Class #3181

Extension-Focused Mat

35 min - Class
578 likes

Description

Work on mobility in your upper back with this Mat workout by Shelly Power. She teaches an "anti-texting" class, focusing on back extension so you can improve your posture. She also includes a few shoulder modifications and exercises to help with wrist discomfort as she includes many movements in a Plank and Quadruped position.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Hi, I'm Shelly Power from Polestar Pilates and we're gonna do a mat class today, get moving. We're gonna start in a little different position, so we're gonna come down to start on the hands and the knees, and actually, kneel down, and then just come into any position the feels comfortable. Before you put your hands down, we're gonna warm up the wrists and the hands. So, as a teacher, I get lots of complaints, "Oh, my wrists hurt when I'm in Quadruped," "or when I do a Plank, my wrists hurt." So, we're gonna do a little exercise, which is, open your hands as wide as you possibly can, close them as tight as you possibly can, and go as fast as you possibly can. And it's all going along fine, until all of a sudden everything gets really tired and you can't move anymore.

So you keep going, you keep going, you keep going, and what do you notice? What, what do you feel? What's working? Warm. Warm, yeah.

So you should start to feel your forearms, those muscles, you just start to become aware of them. Alright, so you can let that go. There's no little muscles in your wrist that help you to have better wrist, the feeling when you're in weight-bearing, but your forearm muscles, they pass into your hand, and that helps, so this is one way you can kinda get them a little bit warmed up, just so you can feel them, and then when you're in your weight-bearing position, you're gonna really keep that wide position as much as you can anytime you're in Plank or Hands and Knees, or anything like that. And just to say that John is dealing with a little bit of a shoulder injury, so he fell and injured his shoulder. He's okay to do class, but we are gonna do some modifications, which is good for you at home because quite often, there's things that happen and it's not so comfortable to be in these weight-bearing positions so, we'll make modifications for you.

Alright, so now come onto your hands and knees, and feel like you align your shoulders over the heels of your hands, knees are back a little bit. Very common Quadruped position, and just round your spine, go into a stretch that feels really nice. Try to round more through your lower back, and when you go into your arch, try to arch a little bit more through your upper back. Those are the two things we don't do enough of. So round again, round through not so much the upper back.

So even let this come down a little bit, yeah, and round there more so it's more consistent, beautiful. And then arch, and go into your arch more in the upper back. And now come back to the center position and just hold there. So I use the image if I lowered the ceiling, the ceiling would be in line with you and you would be in line with it, so give me a little bit more tilt here. Super.

Maintain that, and start to reach your, let's do one arm and the opposite leg. You can start whichever side feels good. Just that normal lengthening feeling, and just hold there for a moment, and start to feel like your thigh can lift up, but your heel is lower than your thigh. I know, it's kind of a weird feeling. Yeah, change sides.

So every time you lengthen your leg, whether you're doing this or Swimming or any of the movements, beautiful, feel like you're lifting your thigh, but your heel is low. And change again. Go out on the first side. Hold there. Now, bring your elbow and your knee together and let your spine round a little bit, feel like you stretch into that rounded shape, and then go back out.

And again, into the rounded shape and back out. One more time, in, and back out, and change sides. So reach out, good, and if this doesn't feel good, you'll put both hands down. And pull elbow and knee together, we'll do it three times, and reach again. Getting a little bit of work through the shoulders, a little bit of work in the body.

And when you've done your last, your third one, good, just put your hands and knees down. Press out into your Plank position as much as it feels comfortable, reach back and forward. Good, and this is the sense of bringing your pelvis down a little bit, heels and head reach long. Good, girls are gonna go down in a Push Up, all the way to the floor. John, you can come down any way that feels comfortable, I'd say put your knees down and then come all the way down if that feels okay, good.

