Mind-Body Alignment Reformer

Hey, excited to be here for another Pilates Anytime reformer class, and we're gonna be focusing today on alignment, and not just alignment, like we talked about bony alignment. We're really talking about internal alignment of perception, how you feel your body. You know, feeling as if there is this connectedness to you, and we're gonna do it just by running through a nice flow Pilates reformer class. Nothing crazy, but we're gonna move in all directions, we're gonna have that experience, and we're gonna start just standing up, eyes closed, feet flat on the ground, and just pretend that your head is attached by this really heavy elastic band, and our bodies are dangling and just hanging down from space. And as you do that, you can start feeling things like the muscles in the back relax and the shoulders relaxing and becoming heavy.

You can feel the knees being a little soft and as if we're reaching for the floor with our feet. That's the feeling that I want to create. And then bringing attention into the feet, move around the feet a little bit, weight forward, weight back, weight side to side, roll to the right foot, left foot, and just sort of listen to the body moving, and then move the knees around in circles, back and forth, and just sort of observing what you feel in the body, and then the hips, the pelvis going in both directions, like a nicer conduction, hula hoop kind of motion, and then take it up into the thoracic spine, circles going both directions, and then shoulder circles, and then rotating the head to the right and the left, and then the whole body rotating through the body, through the feet all the way down, just sort of feeling that connectedness, and then bring it back into the quietest spot you can find in your body. So what I mean by that is where is the least amount of tension suspended? We just sort of explored in like five seconds where your body moves from.

Taking a deep breath. Allow the pelvis, the hip flexors, and extenders, the glutes, the hamstrings, just let them go. Right? The bones are holding us up. The elastic is holding us. Now take a picture of yourselves, Imagineary of what you're feeling, record it, open your eyes, and let's get on the reformers. So on our backs, let's go with two reds and a blue spring, and we're gonna start with footwork, Why? Because I like starting with footwork and we're gonna start on our heels, feet are parallel, legs are parallel about hip width apart and just start off with some extending the knees and back in, settling the body, feeling gravity, drop.

The shoulders away, a big smile across the chest, the back of the neck, and the face, we can always smile across the face, but you're already happy today. So we're doing fine. Fill the low back lengthening a little bit as you go out, the ribs softening down, fill the lubrication happen in the hip joints. Let's do about four more of those. Just nice and easy waking up.

The elasticity in your body. Think of it more like springs lengthening and recoiling, bringing the feet together, knees together. Let's keep going with that same rhythm. So everything together parallel. Let's your breath be natural. The only thing that I want to make sure is that we're not holding our breath. Right? Some people feel like you have to have breath as a rule.

XL when you push out or exhale when you come in. I am as far away from that rule as you get. To me, normal breath happens. And if I see something happening that I need to use breath to facilitate that movement, then I will use a directional breath. And make sure when you teach with breath, that you're always doing it in a direction, inhaling into the chest, exhaling from the ribs, inhaling into your low back so that people know how they get the benefit breath as it pertains to movement. Turn your feet out still filling the heels together, the energy of the heels.

Yep. Pressing out. And just thinking, like, if there's a piece of paper between your heel that you're holding onto the paper, nothing heavy, just filling that connectedness from the heel all the way up into the pelvis, And on this one, make sure that you're feeling that work happening in the pelvis. What is the pelvis doing to maintain itself quiet? While the femurs, the legs are approximating together. A lot of times you'll feel as you push out, you'll feel the back come up off of the mat and just see if you can resist that a little bit. If you can keep that relationship neutral in the pelvis.

Excellent. Take the feet out nice and wide on the bars. Why does you feel comfortable going? Go turned out, right? So we're gonna go turned out. Same thing now. This is a more open pack position for the hip. So it's a little bit easier for the hip. To lubricate than it is with the feet together.

So see if you can feel that difference. Just listen to your body compared to what you were doing with the heels together. Bring in the knees parallel, and the feet parallel still wide. Same exact thing. And then bring your knees towards each other.

So an internal rotation, Some of you might touch. Some of you might not. In my wildest dreams, my knees will never touch. And now let's do the fun part that I love. Let's do full knee circles.

So you come in, knees together, and out and around. Just making sure you're following that direction of the circle. Inside joke with Aaron. We call that, dyslexic Pilates. I'm flying.

Yeah. Reverse the circles. Yep. Circling around. And again, as you're going through these motions, Just observe what you're feeling, because right now what we're doing is finding alignment in the lower extremities. And in the human body, there's no such thing as, oh, I'm moving the sagittal plane or I'm moving the coronal plane or rotational plane. The reality is everything we do has motion in all three planes, and we have to explore that.

The rotation through the knee, the tension on the inside of the knee, the tension on the outside of the hip, and feeling that energy all the way through it. Last one, and then bring the feet together onto the balls of the feet in that prehensile grip, so the toes are wrapping around, send the heels underneath the bar, and just push out and stay out for a second. So here, I want you to feel the heels really reaching long underneath. Even if the knees go into a little bit of hyperextension, I'm okay with that right now. I want you to feel the backside of the body.

