Back Lengthening Reformer

Hi everybody. Amy Haven's here for a reform and workout. We're gonna use a ball today in class. I wanna focus on the quality of rounding our spine. Right, extending our spine, rotating inside bending. So all of our spinal mechanics, and I love the ball as the image for that, for the directional motion that a ball takes.

In my mind, I'm really honestly thinking every vertebra is its own little ball. And in certain places of movement in the spine, movement can be easier and sometimes a little less easy depending on your shape, your makeup, and all of those things. Imagery can be very useful. So I'm using the ball. We'll integrate that. And, it's pretty spiny.

Less limbs, more spine, and trunk. Join me. I want us to begin with no springs. Back up your reformer carriage about halfway on the track. Just climb on in, and we'll begin with our knees bent feet on the floor. Ball right behind your sacrum.

And kind of wedge it in a little bit close. I don't want it to be loose and roll away from you, so you get it kind of close to you. And then b. We'll be seated here. And I want us to just begin that idea, from the base of the spine, the tailbone, and the sacrum, growing tall upward. Right? Not by pushing the rib cage forward, but just imagine maybe sitting against a wall doing this, just sitting but we don't have anything behind us.

We have to image that. Now with the ball image and it being something that rolls. Right? So I'm gonna use my hands just for this. If I took it and rolled it backward, we're gonna use that as our pelvic curl or little tilt. I'm, like, maybe my hands here too. So just feel like you're rolling your tailbone and your sitting bones underneath you to reach your sacrum and maybe lumbar five four back against the ball and then come back up and sitting.

It's very small. Let's take a breath. Use the exhale and wag your tail under. Maybe that's another way we can cue that. And the abdominal muscles, of course, in hip points, close together, and then wag your tail just to level.

Place your hands wherever they feel useful for you. Right? And then return. So I'm really generating the movement of the carriage by the movement of my pelvis. That's what I want you to do. Also, Right? So when we do these preliminary movements, sometimes flexion, we can, we can shorten and compress or collapse.

Not in Pilates. We wanna always go long upward and then, approach the motion. And you'll see I don't have as much movement that way, but it's okay. It's deeper, more qualitative. I'm going up inside my body and rounding my lower back a little bit and center. This just makes sense for my body right now.

Arms in front of me. And I'm trying to round my lower back Moving a carriage with that movement of pelvic tilt, posterior rotation. Coming up, let's do two more. Can you sit a little taller? And and then sitting And you'll see that you probably the movement grows and increases in the range once you start really mobilizing and lubricating those those joints there. Okay? So taking that away, put a lace the ball right in your hands across your abdomen And first, we're we're gonna start a roll down, but very slowly. First from your neck.

If you wanna place one hand on top of your head, push your feet down into the floor, grow tall through your head, and then everyone really bend your neck. Just your neck. That's our cervical spine. Move down a little farther into your mid back, your thoracic spine. I am lightly pressing the ball against my abdomen.

Just to give some feedback. And now we're, of course, in that lumbar spine, and you wanna get that sense of coming up and then over. I've got that ball again here, that image of going over it. Let your hands go and just hang your arms by your legs. Try not to flatten yourself on the ball. Lift up and over the ball.

And then start to restack, but get back on those sitting bones, roll through your thoracic, and finally the head. We'll do it one more time. Take a breath. So we are exhaling neck. Jurassic.

Let your chest really round. Lightly press the ball in against your tummy. And that sense, again, you're going up that imaginary wall. We've cued it for hundreds of years and pilates, up and over. Up and over.

Now keep going. Keep going. I'm gonna place my hands on my shin bones, and I'm gently pulling my hands into my shins. You could also go behind your thighs wherever you feel the best connection. Everyone press your feet into the floor. And let's work more tail curl under on an exhale.

And I'm really contracting my abdominals curling that tail trying to get more c curve out of that lower back. Out of the mid back, out of the neck. Two more, we're not collapsing. We're lifting to curve. You may start to feel your buttocks muscles, and that is not a bad idea.

One more. So the carriage motion is become coming because we are moving that spine to create that action. Keep yourself there. Rule up to sitting. The very last thing is the head neck in your eyes.

Okay. Yeah. Wonderful. Relax for a minute. Alright. So wheel yourself in. We are gonna do footwork, but a little different today. I think for this, his three red spings will be fine.