Stay down here now, keep your hands where they are, and hover your forehead a little bit up off the mat. So, try to get your upper body as flush to the mat as possible, and just your head lifts, just a little bit, so your nose is just off the mat, yeah. Reach your elbows away, and let's go into a little bit of a Prone Press Up or Baby Swan. The elbows reach away, your gaze comes a little forward, and then when you roll down, roll down from the lowest part of your ribs all the way up to the top. And again, go up, reach the elbows back, stay there for a moment, and try to put the front of your ribcage down the next time you exhale.

Try to keep the upper ribcage up though. Yeah, so take a breath in, and then let the lower ribs melt into the mat. That's nice, good, roll down. One more of those. Reaching the elbows a little bit away, peeling the front of the chest up, and feel when you exhale, this lower part of your ribcage comes down, yeah, let your gaze come up a little bit John, yeah, that's it, and then roll down.

Beautiful. Let's lift the legs. So you can put your hands under your forehead if you like that, or anywhere that feels comfortable, and we'll switch to lifting the legs. So turn your toes under, and kinda walk them under as much as possible with your knees bent, and your thighs down. Good, now, straighten one leg, push into the foot, and lift the thigh up.

And then let that go, and change to the other side. So, keep the toes turned under, yep, and just straighten this leg, but leave, leave this toe under, yep, and lift this leg up. Yeah, great. That's that feeling I was talking about, of the thigh being up. You feel like your heel is going lower as you switch.

That's it, yes, good, good, good. So remember what that feels like, and do it now with your feet reaching out behind you, so your feet will no longer stay on the floor, but just see what it's like to lift your legs. Can you lift your thighs higher, but your feet stay a little bit lower? Good, straight legs everybody, super. Alright, let that go, let's put this all into Dart, so let your arms reach back beside you.

If you ever feel like your shoulders are really rolling down and you can't get them back up, turn your palms down to the floor, that helps you to open up your shoulder a little bit more, hover your head, now we're gonna lengthen everything and allow your feet to gently lift off the floor. Hold there for just a moment, and then turn your head to the side, and come down. Lengthen first, so it feels like the inside of you gets longer, and then you float up into that Dart position. Or you can think of it as the Upside Down Hundreds position. And turn your head.

Good, come on down, reach long. So feel like you reach on the inside of yourself, and come up, hold there for just a moment, let your gaze come a little bit forward. Good, turn your head to the side, we'll do one more. Great postural exercise, helps us strengthen the glutes and the back of the thighs. Go up into your position.

Helps us get an arch in the upper back. Super, let that go, and just let your body come down. Rest in any position that feels comfortable, you can kinda jiggle your legs back and forth, around and round a little bit. Alright, now, we're gonna come up onto the forearms for Single Leg Kick. And traditionally, Single Leg Kick comes up quite high, often has the chest really lifted, or there's a version where it's really flat.

I wanna start working on mobility in the upper back, so allow yourself to come in to an arch. Yes, now if you walk your arms more forward, you can watch how Erin's gonna get closer to the floor, even to the point, can you, yeah, is that okay for you? That looks great. So, wherever it feels comfortable, super. Now, as you bend the leg, so let's say we're gonna bend just slowly, imagine there's something behind your knee, like a hummingbird egg, a quail egg, and you're gonna go around it as you bend.

Keep bending, keep bending, yep, and then lengthen. And go around it on the other side. So it has less pulling-in feeling and it is that more going around. Alright, so all together now, we'll do kick, kick, lengthen, kick, kick, lengthen. Let's all start together, here we go.

Wait for me. (laughing) I have the pink pants on, I'm in charge. (everyone laughing) Here we go, so widen the chest, and kick, kick, lengthen, and kick, kick, lengthen. Beautiful, in, in, lengthen, in, in, good. We're trying to challenge the whole front of the body, the length of it.

In, in, one more, each side, and reach, reach, long, last one, in, in, and pause. Press back into Child's Pose. Any version of it that feels good. This is the anti-texting class. We're all on our phones and doing all these things, so we're doing lots of extension, extension work today.

