Class #1780

Breath-Focused Mat

45 min - Class
96 likes

Description

Focus on breathing in this traditional Mat workout by Amy Taylor Alpers. She wants you to think of yourself as a "huge bellow" and reminds you to be mindful of your breath throughout each movement. Amy also includes rarely performed exercises such as archival Neck Pull, archival Boomerang, and a Big Twist ending.
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Oct 05, 2014
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Hi, I'm Amy Taylor Alpers from the Pilati Center in Boulder, Colorado and I'm here with this awesome group of ladies and we're going to do a nice matte, not crazy kick ass too hard, right? But in Nice, good, even keeled classic map. Um, and we're going to focus, especially on breathing can never really focus enough on breathing. So basically I just want you the whole time you just think of yourselves as just huge bellows, right? This big, huge opening, filling chest and then coming down right underneath the rib cage and giving yourself a deep squeeze there and thinking like three rings in one, two, three like we were counting your rings like a tree, right? One, two, three. And really squeezing that deepest ring first just through your imagination and then release that and let your lungs just below back out again. A huge, huge, huge bouquet of flowers. Maybe something like that.

And then you'd just come in and squeeze the stems, big hot air balloon and you just come in and squeeze the cables between the balloon and the baskets. Some image that really helps you keep that constant filling and emptying. Filling and empty. All right, so let's go ahead and lie down. Let's take a moment to kind of stretch yourselves way out, especially stretch that spot we were just talking about between the pelvis and the rib cage. Take your arms over your head, stretch your ribs and pelvis apart. Take a huge inhale and stretch your rib cage remembering there's 80 plus joints in your rib cage. Stretch them all and then come in and go three, two, one, and squeeze and narrow your hourglass right at your waistline. Alright, then we're going to take one more giant. Inhale, fill, stretch open.

As you do your exhale, now it's going to literally cruel you into a ball. Hands come behind your head, knees come up to your ears and then we're going to do footwork. We go in house. You can put your hands right behind your head. Exhale, come back in, keeping the head up. There we go. Exhale, come back in. Inhale, exhale. Now be a bellows, right. Air Gets sucked in, air gets pushed out, and let those knees lift your head higher. Let those knees come all the way into your belly. And how push the air out, right? Just like an air cushion. They push the air out, fill, push. They're out. Fill. Push the air out.

Go Bird on a perch. We'll go a little faster. We'll go. Exhale in Phil. Exhale in Phil. Exhale and keep coming up with your upper body. Keep lifting, right? Imagine you're floating off the mat a little bit. Your upper body, your lower body, right? Your lungs are light on the mat so you're not putting weight on your lungs.

Now Flex your feet strongly and pull those toes all the way to your nose. Each time the knees come in, let your pelvis roll off the mat up towards your waistline, right? So you're not at rest. You rolling your spine back and forth and the other end of your spine is levitating up off the mat. So you feel a nice cradle in the middle. And now we're going to stay out and point and flex.

You're welcome to take hold of your thighs. If you do, make sure you wrap the thighs together rather than pulling them apart. So your fingers are literally reaching for one another. Bend your elbows, lift your upper bodies up higher. Yes. Bend your elbows up light and why? That's right. So you feel that cradle again, right? And then big inhale, and on the exhale, bend your knees to your chest. Give yourself a big squeeze. Get rid of all the old air, soften the knees and let them part. Right? There you go. Take your legs down on the Mat. Stretch out. One more time.

Get a big stretch of those abdominals between the ribs and the pelvis. Feet are together pointed. Take another inhale. And on the exhale, bring your hands down and around and lift up into your hundred. And we go in two, three, four, five. I know two, three, four, five and then two, three, four, a little bigger out. Two, three all the way from the shoulder out. Yes. Now again, see if you can soften the knees and ankles and elbows and strengthen muscles instead of joints. And levitate yourself up off the mat a little bit. And two more.

Still strong, just not locked at the joints. So the joints are floating a little bit. And then last one, and on the exhale you can lower or bend your knees into your chest if you like. All right, legs down, flex those ankles nice and strongly. Take the arms up over your head. Okay. You're going to bring the arms up to 90 degrees.