Head rest can be up or down. Let's keep it down, actually. Because we are gonna do a little supported bridge. Take the ball. Lift your hips and place it underneath you your sacrum on your ball.

It can kind of a continuation of where we just were in the warm up. So look at your alignment, heels on your bar. Write in line with your sitting bones. Make sure you've got some space above your shoulders here, everybody. And just take a breath.

So I love the ball. Right? And so it's that same tilting image. Go ahead and tilt. Yeah. Feel this hollowing effort in the abdomen area. And the back muscles really stretching long underneath you and kinda aiming things up the back of your legs. Right? You should feel a lot of activity in the back of the legs and your tummy and then just relax into your level position. Take a breath.

One more time just to get the connection. Right? So I'm it's kind of like an assisted bridge. You don't have to come off the ball. You certainly could come a little higher, but I don't want you to go to your highest bridge. I really wanna have us encourage this flexion down here.

Okay? And then come down to relax. Now one thing I haven't mentioned yet is the rib cage. Right? Let's interlace our hands. Place your hands on your ribs and just give yourself a little hello. Hello. Okay. There's gonna stay right there.

So you've gotten a little closer to the mat. So let's begin to push the carriage out and in. So our leg presses that we normally do. So it's a little different intention. It's all. And why I'm doing this is to get us a little more connected in the the abdominal muscles, the rib cage closer to the mat, and the lengthening in the lower back.

Right? Some of us needs this, not everybody does, but maybe it feels like, a new connection for you. And as you push, you may not get your knees fully straight. I really am after this little mini posterior tilt for the whole series. That we're doing here. One more now. Alright. Let's do the same thing from the balls of the feet just to parallel.

Take a little look. Breathe in. Breathe out. Get this connection. Now when you inhale push the carriage, breathe back into your lower back, not forward in the ribs, not puffing out. Want you to breathe back, exhale contract.

Breathe back, exhale contract. You may or may not get your knees fully straight. Five more. There's a moment and near the full knee extension where we might lose the connection of the abdominals and that position of the pelvis Remember, this is not how I would always do footwork. This is for an option to feel new connection.

Right? If you're a lordotic person or you have a pretty archie low back, this may be a really fun challenge for you. Hold. Now let's do heels wide. You might have to peek up and see where that bar is because we're higher than the bar. Okay? Same thing. Hollow it down.

Little posterior tilt, and we're going. Push exhale, press. So when we inhale, we're trying to go lateral posterior back breathing, exhale abdominal contraction. Five more. Four. Should be a nice sense of length and some work of the stretch in your back.

Last one, everybody, press and in. Alright. Now come off the ball. Just set it on the floor near you. Come down and doesn't that feel incredible. Place the balls of the feet on. Gonna stretch our calves just a little bit and just keep the intention of that length you just found and just do a little bit of lower and lift.

Little bit of lower and lift. We're contained here. We're long and open. And down to rise, down to rise, two more. That's all I wanted to do with that, and bend your knees to come in. Okay.

I want you to come up and change your springs down to what you would do for the 100 coordination, arm circles, things like that. It could be too red or red in the blue or something there. No ball on your back. Head rest can be up or down. It's your choice at this point. And then make sure you've got some space. Alright?

Keep the ball nearby. Hands in your loops, make a fist, knees toward your chest. Now knees toward your chest rather than tabletop. Let those knees rest, but I'm not tucking my pelvis. And I want us to round into the flexion of the upper spine. Okay? And everyone really just hold the shape. Bend your neck.

Try to bend the spine. Imagine that spine like that really round ball, and then keep reaching into your handles as you come back down. Okay? One more. Just get the feeling. Sometimes it's kind of fun to go back to the very beginning of what does it feel like to do the position of the 100 even though we've done it hundreds of times. That was kind of fun.

And then go into a single leg stretch with a bent ankle, a flexed ankle, and push. And every time I reach my heel out, I'm trying to round one more percent forward inflection. So I'm pushing out pulling my chest up for four more. And three. And two. Alright. And we'll come out of it.

Point your feet. If you want to, roll yourself down. Keep integrating. We're not gonna rest. We're gonna go right back up and around. Now take your legs and work the extension and legs back in.

