Flow

So if you're still with me, you know that I like to play and have a little bit of fun. So this class is really just about flowing, entering that state of flow and having a little bit of fun. We're going to play with some movements and do some [inaudible] and hopefully get our little sweat on and have a good time. Are you ready? Let's go. So I just want you to start very unplug these like with your feet, maybe a little wider than hip width and tap your heels and as you tap your heels, notice what happens in your body. So I feel this beautiful vibration. You're going to hear my voice vibrating as well.

Let your head vibrate and Chen and your jaw and your hand. And I don't know, maybe if you're self conscious about moving like this, you'll do this behind a closed door. You let your shoulders Shimmy you, let everything release. Take a big breath up and take a breath down. Hand another breath up and a breath down. Take a wider stance and just kind of sway side to side here.

So I am dancing to music. In my head right now. If you would like to go ahead and put on some music, feel free to do so. We're going to do a little bit of a flowing dance just to kind of loosen up the body outside of the Pilati Xbox and then see how your body warms up to your PyLadies. With this type of movement. There is no right or wrong. If you're more of a boxy person, if you just move side to side, that would be okay. But if you like to work outside of the box, try moving your shoulder blades around a little bit, let your arms flow, look around the room, enjoy yourself here a little bit. So now pause somewhere and go to one side looking around and then go to the other side. So I'm not counting, I'm looking around and seeing the ocean behind me.

I'm noticing birds, I'm using all my senses at the moment. I just had a mint, so I'm actually tasting mint, I'm smelling lavender in the room. All those silly things to go back to this side to side, let your head sway for a moment. So this is kind of, I'm bringing my feet closer together. This is a lateral movement, so see if you can move your hips a little side to side your shoulders and feel that lateral movement here and now with your feet wide. Again, we're going to feel that rotational movement, rotational movement. The feet don't need to be too wide, but they can be. And notice I didn't change my feet.

I'm really just rotating with my body very softly with flow and mindfully. One more time. You take a big breath up with a wide stance. Just lightly hands, gently drip down and be here for a moment. Standing on your two feet hollow, your belly inward. Take your arms wide, press just a little lower and then press back up. And just one more time like that, press down hollow inward, a little and open and press up. And this time I'd like you to now bring your feet together and we're going to go through basically our Pilati split work.

Standing squats is really what we're doing. So keep your feet weighted equally and flowing down and up. I'm feeling nice and warm just after that little loosening. I want you to be mindful here of standing on your two feet. Be Mindful of pulling the earth together, pulling the mat together, and pay attention to breathing. But most importantly today, flow through space.

Flow through the movement flow with your breath. So just down and up. Manage the movements so that your joints are happy. Minimize the forward folding. So I'm actually trying to stay upright a little bit so that my, my hips hinge beautifully as opposed to just collapsing and just do one more there. Hold your low position. Where is your low position here? Can you lift your heels up? Now we're going to work on balance.

Keep the heels lifted and stand tall. Now without folding forward, how low can you bend your knees? No pressure in the knees without losing your balance and press up. Woo. Go. Again. I don't practice this all this off, this, all that often, but boy, is it an important thing to practice? Good.

We're just gonna do a couple more like that. Okay. Imagine you're squeezing a ball between your knees. Uh, and if you're finding balances, no problem here, try closing your eyes. That's a fun, a fun challenge. And press up. Put your heels down, take your arms wide. Make a small v here. So really focus on the rotation of your hips and to help encourage that.

Take your palms up. Take your arms up, take your arms down. So those of you that ever took ballet, we're basically doing a little play here. Keep it a demi play. That means I'm keeping my heels down. Hold your low position. Stay here, my arms come down, my hands come to my hips. Squeeze the heels together, fold forward. Squeeze the glutes as you come up five times using those glutes.

So that forward fold here from the hips actually challenges those gluteal muscles quite beautifully and again. And last time here we lift up, we stay. Send the arms wide, lift the arms up. Just for fun. Bring the feet to a wide position. Now, nice deep play. So I want you to try really hard though to keep your body upright. So don't fold forward here. Feel rotation from your hips, lengthening down through your low back and be upright. Now don't go so low that you can't move. Yes, I'm talking to you.

Sway your hips side to side. Make sure you can sway your pelvis forward and back. Make sure here, now you can take your arms out because we're going to move and move and move and move and look and check it out. Flow through movement here in this box of space. Maybe you feel your legs, maybe you don't feel your legs. Maybe you just feel outside of your box cause I'm asking you to kind of dance around and be silly. But Hey, that's good for us. Bring your arms forward. Take your arms up open wide. Bring your feet together.