Alright, so, come out onto your front, and then roll onto your side and let's face the camera. And we'll go into a little bit of Side Kick. So, the variations we're gonna do today are lengthening the leg in front and behind, the standard version of Side Kick, and then we're gonna do a Bicycle version too. So, lift through the ribs a little bit, feel like your arm comes into your body right at the side. So, the body, and the arm and everything here is flush together, and then lift your leg up a little bit, see how that feels.

And then take the leg to the front, and take the leg to the back. Good, so as you know, the feeling is to try to get the leg to move, forward and back, keep going, we'll follow Juliana, she's the most in the front, she's in charge, she's in charge now. Good, front and back. (laughing) Good, so see if you can have that same feeling when your leg goes behind of your thigh going back more than your foot. Yes, beautiful change.

One more time. Now leave your leg to the back and hold there for a moment. Do the same leg movement that you just did in Single Leg Kick where you go around to create your Bicycle, so bend your knee, and let it come forward, and stretch it out to the front. Reach it back, bend like you're going around something, beautiful, and to the front. Two more like that plain, reach back.

So you're gonna keep the thigh there as you bend. Last one. And reach back, keep the thigh there as you bend. Now, as you bring your knee forward, round your spine, so it's kind of like what we did in the beginning with the knee in toward the chest, stretch your leg forward as you come back behind, and you go into your Bicycle, let your back arch just a little bit. And round to come forward.

And arch to go back. Round to come forward, beautiful. Arch as you go back, you guys are doing a great job of keeping the shoulders right under you, that's it. And make the next one your last one, coming in. And sweeping back, good, and let's roll onto the other side.

So come on, face me this time. Come up on the arm. Again, just bringing awareness, make sure your shoulder's not sticking forward, but you're pulling back just a little bit. That looks great. Lift the leg up, so you know what that's gonna feel like, and then just the plain one coming front, and going back.

And already you can kind of think about what it felt like, so Erin's now in charge, Erin's setting the pace, front and back. What did it feel like when you were doing all that moving of your spine versus how it feels now? It's good to get some information. One more time, take the leg to the back, now hold it there, we'll do the plain version of the Bicycle, bending the knee, and sweeping it forward. Take your thigh back behind you, bend the knee, bring it forward.

And feel free to bend your bottom knee if you want, if that makes it more comfortable. Yeah, that might give you more stability. And take it front, last time plain, take it to the back, now as you bend your knee, round your spine, stretch it forward, arch your spine as you go back. That's it, and in, and back, and in. Beautiful, very nice.

Back, and in, this next one will be your last one. Reaching back, pull all the way through, one more time, go ahead and pull through to the front, and then take your leg behind and reach and hold, get that lift of the chest, feels so nice. And let it go, good. Come on to your front, we're gonna go into another Plank. And from Plank, we're gonna go into the Side Plank with some variations, so again, before actually before you even go up, make the widest part of your hands, really stretch out the fingers, try to almost feel like you're gonna lift up the palm, send one leg back, then the other leg back.

And hold there for a moment, now lengthen the front of your body, like your breastbone, your pubic bone, your belly button, all the way to the top of your head. Good, stay there for just a couple seconds. Now as you turn over to face the camera, you can either leave your feet stacked one on top of the other, that's pretty challenging, or you can separate your feet and have both feet on the floor. Your choice, here we go. Turn in to the Side Plank, and we're gonna hold there.

Good, that's it, so you can reach the arm up for a little more challenge, you keep feeling like your ribs are coming back and your pelvis is going forward, that's beautiful, stay there for another five minutes or so. Bring the pelvis forward and ribs back. With grace, turn in to your Plank. Good, now you're gonna turn to face the window. Go up.

Good, that feel okay there? Yes. Great, good, hips down just a little bit Erin, we got another, that was a fast five minutes I think. Hips down just a little bit more, stay there for a second longer, keep bringing the ribs back. That's it, and turn onto your front again, go into your Plank, hold for those last couple seconds.