Now come past 90. Pick up that deal, get that flexion. And reach knees toward chest, a little flexion. Pick up that tailbone. One more only.

Keep reaching the knuckles forward. Get that. And then everybody round back down. Okay. Coordination. Bend your elbows. Huck them in. See how it's tight my thighs are to my chest.

I want you to do that too and reach your tailbone long. Coordination coming up in one piece, open and close. Now really reach your knees in. Tail bone up. Round that back again. Still around your neck and come down. For two more.

Round, round, round, round, round, round, round, pick up the tail, flex that spine, and then lower yourself back. Last time, stretch. Open and close, pick your knees in, pick your tailbone up, reach your arms. You're not done. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, and lower yourself back pausing here. Arms circles because they're fun.

Yep. It's a great connection for your rib cage. Just let your ribs be solid, connected. You're not arching anywhere in that spine. I'm also having us do arm circles because we are going to do a little rowing, so I wanted to warm up the shoulders. Let's reverse. Open it wide. Keep the carriage still as those arms come in.

So although it's an arm focus, we're still in our spine. We're still connected to how it feels on the mat. We're not resting. Activively long inside. One more.

Good. Alright. And now go ahead and place your feet, put your straps down, hug your knees, pick up that body again, flex flex flex. Don't feel a little more open, and we're gonna come up off our back. Okay. For rowing, I am gonna use one red, everybody.

That's probably your standard. Now let's keep things as is. Before we row, pick up your strap. You can reach forward on the tape or the wrapping that's in front of your hardware. And I want you to round forward again. Alright.

It's okay if your knees are apart. Let the straps take you forward. And what if right here we actually kind of almost rest on the size? I want you to feel the difference between the rest and the work. So you have to really pull yourself away from your thighs.

Now what's gonna move the carriage again is not us just shoving our mid back back. It's that wheeling under of the pelvis. My ball image of my pelvis. The sacrum like a big ball, the lumbar, all of them are like little balls. Right? And hold.

And then as we come up, let this strap start to take you you're resisting by holding those vertebra back. Now we're gonna go up and over those thighs. Feel how much work there is in that resist resist, resist those springs. One more there. You could go farther and do many more if you want. It's not our mid back that's leading this. It's the pelvis.

Is that true for you? I hope so. You could do it and straighten your legs. It's kinda nice. You're really on your sacrum. I feel how lovely that is.

You're just well balanced. And then coming forward, we're not just gonna go forward. We're going up and forward. Up and forward. I'm resisting those springs.

I don't wanna just jam down on my thighs. I wanna go up and over. Really keep that curve. Okay. So we need that flexion for the rowing.

So now straighten those legs. If you like to cross your ankles, you can. You don't have to. I'm gonna have us make a fist, knuckles together, bring your knuckles to your chest. Now, just for a little comparison contrast, lean forward. Notice you're on the front of your sitting bones.

We wanna start on the back of the sit bones and stay there when we need to. Take a breath. Roll off of them going back a little farther. You just found where your sacrum was and the last exercise. So get here now. Right there. Open those arms.

Try not to move your carriage. Pull the carriage. Now, you're coming up and over. We are not rocking forward on the sitting bones. We're gonna stay on the sitting bones just right where you are. I want everyone to put your fingertips on the edge of the mat, grab the straps with your fist, lift your arm bones, lower your arm bones.

You're not coming off your sit bones. You're in that beautiful flexion. Now lift us last time. Continue your rowing. Open. You're not coming off your sitting bones.

You're in that flexion. Now if you want to bend farther forward, you do come forward a little bit. Okay? So you have a few rules to follow in there or things to think about. One more will flow.

Maybe two. See if you can stay with me there. Right? So when the tempo picks up, sometimes we lose the details. Stay on the sit bones. Stay there three lifts. One. And two.

Last one, three. Open open your shoulder girdle. Resist the springs with that stomach in, stomach in, stomach in, and flex. One more breathe. Flex.

Open. Pull. Round, we're not losing the position. You're there. You're lifted. Three arm lifts. One.

Two, three, it'd be so easy just to dump over and collapse on the thighs. Now even though we're gonna get lower, we're not collapsing. I'm trying to bend bend, bend, bend, bend. Alright. Good. Putting those down, we're gonna come around for rowing number two from the front.

