Class #1487

Playing with Resistance

35 min - Class
134 likes

Description

In this Mat workout, Kristi encourages you to focus on changing your state of mind - whatever that means to you. She plays with resistance in each exercise so you can take up space when you need to or bring in more intensity. It is a great class to figure out what your body needs to feel good.
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Feb 10, 2014
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Transcript

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Hi, I'm Christie and today's class though I don't know exactly where we're going to go with it yet. It's about changing our state or my state, state of mind. So, um, that could be however you want. I'll leave it to you. Let's just stand with the feet completely together. Just notice where you are. Turn the arms out, kind of stand tall. Decide where you're going. Take a deep breath in, fill up as much as you can.

Let the shoulders come up, stretch and exhale. Just turn the arms background and press down and maybe give yourself a sense of elevation. Here we go. Inhale, lift again. And exhale. I'm taking the opportunity to Kinda just take up some space right now. Inhale, stretching, lifting the ribs, lifting arms, lengthening out of the hips, and exhale. And now when your arms come down, just take an easy and how we're going to do a roll down. Just evaluating ourselves. Exhale as you go, keeping your weight pretty much forward. Start tapping into the inner thighs.

Let your head hang. Take an inhale, bend the knees, keep them together. Exhale, straighten the legs. Get a little closer to the knees. Inhale, bend and exhale. Maybe feel the abdominals. Pull up a little bit more to help you round or stretch at your back. Inhale, one more here. Exhale, and with that you can drive your feet into the floor. Tip The tailbone down, roll yourself up, finding ease with the arms I'm doing okay. The arms overhead. Once more, inhale and exhale. Have a seat on your mat and just slide back so you're just not slide but tilt, so you're just behind the tail. Mom, pick up the few words, kind of easy to do that we don't do anything with the lower legs and just rock. Just sort of give yourself some ease. Give yourself some room to decide where you're going to go in terms of a steep change. Maybe you want to intensify your day.

Maybe you want to make your day easier. I for one, woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Feel pretty good right now, but I'm going to solidify it with movement feet. Stay down there apart a little bit. I'm going to get on top of the sitz bones. Hold on. Underneath. Stack the spine, finding space inner thighs involved. Inhale, exhale without dropping. Pull the hip bones back. Give yourself a little curve to the low spine. Inhale, sit up again, allowing energy to go through the ceiling. Exhale, pulling gently back on the hipbones, the front hip bones, and inhale. Sara, go ahead and use the arms. Find some strength even in these easy or small positions. Exhale, if you're a little stiff, are you going to want to either hold, not go as fast as I am with them or do a few extra?

I'm going to do just one more. Inhale trying to move primarily from the pelvis and exhale. I'm going to go down until the arms are straight straight, but it's, it's happening not because I'm pushing my straight back backwards. I'm trying to do it by tilting my pelvis more collarbones wide. Let go. Inhale, exhale, slide the feet in just a little. Try to get the toes down. Just try. That's all we can do. Inhale, exhale, sink the belly a little but find ease elsewhere. One Mowry. Inhale, start.

Exhaling, find the legs with your hands and roll back up. Keep the back curved until the last moment. Straighten it up. We'll do just one more. Inhale. Exhale, tilt the pelvis. You can feel the feet into the mat. Hopefully try and keep them that way until the arms are about straight, if that works for you, right. Inhale and Exhale, easy everywhere you can, but you hold there in the middle or at least deflate in the middle.

Inhale and exhale. Don't look down too much. Kind of keep your eyes on where you're headed in just a moment. Inhale, exhale. Find your legs with your hands. Roll yourself back up, sitting tall. Now just widen your feet, so I'm going to probably go if I wasn't sitz bones, I'm going not quite to the corners of this map, but probably any yoga mat that you might be using. Hands behind the head. Lengthen up, press the back of your head into your hands.

You hear a lot of us say that and there's good reason for it. I won't go into it now, but just get a sense of I'm going back as I go up. Inhale, rotate to the front or up here or one way. Exhale, take the hand that's in the back. Hold onto that thought and twist it a little more. Getting Taller, equal weight on your hipbones in how? Return your hand. Exhale center.