Let's go to the ground here. So I'm going to have you find your way to get down. You can just have a squat if you want and try to get all the way down. I'm a little tight today so that makes me fall. Oh well that's okay. Roll yourself back here. Dry your knees into your chest. Lift up nice and high. We go from double leg stretch here or go to juggle legs.

Stretch, pull in. Inhale back, exhale in good. Really feel the breath. Feel the flow of the movement in how back today. I feel like bringing my legs in a little more with Bassey. Polities we usually stop at 90 degrees at the hips, but give it a go if you want to pull your legs and it feels nice to me. One more here. Beautiful single leg stretch, change, change. Find your breath, breath. Good.

Don't preach too quickly. So if you're moving fast like me, feel free to slow down the breath as you move. Whatever. Makes Sense. One more time. Each side. Chris Cross, not too fast but pretty fast. Ah, breathe. Lift your chest. Feel your legs moving through space as if you're pushing and pulling through some sort of fixed substance. Something that's delicious for you. One more time. Each side. Two legs in straight, legs up.

Hamstring Poles. Here we go. Nice. Straight legs with a little pulse, pulse and pulse. Pulse. Remember we're having fun. So how about a hint of a smile across your cheeks while you flow through space? Good. Slow it down if you need to. Good. Remember this is to self care for you, right? Hands behind the head. Good.

[inaudible] keep the breath going. [inaudible] try to keep those knees straight. I'm struggling a little and go ahead and twist this. We'll just do five each side. Here we go. Breathe. Yeah.

Good. I lost count. I'm going to do one more cause I think it's five but maybe I gave you six. Hug Your knees in rock and roll on your spine. Cross your legs, send your legs back and be in a plank for a moment. Powerful plank here, but let's play with it. One arm and then the other arm up.

So I'm bringing my arm to my chest. Take it a little further and look up and look up. Good. You could always have your knees down here. No problem with that. Look up and look up. One more time. Both knees down across. Don't cross your legs, lift your hips up, walk back up to a standing position and let's come back to that wide squat. Big Breath up. Come down through center. Big Breath up.

Come down through center. Stay here. So we're going to spiral from side to side, around and around. So I want you to feel the spiral in your spine as you change your stance. So rather briskly, but keep going with your body. So the legs change, the body continues. Keep going. You want to pump it up, make it just a tiny little hop that yet, yet, yeah, I have music in my head. Our breath I often say is the music that we're dancing to. Good.

If you start to get dizzy, don't look that far back. Find a point. Couple more each side, please come back to center. Find your balance. Grotell inhale up, exhale in, shift your weight to one leg, finding your balance and then press back and pull up. Woo. And press back. I'm not actually putting my back leg down and pull up. I'm touching it, but I'm not putting weight on it. Reach back and pull up.

Good reach back and pull up to stay. Put your toe down if you need to. You're able to balance your stay. Use Your abdominals, change your gaze, rotate around, send your arms to your side and gently rest other side. Find your balance, breathe, reach back and pull up and reaching back and pull up and again. Then pull up breathing and moving. Nice single leg work, single leg balance and up. Just one more time please. I love the challenge of having to teach and also focus on my balance.

Starts to change your gaze, send your arms wide and reach. You always put your toe down if you needed to. It depends on what you're focusing on, right? Sometimes I'm focusing more on alignment. Other Times I'm focusing more on the balance. Come back through center. Let's do that again, but with a kick, so we reached back, we come up, we extend the leg out, we reached back without touching. If you're able to, we come up and we extend the leg out. If you need to touch, go for it.

The arms are playful and flowing and really here it's like I'm over doing a really big running man. Wow. I played with it too much and reach and come up. We're going to do just one more time. One more of these standing on that leg. Come up. Change sides. All right, here we go. I reach back and we come up and reach back. So feel free to tap the toe on the back and on the front. It's okay with me.

Always reach and press up and again, if you need to keep your gaze fixed. Always feel free to do that. I like changing my days, which challenges my balance and I like showing that my balance is challenged as well. Hold, kick. Bring your feet down to take everything out. Yeah. Okay. Stan, send one leg back. Bend both knees. Take yourself to the earth. Roll side to side legs. Cross legs in front of you. Roll back round two, same abdominals. Here we go.

Inhale, reach. Exhale en back N. Okay. Breathe and move. [inaudible] single leg stretch coming now. Okay.

Try to slow down the breath as we move a little faster. [inaudible] and one more exhale. I'm doing like three or four on the exhale. Two legs in stay. Slip your hands behind your head. Crisscross slow and luxurious. [inaudible] find that breath. Find that flow. Just one more time. Each side.

Yeah. Two legs up. One leg in, one leg down. Hamstring pull and a little balls. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Just for fun. Try looking in a different direction. Okay.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Notice where it's most comfortable? Probably looking straightforward. Try real hard to keep your knees bent. And then with your arms straight by your side here, stay lifted. Yeah.