So imagine the back of the head and the heels both reaching in opposite directions. Right? So even if the ribs pop up a little bit or the knees hypercent, that's okay. That's okay right now. Just feel that connection in the back of the body because now you're going to allow yourself to return the carriage home trying to keep those heels reaching under the bar and the head reaching behind you as you come down. When you press back out, send those heels underneath, find me underneath there, fill that reaching in the back. Let's go with that couple times.

And press under reach, initiate is really the word we're looking for. Initially that movement with the heels going under and resist the heels coming up as you bring the knees back in. So we're really filling the, hopefully, the backside of the hips rather than the quads and the front of the knees. Let's do that two more times. I remember hearing Ron Fletcher say that we should be so in tune with what we do in the reformer that we could do a whole hour of footwork and learn so much from just footwork. If we really pay attention, sometimes we're looking for this really fancy choreography, but if you listen to footwork. We're bipedal animals.

This is a horizontal orientation of bipedalness, right? How we're working with a foot bar. Close chain, proprioception coming in. So now press out all the way, and this time go up on your toes. Right? And let's keep the heels up, bring the knees bending down while the heels stay up. Yep. The heels stay up the whole time. Pressing back out and back in. And again, observing the different feelings that you're having in your legs.

Where is the tension? Where is the compression? Where is the elasticity? Now, we know elasticities in the springs. Can you match the elasticity in the springs with the elasticities in your myofascial tissues in your body? Can you feel that spring working up in the torso? Can you feel that spring, intention, the elasticity working up in the neck? Right? And that's the connectedness we're looking for today in the class. Let's go right into a combination now.

So you press out, heels down, heels up, knees in. Let's do that a couple times. Out heels down, heels up, knees in. Out down, up, and in, and listen now to the anterior posterior anterior posterior? Can you feel that difference in there where the tension changes as the ankles dorsey flex and plantar flex. And that is normal.

That's how we launch and propel ourselves in movement. Let's go right into running, alternating the legs, always coming up onto the toes before we descend into the heel and the knee bending. And let's pick up the pace a little bit. Let's go to New York. Let's go for a walk in New York.

Not this, Santa Barbara Beach leisurely walk that you ladies are used to. Now while you're going through this pace at this speed, see if you can relax your shoulders and let go of the shoulders, let go of the jaw, feel the back of the neck lengthening a little bit more sort of adjusting, and now I want you to feel the ribs connecting to the pelvis. And I want you to observe where does that tension increase and decrease? Right? Is it more when the heels dropping down or when both feet are in plantar flexion? And I don't have the answer you, but just listen to your body where your body needs to connect to maintain that ease, that fluidity, that length, and relax.

Very nice. Let's go heels, hip width apart. We're gonna go into bridging, so knock your head rest down. And I want this to be as fluid as possible. Right?

Sometimes you've heard me use in my queuing being a jellyfish at the beach. The reason why I picked that cue is because a jellyfish doesn't have any bones. And so if we're thinking of it lifting up from the water rolling in at the beach, it is almost a cellular kind of articulation. So I wanna think about that. Right? Let's take a deep breath in just in preparation, and let's just start with a mini lift of the butt, and then come back down from there. Let's do two or three of those.

The water comes in and floats the butt up a little bit, and then back down pulls the butt back towards the ocean. And up and down. Let's add a few more segments, rolling in coming up a little bit higher. Use your breath now as the tool. Right? So exhaling sort of from the back of the rib cage can help lift the segments up one by one. There are 12 segments between, like, the t seven area with the shoulder blade where we wanna post, keep working your way up until you're all the way up.

There's 12 segments. The average person moves from two segments. Typically l four five and l five s one, and then they hinge. Our goal is to find five segments, five segments that you're articulating from preferably in the upper lumbar and the lower thoracic. So let's come up and stay up this time.

In this position, let's find the opposition of force. So the chest goes down, sacrum lifts up. Fill that opposition. Yep. And then from here, slide the pelvis to the right and to the left. So a pure horizontal glide.

That's it. And then drop the chest down another centimeter, slide right, slide left, drop down another centimeter, and keep finding new segments in your spine that you can move from the next time we do a roll up in our bridge. Keep working all the way down until your bottom is dusting the mat. So we're gonna get down into the l three l four, l five, work your way down down down down down, side to side. Yep. And what happens when we do this is we release a lot of the big muscles that are unfortunately guarding our back and causing things like hamstring cramps, even because of that body seeking its control. Alright. So bottom's down, taking a breath and relax, shake your hamstrings out a little bit. And this time, we're gonna go for as smooth of a roll up as possible, a bridge, and just think again, jellyfish on the beach, warm water, peeling your body up, take a breath up on top, fill the water, pulling you out, so you're actually creating that space in between the segments of the spine, between the cells as you lower the body down, really focusing on that upper lumbar and lower thoracic area.