Gracefully, bring your knees down. Alright, good, let's sit facing the camera, and we'll go in to the Mermaid. So let's go right leg in the front, left leg tucked to the side, and if you feel like this ever is a position where your hip is really high in the air and it doesn't feel so comfortable, just cross your legs in front of you or sit on a cushion or something, the sitting position isn't that important. Alright, so we're gonna go over to the side, and when we get the hand down, we're just gonna go over into the Side Stretch, and then turn and put both hands down on the floor. Separate them a little bit if you need to, kinda wiggle around in your body.

Good, now when you press into your hands, it's like we just did for the Cat and Horse or the Cat and Cow in the Quadruped, round your spine, look down, and try to expand these back ribs right here, yeah, beautiful. Now pull yourself with your arms a little bit and go in to Extension. And round, and go into this rounded pose, get these ribs to open, open, open, open, and pull into Extension. Let your pelvis move a little bit if that helps you. Yes, that's great, beautiful.

And then sit back and round. Arch the spine so you're lengthening the back of you now you're lengthening the front. Last time, push and round. Good, turn back over into your Side Stretch, come all the way back up. Good, come to sitting without hands, if you can.

Pick your legs up, and swing them around to the other side. Good, stretch over into your Side Stretch. And then round yourself, both hands down, move them around a little bit so you feel like it feels good in your body. Press into your hands and round your spine, and then pull with your arms and arch the spine and let your pelvis move, that's great. And round and sit back.

So, we're actually mobilizing all kind of things here. We're mobilizing the spine, we're mobilizing the hips, we're mobilizing the shoulders a little bit. Come up. And press back. And come up, we'll do it one more time.

Press back, round, get those back ribs to open. And come out of it now, let yourself turn back in to your Side Stretch. Come all the way back up, and come to sitting. Good, turn your feet to the center, so face each other, and you'll roll down on your backs and we're gonna go into a little bit of Bridging. So roll on down.

Alright, feet in. Good. So always play around, if you don't do Bridging that much or you do Bridging and you don't really like it, which I hear sometimes, make sure that your feet aren't too close to you or too far away, sometimes if that happens it doesn't feel so nice, so just put your feet where it feels like it's a good position for your body. Start to tilt your pelvis a little bit and peel your body up off of the floor. When you get to your top position, remember we're going for a long diagonal line and then you're gonna roll yourself back down, and pause when you get to the bottom.

Now as much as you can, don't actually move your feet, but if you feel like you can pull your feet a little bit that makes your pelvis move toward the back of your legs, do that. So tilt a little bit, and it's almost like you're gonna feel the feet pull under you and the pelvis go over the top of your knees. And then back down. Good, so we use this a lot for warming up the spine, sometimes this will be at the beginning of class, right now we're using it to keep working on using the hip extensors and feeling a stretch through the front of the body. And roll back down.

Good, and let that go for a second. So, we're now gonna do, which is, again, another beginning of class exercise, but we're gonna do with a little, literally a little twist to it, it's called a Bent Knee Opening. So, bring your feet and legs all together, hold there, and then just open both legs away from center kind of slow motion. So take your time opening, and really feel how all of the inner leg muscles lengthen and stretch. Then slow motion bring your legs back together.

Super, do that one more time. So opening out, so we're giving those muscles a chance to lengthen, but they also have to lengthen with control so they don't just flop out. And then pull yourself back in. Good, so we're gonna start with the leg closest to the window, you're gonna open your, just that knee to the side, this is where the exercise often stops, but we're gonna keep going so allow your body to roll a little bit so your weight comes onto your pelvis, stretch your knee out and forward, roll your pelvis back to the center, and then bring your knee back to center. Good, let's go on the other side.

So let your knee open by itself, and the you roll, and you reach this leg forward. Yeah, exactly, nope, leave it, leave it where it is, just reach the leg, beautiful. Bring the pelvis back down, and then bring the leg back to center. Yeah, go on the other side. So open the leg, roll the pelvis, roll the pelvis back down where you started, and bring the leg up, last time.