You're going to lift the head and put the head through the window and then continue the head through the window to roll up and reach out. Flex your ankles really strongly and then reach for each other's fingertips and then pull your belly way back and roll on down and exhale again. So follow that choreography as best you can, but keep your ankles really flex. If you have to bend your knees, do arms up, head comes through, flex your ankles, flex them, flex some, flex them, pull your belly back as you reach your heels away and roll down and keep those ankles. Keep them, keep them, keep them on arms. Then head head keeps go.

You got to flex your ankles more at the ankle, not so much at the toes, and then roll back. Pull the belly in and roll it down. Oh, let's do one more arms come up, then head goes through the window, flex those ankles, use them as an anchor a little bit, and then roll back down. Roll deep through the spine and lift the arms up. Nice job. Okay. Bring your hands down next to your hips. Bend your knees into your chest and straighten your legs up. Good. Now again, when you straighten those legs up, don't lock your knees right and maybe have a sense of a little bird on a perch foot instead of a tight ankle. It's more like you're pointing your foot, right?

Narrow and lift your hips up off the mat and then continue that thought to roll over. Open. Come back down. Keep your legs growing out of that hip power as opposed to hanging off of that hip power. Bring your feet together, narrow and lift the hips, and then keep lifting the hips to rollover. Beautiful ladies and open and rolled down. Now the legs are not hanging. They're projected out of your hip power.

Lower the legs a little bit together. Again, instead of throwing, lift and curl, the feet can go all the way to the floor if that's okay on your neck. Oh, open as wide as the shoulders are even wider and roll back down. You take the legs as low as you want, and close. Reverse open. Lift up and over, feet to the floor. Flex and close. Roll back down again, not dragging the legs, but feeling like they're literally just projected right out of your hips. Point the feet open. Lift, hips and curl.

Beautiful over. Come back down on one more time. Ah, now let's think more about that breathing and we're going to inhale up and exhale. Close and inhale down. And now just lower your right foot to the floor. Exhale. Okay. Right foot flex, nice and strongly. Other foot pointed.

Long, strong, powerful frame of the arms. Lift your hip up and over. Cross left. Go down to the floor. Wide and center. Big Inhale. The body gets filled. Exhale, it empties. Inhale, exhale.

Two more in Nice and big, but with lots of control and last time over around. Stay at the top and then lower that leg. Sorry, keep your leg up and reversed and wide. I was like, that's too short and over and center and you feel that right foot, very strong. See if you can remember your right foot. What's it doing? And inhale, exhale, and inhale. Exhale last time over strong arms and open chest. Now you get to lower that leg, good. Flex that foot point, the other one, and lift and crossover around.

Literally use your upper back, your upper arms, all the way down to your poems for organization, right? And then that nice flex put on the other foot, right to find again, a little more organization is that five I lost. Count and reverse. Sit down around, points your toe and draw the circle with the tip of your big toe. Now Nice and clean over to the ear of the person to your left, right? Even if it's a pretend person and then way over. Nice. Okay.

And we lower that leg rule right up to sitting. Just put your hands next to your hips and pick your butt up. Pinch it strong hips. Pick your butt right up and then put it down behind your heels. Bend your knees and put it down behind your heel. All the way, all the way.

Go farther. Go farther, go farther. Point your toes, grab your ankles, knees a little bit apart, and roll in a hail and exhale. So all the rolling exercises in [inaudible] to cleanse the lungs, right? So you're filling your lungs and you're emptying them. Let the rolling really empty your lungs. Take your knees just a little bit apart and put them on your ears. Yeah, that's the way. And try to keep them on your ears and you're trying to keep your hips on your feet. Hips on the feet and back.

Good thighs on the chest. Try that. How small can you be? Whoo. I know it's hard. Good. And then one last time. Big Inhale. Cleanse those lungs. Exhale, put your feet down, but your hands down behind your hips. Pick your butt up with a nice, strong pinch straight in your legs. Lie Down, roll down. Take hold of your right knee up to your ear. Lift your head in your other foot. And when we switch on. Um, two, two and two.

Breathing in for two and out. Now don't pose, pull the leg and stretch the other leg away like a bow and arrow. Take that needy or ear and then bend both knees in. Exhale, stay for just a second. Hands on your ankles. Elbows, high and wide. Knees apart. Ears between your elbow, your knees, right. Inhale stewards. Everything Long Xcel, gather those ankles.

Lift those elbows. Inhale, stretch. Elbows to ears. Pull and open and curl your tail in the Hale. Exhale, curl your tail. Roll your sacrum off the mat and inhale and exhale. Keep your tail lifted to straighten your legs up. Scissors.