Now hold. Reach up to that foot and see if you can get ahold of it or the leg. Twist yourself. Reach. Find a higher lift. Be here. Go ahead and point the foot if you want. If you're holding the toe, you can be here. It doesn't matter. And then change sides. So maybe a flexed foot is reached. Find it a little bigger.

Lift a little more and change. Oh, I'm rolling all over the place and change and change. I'm going to just keep my feet flex cause I can get a good hold there and it feels like a nice stretch. And one more time. Ah, last one over here. Gently rest. Put your two feet on the ground and roll side to side with your legs using up through your low back, through your quads and through your hips. Gently roll yourself onto your side and around onto your belly for just a little bit of back extension here with your hands outside of your shoulders, we're going to inhale to upper back. Exhale to pull forward and all the way to full extension if it suits you and lower down a couple more like that. Inhale upper back.

Exhale forward, up, opening through the heart and lower down and again, inhale, exhale forward, up and lower down. Just one more time and are reach, reach, reach, and gently lower down. Go ahead and push first to the hands and knees. Take a moment of pause in a child's pose or a rest pose. Relaxing. Shift forward to the hands and knees with the hands underneath the shoulders and the knees underneath the hips. Slide one leg back. Slide the other leg back.

Hold here. So I'm just going to ask you, we tried before that lifting of the arms one at a time. Now we're going to decide if we can just roll to one side and be inside plank. And then just roll to the other side and the inside plank and then change again. Now you can put a knee down, you could return to the simple lifting of the arm, or you could just hold your plank. Whatever suits you. I'm gonna move my hair out of the way and lift.

Good. One more time. We're going to stay over here. Lift your arm up and be here. Big Breath over and oh the way down maybe. Whooo. Big breath over. Okay.

And all the way down. And just one more time. Big Breath and all the way down. Now stay there. So get down to this shape if you're not already there. Oops, I almost fell off. Fell off my rocker. I want you to find a place where your hand is comfortable. So if you're not quite as flexible, maybe you look this. Okay.

And this actually feels better to me cause this arm gets a break after all that work. So we feel free to cup your hands and use your fingertips to kind of pull forward and get a little stretch. I am getting the most lovely stretched through my waist here and it may not look pretty. I may not look like something that you think we should be doing in PyLadies, but we're playing here now. Do you see what I'm doing with my legs here? I'm just kind of rolling around and right there. It's where your friend here needs her stretch.

I'm gonna put my hands down and I'm going to feel that stretch for another breath or two. I hope you enjoy it as well. Good. Gently to kind of bring your legs in and release, we have to do the other side. Let's come back around to your plank. Bam. Come right into that side plank. Remember modify as needed. You can feel free to put your knee down and skip this part.

Something to build up to. We're going to reach up and over and then you're going to come down with straight legs. Use Your abdominals. You're going to try to tap your leg down, maybe, maybe not, and then you're going to lift up and over you and we come down stretching through that body. Remember, the movements should feel good for me. These are good challenging. Let me come all the way down and take a seat. Good, and then arrange your hands so that you feel you can be here. Again, this may not look pretty. I'm actually going to change my foot here so I can roll into it a little bit because this side is a little more challenging.

My shoulder is just where it needs to be for me to be able to move into this stretch and be here. I encourage you to be the same or do the same. Breathing in and I'm going to come down a little cassette. Feel squishy now. That's a better place and breathing out. Gently hug your knees in. Find yourself again on your hands and knees. Please push your hips up high. Walk your hands toward your feet.

Dangle your head and neck and shoulders. Roll up to a standing position. Find yourself standing tall, centered in your mat. We take a big breath up. Feel the flow of a soft body dripping down on one side like a liquid body. Feel energetically reaching up through that one arm. Head is dangling, arm is dangling, the body is so soft, okay, flowing, maybe even waving in the wind, but very relaxed. Gently bring the arm up, gaze up with your eyes. Be here for a moment.

How tall can you grow? Effortlessly tall. And then allow the other arm to just strip down. Breathing in, flowing past your body, finding its way down. Still reaching up again. Feel it says if you're just hanging by a string with one finger and your body is so light, and then bring your two arms up or the other arm up. Actually say so. You have two arms and here close your eyes.

Feel yourself standing on your two feet and use your hands to send your body energy, mindful energy, honoring your mind, positivity, mindful of energy in the direction of your heart. Okay. Mindful positive energy for your center, and then feel your hand sending energy to your every cell of your body for a moment. Just a wave, a liquid wave, land with your arms, open your palms open, allowing that energy to be sent out to the world. And I thank you for flowing with me.