Day 9: Breathing

We made it today. Nine. Welcome back. Today we're focusing on breathing and I've pulled out the magic circle, sometimes called the fitness circle, um, which can be used for strength. But if you pushing on it and you're used to a lot more strength or weight, you're going to probably wonder what we're going to do with it today. I'm using it as a tool to show you how breaths can assist a movement. Um, as you go forward, hopefully with your platas classes, either with a teacher or on the lattes, anytime you'll see that there's a lot of emphasis on breath.

Joseph Pilati is always talked about it. So today's focus is going to be on showing you why it might matter or how it can help. Um, there's no real right or wrong way to breathe except a few tone. So let's, let's keep breathing and let's just use this ring to see if you can find deeper connections today. One thing I will say before we go further, it's never meant to add tension to the extent that you notice it. It's really meant to assist a movement pattern you've already learned. So that's where we're going. All right, standing with your feet just slightly apart, parallel holding onto the ring with the heel of your hand.

You don't want your fingers on it because it turns into something else, more of a forearm thing. You want to make the connection with the heel of the hand so that you can then transfer it all the way up into the center of your body. Sometimes called the cor, sometimes called just the center of your body. That's what I'm going to stick with for now, so both hands are on it. Keep the ring close to you. Let your elbows come. Hive and not your shoulders, so they'll fall down. Just stand tall.

I'll turn sideways just because I tend to do that just to show you this sense of leaning forward and back. That's what you're doing. Your knees are straight. We're hinting at the ankle, nothing really to worry about here, just to notice yourself like we did before. Where are we in space? Then from there, all you're going to do is inhale and then just squeeze the ring lightly. Maybe feel the front of your body, the chest, the Pex, whatever that they engage a little. You don't want to come in so close. I know you can squeeze it harder and release. Inhale, exhale.

I'm actually trying to mimic the lungs or what the body does. When you squeeze. Inhale, let the lungs expand. Fill them open. That's what your hands do. I have no pressure. Now as I exhale, I apply a little pressure inward, but I don't sink on it, right? It's not about the arms in this hole or legs. We'll put it all over the place. Inhale, open and exhale and maybe you'll start to notice that the ring is almost like your lungs.

So if you inhale and then you exhale, you naturally the lungs will close. Our body is so smart, you don't have to tell it what to do all the time, but there are times when you're learning movement patterns. That breath helps you get there. That's why we talk about it so much. One more time. Inhale, breathe in, exaggerated, and when you exhale, just notice. Once you notice your ribs start to come in, let the hands follow the shoulders. Really never moved too much. One more time. I know I said that. Inhale and exhale. Yeah, so keeping that in mind. Let's do that within a movement.

Start the inhale. Nothing happened at the hands. Start exhaling. Feel the exhale, feel the hands come in on the ring, the abdominals, the ribs. Start to engage. Rise up on the toes, ball of the foot is more accurate. Inhale, set yourself down and fill back up with air. Exhale, rise F and you start to notice if you have some control or some awareness around the center of the body via the breath, things become a little easier. It's not to say you won't wobble. We're going to, we always waffle. We just find our center and let's do one more. It's just a breath and a connection to it through the rest of your body.

Muscularly you don't have to think about how it just happens. All right, so keep that in mind. I'll show you some other things. As we go to the mat, we're going to lie down and for now place the ring just above the knee, sort of old school fi masters style. Not Way in the upper thigh but just just this side of the knee closer to the pelvis, your feet, because the ring is wide, aren't going to be perfectly parallel afters off your sitz bones, but do the best you can to keep them forward. So already I have some resistance there. We are not rolling up like we have in the past. We're thinking neutral in the spines who were not tucked in. We're not arched, we're just sort of lying, relatively flat, taken in hand.