Open the leg, roll the pelvis, roll back to center, and bring the leg back in. Good, alright, Chest Lift. So, we're gonna leave the legs down, and you're gonna interlace yours hands behind your head. John, you can go hands on the chest, so he's not gonna get the help of having the hands behind the head but it's gonna be a lot better for his shoulder. So, elbows in your peripheral vision, and we're gonna do a tiny little Chest Lift, a little curl up, and notice when you do that how the ribs go in to the floor, so you wanna feel that sense of going down into the floor.

Good, reach your hands to your legs, hold onto your thighs, really hold on, and curl a little bit deeper. Can you go more? Stay there, reach the arms long, hands across the chest for you, behind the head for the girls, and roll down. Good, now bring the legs one at a time up to Tabletop, and we'll do it again. When you exhale, curl, just small.

Reach to the legs, let the legs help you go a little bit deeper, beautiful. Hands come back to support the head, across the chest, and roll down. This time we're gonna go on. Roll again. Hold onto the legs, now stay there, and do what you would have to do, kinda the feeling of pressing your legs a little bit away from you, pulling in with your arms, if you did have to stay here for five minutes.

(laughing) No one can leave this position, yeah? So what do you do if you have to be in the position for a long time? You don't tense more. You relax a little bit, use the legs and the arms, and you can actually stay here fairly comfortably for a while. Now, you're gonna keep holding on with your left hand and your left leg, stretch your right arm and leg long like you look like you're doing the Hundred, but only half of it, yeah.

And then come back in. Support yourself on the right, and do the left side. Great, let's do it again on each side. This time, 'cause you're holding, see if you can lengthen and lower the leg a little bit more. Right, remember what it felt like to bring your thigh backward when you were doing all that work on your belly.

Yeah, last time, and reach. Good, so if you're ever having trouble with the Hundred, come back in, roll yourselves down, and the Hundred just seems way too much, or you're just tired that day or something's going on, do it half, do 50 on one side and do 50 on the other side, and at least you can, you can do it that way. The other cool thing about holding onto your leg, is it actually allows you to get the leg that's outstretched lower than you normally would be able to, so if you, seems like it's impossible to lower your leg, do it like this, then you've got some help, and you can actually, you can actually feel that lower position. So, should we do a full set of Hundreds? Let's do it.

Alright, so, use your legs again to help you, so go ahead and take your hands behind your thighs, roll up, sink your ribs down a little bit so you get that feeling. Good, stretch the legs long at whatever height feels good, palms facing the floor, to take a breath in. (inhaling loudly) And then exhale out. (exhaling loudly) Good, so keep going, keep your own breathing going. If ever you feel like you're feeling like your legs are heavy, press the feet, ah, that was a nice change, away from you.

Beautiful. And, reach. And you can be parallel or turn out as you're going, whatever feels good, but feel like you're pressing your feet away, you're pushing the wall away from you. Good, keep going. Good, feeling that sense of expansion in the ribs as you're inhaling, and everything coming to center as you exhale.

Let's just do one more, I know it's not quite a Hundred but that's okay, and keep exhaling now, stop your arms and just keep exhaling, exhaling, exhaling, exhaling, go, go, go, go, go, and let your knees come in, take a break. Alright, last one of these, we're gonna go in to Coordination. So Coordination's one we usually do on the Reformer, but why not do it on the mat? So, we're gonna be in the Hundreds position, just reviewing, you go into the Hundreds position, you open and close your legs one time, then you're gonna bend your knees, and then you're gonna bend your arms, but the body stays rolled up the whole time. Alright, so again, hold on to your legs however it feels good, roll up, give yourself that little bit of help, walk yourself around if you need to, and then, good, from that position let's go into the Hundreds, inhaling out.