Let's do one more of those. Now stay up this time. Drop sternum down, and let's press the legs out half the distance and come back in. And half the distance. Now feel where that connection is happening.

See if we can find a little bit of what we were doing in the footwork. Of the ribcage to the pelvis, and gradually progress it. We're just gonna do three more, but progress it until that last one, you're pushing all the way out. On this next one, everybody goes all the way out. And then come back in.

And roll down through your spine. Lovely. Change springs to a red and a blue. We're gonna go feed and straps. Okay. See if we can make some connections here.

You okay with the red and the blue? I shouldn't just assume that you like the red and the blue. It and here's a little lesson too. A lot of people get confused and they wanna follow recipes. The reason why we use springs for feet and straps is to support the weight of the legs by nature. So the idea is that the less springs that we use, the more challenging most these exercises are like preparing us for the hundred or for a single knee stretch, double knee stretch. And so our goal is to use as little as possible.

But we also have people big like me that might have heavier legs that do better with two reds or two, you know, two reds and a yellow or something like that to carry the weight of the legs. The idea is to be assist let's stay parallel to start, and let's just go through like we do with footwork a couple times up and down. And as you go up and down, it's okay to let the butt come up a little bit. I know we talk about that being a no no, but if you can feel the bottom rolling up a little bit, then when I say, maintain the pelvis quiet, you know the difference. And you can go as low as you can, even if the ribs come up a little bit, you're not gonna hurt yourself, but feel the difference on the extremes, and then let's bring it into a controlled environment and see if we can find that alignment.

So do that one or two more times. Just feeling the bottom roll up, feeling the ribs come up when the legs go down. Right? And now let's see if we can maintain the quietness. So if you have the pelvis as a large bowl of soup and the soup is full to the brim, Can we keep the pelvis quiet and the ribcage connected in as far as we can move that range of motion with those straps? I hope that makes sense to everybody out in Pilates any time, Lynn.

And you can see a perfect example here. The rib cage now is connected. The pelvis is quiet. The work is happening through the hip itself. We call this disassociation in Polstar.

This might be a case where somebody having back pain, might not tolerate movement of the pelvis, teaching them how to disassociate that. Right? So from here, let's turn the legs out, keeping their thighs together, similar to what we did in footwork, up and down, same parameters. Notice if there's a difference. Again, challenging yourselves to push the legs down and feel that connection of pelvis to ribcage. And then let's go right into circle.

So legs come up, circle out. That's sleek down. That was for Aaron. That wasn't for you. I know you guys know how to do that.

That was for Aaron. And if we're not having fun, what the hell are we doing? Right? Alright. And just so everybody knows out in Pilates anytime land, I love Aaron, I love Christy, and, we're good friends so we can, we can play like that. You wouldn't want to offend one of your clients by saying that kind of stuff. Let's reverse the circle pushing the feet down, circling back around the other way.

And while we're doing this, listening and again, I'm not babysitting them. I'm not babysitting you on this exploration. I've already created the criteria I want them to do enough repetitions that they can listen to their body and feel that you can feel what's going on. Where where is the tension? Where is the compression as the legs circle around? I can't help but ask myself those questions. Alright.

Meet me at 45 degrees parallel legs. Yep. And now bend the legs in, so the legs always stay tabletop by the time they come in. Right? So they're nice and flat. Yep. And then push them right back out to 45 degrees. And again, just observing how do your hips respond to the knees being together going into flexion and pushing back out, and we'll compare that to what it feels like when we do the frog where the lakes turned out. So do two or three more of these listening to the body. And when you're working on alignment, you need to give your students and you need to take a little more time, more repetitions, feeling it. Right? So the key is the assistance in the equipment that we use, the spring setting, should allow us to do a number of repetitions or variations of that exercise for an awareness training.

Right? If I'm looking for more, just like I really want to get them to have a whole body experience, I might do five repetitions I'm doing alignment, I might do 20 repetitions. Right? Let's go into frog. So turn out heels are together and and press out. And again, observing the difference, legs turned out. What does it make that pelvis want to do as the knees come in? Is it easier for the hips to flex where the legs turned out? Now, typically that would be the case.

That's an open back position in the hip. Very good. And then let's do a little walking on the ceiling. So press out to 45, alternating the legs, still staying turned out, bringing it back to the 45. And again, this starts creating some asymmetry in the load through the tension of the body. So listen. How does the tension feel on the straight leg versus the bent leg come into the pelvis? And again, all you all we're doing in this class is listening.

We're feeling we're observing. Right? You know these exercises. I'm not gonna give you any exercise that you don't know already. Let's do three more of those. And on that third one, bring the knees into the chest, slip the hands into the cuffs. Are you okay with a red and a blue, or do you need me to change it to a red and a yellow? Four. Four armarks, some arm series.

