your feet. Whichever version you've chosen, you're just looking at the ceiling. It's kinda, it's a decent opportunity to stretch out the front of your hips, not to mention your chest and shoulders hinge at the hips. You're just going to almost sit down and we'll go again.

I am going to add that Andy, just cigno and your butt should help you here. Use it and down going. I'm just gonna look at you. So if for a moment, sorry for a moment, as you look forward, wherever that ends up being, when you go up the head doesn't deviate it, it's with you. Okay. So what I, what I'm seeing in some people is you start up fine. They had gets going without you and then body gets going without you and it's just not fun. So it's more like robotic. Boom. Okay. Up we go.

Hopefully find the stretch. Feet are balanced and down you come much better. Last one, I'm going to add in the um, well not F. once you come out, I'll tell you and okay. Going into a tricep dip. So does anyone want a band that would prefer not being on the wrist anymore? Okay. They're right by Mark. If anybody wants one, I'll get it.

If you're happy to get up and get you one. Otherwise we're coming to this place again. Instead of being up in tabletop though, we're just going to get the hips out of the way. Okay? We're also going to keep the shoulders back. This doesn't count and we're not counting any of them that do this. Okay?

This is just the upper back stretch we don't need, right? It's there and it's bent. Elbows straighten elbows. Okay. You can use your feet if you don't want your feet. You want less feet? Move them out. I don't know. Tell me how that works actually yet. You may run out of room. Here we go. We're bending. I'm doing 30 ish, one and two. It's getting wet.

Ooh, five-ish. Seven Oh boy. They're eight nine you'll listen to your body 10 if you want one leg off. It's just going to challenge the balance and the tricep on that side or opposite side. Three and four. Don't let me not count those ones where the shoulders point forward. Seven. Thank you. Eight nine Oh boy. Who said 30 switch legs.

If you're using a one down, up to I count the at the top three. Nice. Four. Watch the shoulders. Five. It's just the elbow. Six. Seven go and you go. Eight. Nine. That's impressive. But the foot down. Ease your way out of it. Well Don, Andy, I want to clap for you if I could. That was nice. Okay, so that's our goal. Yeah.

Three more sets. Why candy? Okay, maybe one but not yet. Uh, instead we're going for the saw. So do you see the method here that to my madness, we're about to do something. The arms float in the air and they're not meant to do anything, but often they do, but now they're tired. So pre fatiguing as they used to say. Or maybe still do we rotate? Oh, come back. Just come back. Yeah. Lovely. Take a minute and just be aware of your lower body. It's your anchor.

It's not to move. Not at all. Okay, so you're lifted up. We'll go to the front again. Rotate it. You can extend energy all you want. You're reaching outside that little toe. The back arm reaches quite a lot. I'm going for length rather than just a rounded spine. Sit up tall on an inhale, come back to center. You may have to do a little Ben to the elbow to clear each other even if she staggered and reach. Okay. Hang out here for a second.

Whichever side you're reaching to you out of. Feel that opposite hip. Reaching into the floor. Find opposition everywhere. You can sit up tall in here and center. We could do this. Let's make it so we don't have to think too much. We in here. Once you get here, go into it. Sitting up tall. I don't really peel up there. You could originally did, but I'm liking. Well, the way I was taught, which is to encourage the back extensors up, rebound elbows and back to the center. I should kill you. I will inhale, rotate.

Extend their arms. When you get there, exhale. Extend. It's like it's a stretch. Stretch the hamstrings in, you know, sit up in that long spine. Fold the elbows to come back to center. One more time and heel rotate. Extend the arms, reaching forward. Find out position. Lovely. Very good genetic nail that indeed looking at making it look easy and center.

I had a request so I, it's not my fault. Round two. Round two. Anybody want to dine a TheraBand now? All right. What's the number? Not 30 30 is a bit ridiculous. 15 let's do 16 in case anyone wants to take one leg off. They can do eight and eight. I'm going to try straight legs.