Just waking up the body. Inhale, the other direction, backhand or front hand this in my case, excellence. Tall, tall, tall, rotating pressure. Head back. Inhale, hold the position, but put the hand back behind your head and exhale. I'm going to give you a right left arm cue so I'm twisting to the left. Exhaling taking that or right hand to gently press down, but using primarily whatever I can to get me around further except for the arm in how return the hand behind the head. Exhale center. Just one more. Inhale, rotate your spine to the right. Exhale left hand to thigh. Use it a little to get you up and then a little less to rotate more. Inhale, exhale. Return your hand and then come back to center. From there, walk your feet back to Sitz bone distance. We roll down just a couple more little preparatory things and we're off feet flat, arms flat. Feel the back of your arms, the bottoms of your feet.

Exhale and roll the pelvis up, standing on your feet. We don't need to overthink it right now. We're still in the, how do I feel? Phase of class. Inhale and exhale, a sense of melting down. Can you do that? Sometimes I'm so caught in my thinking, just keep going.

Exhale up or whatever. Who knows that I can't even really soften when I want to. So for the moment I'm thinking about that. What about you? As I exhale, I'm letting the chest fall. It's almost as a similar length and you're holding my head in place and I'm stretching the rest of me away. Two more. Inhale and exhale.

Just noticing who are you right now? Well, we know who you are probably, but let's just, how do you feel and what can you do? You want to keep it? You want to energize it, exhale down. You want to change it? Hm. From here, bring both legs up and I'm doing it. You could actually leave them on the ground, but I'm going to bring them up somewhere near 90 and take the arms out to a tee. All right, so yeah, we're doing the tabletop here and I want, if you can think to activate your upper back, I don't mean straighten it, but just activate it. Take your knees to one side. I'm saying to the left, they're lined up. You've keep that opposite shoulder on. Exhale, bring them center other side. Inhale, rotating. I am lifting the hip, I'm keeping the knees lined up and I'm gently pressing inner thighs together.

Exhale, center and inhale, stretch it over, stretch it, stretch it, stretch it. If you're going really far, I hope you're warm, but also you could take your head the other way as opposition and in it's this funny game we can play of how little can we use to be effective, but then you can also play with resistance within each exercise. This will be our last one. If you need Morgan, you can pause and keep going to warm up a bit more. Otherwise, legs go down, arms just slide back behind you, float them off the ground with the palms up and for a moment, stretch and reach the shoulders long and then let them slide back onto your back without overly pulling them down. And that just means there wouldn't be an excess strain and your ribs won't pop up. From there in here, start bringing the arms up. Let your head follow. Reach the arms down alongside your legs and blow out all your air and just kind of prove it to yourself. Reaching forward, forward. You're almost going to get up. Then inhale, take the arms back down and exhale, curl it up, reaching, reaching, reaching in.

He'll take the arms and really the whole upper body back down, right? So you're connecting these two, the arms to the body, the body to the spine, spine, all of it to, to your intention. Squeeze those inner thighs a bit and down we go. We're going to stay up and do the a hundred so you can take your legs up. Now if you know where you want to go, otherwise exhale, curl. Inhale.

Float the legs either up in straight up or into the position you're used to. Some are opposite eyes is about the farthest you want to go. Start pumping, inhale, and this is where you can really start effecting change here. Inhale four or five. Exhale in and out soon rather than just counting four. Focus on your breath for a moment. Can you really inhale deeply and okay in and get it all back out.

[inaudible] inhale and pumping. It's vigorous is where you're heating yourself up. Yeah, I'm doing two more. Three, four, five. Let the arms go down and take the legs up. Your head goes down for the moment. Cross the ankles and bend the knees. You're going to allow yourself to Tuck the pelvis, use the back of your arms and just lift the pelvis up and set it all the way down. Kind of almost, almost going into an arch to the back, but not quite in air lift and sorry, I'm exhaling as I actually left blowing out.

It's up to you a little easier for me to do it that way. I'm changing the crossing my legs just to make sure I do. And down just two more. Getting that sense of contraction, that Tuck, but also lift. Now you can either stick with that or straighten out the legs and we'll do our roll over. So from there, inhale. Exhale. Lower your legs over your head by lifting your body. Inhale, flex the feet. Separate them, lower them, and roll it down. Ah, Ooh.