We're okay, Rhett? I figured as much, but I always ask. These are table topped. Let's just start with some sagittal arm arcs with the shoulders. And in this one, the goal is like, you know how we talked about the pelvis being quiet? See, see what happens when we organize and widen the collar bones as we're moving the arms through space. And I like to think that the collar bones are actually rolling back as arms come up and rolling down as arms come down.

It sort of gives you a way of connecting the upper extremities into the torso, into the pectoral girdle, and then go right into circles from here out. So come up. Out around and together, up, out, around and together. And we did not rehearse this, just FYI. This looks great. And again, notice now going into the abducted position, arms out to the side, how that connects now feeling as if when you're pulling down, the shoulder blade connecting to the pelvis.

So feel that back diagonal, and even if you might feel the diagonal cross to the opposite side. One more in this direction, and then we'll reverse from the top. So now we push down, open, and around. Very nice. And now notice the difference of pulling the arms down and eccentrically letting them open up through the shoulder blade.

Very good. Now with the arms down to the side, let them come up off the mat a little bit, and push into the hands as you roll the head and shoulders up. And just stay there for a second, a couple deep breaths into the back, find that sort of orientation. I love the pressure into the hands, as the feedback for the body coming up rather than lifting the head or lifting the shoulders. I love pushing into the hands and then relax. We're gonna slip the straps back on your feet, meet me at 45 degrees with straight legs, and we'll do a set of hundreds with assistance. And we're really gonna be focusing on the breath in this exercise because it is a breathing exercise.

So as you exhale, feel like you're still pushing the straps with your hands, the legs are just gonna stay at 45. Push the hands down to the side for that energy, beating the hands, breathing into five, oh, two, three, four, five. And as you continue that breath pattern, imagine the breath expanding into the back of the ribs that the breath is actually lifting you up. So every time you inhale, it actually lifts you up a little bit and you exhale feel the softening across the front. The diaphragm has to be able to move. You got three more breaths to go.

Keep going. The diaphragm has to push the viscera down. If you expand in the back, you have a little more control across the front. We got one more breath to go breathing into four, five, out, two, three, four, five, and relax. Let's get rid of your straps. Betty nice. And let's come on up into a mermaid position with right knee or shin against the shoulder pads. And you can adjust your brings, how you like.

I typically go with like one red or a red and a yellow or something. It just depends what you wanna feel. I'm not looking for resistance. I just don't wanna make sure you don't fall in the well and, sue me later. How are we doing? Good? How's the spring feel okay?

Alright. So from here, let's start without moving the body. Bring the right hand behind the head. If you've taken class with me before, you know, I love to get this opening like a slinky through the side that's opening up. So we're gonna lean over a little bit towards the left hand and really breathing into that right lung. Because, see, don't we have some good memories of this exercise somewhere?

Breathing into this right lung. And like I love that feeling of the elbow reaching up. Let's go to the other side. Grab the shoulder pad or your shin and then left hand behind the head and reaching that up. And again, feel that length opening up from the sit bone all the way up to the skin of the elbow and use your breath as the directional cue, really opening up the rib cage, bringing some energy into there. And now we're ready to go into a full mermaid, so left hand comes down.

Feel like when that gesture arm, the right arm comes up and over, that we're sort of following that trajectory that we just created with the elbow, up and over, opening through the rib cage and then coming back up. And let's just repeat that a couple times just to the one side. Up and over. Up and over. Let's go a little bit quicker now. See if we can still find that springiness inside the ribcage up and over, spring open, spring closes. Ribs open, ribs spring back, and open, and spring back.

Let's do two more of those. And on this next one, we're gonna come up and over and bring the right hand onto the bar. So we're gonna rotate down. You should be looking down at the springs, and the goal is to try to send that right hip down to the mat and we're gonna breathe into this back area here. We're gonna expand into the posterior rips.

You're in a rotation, flexion, and side bending position. And so this is pretty realistic. And the area that's gonna do that a lot of that movement is gonna be up here in that lower and upper thoracic because of the shoulder girdle attachment. In this position, allow the shoulder blades to drop down a little bit, push the hands into the bar, lift the head as you start to inhale, let the chest lift up, and let your sit bone lift too on that right side. Right. Good. Coming up.

Inhaling now into the front of the chest one more time. Exhale press the hands in the bar, send the sit bone back down to open up that space. Inhale coming forward, sit bone comes up, exhale sending the sit bone down, rounding the spine, finding that that space through here. Yeah. There it is. Good. Inhale come up, let the sit bone drive it.

And exhale pushing back through it. The goal here is to feel the segmental connectedness from the sit bone all the way up to the crown of the head. A lot of times we do these exercises and we're just trying to look like the picture or do the things. I want you to feel the connection. It's like the the sit bone is driving the elongation or the extension of those segments of the spine. They're all neighbors, right? So it's like l five talking to l four. Hey, how the facets doing today?

The facets are great. They just started kindergarten, and then they talk up to the l three and l two and l one all the way up to the base of the head. You know what I'm talking about. It's not a great image and come on up. Now let's think of a nice transition keeping the hands there. Can we rotate to your left and then come down into the z sit facing the back. Yep.