Open, close, exhale, bend the knees, then the arms. Inhale, reach, open, close, bend the knees, then the arms. Inhale, lengthen, open, close, exhale, bend the arms. Last time, reach, open, close, and the knees, and roll down. Good, use your legs to help you, or not, as you like, to roll up to sitting.

Good, separate your feet just the width of the mat, and we're gonna go in to the Saw, so stretching long, alright, so, again, we're gonna do a little different version, not the traditional version of it. We're gonna reach, instead of, often times I see as a teacher when people are doing the, when they're doing the Saw they get over and they reach and they move their arm and they do something like that. And that totally missed the spine, there was no rotation. So when you reach this time, what I want you to have the feeling of is reaching down the center of your mat, and feeling like you're gonna press your arm farther forward with your body. So when you rotate, you're gonna actually press a little bit farther forward.

So, let's do it as a practice once, without all the arm stuff. Just take one arm forward, whichever side feels good, and as you reach out and round, stretch your arm, but feel like it's your body that's pushing it, alright? So your body is doing that motion, yeah. Then go on the other side, try that. Yeah, and you can actually, you can use your other hand on your leg, if you want, as leverage, good.

So it's the same type of thing we would do if we were playing tennis or golf, alright. You don't use just your arm when you're gonna rotate, you use your whole body and arm together, so that's the idea here. Okay, so, sit tall, stretch the arms out nice and long and start to twist, let's go toward the camera first, rotating, and reach down the center of your mat, the other arm can reach back a little bit, press, and roll up to sit tall. Changing sides, reaching out, through the center, feel your whole arm get farther away from you, from the body, and come back up. Good, now being mindful of the pelvis as you twist and turn this time, see if you can keep your pelvis upright.

And to check if you did, go farther and allow yourself to go a little bit more, you'll feel as if you have some room to go, you, you were successful. Come back up, on the other side. Reaching long, stretching out. Good, that's it, remember that feeling earlier from Mermaid when we did all that twisting, that's now. One more each side, reaching long.

Go to the center, now stay there, and allow your arm to go across toward your foot in the more traditional feeling. Yeah, that's it. And last time, start in the center, go down the middle, and then when you can't go any more, allow your arm to come across. And roll back up. Good, swing your legs around and let's come in to High Kneeling position.

Alright, so come up all the way on your, on your knees, all the way, yeah. Alright, so just like in Standing, just like we talked about in the Bridge and some of the other movements, we often stand like this, which is not the worst thing, but it's also not the best. So we wanna send the pelvis forward and the ribs back. Pretty easy to do when you're in standing, 'cause your feet are in front of you and they help you balance. A little more challenging when you're on your knees 'cause you got nothing to, nothing to help you.

So, sit back a little bit and see what that feels like, and then gradually bring your pelvis forward, feel like your ribs are trying to stay back, you'll probably feel your hamstrings start to engage a little bit, and you're at that point where your balance is a little bit challenged, and then let your arms hang down beside you more on your sides, yeah. Bring these ribs even back, that's great. Does it feel like you're rounded forward? Yep. (laughing) You'll do that, you'll feel that when you're working in things and you make a tiny little change and it feels like you made a giant change.

Alright, so now, remembering that position, you're gonna step forward with one foot, your choice, forward into the Lunge, stop there, and then tuck it back under. Good, other side, forward into the Lunge. Tuck it back under. Good, one more time on each side. Go forward, beautiful, and take it back under, and forward, and take it back under.

Good, so now we're gonna go forward, stand up, come back down, tuck it back under. Press into both legs, I think, probably the biggest thing that I see when people get here is they try to just use one leg. So if you can use both legs, and go up, should be a little easier. (laughing) Here we go, alright, so take one foot forward. Hold there, tuck your back toes under, go up through the center, top of the head to the ceiling, beautiful, lower back down with control, and tuck that leg back under.

Good, other side. Come forward, turn the back toes under, press the ground away, and rise up, hold. Bend back down, and come back under. Good, one more on each side. Come forward, turn the toes, go up, feel like you're going right up through the ceiling, and back down.