What I'm asking for is that you start your exhale first, exhale like you're fogging up a mirror and then follow that exhale with your legs. Not everything you have in your legs, efficiencies in another lesson, but it's just an addition. It's connection. Inhale, let the ring come apart. Start that exhale. You can put your hands on your abdominals, feel the abdominals engage, and then add that inner thigh contraction without changing your spine to feel how much more you can get out of it. Just by exhaling inhales. Do two more [inaudible]. Exhaling deep and deep and deep and don't go so far that you strain, but don't you notice that once the XL is out, you almost have to inhale while you do as the fact exhale. Just that idea. Keep it in. Keep this contraction on the ring, rock the pelvis so that your low back is in the Maddie and tail Mona's up and then go back to neutral. Still have resistance on the ring and do little pulses. They're not from the knees. This is a strange cue, but from above the ring closer to the pelvis, so it's the whole inner seem. The feet aren't rocking. It's smaller than that.

Can you still feel that hardening of the abdominal wall when you puff out or blow out the air? [inaudible] you might also notice that when you do that, the abdominals go down. Yeah. Are they flatten [inaudible] one more time. You can release it just a little bit. From there, put your arms down.

We will do the pelvic curl. If you, if it's very uncomfortable on your needs, you could pad it with a towel. For some people it is, or you could just widen your feet a little, but let's start with some resistance. Feet and toes. Point forward. Inhale, start that exhale, add a little more resistance to the ring so your knees are close to parallel. Now Roll Up. As you know, roll. I'll keep knowing you can't keep the tailbone behind you. Press the back of the arm, stand into your feet. You know all of those cues you've been practicing them. Inhale, I still have resistance.

I'm going to keep it as I exhale and plant my bones in my back. Back into the mat, one by one and only at the very bottom. Will I take a little bit of a break in here with widening and written. Start the exhale. Feel the abdominal sink. Feel how the knees almost want to or can add to it. Exhale, roll spread out the collarbones.

It's just adding layers. Pleiades is layer upon layer upon layer of how much deeper do you want to go? How much better do you want to feel? Inhale, exhale, roll down. You've melted down. There is a tricky one with your feet flat and resistance on the ring.

Can you be soft in your spine? If not, go back to the grounding class and think about how if you're grounded, we're keep going. Roll up on an exhale. When you're grounded, the rest of you can move a little freer. So if everything's working too hard, that's not good, and if only parts are, that's a little challenging too. I'm rolling down. I'm gonna do one more here. Inhale, and aren't you getting a little inner thigh work? Even if you're not squeezing with all your might, if you're squeezing with all your might, you probably aren't because you'll be working everything else and just bursting the energy so that you're not isolating. It's a tricky thing, but not that hard either. Inhale and exhale o the way down. All right. Bring your feet and knees together.

Let's use the ring just again as a guide. If you can fit your knees right in inside it, you can even let them be a part so you can hold it. But you recall we've been doing this knee side to side with the knees as a warm up. We're doing that again but it'll show you if your knees are slipping, meaning one hip is getting higher than the other. I'm going to rotate to the front. Inhale. Now push that knee into the top edge of the ring. By the way, you could put the ring on the inside of the knees too.

It's a slightly different field, but it's the same idea. And exhale, come back to center. Just one more each direction. Inhale and exhale and to the back last time like you start to see how all the things we've been playing with come together. Place the feet down, take the ring. Now I'm placing the a handle one handle on the back edge of my head. I can, I'm still focusing on breathing, but this is just another sort of tool to help us get into position.

So my the handle is just below that shelf, that occipital Ridge on the skull. Other two hands going on the inside edge of the handle. Elbows wide, shoulders down. Keep your hips where they are. We're doing the chest lift. Inhale again. You start the exhale, feel how the ribs drop heavier into the mat, and then you can apply pressure or lift the head. If your head is coming out of that ring, bring it back into it. Inhale, hold, exhale, come back down. Right? Even though we're down, we're still connected in here. Start the exhale. You feel what? Sometimes people call a closing or shrinking of the ribs, but mostly it should get the air out and make the shape. Get your air out.