I may not stay there, but Andy has over here inspired me, so I'm going to check it out. Yeah, if you do the straight legs and I'm an let's put it in play, how would we use them later in the back support. So you use your hamstrings. All right. Feet flat if you can bend elbows and up. So it's going to be a smaller range, right? Because you're going to stretch you that much quicker. Three four is that for fun? I like it.

Six right? Here's the other option, right? Seven. Eight if you're using one leg, you should change. Oh God, I said too many numbers. Three or 11 1715. Okay. I'm going to sit down whatever number that is. Well, yeah. Okay. Fun, fun. [inaudible] all right, so going into open like rocker, if you know what move forward on your mat. If you don't know it, you're coming with me, which is a more extended version of an open leg rocker. Either way, we're all getting in seated position just behind the tailbone. Walk your feet in. Um, if you know the full open like rocker, I don't need to kill you so I won't. If you don't know it, you're holding onto this shins or somewhere.

You draw the shoulder blades down like you're pushing on that imaginary tabletop so your back is flat. We do a teeny tiny tuck of the pelvis to roll back to the shoulder blades. We do a big exhale to roll up and we try to straighten our legs and our, I mean our backs at the top, we do a little tuck. Nothing really changes until this little articulation that the spy, things that help don't let the bones of the legs get closer to the body. At any point. Preferably they don't get further away either. They stay with, they start maybe a tiny bit depending on the spine, right?

To avoid rolling all the way to the back of your head. Okay. If your legs are straight and you sometimes struggle with getting up, I always recommend slightly letting me, uh, hands go at the back and then re catching. Andy took our advice. He is inspired himself and therefore it is rubbing off. I like it. One more pick up version up. We come holding it, I'd grab onto the legs, bring them together, let one foot go to the floor.

Knees are bolted together. So it's as if the thighs are one we roll down all the way. Touch the back of your head, reach your arms overhead, still squeezing the thighs. Might as well squeeze hips toward each other. Come up, reach for the toe. You can be rounded to do it. Just don't let the shoulders slide up. Lengthen your back.

Roll down like [inaudible] [inaudible] and back. If that's too hard on the legs, you move the foot out a little bit. The one on the ground, which for the foot. Then up we go. Leave the arms up as we go down. Good. We'll change feet down here. Keep the back still as you do. Squeeze the glutes inner thigh. Go inhaling. If you can.

Inhale the whole way up. Do that. It's a little more challenging. Yeah. Nice. We're now you've got long legs. You and Wendy both probably would want to have your foot a little further out. Having said that, you look like you're handling it fine, but I would one case where the teacher's getting off easy with her short legs and down. One more time. I might've already said that, but anyway, I'll put go Ben. Like that's in the air to tabletop. When the other one to match it, arms are right alongside the shins. I'd touch.

If you want to roll down to the shoulder blades, leave the legs in space. Roll up, hold onto him flat on your back. So enjoy. Enjoy the break of the legs. I'm holding, I'm shifting back. Remember how at the beginning of class we pushed into the thighs. I promise you it helps and not, it's not a cheap, you're just working. Try it. You're pressing into it. Amazing, isn't it? Do it again.

Well remember you're kind of pushing against your hands with your legs a little. It's just me. Is that the feet down? Separate the knees and just sit right up on top two first. I think hold on somewhere. Um, I think, I think it's true that if you bring your feet closer, you can get more of a hip stretch, but it kind of depends on where you're trying to stretch.

So I want you to feel good. Um, so hold on. Find a straight spine and then, so we're gonna round over in a minute, but to start, pull forward in the straight spine. I suppose I'm guiding my knees down toward the floor with my elbows as well. But if you're, you know, if you don't need that or want that, all right. Okay. Angling yourself forward on the diagonal when you've gone as far as you think you can or even want to, that would be a good time to still hold the abs a bit and round over.

If it suits you. Okay. What I'm not trying for is to just stretch the upper back. So if all of a sudden the goal becomes to get down, but you had to back away to do it, kind of lose the point, right? So in your own body, remind yourself we are going for a hip stretch, whether it's inner thigh for you or outer thigh for you is going to be dependent on what you probably need more of. Find your way back to a diagonal line and then I'm gonna slide my feet out, which I know is sliding on. These mats doesn't really work, so let's pick a foot up and move it out a bit so you have more space.