(laughing) Wiggling is good. Last time, come through. Good, turn the toes, go up, hold there, bring your back foot forward to your front foot. Nice. Okay, good, scoot back a little bit, just to maybe to the middle of your mat and we're gonna finish up with a Standing Roll Down.

How'd those feel, they were okay? Yeah, if you set yourself up right. Uh oh, he's, what are you smiling about? (laughing) You set yourself up right, hopefully, it should all work together, I think it's when we get into funny positions that we don't feel very strong. That's an amazing way to get up and down off the floor.

It's a really safe way for the whole body to get down, do whatever you need to do, come back up, so, good to practice. If you do it every day, hopefully you'll never not be able to do it, alright, 'til you're 100 years old. Alright, so standing again in that position, feeling like pelvis comes a little forward, ribs come a little back, your weight is ever so slightly on the ball of the foot, and you're gonna start to nod your head, and peel yourself down. Keep your pelvis in the starting position, so you're not gonna go all the way, just go part way, and feel how far you think you can go before your pelvis needs to do something, when that's the case, roll back up. Good, and do it one more time.

So feel like the pelvis stays. And you can even remember back what it felt like when your hands were behind your head, lift your head a little bit into my hand, yeah, that's great. See as far as you can go, and then come back up. Good, now we'll go all the way down this time, so, you don't have to do it, but remember what it felt like to have your head pressing back? It's very different than this feeling.

So back here, remember that as you roll down. Keep going, and delay moving your pelvis, try not to. But eventually you need to, to roll all the way forward, do whatever it feels comfortable with your hands, you can bend you knees a little bit, whatever feels good. And now we're gonna come back up, leading with the pelvis. So the body reluctantly comes up, the pelvis leads, straighten the knees, push the ground away, and stack yourself back into that position where you were just a moment ago with your ribs back.

Yeah. Beautiful, one last time to finish up. Nod the head, but just a tiny bit. Rolling forward. Let the spine be as pliable as possible.

At the last minute, the pelvis is gonna go with you. Do whatever you need to do at the bottom, so you can support yourself with your hands on your legs, you can have the floor, whatever you feel like. Move the pelvis first. Good, very nice, that was a change in your body, I love it. Come up, you're rounded a lot more, keep rolling, keep going, keep bringing the ribs back and the pelvis forward.

Now we'll just challenge your balance a little bit and I'm not gonna let you leave the mats which is harder. Just, in that position, lift your heels. Feel that sense of alignment from the floor all the way to the top of the head. Lower yourself down. And we're done! Thanks you guys.

Thank you for joining us, hope you had a good class, and we'll see you next time.

Comments

3 people like this.
loved this class Shelly, will try out some of these lovely stretches with my class. Thanks.
3 people like this.
Simple, basic movements cued in an extra-ordinary way. My spine feels great.Thank you Shelly
2 people like this.
I loved the roll down at the end - keeping the pelvis steady until the last minute. One of the best things about Pilates for me is that the slightest variations can you make your body feel so different. Thank you for this class.
2 people like this.
Thanks Shelly. Love your explanations and cueing. 🙌
7 people like this.
Shelly has a special way of reminding us the basics are not so basic, "reach the back of your thigh as if higher than the heel". It is nice to have this opportunity to learn from Shelly again, and deepen my ability to convey it to my Pilates community.
1 person likes this.
Thank you so much, loved the saw options felt great for my body 😊😊
1 person likes this.
Super class for this stiff back ! Will be teaching this lovely extension work ,which we all need, this week .
look out! the pink pants are in town! total pilates celeb crush on Shelly. Really helpful, practical explanations. So grateful.
1 person likes this.
I like the break down to teach Saw
Very nice class Shelly, clear and simple I definitely going to use some of your ideas. Thank you and yes I also like the break down of the Saw and the roll down. Interesting alternatives to 100 it can help to some of my clients.
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