We're going to go into scissors now. Sorry. And straight legs up. Pull twice. Scissor, pot, scissor, pull, scissor, pull. Good. Now can you stay for one second? Take your hands higher on your ankle. Lift your pelvis off the mat and roll back onto your upper backs and switch from there. Stay back there. Stay back there. Yes, right. Nice job you guys. So you take your ankle, pull your elbows high behind your head. Just like tree. Beautiful. Stay there. Put your hands behind your head, leg straight to the ceiling.

Inhale the legs down. Exhale, come back up. Keep the head up. Keep lifting the head. Now feel that your inhale is like the parachute. Your legs are the skydiver. Your inhale better be big enough. Make your inhale too big. Bigger than the skydiver needs. Can we do one more?

Keep lifting up dead. Lift up upper body. Yeah. Stay up and twist and twist and twist. Now if you can, you keep your head dead in the middle and you pivot around it so you don't roll side to side. You pivot. Beautiful. Nice job. Excellent you guys alright and come right up to sitting. Very nice. And then you can skip back. Just you have a little bit of room.

Straighten your legs out. Feet flexed, a little wider than your maths. Okay. Take a nice inhale and then exhale round over. Flex your ankles. You might need to even bend your knees a little bit. Inhale, sit tall, stacking your vertebra, fill your lungs, fill your lungs, fill your lungs. Exhale. Three rings in empty, empty, less stretching, more emptying, emptying, go head. All the way to the floor in late, back up. Let the air fill you like a balloon XL.

Deep squeeze and empty. Empty, less muscle, more air, all the way. Go down, go down, go down, go down, fill your lungs, fill the lip that pick you up. Lecture, ankles, not your toes. Exhale, squeeze and curl. Keep your ankles flexed. Ankles flexed, ankles flex. Let's take hold of the souls of your feet. You can go over, the toes are through the archer. We're on the side taking. Inhale as you soften your knees a little bit, fill the parachute of your back, and then as you exhale, pull your belly in your organs in and reach your heels away.

No hyperextension though, right? Inhale, release the knees. Fill the back like a huge sail. Just fill it, fill it, fill it, fill it. Exhale, squeeze the gut. Reach the heels away. Inhale, come back up to sitting. Just take your arms away. Nice. You can put your hands here just for a second. You're going to curl back.

Points your feet. Lift your legs a little bit to bend your knees, to take hold of your ankles, to straighten your legs and you're going to roll again. Inhale, roll back and exhale. Good. Now remember, no hyper extension. You're going to pick your hips up rather than straight and your knees pick your hips up, right so that even if you do straighten your knees that comes out of the hip lift and not out of so much a hamstring or knee stretch, right? And Justin degree, like a quarter of an inch. Hands moving towards knees. We'll shift it quite a bit. If you're struggling to come up at all, you just can go tiny bit closer to your knees.

And then last time, try now as you come up, bring your feet together, flex your ankles. You can just keep your hands where they are and try rolling again, but really try flexing your ankles right and again, you might have to bend the knees a little bit to do that. And now roll like that. Ultimately your goal is going to be to climb up your legs and maybe someday take your toes. For some people. That's not that hard. For some of us, it's a lifetime journey.

See if you can flex your ankles more. So reflection is a really key component. It's not such a, not just like a physical idea, it's actually a component of your health. So flexing really will shift things, not just stretch things. Yes. Nice job. That's the way beautiful. Stay at the top. If you can point your toes, it's just take your hands to the mat and then we're going to jackknife over.

So anybody who needs to scoot forward a little bit, maybe just do, and we're going to go into our corkscrew. Okay. So you're going to Jackknife over and then up and point those toes nice and strongly. Now find that upper body power again. Twist your rib cage to the right. Roll down the right. Yeah, go the other way, Jen. And then circle around and come back up. Yes. So you think as you twist, right, twist your rib cage to the left.

Roll down the left. Exactly. And then circle around and up to the right tool list. Reach way over here. Canyon like big circles. So you end up on your side, twist, come down the knife edge side of your body. Bring your feet this way. Ah, it's the way. And then we'll do one last that twist or the right.