The antibodies. Circle the legs to close. Inhale, exhale over. Not just focusing on one part. You know that. And down we go. Circle. Inhale, come to [inaudible], the lift from 90 try to make this shift from the ground to being airborne. Almost imperceptible in effort. Changing it. So now we open to the v. Exhale over like that. Flex, close and tilt. Reaching through.

Maximize the stretch if you like it. Inhale. So that means exhale over. Close the feet. Flex the feet. Now bring those ties close too. But don't just hinge at the hips. Let your spine gets way down. The last one you knew. Exhale. Over and down we go. We'll leave the right leg in the air. I'm gonna leave it. Flex left leg down completely. Take a moment, lift that hip or that foot leg straight up. So the hip cleared.

It says if I'm keeping the legs vertical where it started, and then I roll the hip back down. Two more. Up it goes. The leg itself just kind of elevates, moves a little but not a lot. Last one, lift and pull it back down. Settle yourself in and crossing the body. I'm gonna do a breath where it's a full inhale and then a full exhale in the same direction. Here we go. Inhale around. Now exhale around. It doesn't need to be big. It needs to be under control. Inhale and exhale.

One more set of those. Inhale and exhale, go the other way. Same leg. Inhale around aqua. Give it a little pause at the top just so you know that you're in control. Inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale. Point the toe. Reach up and grab onto that leg and gently bring it to you.

As you let your head go down, it's already set. Ben's a little right. Be Nice. Flex the foot, let the arms go down and just switch legs. Other leg is up. Lift the leg straight in, hips straight to the ceiling. It's a bit of rotation at the waist and bring it down two more. It's like you're pushing the ceiling away and you bring it back down.

One more time. Push it up and down. Settle yourself in. Check for level hipsters close to as possible, crossing the body. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, taking a little bit deeper breath and maybe you're used to an exhale. One more set. Inhale, reach through the heel and exhale, go the other way in. Hilary around. Boom. Exhale. Inhale, exhale. Last set here.

Inhale around and exhale. Hold it up, point the toes, reach up and grab the leg. Bring it back with you. Thinking of your opposition, the sense that the outer left hip, if that's if you're holding your left leg is gently reaching to the right ankle. Flex the foot. Cool. Remind me to add some calf stretches in somewhere and then let the lego down.

Reach the arms back overhead for the roll up. We bring your arms up, your head follows and we roll up. I've got my legs together. You can vary that, but I'm kind of sticking with the inner thigh connection there and roll that down. [inaudible] so I'm not going for a real big stretch here. You could, but I'm, I'm a little more focused today on keeping this space, so I'm looking for space. That's my change. If you haven't guessed it down, we go and you do what you need. Inhale, arms up, head follows. Exhale, finding some room reaching but also the sense of being held back at down. We go that one exercise linking to the next, letting it feel good, letting it flow.

If you have a breath pattern you're used to, you should stick with it unless you're just sticking with it to do that. In other words, let it let your movements milk the breath or create the breath or perhaps be easier because of the breath. We'll do just one more [inaudible] when they come up. Stay in your game so to speak, as if you were still in a role, a position here at the top. Slide yourself forward for rolling like a ball. You're behind the tailbone a bit. You come and close. Try it with knees together but still close.

You won't get your head between your knees obviously, but that's all right too. Here we go. Anyhow, back. Exhale, hold. And what starts your movement? What's, what gets you going? [inaudible] there's no gravity. It's not. It could be I suppose. How about two months [inaudible] one way.

Then I'm just backing up a little and we'll go into holding the right leg, reach the left leg out, bring it in close. I really liked how Carrie Macy and her class here push the instep of the foot into the knee for moms to give you that sense of, well for me, the sense of holding through the middle. So just do that and for the moment, give a little rocking action, keeping those connections. So it's sorta like the rolling like a ball, but I'm more than just in the moment of keeping the two legs pressed together in this position. Okay, that's cool. Go down, stay down, change the leg. So now my left and step is just wherever I can make it. It's about where my knee is. I've got everything settled in, especially those glutes a little bit here. You get a little rocking action.