Can you be any higher without being all arm work? Inhale, come down. Start that exhale and after you come you're basically following the breath and if, if you get nothing else out of this class, notice that in other classes and come back down. Inhale, that exhale just helps us create certain shapes. Once we get good at those shapes, we change them. Stay here. Elbows are still pointed out to those corners. Can you curl any higher? Ian?

Hail. We're coming toward the front. You've done this. Let your head rest in the handle. Exhale forward. Inhale, stay high. Come across, exhale to the back. Inhale, come through center. Exhale forward. Your hips aren't moving, your knees aren't moving. Maybe pretend that ring is still around the knees. Whatever you have to do, right? Just to get the work, to feel the shapes change to cleanse really the body from the inside out and sometimes they're good. Exhale will do that. Not sometimes, often it's not that you have to get every last drop out, depends on the movement, doesn't come back to the center and take everything down.

From there. You can remove the ring. So let's carry on. We're going to place the ring again back at the knees. You can have some fun with this. I'm placing the heels together. You know the rolling like the ball, right? So that's the one where you either held behind your thighs.

I might recommend that for this first view, but today definitely put your heels together. Squeeze the ring a little bit. Lift the pelvis up so you're already rounded. Oh, to make that easier, lift your head up. So now you're in this rounded like position. Keep the squeeze of the ring. Start exhaling in. He might have to kick a little, get going, squeeze the ring harder. Keep it held however hard you want to squeeze it. You got to keep it though.

You don't. You don't squeeze it every time. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Notice how that resistance on the ring, the focus on the ring maybe on the XL helps you up. Let's do three more. One to play with the pace. Last time we stay up. Here's three and set it down right. It's kind of cool. Something we haven't done but it's of take on. That is the roll back or the roll. What ends up being the up? You can place the ring.

Flat pressure heals into it and for a moment just sit back, get cozy. Some of you are going to need to bend your knees. That's okay. Do your best to keep them as, as keep them as they start. Squeeze a little into the ring. Again, not from the feet so much, but as if the ring were higher up. So when you do that, and if you can think of that, even if he didn't have a ring, it helps you to sit a little taller from there. We're going to roll the pelvis back. We're not going to the ground. You squeeze the ring, you squeeze the ring. Go only so far as you can.

Keep that ring on the ground and we'll see everybody. We'll stop by mid back. Inhale and we'll come them back up. So you've got to squeeze the ring. You might have to hold on. We've played with this with the theraband. If you recall, stay curved this time in here. Xcel a little bit more inner upper inner thighs. You roll the pelvis away and come back. Here's the breath pattern you normally see.

We'll go the whole way this time and he'll prepare or start rolling. Either one. You'll hear both. Keep that squeeze from the upper inner thigh, upper the side. Keep going, keep the routine or tension on the spring. Head goes down, arms go back. Do not let that Ringo do not flare the ribs. Inhale, you are coming back up. You got to use this upper inner thighs. Blow out your air. Now start blowing it out now so you're not holding all the resistance up in your upper body one more like that. Exhale when it's time to go down.

Keep the squeeze on the ring. These are, it's a tool. It's a way to think of things, a way to start to understand some of these movements so that you can continue on and forward. All right, that'll do. From there, we're going into our series, our big abdominal series that you know, so roll back down and again this time instead of placing the my head at the handle, I'm going to just use the rim of the ring. And again, you don't have to do this right. You already know this exercise, but for fun, I've got my hands on the handle, a little pressure, shoulders down, curled up through the upper back. Bring the knees up one at a time. From here. We're going to pull the right knee and extend the left, and as I do, I am applying a tiny bit more pressure through the hands. Inhale and exhale and a little quicker.