Take your feet to the right as if your feet, we're going to go around a big clock. Go that way. Yeah. And then last time the feet go around the clock the other direction they come this way. [inaudible] around or around or around and up. Nice job and roll right down and come up to sitting again. Feed in the V ankles flexed. Nice, strong flection, which is an ankle movement more than like a Shin or even a foot movement.

It's really an ankle movement. Find that. Take your hip feet just a little wider than your mat. Yeah, arms out to the side. We're going to twist a very tall and then curl. Reach for your little toe. Now Flex your ankles more. Yes, and roll back and notice how twist to the left. Notice how if you keep your ankles flexed, it will organize the exercise a little bit better and come back up.

Twist. Inhaling. The twist squeezes and rings the air out of you. Inflation lifts, you twist, deflation, squeezes and rings and twists. Inhale up, twist. Now take your left hand back behind you and keep pulling your right. Sorry. Your right hand.

Keep pulling your right shoulder blade towards your spine. Keep pulling that twist your left rib cage toward the floor. Don't lever off your foot if you can help it. Just do that with spinal muscles. Yes, and then come back up and twist. We'll do one more set after we finish this.

So keep twisting your left shoulder blade is keep is trying to keep going towards your spine. Your right rib cage is trying to go on the mat between your legs. Sit on both hips equally and flex your ankles and come back up. So I know it's a lot of thought on this exercise, but all of it will help you organize it a little bit better. Let's do one more set twist to the right. Keep those ankles. Don't lose them.

Ankles or the hips. Twist your spine, twist your left ribs forward, your right shoulder blade back, your palm up, very high behind you and come back up. And who is the other way? Keep twisting that back hand. Keep twisting it and putting those right ribs on the mat between your knees. Flex those ankle strongly and come back up and do my gut. Bring your feet together. Swing 'em gently around you.

Just make sure you don't bonk each other, you to swing your legs around behind you and line your belly palms down, forehead down. So right off the bat, just imagine, you know with the amount of heat that you've got going now, right, and the oxygenation deep in your tissues that your tissues have absorbed. So they're very soft that you literally just don't even have a spine. Now your spine is so soft, it's absorbed into your musculature. Bring your hands under your armpits. Yes. Even a little bit more, right? Yeah, exactly. Then lift your eyes, your nose, your chin, your chest, your throat, your sternum. Rise up. Push with those hands and rise up. Lift your belly and stretch it long. Eyes up everybody.

Eyes up and then roll back down, lengthening your abdominals across the mat and lower your head. So you think that you're not just going up and back, you're actually going forward and around. So the front of your body gets long enough to not compress your spine at all. Right? So you lift your eyes, nose, chin, throat, sternum, all the way down to your solar plexus. And the front of you is getting so long towards the center of this room that your spine has plenty of room.

And then you pull yourself long as you come back down. Exactly. And let's do that one more time. So you lift sequencing right on through pulling yourself towards each other, lifting and going around a Ferris wheel instead of back into it. And then you can die. You can release on push or take the arms out above the head if you want.

I know, right? So keeping the hands right under the armpits is actually very fine too. Yep. And then beautiful. Have a moment and just sit back onto your heels while you're sitting back onto your heels. Walk yourself farther back than you're used to. Curl your tail under, pinch your butt under a little bit.

Press your shins down and lift your belly and organs up into your spine. Maybe even trying to get your ears between your knees a little bit more, pressing those shins down and tucking the tail under. So the abdominals. Gather the organs backups. So that feeling is, is in piles all over the place, right? Versus kind of more that flatter position where you're just sitting in your hips and lying on your thighs. So even though we're going to come into extension, keep that sense of deep organ lift as you come back out onto your elbows. And that same length that you had for your Swan, where your spine has so much room because your front is longer than it needs to be. Okay?

Take your elbows farther forward and let's maybe even try this tripod position today. And now imagine in a way like you were like the guys in the military, you have to do that kind of crawling along the floor, pull yourself forward. And then as if like you were on a, um, a surfboard or something, right? Lift the rest of yourself out of the water. So you're on the kickboard and you gotta lift the rest of you and hold yourself on the surface of the water. You got it right. So your knees are relaxed, you're lifting your legs, you got it. You're gonna kick once and switch, kick and switch, kick and switch. Kick. Try not to lean on your quads at all.

Your quads theoretically should be off of the mat and good and your belly is off the mat. It's like crazy, but you're doing it. You keep pulling yourself forward. Look up a little bit more than you're used to. Maybe over the head of the person in front of you. Keep pulling a little bit more so there's no balance. There's lift.