You can see where my head is here. Right? So same idea. Let me just get that organized. Pick up your straps. Let's flex our feet.

Check-in. Are you on the front of your sit bones? Likely that we are. We're back here. Okay. Take a breath. Neck. Thoracic lumbar.

Stay there. You just explored all that. Slide your hands. You're not coming off of those sitting bones. Palms down. I want everyone just to roll up to sitting tall. Keep your hips back against the shoulder blocks. Today, just open your arms and place your hands while your hips breathe.

Neck, thoracic lumbar. Reach your hips back into the shoulder blocks. Roll up from the lumbar, thoracic, cervical, open, and come down. We'll take a couple more. Again, so often the details are kind of maybe, not really lost, but faded when we pick up the tempo.

Feel how much work there is in slowing it down, reconnecting to your details. Good. And then everybody relax. Great. Now let's move on to different part of our spine. We're gonna move into our lateral flexion. You don't need your ball, but if you want the image that way, we're gonna go toward the foot bar toward the foot bar.

I love a blue spring for this. And I want you to start with your arm straight. Hand behind your head. Okay. Bend your neck. Your feet are gonna have to move a little.

Bend your thoracic spine. You might have to move a little. Try to bend more thoracic. Can you get your lumbar to bend a little? It's very difficult to do lumbar flexion sideways. Right? It is very difficult.

Push your feet into the floor a little. And now here, everybody, can you bend more into yourself? You might cramp over here, open this one up and then come back to sitting tall, lower back, thoracic, and neck. And you might move a little. Do it again. We'll add a little to it.

So I want you to establish this lift, right, the back of the head to the hand. Let your neck bend. Thoracic spine. Bend. It's like I'm going into myself right there as my image.

Go. Go. Go. Go. Now let's add a little something. Bend your elbow a titch. And as you straighten, can you bend more? Two more as you bend the elbow, when you push, you have to bend a little more. That's fun.

Third one, I'm about to cramp anise obliques. It feels really good. And a big stretch over here Now as you come up, don't rush it. It's lower back, thoracic, and your neck, and you're done. Other side. You only need a few. I think it was Pilates.

I know it was. Quality over quantity. It takes concentration, though. No rushing. Ready? Neck. You may have to move your feet a little bit. Thoracic.

So I am pushing a little bit with my arm on the bar. But I'm really trying to bend my body. I'm not just trying to shove myself with my arm. I'm bending my spine. Mister Pilates wanted a healthy spine and then return.

Right? He talked about the spine all the time. Come out. Lim is secondary. It's gonna be the neck. The rib cage spine.

The lower back spine. Now that doesn't mean I'm not pushing with my arm. Of course, I am, but I'm trying to bend into my cell stretching this very wonderful low back and coming back up. Third one, we add that little arm bend. Ready? And neck and ribs and lumbar. Now a little bend of the elbow as you press it straight, try to bend it to yourself more.

Whoo. Two more. Trying to bend into my body a little more pretty well even on both sitting bones. Third one. In and in, and then return all the way up. Wonderful. How are you feeling? Just stand up and kinda feel what you feel. Hopefully, you're feeling a little more loose.

This is a place that most people have some short tight. Right? Pilate is so good for opening that up. Now let's go ahead and lower our foot bar for now. You can put a very light spring on everybody. But for me, I'm gonna actually gonna use the yellow spring. We're gonna get our box up. So when we do our box prone, I want you to do the mount or the getting on kind of like the classical traditional if we were on you know, kind of from this eye, this side, but what's nice about this, you can see that the box is centered, you step up, and light spring, be ready. You wanna place yourself quite precisely and lie down. And ideally, your underarms are pretty well near the corners of the box. Alright? So let's go ahead, thumb on the railing. Chest is round.

Spine is like a long round you're draped over. Take a moment, connect your legs, lift your stomach up off the box. Commit to that lift of the stomach. Okay? Now I really don't want us to go very high. I want you to pick your head up an inch or two. I can't tell if my head is level, but I'm proprioceptively hoping that it is.

And then I really just wanna press my thumbs down, connect my shoulder blades on my back, and start to pick my throat and my cervical spine up just a little bit. And then I'm gonna come back down. So it's very, very small. Pick up the tummy. Press your hands.