So left shin is against the shoulder pad. Left hand is behind the head. Now we get to see it from the back. Square off. Yep. And we're just gonna do an up and over Again, now we see it from the back, breathing in to the left lung, expanding. I remember I was teaching in Germany One time to a bunch of physical therapists. This is back like in 02/2005, 1995.

And one of the therapists said, you can't breathe into one lung. And I said, well, let me put you in this position and see where you breathe from. And then she said, I guess I can breathe in one lung. So this is where movement facilitates breath. Let the position facilitate the movement of the rib cage. Let's switch to the other side.

How's the body warming up? Feeling pretty good? You're getting ready to have some fun. Oh, I am too. Alright. Reaching that elbow up, filling that expansion there, and then let's go into our full flow of the mermaid over to your right side. So reaching up and over.

Really feel like you're going up and over space and come back and repeat. Let's find some flow to it. Over and up. Over and up. Over two more times, and then we're gonna do that rotation again, bringing the left hand down onto the foot bar this time. Left hand comes down.

Spread the hands apart a little bit. I like to begin like I'm feeling the carriage coming back underneath me a little bit but the arms are straight and that left sit bone is trying to go down so we're really trying to open that space and let's stay here for a few moments because this is where I find we have the greatest difficulty of facilitating movement in the rib cage. And if you're a golfer, if you're a tennis player, if you're a volleyball player, if you're a swimmer, we need this motion in our body to protect our shoulders and our necks. And so I like to spend time here really exploring this expansion of the ribcage. Now, with this one hands pushing down into the bar, head and sternum start to come up, fill that connected chain all the way down to the sit bone coming up as if you're sort of pushing yourself off of the bar, take a deep breath into the chest, exhale press back through it, leading with the sit bone coming down, rolling back into that flexion. Inhale coming up.

Just follow your breath pattern, exhale pushing back. See if you can find the movement between each of the vertebra, as you are articulating that spine with your breath. And you could imagine this is the backside of a golf swing. This is the, you know, swimming and coming through on that rotation. This is a volleyball spike All of those things are part of this motion in the shoulder girdle. Last one, and go right into quadruped here, feet against the shoulder pad, come right up into quadrupeds.

Just slide that right foot back, spin it around. Yep. Minimal changing of anything. Let's stay with the red spring. Alright. You're both on a red spring and push the hands back a little bit. So we're just gonna go back a little bit further. Yeah.

Let the knees come underneath the body. Yep. And I'm looking for this kind of alignment here. So the shoulder, yep. Perfect. And I want the knees to come in and out underneath the pelvis. So you can press the legs out and in a knee stretch exercise here. And let's create the accent with a breath coming in.

Five four three to bring the pelvis all the way forward into a down stretch position. Still hands are still in the bar, bring the pelvis forward chest up. Again, filling this relationship, right? So now we're in that open hip position that we've been just starting to bring some awareness to. And from here, pressing with the arms, press out keeping the leg relationship quiet, let the shoulders do the work now as if we were using the knees before on the knee stretch. Now we're using the arms on the down stretch. Elasticity matching the springs, not trying to use muscles.

Right? Trying to just think of like the gravity is gonna take the carriage out with a very little push. And the springs bring it back in and lift us up through the shoulder girdle. So the shoulder girdle is just doing a nice light work. Some people make this a heavier spring, and if I make it a light spring, a lighter spring is even too much sometimes. Right? Let's do two more. Now from here, add a blue spring on.

So we're gonna be a red and a blue spring going into elephant. So heels down, and this one is about posting weight over the feet. It's not about posting weight on the shoulders. I love to feel the toes curl up. So I really feel the energy on that posterior line coming down into the heel to be able to find that energy. So find that first and then it's a pulse, right? So you press the carriage out.

The energy I like to feel is if she has to pull it in. Mhmm. The body stays right still in space. You can even round a little bit. Yep. And push out and pull in. Yep. Pull in and the pull in is actually by sending the heel down and the toes up when you come in. It's not a just try to think of connection.

We're connecting that whole anterior chain from underneath the arms the ribcage, the abdominals, the pelvis, the flexors, all of that being connected on the front. And we need that connection as we go into the next exercise. Alright. Let the hills come up onto the bar. We're gonna go into a plank. Does that say what I say? Bar.

Hey, trapeze table reformer, you know, it's all the same. It's the same. Alright. So we're gonna have the heels up on the shoulder rest. Yes. When we plank out, I want the shoulders over the foot bar, right? So as you press out, let them come over the foot bar. So we're not having too much weight on it and then pike right back up.

When you pike up, keep the weight into the legs a little bit so you can give your arms a rest. Right? That's what we just experienced with the elephant and back up. Nice. Let's do two more of those. And on this last one, stay in the plank, and let's do a long stretch.

So press the carriage back, and come forward, bringing the head forward, and back, shoulder holding up. Okay. Okay. Let's just do two more of those. And then we're gonna go into an up stretch on this second one. So push out. Come in. Drop the head down.