Nice job. Excellent. And then once she got in the mad, beautiful ladies. All right, hands go as high up on your back as possible and then walk them up a little higher and then take your elbows down, narrow your legs, and levitate your legs a little bit, right? So you're using your back muscles. You're not just going to be using your quads. You're going to be using a lot of hips and hamstrings. Take a big inhale and then bend the knees, kick three times one, two, three.

And now inhale and just yawn. That's just as big as you can. Eyes up, chest up, hands up, feet up. Ben High to turn to the other side and kick. One, two, 3:00 AM lifted up. Get your feet higher than your head. Yes. Awesome. And kick. One, two, three. Inhale, less stretching, more, lifting and filling. And exhale two, three. Now lift and fill. Lift and feel.

Unlock your arms and lift them instead. And exhale. You can still keep holding. Just don't lock your elbows. And up we come. So don't lock your elbows. Lift your elbows, lift your eyes, lift your legs. And last time, kick two, three and rise up as high as you can up higher legs, higher everybody higher and release and sit down. Sit back onto your heels and go into that position right away. If you can, instead of sort of a long child's pose, go more into that curl.

It's not a ruler or anything, it's just that it kind of gives you a little more clue into what we're doing. Plot is more of a round spine, strong hips versus sitting into the hip joint and leaning on the knees. All right, bring your feet on front of it. We're going to do the archival version of the neck pole mainly because it's a lot nicer if you don't have a strap guy, but I'll talk you through it. So the one thing, keep those ankles flex. Honestly, ankle flection shifts like every gear in your whole body, all the way up to your cranial bones, all the way up to your brain, all the way up to your eyes in your eyes socket.

So actual flection and pointing and PyLadies is doing a lot more than just say teaching you a skill or working your ankles. So trying to keep that ankle flection as best you can, and it's really in the ankle, right? So it's deepen that joint as opposed to something that feels like tension in the front of the Shin or even stretching in the back of the calf. Okay, so this position here, we're going to start in. When you roll up from the floor, when we get to that moment, you're going to come to this position instead of rolling to your knees. So you'll, you'll probably mix it up and then have to fix it.

So just know that's the one spot that's going to be a little confusing. So elbows very wide. You're going to round forward to your knees and pulsed gently three times one, two, three. And sit tall, elbows wide. Then you get to actually bring your elbows narrow and curl down to the mat at the bottom. Keep your flection, let your elbows go wide. Now when you come back up, remember you're going to come to the sitting position. Curl up to sitting up.

We go, elbows wide, flex those ankles round over. Pulse, two, three. Inhale, sit. Very tough. Lecturer equals more. And then elbows narrow, curl down. And one more time up. We come up, we come sit tall, elbows wide, flex those ankles round over elbows, high elbows really high here. Yes. Inhale, sit tall, flex your ankles even more. And then curl elbows can come forward and down gut. And some of you did that with hip width and some together and actually those are both options. So great. All right, so you Todd. I know, right?

Okay. Then you need some place your feet flat, hip width apart. And let's just do a nice shoulder bridge roll up and down a couple of times first and we'll see how we feel. All right? So you're going to just a little bit of that lift in the deep pelvic muscles. Rolling your spine up off the mat, push that shoulder girdle power back into the mat, push those feet into the mat, lift your hips a little bit higher. Now you could step right.

Walk your feet in a little closer to you that way. Yeah, and maybe to a little bit jet in, in, in, and then go up more. You guys up, precious shoulders back your feet back. You're back up. And then keep that pressure, but curl in and lower your spine to the mat, right? And it's not like you're just dropping it or anything, right? You're keeping that back pressure. So that keeps your suspension a little bit pressed.

The shoulders and the feet and levitate the hips, the spine, all the way up past the lungs. Get higher, press down backwards to lift up frontwards, huge rainbow arc of your spine, and they keep the pressure down and back to lift and lower your spine so you don't let go of that. It stays connected the whole time you're rolling back down. You got it. And that one more time. We're going to narrow those hips sense, strengthen them and pick them up. Rolling and articulating and rising up higher presses, shoulders back, press back, make it powerful fit footprints that we're going to find 500,000 years from now. You're going to find those footprints, push them down, push them down, push them down, and then keep the push and a roll the spine down.