Yeah, so the shape is basically the same, right? So when we go down and stayed on after one more, we're going to not move this shape. Here we go. Switching legs, it's pull. I usually exhale. I do a little inhale in between, but you decide. Think of the reach, the pole, the stretch, the squeezing, everything out. And I mean air primarily major, not taking deep breaths. I recognize that too, right? Let's do four, three, two here. Come both legs and hug them. Close, close, close.

Lift your butt even get way in there and try to stretch your stick of back down. Double leg stretch. You now reach XL. Start at the middle and pull back. Inhale. Feel the intensity in the middle before you bring the legs in. Forget the choreography. Get the breath. Three more and, and, and one more. Hold the right leg. Stretch it up for the moment. Just keep the left leg in the air.

Take this right hip and reach it toward the left hip. Just a little at my swivel a tiny bit. Now press left leg to ground. Really push it down. Let that help you up and now the top leg to your chest or closer. One, one, switch, one, one switch. Be Mindful of when you pick up that lower leg, it's not from the hips so much as it is where you're working higher up and one more each way. Both legs are up. Support your head with your hands.

Remember how we pushed back and do that now. Inhale, stretch the legs away. Act like you're going to get up with your upper body. Exhale, bring it up and again without looking at your abs. Feel that when you exhale, you're getting all that energy really moving through the body. Yeah. One more. We'll go into Chris Cross after this. To your right. Here it is. Press one, switch one [inaudible] locked in.

I love it when Negro walks in. Rotate, rotate, rotate. Give yourselves four more singles, one, two, three, and four both legs and just rock yourself up. Stretch your legs out for the spine stretch. That's a variation. I have a couple people, but just come with your hands behind your head. Straight legs. If you can sit and write up off those hip bones or sit bones. Exhale, round over, push through the heels, blow out all your air.

Now from here I'm going into a flat back on the diagonal. Almost like your ups stretch. Inhale into your long line. I'm putting your hands here so that you can push your head back into your hands and maybe even feel the straight line of your back. From there. Just breathe however you want. For now there's a lot of words. Extend your arms alongside your ears.

I like to actually rotate the thumbs up so that I can really externally rotate. Inhale, refold the hands so they're behind your head. Exhale, round over and on the same exhale, come back to an upright sitting position. Inhale, exhale down. Inhale into that long stretch like position or down dog, like position. Just inverted. Inhale, stretch your arm stretches. Find you're being pulled now. As you exhale, only your spine is getting longer as your arms.

Refold inhale and exhale round over and come back up. Head pressing back. Inhale. Exhale. Rounding down, trying to get the top of your head to the mat. Go ahead, keep pulling back at the low belly. Inhale, long, flat back, your feet still flexed. Exhale the arms. Inhale, grow longer. Just think it. Put the hands behind your head and exhale round over. Starting to maybe zero in on the upper back. I'm going to do a couple more because it's an important one. Inhale, exhale.

Down. Down, down is all the air out. Make sure, make sure, make sure. Inhale flat back. Come on, come on, looking for that space. Exhale. The arms are easy, but there are long inhale. Oh, I think I just started to feel that state change. I was looking for. Check in with yourself. Exhale. What do you need in here? And let that go for it. Come on, I'm gonna hang out here in a minute. You can bend the knees here. I don't suffer work, but don't suffer extending arms. Stay there with the arms if you're there and gently pull back as if, well not as if where are the arms are attached.

That's the part you're kind of gently thinking about. It's not where the hands end up. Can you be any longer? Oh, I could. I didn't know that. Hmm. That's good. Oh, I feel it. I need two more. One. There's to get along, but no strain in the neck and shoulders. Check it out. Check it out. Leave the arms. They're straight, but then round over and roll it up.

And I just bend the knees. Get behind the tailbone for open leg Rucker. Okay. And just see what happens. It just sort of internally think of your back. Mine's a little rounded. How about yours? That's cool. But can you straighten your legs without changing it or wobbling? Bend them. I'm just doing both. It's just a play. Just see where you're at.

You can do one at a time. Sorry. No random. Now the low back is definitely rounded. It's gotta be for this really. But can you gently think about keeping the lower end of the spine as is, but length in the upper well, but don't wobble cause it's not coming from down there. That part didn't change. Oh, okay. Now straighten your legs. Ready? Here we go. Inhale, roll back. Exhale up. Find that spot. Oh, you don't have to stay around it, but you're not changing the pelvis. The upper back. You don't appear flat.