Roll the spine up. Press back into pike, press out into plank. It's just combining the exercise we did. Long stretch, head drops down, spine rolls up, press back into pike, press out into plank, forward last one, long stretch, pike, roll out. Beautiful connection. Let the knees come down.

We're gonna sit on the foot bar, heels on the carriage, and a red in the blue is okay. I might even go down. Let's go down to a red spring. Because I really want this to be more about balance and connectedness rather than any kind of load work. Find the balance on your sit bones so you might be just in front or just behind wherever your soft tissue molds the best.

Over the bar. Everybody has a little different redundant tissue relationship to the bar. But the goal what? I love redundant tissue. Hey. I love my redundant tissue. All of us are 40 in this room, me quite a bit 40.

And the bottom line, literally, no pun intended. The bottom line has some redundant tissue. And and sometimes we lose that redundant tissue too. So our bottoms become flatter as we age quite often, and where do we find that balance? So now with the hands on the bar for safety, press the carriage out a couple times, just straightening the knees, and find to make sure that you are on balance there, right, that you could you could stay there and do that same motion without your hands. Can you find that relationship?

And once you find that relationship, see if you can trust yourself to bring the hands up to the side. Yeah. And just let the legs in, come in and out. And then on the next one, if you feel comfortable with it, when you press the carriage out, sweep the hands down towards the feet when the knees bend in, bring the chest up. Into an extension. Going into that extension, right? We're gonna go here, press out, come down flexion, come up through that neutral spine up into extension, sweep back around. So we're integrating that motion we just created with the spine, and you still have to maintain the control of your pelvis while the knees are pressing in and out.

So there's a very good dynamic alignment exercise that forces the pelvis to interact with movement from above and from below. Which is walking and running and all of those kind of activities. I find people that have a real challenge in doing that also have a real challenge in just daily activities that might be causing some of their painful problems. So when I teach this exercise and they can't do it, we'll stay here for a while until they can do it because as soon as they find that connectedness and that variability in their spine, they seem to feel a lot better. Last one. We're gonna go right into quadruped facing the head of the reform, a reverse abdominals from there.

Let's try to leave this spring the same there, one red. If that feels too heavy, feel free to take it down to a blue. We'll see how you feel, but quadruped hands are on the frame. Find that perfect quadruped position to begin with. Yeah. And from here, let's just move the spine a little bit. So think of arching the spine up, tailbone and head go down.

We're we're not gonna use the machine other than just to hold us. And then come up into extension, tailbone and head come up, spine goes down, and let's repeat that. And while you're doing that, see if we can change the point of origin. Right? So let's start the flexion from the head. The head comes down, the spine responds all the way through, right? And the head's gonna come up as the spine goes down, and then do that one more time because I want you to fill that initiation. And then on the second one, we're gonna initiate it with the tailbone.

So the tailbone going down is going to result in the head going down. Telephone bone going up, result in the head going up. Once you have the pattern, let go of all the muscles. Like, let it be purely skeletal, moving skeletal, and using as little muscle tone as possible. Right? Elastic springy. The ligamentum flavum in the spine is yellow.

That's what ligament flavum means yellow. Is yellow because it's filled with elastin. Right? So as the spine stretches, it's like a theraband stretching on your back and recoiling in the different positions that you go in. And then finish up just with a free for all for like two or three, like two or three repetitions of just being able to move the pelvis or the head or the spine from anywhere you want with the closed chain on the knee in the hands. How do we move the spine and the body in between the hand and the arms lateral translation, circumduction, rotation, what can you find in the body? Because if we can create the awareness of movement in the body with both hands and lower extremities being in closed chain, we really create connectedness.

Last one. Come up into high kneeling and shake your hands out for a second because it's hard sometimes to bear weight on this, wood. Let's come back down into quadruped. We're gonna do a reverse abdominal now. So now we have that sort of shook up the spine a little bit and, feel that connection again between ribs and pelvis. Yep. Lean forward over the hands.

Yep, and then draw the knees towards the hands, just as if I could keep that hot cup of tea right on top of the sacrum, not spilling it, feeling that relationship of the knees drawing, and the arms are pulling back. Right? So we have this opposite force to bring those knees closer together, and we're still reaching the head and the tailbone opposite of each other to keep that dynamic alignment with that movement happening. Let's do two more of those. And relax. Grab your straps, come up into a high kneeling. Now, a caution here, the tendency, if you're not familiar with this exercise, is that the machine wants to eat you in this direction. Right? So my suggestion is start leaning back quite a bit as you should find that first tension and the place that we typically fall down is when we let the straps come back forward. So leaning back a little bit, pull the hands just a little bit.

And let it go forward again and just sort of find that place where you have the balance. Once you find your balance, you can come up a little bit more vertical, but respect the machine. I'm telling you this is the one exercise that if you're not respecting, you could take a little bit of a tumble. So if you're worried about it, air by going back on your knees versus coming up vertical. Let's keep moving this arm back and forth.