Nice job. And then bend your knees into your chest and just give your spine a little bit of a flection release. Letting that go all the way. So your sacrum rolls, the knees can come a little bit apart. Yeah, and you release that tension. We're going to go into Jack Knife, so if you need to scoot down your mats at all, do and then bring those knees in again. One more time and straighten the legs from the hip lifted position.

Right? So the hips are a little bit up. Exactly. Okay. And there's that strong shoulder girdle again. You're going to roll over. And then those hips, lift the legs up, lift your back up off your arms, keep that shoulder girdle power and lift yourself back down to the floor like you did in your shoulder bridge. Just roll it down and nice. You can take the feet a little farther away from you.

And then you come hips lift over. Nice job and up. Very high. Pick your rib cage up, off your arms, pressure, arms way back, and then lift your back to your feet as you pull your belly in to roll down. Not too slowly. Roll on down now. One more time. Roll way over. Lift up your back higher, higher, higher. And then press the shoulders, lift the back and pull the belly in and roll it down. Nice.

Take your feet all the way to the floor if you can, or bend your knees. Beautiful. Okay, let's all roll onto our right sides. No, don't know if you have a standard way of doing it. Good. So yeah, let's all we can all face me or we can all, let's all face me. I think that way. If I say that certain leg, we're all doing the same leg. Okay, so maybe put your head at this at, okay. So you're up on your elbows. The other hand can be here, right in front of you. No problem. You're actually here. Sorry, I said that a little funny, but you're up on that elbow, right? And then, and this left hand can go behind your head also if you'd like that, but do levitate your underneath side so that underneath side is not hanging on.

The Mat is actually suspended off the mat. So even pick up the rib cage even a little bit the pelvis. So you're almost more on your greater trow canter here. Okay, your feet are forward at a nice 45 degree angle. Flex the bottom foot in a nice strong flex. Picked up your left foot a couple inches. Flex that foot.

We're going to swing to the fur and catch it. Reach and then to the back point to the back and flex to the front and point to the back. Good. Now we go and hey [inaudible]. Hey and you get to let your spine curl a little bit arched to the back, right? So your spine is actually reflecting the movement. In fact, it's actually creating the movement so it doesn't get stuck so much in your hip. Let your spine flex so that you can catch the leg with your abdominals and lift again with your back and arch again. Front, front, and back.

Back last time in handling and stay to the back. Nice job. Bring your feet together. Turn the top leg out, point the foot. Bring the heel to the mat in front of that foot. Just straight leg though. Okay. Still have your hand down or behind your head. Lifting the underneath side. You're going to kick up, flex down.

We're just going to come down in front of the other foot and up. Flex down. Point up. Flex down. One more time up and reverse it. Flex up. Point down really tall. Don't lean on your right. Ribs up, up, up, up. Up we go. Yeah. One more time up.

Stay down and pointed. Turning out. Draw a line up to your knee. Lift your inner thigh, stretch your leg, flex it, and bring it down. Point. Draw it in. Spiral the leg cork. Screw it up and down. One more time. Pointed. Lifted. Yes, very nice. Reverse it.

Flex it up. Point. Lift your inner thigh to bend your knee and slide your foot down. Up to the side bend and slide it down. I want more time, up points and flooded down. Nice. Parallel both legs.

Lift both legs up and down, and you can put that hand down to help. Absolutely. But again, lift your right side off the mat so that your ribs are not touching them. Add their levitated a little bit and lift both legs from your waist line, not just your hips. See if you can pick them up in your waist. Yeah, keep 'em up. Stay up. See if you can lift him higher. Lift him higher. Lift a Meyer. Nice. Keep them connected. Point your toes. Roll onto your belly. Turn your legs out and clap, clap, clap, clap. Find that turnout way up inside your hip joints.

Good. And then still with the legs and roll onto your left side. Bring your feet forward to 45 degrees. Flex the bumps and we're going to turn and face this way. There you go. Flex that bottom foot right. Pick up the right foot and flex that foot.

We'd go for curl and point. Arch your back. And so you don't use your hamstring as a break or your quad as a brake. You go past the leg and you catch the exercise with your abdominals. Pulse higher than with your back pulse farther. Right? So it's a lot more body work than it is leg and hip work.