If that's not comfortable, you can cross your legs, you can separate your feet. You can even be like this for where I'm going. Okay? But if you want the hip stretch, keep them down. All right. From there, finding that spine stretch with back extension position again, that just means that your body's on a diagonal line. You might be lower than I am. If you can stay straight, do it, might be higher to feel your back muscles and then we extend the right arm up and as you do that, glance over to your right, turn your head and you're looking under your arm. Here we go, bring it back. Take the other arm up.

Do the same check looking. When you look, you're trying to look underneath. Now it doesn't work for everybody, but give it your best shot. That doesn't hurt and you find the length and we gently from here, you're still leaning forward. You're still with a nice flat back attempt to tuck the pelvis, but don't change your upper back, not even a millimeter, so you probably won't see a thing. Just look down a little gym, so that's going to hold you in place. If you've got energy left in it, you'd either draw the upper arm slightly further back and truthfully it's not really the arms we're interested, it's the shoulders or shoulder blades. If that's enough, you can do it with the hands down and gently guide.

Chest forward. It's all the same. Otherwise, two more. One and two take the arms behind you. I just turn the palms over naturally, put them on the ground, rounding over and then I just helped myself up. Well we're here crossing the legs. If you can, I can give you an alternative if that doesn't work for you. I would not love this. And while the alternative really is to go back where you were, cause I think everybody could do that. So anyway, let's say I'm whichever foot is on top of the sec. Sorry.

Can you put your left leg on top of it? Trust me. It'll be better. Fine if we're all together with the Q's. So the one in front is the left leg. Okay. So we sit til we got ourselves forward again, you can take that arm and you're going to hug as best you can. Be gentle your right knee. If it doesn't fit, it's okay. And be here. I meant left, right elbow, left knee. Thank you. Thank you. Yup. Exactly.

Exactly. The other hand is helping you however you need to. The opposite hip is down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a couple things happening and, and you really can change the stretch depending on what you want more. But in any case, I want it to be relatively gentle. In other words, don't crank on yourself, don't pull really hard away from what you're holding. Um, but you could focus more on the rotation, gentle or you could focus more on the leaning forward first and then gently pull, say the ribs away. And what I mean is if, if we're all hugging our left knee, we would pull the right rib cage. Hm. Actually both the left and the front, the whole board cage back just a little.

So if you want more back, you do that. Oh, you're an unwrapped the hand. Use it. You're going to want it to help yourself up. Use the hand and if you don't think you need it meaning yeah, exactly. Keep the cross the way it is. And we are going, I'd like to go forward first. It might be a better idea to rotate. We'll go on the other way.

Just going to be a little different. So her left elbow around, right knee. Other hand is there for assistance so you don't lean off. It can reach further around you. I just sort of use it as a kickstand, reminding ourselves that the neck is part of the spine and if you're really rounded over and make sure your head's not up. If you are really rotated, make sure your head is starting to look in that direction a bit and then play with where you want it. But gently, this one you could really pull on it and that's not really what I'm going for. Unwind yourself carefully and maybe walk hands back to center if you want real direction and walk yourself up while we're here.

We squeezed the inner thighs so there's a sense of inward press. Again, you can sit like so that's better for you. Even be on your knees if you want it to. I pushed down first to go up with the spine and then I pull, I'm holding on. I'm whole hugging my knees to send the chest up, not really thinking about the shoulder as much. Other than that, they're relaxed down to try to arch. Once again, just the upper back so you're not leaning back. Your elbows would be bent I think. Yeah, release it one more like that.

You're growing tall and this is one of those things. If you, if you bear down on yourself, if you strain to do this, you're going to get shorter. Let the Oregon's rise. I'm told that they're supposed to do and release. We've got to change across the legs and repeat all that. Here we go. Right? Like in front. We're a little looser so we're going to hinge forward. Let's go to the right. Thank you. Hugging. Yup. Left elbow around, right. Good, good.