I actually love this exercise because it forces you to be open across the front of the hips. And so today's world where we're sedentary for sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day, average is sixteen to thirteen to sixteen hours. This is a really important one to feel that uprightness of the body, to feel the connectedness and the load through the arms, and be open across the hip. So we're getting those long muscles coming down to the, tibia to below the knee that are forced to be open. Now cross the straps over and choke up on the handles, if you haven't already, and we're just gonna do a row.

Same kind of organization. You've already prepared yourself, being safe, pulling the elbows back into a row, and then it come forward. And just stay in a range that you're comfortable with. If you have some shoulder discomfort, Keep it low. It's okay because I'm more interested in the load on the back of the chain of the trunk than I am in making this a shoulder exercise right now. And let's just do two more of those, and then we're going to reorient ourselves in high kneeling still, but facing the foot bar.

So you'll need to uncross the straps. Turn around. I think we'll stay with the one spring on this, and you're gonna grab your straps again. If you can get them, if you need help, I can help you with that. Good. And we're gonna bring the hands to the side of the chest.

So now we're loading the front of the spine. Still maintaining this openness across the front of the hips, and we're just serving the platter, right? And back in. Serving the platter and back in. So feel now what is happening on the front of your body, because now the load is coming through the front in relationship to those hips being extended. This is a really important observation that we can make in this position.

We'll do one more serving the platter, And now we go out, let the straight arms come down to the side, what's comfortable, bring it back up, and then bend the elbows back into the ribcage. Press out, down, up, and in. Out, down, up, and in. Let's challenge ourselves this time. We're gonna go out, down. Can you take it up, like, to eye height?

And then back in. Out, down eye height coming up. Yep. Honolulu. That's a Honolulu exercise. And down last one and up, and relax. Very good. Let's get rid of the straps.

We're gonna go right into scooter right now. So again, probably wanna toughen up your springs. We're gonna go right foot on the floor, left foot on the shoulder pad. I typically go with a red and a blue. Do you feel comfortable with a red and a blue?

This one can be a little bit heavier because this is where we get to like work a little bit. But you pick the spring that feels best for you in this exercise. So from here, we're gonna push back so that the tibia is vertical on the right leg. That's where we wanna be. Yeah. And from there, we're going to push the left leg back and in. That's the the working leg.

If you're too bent in the knee, your knee's not gonna your knee's gonna touch the mat. Can we get, come up a little bit? Yeah. There you go. Perfect. You got it, Christie. That's what I'm looking for.

Now from here, I wanna get rid of the hands. I wanna get rid of the hands. Can you find it? So what we're doing is we're creating a single leg load through the standing leg. The standing leg is a leg that's doing the work. It's trying to prevent you from rotating around from the carriage coming back in.

It's hard work. This is however how our body works when we walk and run. If you cannot do this, you should not be running yet. Yet is the key word. You should do a thousand scooters every hour until you can, I'm just kidding. Last two, and relax. Come back into a quadruped position.

Yep. Let's go into knees stretch with both legs so we get a feel for it. So just sitting back, right? We're gonna change the pace a little bit. So press the carriage out and in. Nice and fast. Load up the elastic of the hips, see if you can push the carriage out a little bit further each time and still come in with the same springiness coming in.

Five four three to and relax. Left foot on the ground, right foot on the shoulder pad. We repeat the same thing for the scooter. How are we doing okay? Great. Good. Let's do the same thing with hands on the bar to begin with. Get a feel for that. Do four or five with the hand on the bar.

We are almost there. We're getting very close to our alignment class on the reformer. Appreciate the connectedness again on that left standing leg. As you remove the hands, Can you find that connectedness in that hip, in that pelvis, in the thoracic, in the head? Everything has to be connected and tied in with sort of a focal point on keeping that left knee straight forward. Got three. Two, one, and relax. Go back into a lunge.

If you want to light, take off a blue spring and just go back into a nice lunge. Just stay there for a little bit. Chest up, fill that whole anterior line. Yep. Connected without collapsing the back, pushing back back back and feel that extension through the chest. Take a deep breath into the front of the chest.

We'll do one more deep breath there. And exhale and relax. Let that come back in, switch over to the other side. Same thing. Nice long stretch on that. Fill the connectedness from the front of the foot. Right?

You got the foot Doricy flex. And we're gonna feel that connection through the thigh, up through the pelvis, up to the abdomen, up to the chest, the neck, the head, and the crown. Breath is facilitating it. So if we can breathe in and still maintain that position and exhale and still maintain that position, we were successful in this class. If you feel like the spine is gonna change its position with the breath in, we haven't quite gotten that breath mobility yet.

That we need for extension, flexion, side bending, etcetera, and relax. Let's leave it on one spring. We're gonna finish up with side splits as our last exercise today. So organize the machine. So you're nice and safe with that. And let's, I'm gonna refer to it as the frame leg and the carriage leg. So it doesn't matter which one you start with. Let's start. Yep.