In many cases you flex to the front and arch to the back. Last time, man. Hey Annex. Hey, I'll bring the feet together. Turn the top leg out. Point kick up, flex down, really spiral that hip. And even here, think of lifting the leg with your abdominals and reverse your foot versus throwing it. And then using your hamstring as a break. Lift the leg with your abdominals. You got it. And let it go. As far as that, that's much better. Okay.

Parallel lift both legs up and down and you can point the feet at the, it might help a little bit up. Again, you're trying to lift up in the waistline and not just roll on the hip or lift with the hip, staying up pulse up from the waistline up from the waist line up. Nice job. Excellent. Beautiful. And then lower the legs. Awesome. Okay. Come to sitting facing each other. We did even numbers. We didn't do that one. We've got to do that one. Sorry. I was like, did we miss something? We missed something. Okay, bring your feet forward, turn the top leg out and lift the legs.

Stretch, flex and come on down point and you're working your turnout more than your knee. How about that? You work your turnout in your hip. Beautiful River. Sit. Work the hip, the hip. Turn the hip out. Beautiful. You guys up. Pull your belly deep in so you're not arching. And last time.

Up and down. Good, good, good. We got everything. Great. Come up to setting. That was great though. Also shifting to that hip like that we can do so much kind of leg gesturing when we're really trying to get into these hips a little bit more. So for instance, in Teaser, your hips are there for you. Okay. So you're gonna straighten your legs out in front of you. Point your toes nice and strong in the hips.

Not here as much as you'd like to think or here, but more here and then more in the sole of the foot instead of the ankle. Yeah. So you really feel like your foot is active, but not that your ankle is just hyper extended, right power here, but your hands down next to your hips. This to your toes is one thing. Curl back, lift that whole one thing in front of your nose. Hands parallel to that and then curl your belly down to the floor and then rise back up and keep that tremendous hip power that projects those legs out. Roll your belly down and rural it back up again.

Very nice. Roll it back down. Beautiful and stay up lower. Lift from your waistline, not just your hip joints. See if you can have that feeling we talked about in sidekicks, where it's your whole body doing it and not just hip joints and then take it all the way to the floor and rest for a moment. Beautiful. Roll Up. Just halfway bend your elbows and pull them way back behind you.

Press them down and push into your feet a little bit to pull your guts way in. Strong hips. Take a big inhale on the exhale. Press your hands down and lift your leg straight up to 90 degrees. Okay? Just like corkscrew. Roll onto your right hip, circle the legs down, roll onto your left tip and center and how again you switch. Alternate how again, could this be more up in your waistline instead of down in your hips?

Imagine you were like those gymnasts on the parallel bars and there was nothing under your sacrum. You had to hold yourself up with your arms and move your whole lower body as if there was nothing underneath it. And then last time and center, very good. Bend your knees. Great. Okay. Swing around a lie on your bellies. Take hold of your ankles.

Okay, think about back into swan where our fronts were so long. Your back has plenty of room. Straighten your legs and let that tow you up. And then lift even higher. Lift even higher. And then if you can rock you, press the feet into the hands and let that do it for you. And then feel like you press the hands, lift the hands, press the hands, lift the hands. Nice job.

Stay up at the top release. Gently reach your arms out around in front of you and swim. I stay up everybody up. Don't drown. Stay up. Look over the head of the person in front of you. Big Arms now, big arms all the way from the shoulders. Hey, hips all the way up from your back and then rest and sit back onto your heels. All right, and let's do for fun. Let's do the archival boomerang.

Okay, so you're going to bring your feet out in front of you. It doesn't feel have it has all the ballet removed and it has all the, all of the balance and arm movements removed. It's just Joe doing what Joe could do and he was a boxer, not a dancer. Point those toes. Nice and strong. Hips. Hands down next to your hips. Okay. It's going to start with the curl forward and as you crow forward, you lift those arms up behind you and they're actually what curls you forward.

And you pulse. Pulse. Put your hands down next to your hips. Lift your legs, roll over. I forgot to cross your legs again over open. Cross your legs, right? Roll right back up to sitting and sweep the arms back. Pulse, pulse, and hands-down Jackknife over open, close. Roll right back up. Sweep the arms back. Pulse, pulse, and again over open, close, [inaudible] and pulse.