Oh really? And so if it feels particularly tight, maybe back off a little bit, then breathe into it. See if you can focus your breath to a spot in. Your body will go everywhere, but you can direct it. One of those tools we have, we're going to come back walking yourself center. We're going to come back and come up, shake it out other way, hinged forward first and then rotate yourself.

That breath alone can relax us tremendously if we let it. And I think sometimes if we change our notion of what it is to work out, we could be way more efficient. It doesn't always have to be straining to be effective. At least that's what I'm experimenting with. Take a deep breath and when it feels right to you, come out of it on the next hail or you know when it feels right. Come on back.

We're gonna do one more little back extension here by uh, yeah. Squeeze glutes a little. That just prevents us from over hyper extending and rather lets us feel like we're sliding up a wall. Is it for about to go over? Is it a high jump air? I know you don't do that, but over the pole thing. Okay. I really nice. Okay. If it's available to your hands and knees or come to this position as best you can.

Alright. Almost there. Hang almost there. We're going to play with the arms a little bit more because we want Helen went in that 100 bucks. All right, so what that means for now is your collarbones are straight across. Let's go into a plank position. Let's modify at the wrist of where you need to reach through the heels. So that means push back through the heels so much that you feel the middle of the back of your leg. And I do not mean your knee, I mean the middle of the back of your thigh, those muscles. How do you do it? Well, what I'm doing is pressing through the heels. That doesn't do it.

I think five bones to the ceiling without anything else moving and my knees are rather irrelevant in terms of that cue. From there, bend your elbows a little and come back up. Bend them a little and come back up. Go ahead and bend them all at and come back up. Let's make them bend straight so they're not going to the side. One more time. Put your knees down. Press back, coming away from the hands.

Roll yourself right back up with stay on the knees. This time actually you don't have standards. I'm going to stay on my knees if your butt widen the hands. So if we work here, this time we're going to go slightly wider. And when we go down the elbows, we'll go wide. Okay, so you decide what position you want. The body follows the bend of the elbows. That's it. Here we go. Let's go. Six slow one and up. Don't forget the back of the legs.

Two and three. If your chin gets there before the rest of you, you just think you're getting down. I think I said six last one and knees down. Stretch, back. Release the toes. Right. I'm just going to mention it because it's common and I'm sure none of us think we're doing it and I include myself in that. There is a strong tendency, especially as you get tired to go. Alright, I made it.

No right. Rather stuff when you need to stop, but keep your head as part of your body. Want another shot at it. Here we go. I'm sure you did it that way to begin with, but it was worth the mentioned. Here we go six it is or hold plank or go to your forums. I mean there's so much you can do, right? You don't have to follow me. I know that. Here we go. Down and up. One is doing the elbow sideways thing again to, I can't really tell you exactly where to put your hands cause everyone's a little different. Let them be comfortable. Oh, I can tell you that you can pull weight out of those arms. If you think about the powerhouse, one more, right hips up to the ceiling. If that was six, walk the feet in a little bit.

Put the hands back where it feels like they're coming out of the shoulder. In other words, the width of the shoulders rise up to the toes. Bend your knees, tailbone to the sky as you guide your ribcage toward the thigh bones. So you're kind of pushing back into that. Recommit to tailbone to sky. And then after you've done that and not much is going to change, imagine the top of your head reaching through the floor. There's a real tendency.

Some of you have super flexible shoulders and you could just almost go through your arms. Now looking for that, I want your arms lined up with your uh, head, upper arms with your head best you can. Not everyone will do that long spine. If you can keep that, start to straighten your legs. If you can you press the heels down to but be gentle. Be gentle. All right. Where I said we're almost done already, didn't I? Oh boy. We better be, we better be I suppose. All right, I'll get it again.

So now we roll into a plank. Okay. Step forward with one hand as far as you can and then move the foot. Okay. Let's say in first and so in other words. Yep. We're like, so for now and then, uh, yes.

Good. When I made the correction I was just gonna say Mark, what you might want to do is just move your right foot forward just like two inches. Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's use the hands as we need to, but push through that back heel again. Yeah. Lighten up on the hands cause they've done enough. Yeah. So you've got weight, not equal, but probably pretty close in both legs. What can I hit the floor? Good.