That looks good. And we're gonna start with simply a split. And I'm here to catch you if you lose your balance at all. I always and I would just say like a good six inches into the mat. You guys are fine. And pressing out into the split out to the side. So a red spring still gives enough resistance but also gives you that impression of inner thigh working again. Let the body lean forward about 60% of the weight into the ankle.

Make it the ankle strategy, not a hip strategy, and come back in. Yeah. Let's just create that for a couple times. And on the pulling in, turn the feet out a smidge. I don't like them so parallel out there, but feel as if the outside of the foot is pulling you back in. The inside of the foot is pushing you away.

The outside of the foot is pulling you back in. Can you feel that connection? Inside of the foot, medial side of the foot pushing out, lateral side of the foot pulling in. Let's do that two more times. From here, we're gonna go into a half squat or a semi squat, doing the same exact thing, but now we're in the squat doing it.

So what we really want is the head stays the same height. So the knees are gonna be bending in and reaching out, but keeping the same height. How are you feeling? Good. Let's keep that. Keep going. Yep. Good. Good. Good.

And listen now. Listen what's happening in the pelvis. Listen what that relationship is with the ribcage. Right? When things start, wanting to shake, what's going on there. Last one, you come in, you're gonna stay on the frame leg and skate out to the carriage leg.

And we're just gonna keep that same height just skating that leg out. Feel that elasticity on this one again. Power on the standing leg. Springy on the gesture leg. If you feel like you wanna alternate your arms too, as if you were skating, that's fine.

Last two here. And this last one, we're exercise here. We're gonna stay on the carriage leg and push out the frame leg. So again, this is a safety issue. Make sure that you find that safetiness on that.

You understand where that's happening. You have to keep the frame leg outside of your pelvis. You can stay on top of it. If you let that frame leg come in underneath or sorry, the carriage leg come underneath your pelvis, you can tip right over it. You always gotta keep that leg out.

And then let's finish up going right into skating, both legs out, out, in in. Out out in in, out out in in, make it fun, use the arms, the chest, the face, put a smile on, feel that multidirectional connectivity flowing through, and two and one and relax. Step down. And we're gonna turn around the other direction so that we are beautifully symmetrical human beings. Perfectly imperfect, as I like to say. Straight legs, slightly turned out on the feet.

Let's get five or six repetitions there. Same thing. A little bit of a weight forward onto the ball of the foot, ankle strategy versus hip strategy. Feel the connected across the front, across the back, just observing your spine should be happy to be in on top of the pelvis right now after all the warm up that we did. And four, five, squat position, going down, pressing out one. Two head stays the same height the whole time, so the legs are reaching out and coming back in.

Two more. And stay on top of the frame leg now, pressing out the carriage leg, skating, pushing that leg out. And again, as you push out, See if you can feel the dynamics through the foot. Which edge of the foot is doing the load. Right? Now do the same thing on the carriage leg. Stand on the carriage leg.

Press out with the frame leg. That's it. And blissfully go into your skating. Full body, rotation. Let it just move. You can just feel almost the leg pushing.

Is pushing the pelvis up into the spine, up into the neck, into the eyes of the head, and feel that whole connectedness. Everything just working elastically sort of balancing out with that one red spring, three two, one, and relax. Come on off the reformers. Xcelente, come back in front here. We're gonna finish the class with eyes closed, feet are underneath the pelvis. Imagine that heavy elastic band coming through the crown of the head, and we're just dangling from it.

And the bones are connected with some rubbery elastic material that we call myofascial tissue, and just slow the breath down. Bring the attention to the feet. Where is the weight? Think of the balls of the feet, the heel, the lateral foot, the medial foot, In human bipedal, we should probably be about 60% of our weight into the ball of the foot. When you get there, you'll often feel the quadriceps and the calves and the glutes actually relax a little bit.

Bring attention to the knees. Maybe soft knees right now. They're not hyper extended. Bring it to the pelvis. The hip is open.

No flexion in the hip. It's nice and open. The pelvis is quiet. The spine stacked on top, the naval l three stacked right in alignment with each other, the sternum, and the shoulder blade, basically the shoulder blade. The shoulders are directly out to the side, and when we open our eyes, our eye gaze is gonna be horizontal to the floor. Right?

Close the eyes again, taking another deep two breaths. Take an imaginary picture of your body of what you feel like, where the elasticity is. Open your eyes. I hope you enjoyed this class. Again, focusing on different concepts, familiar exercises, but looking at how the flow, how the emphasis of connectivity, front to back, side to side, rotation, combined motions, prepare our body to be aligned in all of our daily activities. And most importantly, in our Pilates philosophy from Joe himself, an aligned body is prepared to be able to allow the mind to fulfill its full abilities in your daily activities.

I hope you have wonderful daily activities filled with vigor and Zest, and we'll see you again on Pilates anytime. Thank you, Christy. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Pilates. Anytime.