Start to drag yourself forward. Shoulders are on her back. I'm not worried about how high I'm coming. I don't want you to wear how high long and low. I'm really efforting my sternum toward those risers.

It'd be really tempting just to jam up in the lower back, but we wanna stay a little bit lower longer and come down. Couple more. Have you ready to pick up your tummy? Ready and thumbs, scapula. The work of our extension of our spine now is what's moving the springs. There's a big eyeball on my chest, and I'm opening the eyeball toward those risers.

And coming down, let's take one more reset and go. Long and low, and now walk toward those risers. Put your hands near the top. Let your head come down again. Let's see if we have a teeny bit more upper back extension.

We may or may not. I want you to get your shoulder blades down on your back. Start to pick your head up a little bit. And again, it's not about how high. I want you to lift your sternum up higher than the risers. That might be all we need to do and then lengthen back out. Get your head between your risers.

Check your abs. Let's do a couple more. Scapula. Leading with the crown of the head. And I'm just trying to pick up that chest, that upper chest, barely. My ribs don't lift off the box.

And then I'm coming down into level one more to go. Good and scapula, stomach, all the s's, and sternum. Oh, that's fun. Good. Yeah.

Eyeball open on the chest. Now we will feel that in more of the middle lower back, of course, but we wanted to start it in the right place. Okay. Walk your hands and then just rest yourself back. Wonderful. Alright. Everyone step off the side, but, like, we wanna work from the upper then work all the way down.

Right? Okay. So let's think about short box. Pick up your ball, but it's gonna be some short box on the long box. You'll want a little more spring. I'm gonna add red with my yellow. Make sure your foot strap is ready.

And let's go ahead and sit on that box. Feed up on the wood and maybe a go 90 degrees right there. Okay. Have a seat. It's just like we started. Put the ball right at your tummy. You're gonna press the ball a little bit into your tummy.

And flex a little bit, everybody. We're not collapsing. Now roll your pelvis. Here's the ball. Roll. I'm gonna do it this way.

I like this. I love watching. So I'm rolling backward. Rolling backward. Rolling backward. Now I'm actually gonna keep going and let my sternum and my neck go over, and I'm gonna look at that ball.

Now we gotta come up. It's the neck. It's the thoracic. You can put it on yourself, round it to yourself. Roll up to sitting tall and let's do it again.

Hold the ball. Roll it backward. You're off your sitting bones. You're really into the way my mind thinks. You're on your sacrum.

You're lumbar. You're getting long in between each rolling motion. You're going over. Keep looking at the ball. It's safe for your neck and rolling up. Okay.

You can keep doing that with the ball if you wish or You can just hold it. Breathing in. Gonna do two more this time. Of course, I am getting my eyes on the ball, though, and just extending that body over the ball. Over the box, picking yourself up. Now if you wanna follow me, I am gonna take my arms up. I don't wanna lose my trunk connection.

I don't wanna just arch my back. Let's go again and roll off the sitting bones. Keep your legs very connected. My feet are on the wood frame. I'm getting long and I'm extending over the back, stretch looking at the ball. Round. Oh, and up.

Okay. Let's go for one more. Why not? And flex. Round. So I hope that the ball, like, the ball imagery is working for your movement. I think imagery is very fun.

And it's always quite useful if it's the an image that works for you. If it doesn't work for you, of course, it's not gonna be effective, but usually the ball work informs the direction of what we're doing there. Okay. Take your arms out to the side, everybody. And just hold. I want you to rotate now toward the side of your body where the ball is. And just give yourself three pulses. One, yes, I'm looking at the ball. Two, and three. Change hands.

Rotate the trunk. Look at the ball for one. For two and three. One more each side. That's it. Just final rotation with the ball. Check-in with your eyes and look.

And look. And look. One more. Think there's a quote out there where the eyes go, the spine will go. Don't you find that true? Can you feel that? We should do it again. Once more. Yeah.

Where the spine eyes go, the spine's gonna go. I want my cervical spine to rotate. I don't wanna not use that neck. No. Use your neck. Use it. Sit on the sitting bones. One, front arm reaches two and three and come home and rest.

Wonderful. You can put this away. Let's lighten the spring. You can either keep maybe a red or blue. I'll let you decide. It's actually gonna keep my blue, I think. And a low bar.