Probably if we get where we're going, where I'm trying for, I bet I'm going to hold higher. You inhale back, exhale up. Maybe you're gonna hold lower. Maybe you need to bend your knees. What are you thinking about more or what might we think about more as what is happening in the middle? If you're wildland all around because the legs are straight, it's not worth it. Right?

[inaudible] okay, stay up there. If you're there, come get there. If you're not for a minute, just kind of pull down on those ankles. It feels good and let your stay come or your hips just sort of broadened. I'm not changing them. I'm just literally not making my legs work, holding them and pulling on them. I'm not a breath for that. I am not sure why, but it's all right. Sitting tall for this saw.

Let's go to the right. Rotate. Exhale, reach over. I'm going flatter here and going for the space. That's sort of my theme. That flat, flat, flat. I know I'm not flat, but I'm trying instead of tall and center. Try it differently. Maybe inhale, exhale, reach. Long Inhale, sit up. Exhale, center, and as you spiral down, we try not to anticipate until it's time to go there. All right. Just go where you're going. Inhale, you're there. No, you're there. Then you're up again, but maybe further and then back to some new place in the middle. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. The one relatively fast here, so give yourself less you repetitions to focus on certain areas.

Perhaps I'm thinking extremities on this next round. I'm reaching even that back arm up. Last one. [inaudible] up and center. Let's just close up the feet. Roll down and turn onto your side all the way for the moment. Basically lined up. If you need a little bit of, um, your feet coming in front, that's fine too. But not a big check mark.

Like shape from here in waisted, long hand is down. Inhale, exhale, lengthen or just lift without shortening. Whatever you want to do. Inhale lower and exhale. So there's a sense of the bottom side also remaining long. It does move both sides. Move a little right. [inaudible] the goal isn't necessarily to lift your legs as as possible.

The legs themselves are actually quite relaxed. Them staying up on this one. Take the top leg and maybe lengthen just a little more. You don't have to overly do that. Just so you know it's not falling. Seem like it's going to circle. Go a little slower cause we aren't on that sir. Uh, that check mark shape to get it to go behind you three.

I work too much in the hip joint. Just make the action for this one. I think this is six here. Let's go the other way. Take it around. One, two, both legs. Rep, you could put the bottom. Lay down. Three here's four, five and six. From there with both legs together, bring them forward just a little bit. Come up to your elbow and forearm so your elbow is pretty much right below your shoulder. Try and distribute weight into the rest of the form. Pick that top leg up again and kick it forward. It's kick kick and then sweep it back. Next one, hold it in front for just a second.

Grab onto the leg and like somewhere else today we pulled the hip back down or away from the leg. Do you give yourself that sense of feeling? That kind of happens each time you kick forward when you go back. Not My chest change, I don't think. Here we go. Kick, kick and sweep three, three and sweep for four, five, only doing six. So here we go. Hold it to the back. From back there. Just notice where your thigh is. It's going to stay there. You're going to draw that heel to your butt.

But the thighs not traveling forward, straighten it back out, but maybe try and push the whole thing ever so slightly back. Nothing else. Changes in the front, bend it again. Can you bring it all the way your glute and straighten it and bend again. Good. Take that same leg, just cross it in front of the bottom straight leg and then you can either stay here and kind of gently push the knee out for a little stretch of the hip hopefully, or even come up to a straighter arm. And I'm just kind of pressing the knee away from me. Sticking my butt out. Gives it a little bit more joy.

I mean space [inaudible] change sites or down all the way lined up as best you can. So that probably mostly is gonna relate to your head. A lot of times we end up looking down at our bodies and that's fine for a moment, but let's try and straight now. Here we go. Exhale, lifting both legs up, inhale, reach and set it down. And number two. And so the reaching now is really as if you could reach the pelvis away from the rib cage versus the hips or the legs out of the hips. Two more. Yeah, starting that exhale. A split second before.

One more. From there we take the top leg and circle it around. Pick a direction. Doesn't matter too. Oh, pants theory for [inaudible]. The rest of you is pretty still six change directions around two, three or breathing in there somewhere.