At this point. Now that we're going quicker, it's a little the, the ring itself is sustained, but I have to remind myself to drop my head into the ring and curl higher. [inaudible] and last one, bring both knees in. Let your head go down, but keep it where it is. Inhale, recheck the shoulders. Start the exhale. Feel the ribs drop to the mat. Apply a little pressure in the ring as if they were part of your ribs. Curl yourself up. Keep your head here today. Inhale, extend the arms, maybe open the elbows. Exhale, squeeze everything in tight, tight, tight.

Now you're not going to move the spine from there. Inhale, open the elbows. Exhale, start the exhale and squeeze the ring tight or as if that had something to do with it. Inhale, keep the shape of the spine, the legs and arms move. Of course. Exhale. This is your double leg stretch. Touch those thighs. Inhale, exhale, sink. The belly. Sink, the belly. Sink the belly. Last time, inhale and exhale from there. Let your head go down briefly. Keep your knees where they are. Find the grip you need. You remember that or don't remember? I didn't say it.

The ring is not on your neck. It is on your skull. It should feel good. I don't do things that should feel bad. Challenging is different than bad from me. Exhale, curl up. Extend the leg for this from me. Rotate towards the screen or forward. Drop your head back. Okay. Pull that knee in touch.

Squeeze that ring a little and change when you get to the other side of hold it. Take an inhale, put a little more pressure on the ring. Squeeze the deep in the belly and now a little quicker. Maintain the resistance from the ring one. Switch to three. You can also almost pull up on the ring a little too. More staff full sets.

Last that come back to the center and rest your head. Take the ring out from underneath. You. Place it between your ankles. What? Yes, if you can get straight legs do. If you can't bend them, that's okay. What you want to try to avoid is in either cases, the knees really coming in on you to lift your hips.

What we are going to try for very subtle. Inhale, prepare, start the exhale, feel the center sink or be involved at least and then a little lift and back down. That's it. Inhale doing it slow on purpose. Exhale, thank the valley. Squeeze the ring and then get the little lift and down. If I told you only three more, would you stay with me? Sinking lift. Yet you have to use your arms. It's not about the height, it's about do I have that connection so I can do this exercise.

Well later we have one to go here, a com sink, lift and while I bend the knees, let's just for fun fit the feet in the ring. I'm just anywhere. I like to put them on the handle. Curling. I now I'm going to keep the shape. You know it. We're rocking and rolling three times to get out. There's one, two, nothing. Ben's any more than it was one more time we stay up.

It doesn't all have to be hard to ask to be connected though. For the spine stretch one of these great exercises that takes years for some of us to figure out, but it is about breath and it is about the shape of the body in my opinion. Getting the breath out. So extend your arms on top of the ring. Flex your feet strongly. Sit as tall as you can.

We're going to inhale and lightly pressed on the ring so that we get even taller on the exhale. The only reason that we've put more pressure on the ring is because we're rounding the spine. We might have to let the ring lean forward a little bit. If it's too close, move it [inaudible]. Then get all that Arrow and then notice how easily you spring back up in. How do you get sort of a theme coming in here?

Exhaling to inhale springing to life. Exhale as you round, keep those shoulders down. The harder it gets to bend forward, the more the shoulders want to go up. It's okay to lean the ring forward. Flex your feet harder and when you're out of air. See what happens. Just let it fill you back up and exhale. Yeah. If the ring gets in your way, get rid of it. Right.

It's just a tool to help you get the sense of the compression. That's sure. Putting on the ring is almost, it's that compression on the spine, but it's compression of the lungs to get that air out, out, out, out, out. And you popped back up. Last one. [inaudible] from there, we're going to do a little rotation here. I think we're going to leave the ring down, but we are gonna use it.

Put it so that the heels can hold it and I'm not trying to pick it up at all. I just want that sense of connection from the inner thigh all the way to the feet so that when I breathe, which is a huge part of this next exercise, I have a sense of connection to everything. This is the spine to a sitting. Let's take our arms out to the side. Rotate the arm bones backwards or open so the palms are up. A light squeeze of the ring from the upper inner thigh. We exhale to the front.