Last time. Open, close, rural, backend, sweep and pulse. You got it. Nice. That was Kinda fun. I think, you know, take a little pressure off. Bend your knees. Let's do the prayer foot. So soles of the feet together. We're going to do seal, so just make sure you have room behind you. Soles of the feet, and then you're going to turn your toes toward you and see if you can feel how that actually makes your spine curl a little bit. Now pull your feet away, Rachel, just a little bit like take them out away from you a little bit more and pull your ball, your belly back in opposition. You feel it? It's awesome. Okay.

Keep those toes curled around and roll backwards. Lifting those hips and then we're a turn and you can use the, you do the claps at either under, both up and over. Keep pointing those toes in the direction of the curl, right? Yeah. There you go. And come back up. Right. And see if you can feel how that opens your back a little bit more maybe. Right? So as you think, yeah, I, I go this way a little bit more and then point them that way. Yes.

Nice job. Good. Let's do two more big inhales and exhales and last time. Big Inhales and exhales. Beautiful. And then let's come to standing. All right? And what we'll do is we'll finish with the big twist.

Anybody never done the big twist. Okay, no problem. So you're going to start, you're going to face me. I'll do mirror image. Not Too wide. You'd be a foot width, right? If you get too big, it actually gets harder now. Yeah, you might be okay on your match. You might like it better on the floor just cause the mat might twist into your feet a little bit. Alright, so you're going to rise up. You're going to be in a star position. Let's everybody go to the right.

The foot that's going to pivot needs to pivot until you're facing the other direction. You know what I'm going to have you guys all start facing that way first. So when you turn around, you'll see me cause it's the other direction. That's harder. Okay, so your op, okay, you're gonna pivot to your right pivot. You keep pivoting, you're gonna keep pivoting that right foot. Keep coming all the way around. So do you see me now? See I turned out that foot is, this foot's resting on the floor.

You're gonna reach all the way around and grab your back ankle, bend your elbows and pull your head to your ankle and just keep turning even more. So these toes will be all the way over here. Keep coming, keep coming, keep coming, keep coming. You've got it. And then that hand can reach and then you reach out and you spit spin back and around, up to your toes. Got It. Turn and face the other way. Your left heel keeps pivoting and then your right foot is resting and they're not so far apart. Right? So if that foot were more like here, then you could reach it a lot better. Both hands grab it. That back foot that you're holding, turn it out and rested on the side. Yeah, you got it right. Yeah, just like that.

That's exactly right. Okay. Then the front knee, very deep bend and twist. Bend your elbows. Pull your head to your knees at you. There you go. And reach around. This is like Joe at his most ultimate twist your body like a dishrag, right? One more set twist all the way around. Keep coming. Keep calm, and take both hands around. Bring your feet even closer. That's reach around.

Grab that back ankle. Pull and bend your elbows and then reach again on. Calm up to center. Last time. Big Inhale, twist, grab, pull, exhale. Ah, big inhale. Come back around and just bring your feet together and your hands down. X. Well done ladies.

Great job.

Comments

3 people like this.
I think that bellows bellow the belly button/at waist image just changed my entire life! Thank you, Amy Taylor Alpers! Just as I expected. Profound and delicious!
1 person likes this.
Great overall workout, excellent instructions and pace. Really enjoyed this class. I was debating whether I should work out this Saturday morning before doing chores and I am glad I choose this class. Time flew, because I enjoyed it so much.
Thank you
1 person likes this.
This is a video I see myself going back to week after week. I loved learning the archival exercises too. Thanks so much, Amy!
1 person likes this.
What a treat to have you teach me again!! I forgot how spoiled I was learning and taking classes at the TPC. Now that I have moved to Rochester, NY I don't have access to amazing teachers like you Amy!! I love your imagary. It helps me get more out of my practice!!
Deborah L
1 person likes this.
I loved doing this class live while traveling in Cali this summer. It was fantastic being taught by Amy and I'm excited that now I can take the class again to catch her amazing cues! The studio is as beautiful in person as you see and yes, there is really a train.
1 person likes this.
Yay Amy! Makes me miss The Pilates Center even more!
1 person likes this.
This is going to be one of my favorites! Great pace and cues.
Thanks, Amy!
1 person likes this.
That was absolutely fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed the tree rings and exhale from the inner ring analogy - very helpful. Good cues and such positive encouragement. Thank you very much.
just did his class at home, feel ready for the day now:)!
1 person likes this.
Great class! Really deepened my understanding of the classical work. Will repeat. Thank you so much!
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