Now I'm a shorty. I'm about five three. I'm using a low bar, and the reason why I'm doing that is so I I just wanna stay really low. I don't wanna go into the backbend here. If you're a little taller, you might wanna go low also.

So everybody, come on to your tummy. Yeah. I just am really in this low and long rather than such a big backbend. Okay. So same thing. Let's get the underarms kind of on the corners, hand, hand, hand, legs together, My forehead is kind of close to that bar. Before we do anything, pick up the stomach, pull the bar open.

Feel how active that upper body is. We're just gonna do push ups, meaning prone, shoulder push. For now, your neck has to stay long. The spine is elongated from the head to the tail. The stomach is actively up off the box.

Kind of sorta. We don't wanna rest. K. Now stay on the long arms. Same idea of that what we just did facing the other way. Can you just pick up your gaze? Up over the bar.

Get my ponytail out of the way. And then I don't wanna even lift my ribs off the the box. I don't want you up high. Stay low and then come back by bending your elbows. Pull the bar apart. So we're gonna combine it.

Push with your arms and slightly lift your thoracic spine. Pull the bar apart and come back down. Little combined movement. Little bit of press, little bit of extension. Right? Check your abs and everybody come back in, and we're gonna add one more extra element to that when we're out there, pull the bar apart, extend your low and long single leg kick. Alright?

I love adding these challenges the trunk control, challenges the upper back extension, hamstrings. So your whole back body, four more, four certainly could lift your thigh higher if you wanted to. I don't want your low back to take all the work. Last one, and then pull the bar apart. Everybody come in and lower that head and rest. Okay. Come up off your back. Oh, that was your stomach.

Come up off your stomach. We're gonna take our box away. We worked our back by being on our stomach. Wonderful. Everybody. Now let's change a few things.

We're still with the ropes, risers. We're all good. We're gonna do two red springs. I don't think we need the ball. We don't. I want you to lie on your back and place your feet not in the straps, then straps will go around the backs of the knees. Okay? However, Instead of pushing off and sticking one leg in at the same one at a time, come in, knees to chest, pull, stick your feet in, and try to loop your knees all in one piece. Okay?

Should be a fun challenge. You've got some space between your shoulder rest and you, and I want you to rest your thighs against your chest again. And just feel how kind of comfortable this position is how your back is really comfortable. Right? My hands happen to be at the edge of the carriage. Flex your feet. Start to press your thighs away from you, hip extension, and then come back to hip flexion. Do that a few more times.

Hip extension, hip flexion. Trunk control. You're just working hip flexion and extension. It's very healthy for the back. Now from here, peel your knees apart.

My heels are still together right there. Close your knees. Do that again. Heels together. Pry your knees apart. Come back in.

Now this third one, keep your knees apart. Separate your heels. It's leg circles, but we're doing it from bent knee. Why? Variety. Go.

Press down. Peel. Open and close. Press down. Open. Yeah. It's a nice option. And also, maybe if you're a a tighter hamstring body or you're a teacher with clients with tighter hamstring legs, this is a great option.

It's so healthy for hip joints. They're not fighting their hamstrings. They're working their hip joint. Right? Successfully, I would add, and I'll go the other way. So we open. See how my heels are together there, then they open. Now we've gotta use the lateral hamstrings to pull the legs to in and in and up.

Lot of motion in the hip socket, lot of synovial fluid being generated in there, warming that up. Well, it's already in there. That fluid. We're just warming it up more. Healthy. Open. Close one more time. Hip joints, legs, hip joints, and legs. Alright. Now relax your feet.

We don't need the ball. You could always, if it was handy. I'm not gonna worry about it. Tuck it underneath your thighs like this or your legs. But what I want everybody to do, make sure your head rest is down, please.

Nice and flat. You could either hold on to the pegs if you have the pegs or you could hold your shoulder blocks. Okay? We are going to first begin a little hip lift, deep hip flexion like we are. I am gonna pull with my arms a little. It's okay. Roll up. Roll down. Let your thighs come close to you and roll your hips up.

Roll your hips down. Do one more like that. Thize close to you first. Roll up. Roll down.

K. You can keep doing it that direction. Or I'm gonna start with my femurs out and try to lift my hips from here and then do the curve of the spine. A little more work for the body. Here we go. Lift. Roll down.