Inhale Center, other side. And a tip is that as I turn to the front here, that front leg is pressing into the ring a little bit more just so I can feel it. So I'm pushing, pushing center, pushing, pushing. Ultimately the eye, you know, it'd be ideal if they were the same, but that's a way to feel. Some of the stuff. Sometimes you just got to feel it to know where you want to go. And last one, that's the spine twist. Okay. From there we're going onto our side.

So taking the ring in between the ankles, one on top of the other, try to set it up. You may not get it the first try, but you get better at this and then some days you aren't so that your knees are forward so the legs are parallel and then come all the way down. You want your body to be lined up so the hips are on top of each other and maybe the top, both legs are ever so slightly in front of you so that if you look down, you see your toes, they're not behind you from there. First part, so easy. Take two fingers, put it somewhere in your belly. It doesn't matter that you know, go deep and on the exhale without all your leg strength, start to blow out the air. Start to press down on the ring from the top and harden the abdominal wall underneath your f your flesh.

Let it come up XL and feel asleep. Just feel it. When you know where it comes from you so much more powerful. Everything becomes more efficient. Just like that. I am going a little quicker. We're going down and up and up, down and up. Eventually keep your head straight so you're not always looking at your feet.

Couple more on the next time you go down, hold it down. You're going to want that hand that's in your belly down on the ground to lift up both legs. Up One. We'll do six. Two so now the bottom legs working, they're both working. Not a lot. They're not working a lot. Where if the focus is really the obliques and the abdominals and it's crazy up and again, fabulous. No big deal. Come on up, take that ring out, stay up on the hour, get yourself high on the elbow. And this next one is this sidekick that you know, I'm just putting the ring out in front of me so that I have an anchor on that side. So there's grounding, there's all this other stuff we've already talked about, but it also, if I can press down on it, it helps me to blow out the air, engaged to the ABS, et Cetera. Leg is up, kick forward, one, one, sweet back and keep the pressure. It's not, I'm not doing a lot with my arm. I'm just using it almost as an assist and forward, forward, back, forward, forward, back for her thought back again.

Four, four, hold it to the back and then come around to the other side in a place, the ring right in between the ankles and so, and we lie down. Let the legs be a little bit in front and keep in mind the focus today is breath. It's breath. It's not the inner thighs. You'll get some if you overpower it, you're not going to feel anything and feel the middle. Here we go, exhale and exhale. There's a sense of not just completely releasing here. I'm trying to be long with that subtle exception to the slight banana shape and up. And if you feel your abs, you can break the ring for all I care. Right? You can push as hard as you want, so long as you stay under control and that you feel that connection in the middle one more just in case.

[inaudible] now put the top arm down. Keep the resistance you have. Maybe activate the lower leg a little more and lift up one and lower too. We don't need a lot of tension in your feet though. It might feel like it theory. If you could take your fingers in your belly again, you would, but you don't need to keep the balance to more.

Yeah, and then [inaudible] coming to that sidekick position again, I back up. Just so I have room to place the ring. I like it out in front where I can stretch, but my shoulders not off. My back. Bottom is at 90 topless stretched. You're lifted, you're proud and we apply a little pressure not from the hand. That make sense? Take the inhale, exhale, feel some sense of all your power comes in the middle and then this. You don't have to hold this hard. It just helps you.

Let's kick forward one one back and I'm inhaling forward. I think I am and things change so don't hold me to that. Hold it back. It's about how the breath can help. Not when you actually do it all the time. Okay. There we go. We're going face down. Two things for a back extension to continue with our expansion thing yesterday with the ring, I'm just placing my elbows where I can find it comfortably to hold and essentially it's, I'm just trying to hold it so that I have again that connection where when I exhale I can feel the ribs a little bit.