Five and finally six. Both legs are together. So we've been forward a bit. Sit Up to your elbow and you know it's worth, sometimes it's worth noticing what would be kind of a lazy position and letting yourself be there carefully. And then what does it take to get out of this without using your arm, right? I mean you're gonna use it some, but you know, rather than just driving it into the ground, lift the ribs, just let yourself lighten up and lift the rips top. Like is that kicking forward? Hold it there for that one.

Literally hold it with the arm and see if you can pull the hips back just a little. I'm not really trying to take you out of alignment. I just, the temptation is to take the top hip too far forward. Then let it go to the back. Feel that and now we'll do five more. We kick kick and two to think of reaching right out of the hip. Three, three I should said heels. What I meant to say there's four and five.

One more time worth a quick peak here because sometimes we think our leg is behind us and we're actually just laying backwards, but if your hips are stacked and your thighs behind you, that's cool. Now just draw the calf or the heel towards your bum without letting the knee turn up and straighten. Sometimes I put my hand on my thigh so I don't let it push my hand forward to only one more time. It should kind of kick in the hamstrings. Hopefully there's three and Voila. That's the light that comes in front of the other.

Either staying down here to gently press away being mindful of the shoulder you're sitting on still, or of course come up to the straighter arm. Let's see what that does for you. We're almost there. Just like that. Turn onto your stomach skis and let's go into, sorry, someone can forearms. I have the elbows pointed out. Lower yourself down just a little closer to your sternum and feel what that feels like on your ribs body right there. And now I've got one hand over the other. That's not critical, but I'm, I'm kinda dragging myself forward without moving actually the sense of keeping the ribs down, but sending the sternum straight ahead and since we're this low, we probably aren't looking up at the ceiling cause that would just be weird.

So wherever it feels natural there, all right, then reach the legs the other way. First of all, they gotta be straight. You gotta be flat in the front of the hips so that when you lift them up, it doesn't shift your whole trunk. It's like you're already there. They just lift and oh there's your hamstrings now. Right? And boots that you can pick one lady. Let's go right like kick, kick, straighten and kick, kick, straight kick. I switched straight and sorry, I'll alternating right, right. Stretch, left side, left, left stretch. I'm right. Golly. And keep that down.

So your both kneecaps are off so long as it's not causing any pressure in the low back, in which case you probably just want to go lower. Now alternate without the straightening, so it's one, one switch to do three, three or four. Five I'm doing six here it comes both like straight out of curiosity to yourself with the position you're already in. Could you lift your forums without changing the rest of you? If not next time, no, I'm going to say that and plan for it. From there.

We're going to come all the way down and turning our faces to one side, hands high on the back and if you're going to lace, which is fine. Some people date you're going to lace all the way. Don't kind of hang on the joints. A lot of people prefer to just hold four fingers or three fingers. You're all the way down with those needs together. Still I faced on the mat.

I'm not doing it for the mic purposes and your elbows on the ground, but there you're going to kick three one, two, three. Stretch your legs, stretch your arms, turn your face. The other way to come down. Bend the elbows high. They're on the ground and kick three, one, two, three, stretch. Eh, right. You don't, you don't have to lift the ribs off the ground. Keep them down. Listed chest, all you want and one, two, three holding it here. Put the feet on the ground, stretch the arms overhead, lower your chest a little. Pick up the legs again for swimming. Inhale, I'm doing right arm and left leg. Exhale, you can slow this way down if you want.

You want to make sure you're working in opposition. One more long breath cycle. Inhale and exhale. And from there just melt your way back to the mat. Resting for a moment, maybe a little shimmy from side to side, and then with your hands by your shoulders, press back into a rest position. And really the rest your back. It has to have it most likely is going to need to be rounded.

So get where you can. You can do that, that it's not just you sitting back and chill and for a minute you're actually stretching a little bit. In fact, walk your arms to the left, both of them, and then gently take your hips a little bit to the right. Come through, walk the arms to the right and the hips to the left. Be Gentle as you make that transition and then back to the center. From here, almost there, we're going to just leave the arms really straight. Start to round. I'm put, I'm going to push my shins into the floor so that you know what I'm doing. My head staying down and pushing my shins and enforcing more of a curve. I'm hovering my ribs, I'm lifting more. My head's dropping more.