Lower the back knee down just for a second. Allow the hips to fall forward. Do they just sort of gently fall forward? Start thinking of elongating the back of your body. You could lift up. I'm going to actually go right back to that other lunch. If the other lunch isn't working for you to have the knee off, you can stay here. Otherwise lift it up and we'll move into the second version, which was to just walk the foot out and inside.

And I do turn the foot out a little bit. I'm going a little more now for adductors. Okay. And you'll get more hip too. So here we are. Go ahead, Wendy. I'm following you. Do that. So you have an option. It doesn't have to be even. Okay. If you can, you see why I let Wendy, you can just bend the elbows a little, right? You could not do it at all. You might like it better with a need down. I dunno.

It could be more intense, right? It's really going to listen to your body kind of thing. What I will say, whatever you've chosen equal weight on or put weight on the instep of the foot, that's forward. Like don't let the foot roll out. Okay. This is for you, Jim. All right. So now use your hands, help yourself up, lift your hips a little to walk the foot however you need to, and then either go to the knees, but don't, don't hop out of it unless you're used to it. Okay? And we changed sites. In other words, when you've done a big stretch like that, you gotta be careful getting out of it because you are in fact in a gigantic stretch. So your back leg is straight, you're energized through the back heel. Right? I could come by and pull.

That's good. Very good. And then just take a deep breath and you might decide that, Hey, if I really like, Oh, I might sync my hips closer to the ground. But again, we're not about tightening up now. So if that starts to just fight to you, that's your clue enough. I noticed I switched to my fist. Not even, even as I tried to pull weight out of my hands, it's enough on my hands. I like to go to that. So it's up to you. All right. We gave it a little release, didn't we? We dropped to the knee. Uh, you could release the toes if you want to. The idea being that you start to think about lengthening both sides of your body or your back is usually a good way to think of it. If it's easier on, you know, the next stretch I'm going to is where you move the foot out.

It might be easier to do while you're unloaded like this to move it out, hands adjust back to the straight leg. If that works for you, make sure it's okay. Good. And so what I'm seeing really nice variation on is if I just teach it straight, you know, the general rule would be knee over ankle, right? But Andy, Wendi, even a gym or going for a little bit more by pulling that foot more forward, you don't have to, but just know that that that's something you could do, right? That that just makes it impossible for me. So I'm going back to the basic, which is plenty intense. Yeah. Good. You can bend and straighten yellows, right? You don't have to hang out in a place that you start to fight. All right.

I gotta let you go home eventually, don't I? Okay, so let's bring ourselves out of it. I'm going to lower the back knee just to let my foot come out. Then I'll curl the toes under. So the feet are flat. Your hands hanging out over your thighs. Fold yourself in half. Checking in with your body, right? If you feel like a tremendous stretch in your hamstrings, it'd be better at this point of class to leave.

The knees bent might be better for all of us. And for a minute, just don't tighten anything other than what it takes to keep you upright. Like let the shoulders go. Let the muscles in the face go. So the lips are kind of fallen off your teeth. I'd show you, but Oh, if you're laughing and smiling, that's a muscle.

Let it go. Just kidding. Sort of the rule. I mean, it's amazing. You can actually feel how heavy your head is. It's fabulous. Try saying fabulous when your teeth are okay. Notice or upper, I mean, your lips drove around. It knows it's all good stuff, right? We're so controlled. Hm. Fought someone over who pumping my gas today. That's how controlled I was.

I need to let that go. All right. Draw the Addison. Just start to roll up without over committing to anything without suffocating. Yes. Okay. Somewhere around midway. Start feeling strong again. Don't tighten. Just know how strong you are. Know the framework that you have at your rising, rising up, off of that you have supported by working. That's your head, that heavy and your lifts are okay. Well, take your time. Inhale, arms come up.

Let go to the side and just, let's do, I don't know, two more. And, and the goal from me at the moment is how light can I feel now? How is heavy a moment ago? And now I'm like, and one more filling, upbringing, whatever you need back in recognizing it's all about you and you aren't dad. Thank you for coming. Well done. Well done for the new people.