I can use it to help lift me even though I'm not going to make a big movement. That's what's happening if you can't see it. So my elbows are into that. I'm not going to listen to ring off the mat. Hands or face down. Collarbones wide feet are long and straight. Mine are not together though. You might that. That's sort of where it heads, but I'm going to leave mine apart. All right, squeeze the ring, lift your chest, pull the abs in, and take an inhale. As you lift both legs barely, and you're exhaling. Kick the right leg twice, one to put it down.

Other side one, two and I'm inhaling as I extend. Exhale. Exhale. Inhale, switch. Exhale, exhale. Inhale. Keep this squeeze of the ring. Notice how your body stays connected. When you're focused on breath in all areas of the body and poor, poor press. If the breath confuses you, it's not worth it. Find a movement pattern that makes you feel connected and obviously keep breathing. However it suits you. One more. And down we go.

Finally, we take the ring out in front. If you have tight shoulders, you may decide do this without, right. You may decide that you're going to have your elbows bent and then the rest will be the same. Otherwise he turned that ring on the end and I either place the hands on the handle side by side. Mine don't fit fully or you can go slight bit wider on the edges.

That might be more suitable for most people. It's up to you. Here's the point. I don't have a lot of pressure on the ring. My arms are already up. Looking at the floor. Legs are straight. Parallel. Inhale, start to excellent. First feel a sense of the abdominals ever so slightly coming away from the mat or lessening the tension. I am not pushing on the ring yet. My arms are weighted on it.

I'm just looking up over the ring and only when I've gone as far as I can with my own body. Do I get to continue pressing on the ring to come up and then I inhale and reach the front of my body forward through the ring and finally look down. So easy. Ring in here. Start, exhaling, apply a little pressure on the ring and the ABS have come up. You started looking forward over the ring. Do it. Only the back muscles can do when they're done working.

You can add some pressure on the ring and lift higher. So the beginning or a different version of the swan and inhale down. We'll go ever so slightly faster. I've been giving you exhale a lot today on the exertion, but I'm here to tell you, inhale down. It often works better the other way. You want to try it? Take a free breath.

Inhale, exhale. And when you're ready, try doing this exact same exercise. Inhaling all the way up and see if it doesn't make you bend more. Inhale up, look over that ring. Arms are totally straight, totally straight, totally straight. Ah, cause that inhale allows it just the way the mechanics of the body are. Exhale down in this case that can help it. Try it again. Last one. Inhale. So up, up, up.

Find some ease in there somewhere. It's like you gotta be your own best teacher if you can't get to one. Which I do recommend you get. One if you can and Oh, let's do one more and I'll just cue the breath. Let's go up. Breathe however you want. I'm going in here heavy in the ribs. ABS are pulling up legs or in energized or under control.

We're grounded and down we go. [inaudible] let the ring go. Take a minute. Sometimes it's good to just show me the back and see where the shoulders are at. Philosophies is definitely a practice, so I'm hoping that classes one through nine will be repeated and or the ill explore more. Sit back into a rest position or lie onto your back if that's better for your knees.

[inaudible] if you here with me with the, uh, either way it getting your thighs as close to your ribs as possible. This isn't nice way to feel breath. Can you take a large inhale and rather than just forcing yourself away from your thighs, see if you can find a room in your back, more room in your back. On the inhale. [inaudible] just an idea. It's not to say the front doesn't move. Our bodies are somewhat s cylindrical around this area where the breath comes from. So let's use it, but it just burst fully, not just upward, but fully and on the extra notice that released.

Let you just drag it in and it has automatically. You don't have to think about it. Come away from the thighs last one and buy away. I just mean not as much pressure. [inaudible] Nick's hand. Help yourself up.

Find a seated position together and do one. You can stand if you want one breath together and then just kind of think about that throughout the day. You can do it everywhere. I hope you do continue, continue breathing and occasionally think about it anyhow. [inaudible] exactly. Well, one breath vacation right there. See you next time. Only wanted to go.