I'm going to transfer weight toward my hands. Still got the shins pushing in. Be Gentle. As you go over the knees, start tightening your bum. As you press the hips forward, almost as if you're trying to Tuck your pelvis, but you won't be able to, and then you unfurl. You don't drop you unfor where you could breathe easily into this long spine. Then pull back on the ribs, the head, everything drops back to where you started. Let's do it again a little faster.

You push down to lift up. Inhale, oh the way. If you can, you can do an exhale here and inhale, drop the head, pull the ribs back and back. One more time. Inhale, exhale. You're not sinking on the shoulders. You're up out of the ground and around. Back this time. Curl the toes under. Try and feel all five toes, Christie. And then from that place we're going to start to roll forward. When it feels appropriate, get a lift off the knees, straighten your legs, and if you need to walk the feet back a step or to do so that your hands are right below your shoulders. And then from here, gently press yourself forward a little with a fee and then slide back as if you're pushing the ground away with your hands.

So for now I'm just dragging everything down and back. And then pushing forward. If I'm referring to my hands, I draw the heel of my hand toward my hips and then I push it away one more time and push. Now lift the hips up, let your head hang, walk the fetus, step or so forward and try first. For a flat back. So I'm going to drop into somewhere around my head, between my arms. I'm going to lift my tailbone to the sky, which for me makes me want to bend my knees. So I do. Then I think I want both sides of my trunk to be long, not just feeling like my back is doing it.

So I'm going to pull the ribs in slightly and think about stretching everything more. Then I see what I can get out of straighten my knees. Here's that calf stretch I was looking for. You can walk from one heel to the other almost there. Just kind of finding any last nugget of whatever you came into class to do. Now's your chance.

And with that we're going to walk our feet forward and this baby like we started it, except I do have my feet apart. You can do it either way together or apart. Bend your knees. Remember that. Exhale straight. Bend again and straighten. If you did change your state, try and keep it as you go on. If you didn't change your state and you still want to, sometimes it's just a decision from there. Let your legs be as straight as it feels comfortable. Tailbone gets heavy, arms leave the floor. You roll up allowing for that space, that room, that attitude, and to finish it off, just turn those arms out again, like we did. Deep breath in and exhale.

Thanks for coming.

Comments

2 people like this.
Kristi, this class was wonderful! I loved it!
Thank you Hilary!
You, and this class, go directly to "favorites"!!
Woo hoo!! Thank you Joni! That feels good!
Hi Kristie,
Nice workout, hits all the right spots for me.
One question: in single leg kicks my knees 'snap'. I can't really see it but I think my lower legs and ankles are slightly rotated (outward) relative to my tights. When I try to correct that (flexing my feet and pointing my toes toward each other) my knees don't snap anymore (only when I do slow movement) but it's forcing/pressing my thighs into an outward rotation like hell which hurts in my lower back and it feels like I'm forcing my knee joint.
Is there a video instruction somewhere to break this exercise down so I can try to build it up from scratch or get some alternatives in how to place the legs? Unfortunately there's know studio in my area where I can be trained properly...
Hi Edith, Thanks for the feedback and your question. Sometimes knee snapping happens when we are lying on our quads then forcing them to lengthen (in this case when you bend the knee to kick), The first thing I would try would be to lower your upper body position (Move your elbows forward) so some of the pressure will come off of the thighs. You also may want to relax your feet (no point or flex) so they don't guide the whole lower leg and you rely on the hamstring instead. We are working on redoing our entire exercise section right now because we think we can do better and offer more than what we have now, but in the meantime, here is a short video description of it.
Single Leg Kick
Thanks Kristi, I will try it with these modifications!
Oh...and by the way: I'm officially addicted to your website, I've got it open most of the day. Don't make the site too good otherwise my husband will complain that I can better marry Pilates Anytime....
Ummm... I'll do my best to NOT make PA too good (lying!)
Edith, I will work my bum off to make this site so awesome that EVEN your husband want's to play! In the meantime... I'll trust that you shut us down when appropriate
3 people like this.
This was one of the best workouts for me!!! Perfect! Hit all the right notes! I loved the quick pace and perfect cuing!!! maybe waking up on the wrong side of the bed is a good thing for all of us out here in internet land. again thank you so much for PA!!!Life saver!!
1 person likes this.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....
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