So what's different about this one? I'm getting higher up my back, but I'm not moving at my hip joint. I'm starting motion at my tail. Tail. Sacrum, lumbar, thoracic, and roll your way down. Now I like holding the supports here because it helps me get up. With my knees bent. Right? A couple more times.

And rolling down every vertebra, like, it's a little ball rolling around, rolling? And rolling. Once you get there, relax. Okay. Can we get out of the straps the same way we got in? Unless you both at the same time.

We It's a little harder. And then we get to come put those down. We'll come up off our back. So that's a little bit of variety for you there, guys. We're gonna do a few more exercises.

This is baby elephant. Baby elephant. Why is it different than regular elephant? Well, we're not gonna take up the full length of the carriage. We're gonna stand closer. We're gonna need a higher bar.

So get that there. And then how we get up here is the standing up hands on the bar, balls of feet right at the edge. I like to stand all the way together, legs, toes way up, arch as a feet up, push the bar down, dive your head down. You see the theme. Right? Now look, turn your head. You're not moving the carriage, but just turn your head and look where I'm at.

So I don't want anybody back here. See how far back my hips are from my heels. No. Come over your arms. Ideally, shoulder right over your wrist. Everybody, push that carriage bar down, dive in, push with your strong butt muscles and the hamstrings in the legs. This is from your hip joint. Move your thighs back.

Move your thighs in. Thighs back. Dive your head. I'm pushing with my arms quite significantly. You can keep going or challenge with me, raise a leg. I'm gonna just point my foot and then put my foot by my calf.

Oh, yes. A single leg. Little more oblique challenge here. One more for four on each side. Good, step down, reset, drop that head, pick up that foot, tow by your calf muscle, and we press from the rear end and the thigh. Lift that stomach too. Good.

Last one. And in. So see, that's your baby elephant. Regular elephant is a bigger animal. It takes up more space on the earth. Right? The baby is smaller. We compress ourself in. And I don't know if you felt the difference between the challenge, but I love that challenge.

Couple more. Little more weight. Let's go red and blue. Knees. Get yourself in your down stretch position.

Okay. Down stretch. Can you arch the upper back a little bit more? Push the carriage once. Now I want you to come and hold that stopper neck flexion, thoracic flexion, lumbar flexion, do one knee stretch just very little, and you're gonna come back in.

We're gonna lumbar thoracic, The rasic and neck, one down stretch. Come back and move from your neck to flexion, the rasic flexion, lumbar flexion, one knee stretch around. Couple more. Just feel the fluidity now. Feel the fluidity. Head to tail.

I'm pushing the footbar forward and away from me. It's a nice wave through the spine. Head, neck, lumbar, and push. Okay. Everybody or last one. Extend, and come into your cat, round back position.

Okay. I have a couple more. Just two more exercises for you. Okay. Lots of spine back to our blue spring. We already did it. So it's the side bend, but we're gonna add a twist.

I want you to get a little more ringing to come back to where we know we were earlier, ready. You're gonna bend that neck, thoracic lumbar, Three times. Let's give it a twist. Twist into yourself and away. And exhale round and twist into yourself? And away.

Like the ball would be right here and you're going up and around that ball. And other side. Let's turn this way. A variety, a change of pace. We always turn toward the bar. Come away. Ready? And then neck, thoracic, does it feel easier?

Should and twist into yourself. Twist. And return twist. Feel all that mobility we've gained in class here starting with the flexion working into extension, the side bend, the twist, The final exercise today is our bottom lift. You can put your head rest up.

I want you to go to two springs. I'm doing two red. Now you don't have to use the bowl. But you could to start it. It's like we were at the beginning.

Lift your hips. Here's the prop. There your heels are. However, in the regular bottom lift, we're not really this high. So let's challenge ourself. Get your ribs down, get your hips up.

You might make a little fist here and hold on. Don't go too fast. We're doing eight of these and in. You're still in that little beautiful scoop and that hollowing out and you're pressing. You're in control, hollow in.

Ribs are anchored. Does it feel easier to anchor your ribs? Hopefully, it does. And out. And out. Good. Once more. And then when we hit that bumper, we roll every little vertebral ball down down down.

Oh my gosh. Hug yourself. I think you did a great job. I know I did a great job. I feel fantastic. Let me know how it goes, and thank you so much for taking class with me.

Bye.