Arc Flexion and Extension

Hi everyone. This is Amy and today I'm working with the [inaudible] are quite balanced body. It's a little different than the regular spine corrector and half barrel. It's foam, it's lightweight, you can pick it up and the step actually is removable and we'll do something in a few minutes with that. This is the first class I'm teaching. With this later you'll see a class on the reformer and the Cadillac as well.

So we're going to get started and I want you to sit all the way down in the crevice and I like to call this the seal designed with the legs or diamond. So the soles of the feet together, knees are open and just establish first or nice vertical sitting up posture, no extra force, just a feeling eleventy through the rib cage and I'll give yourself a couple of breaths. I'm thinking three just to center yourself. It's a nice breath in. Just start to settle your sit bones down, but that lightness through the rib cage and the head all the way to the sky. So as we take our first articulation, I'm going to just have you float your arms up and take a breath. So feeling a nice, easy roll across your sake room, over your lumbar spine, over your ribs, across your shoulder blades, and let your head touch it.

Feel free to do different choreography with your arms if you'd like. Coming forward. Round your chin toward your chest, look towards your feet and roll yourself back up and sit tall. So relax over the barrel, relax over the arc. Feel your bones moving. You remember the corrector work or the arc work here can be very much about mobility. Yeah, I left to mourn ago, so I'm just feeling a nice sense of ease trying to connect to that.

Letting go of any extra muscle work at this point, just getting started, feeling the bones, move and look. And once again, like a nice current of energy going through. And I love this little articulation over, you'll see me use this a couple times for a transition and left. Okay, I'm gonna move us now up onto the front of the arc or sometimes called the lip on other pieces. I'm just gonna refer to it as the edge still feet together and I'm going to curve the arms. Feel free to do something different of you if you'd like.

So this one, exhaling, pull those abdominals back. Find a c curve and it was a matter modern dancer. So this feels very at home for me. I am thinking of pulling my pelvis back away from the legs. You're going to see a shift of the feet flex, flex through the hands and hinge at your hips and reach your chest forward.

Find your back muscles. Now again, it's not a throwing forward of the ribs, but a feeling of strength of the back. Breathe now reverse it, pull in into that curve and then change, flex and open. So the pelvis is doing quite a bit of the direction. I'm rocking it back and forth. It's underneath me. I'm rocking it forward to hinge two more and lift into the curve. Lift into your hinge and one more lift back at up into the curve.

Open up that spine and into the hinge. Stay in hinge, flex the hands, feel the nice stretch through the heel of the hand. I'm going to be going a little easy pulse. What I'm trying to do here is drop my thighs down. Keep shifting the weight to the front edge of the sit bone. Visualize a long line from a tailbone up through your head.

Let's take four more little pulses and shift. Keep flexing those hands three and four and I'm going to go back into the curve again. This time adding a little rotation, flex and twist them a look to my backhand and who west to the other side and curve. Really feeling some mobility. Open the chest contract, the abdominals and open. Feel free to make those arms do something different if you'd like. Just play with flection extension, rocking over your sit bones. Once again, each side, flex and point and flex and point. I'm going to go back over one more time. That same transition as I mentioned, I'm a slide down in the crevice. Take myself over this time.

Feeling a little more mobilized, open, open, feel the stretch opening up in the chest and round back of it. So luscious. Okay, lateral works. I'm going to turn and face you and just sit down toward the crevasse. You're in a mermaid type of a setup. Here. Pelvis is square to the front and we're going to start with a little diagonal oblique work. Now I want to just mention one thing.

Instead of a side bend in this, we're going to try to work a little more balanced on right and left side and we'll see if I can maintain that. So as I lean over, I'm sliding my hand down the arc into this kind of diagonal lines. I'm hoping to have that line there. This hand is pressing slightly against the arc. Now as they come up, drag it a little bit. Drag, drag, drag, drag, drag. I'm gonna Breathe in as I go over and exhale to come up. Now it's not that I'm letting this arm help me come up.

I'm trying to just connect and give a little feedback dragging to feel the lab working in association with my side body [inaudible] coming up. Now we're going to add a little to that same beginning, but as they come up I'm going to go into a contraction and rotate toward my back foot and open up. See curbing through my spine and again over the barrel again. This is really coming more from my dance days from a long ago. Once a dancer, always a dancer, an open, Lindsey wouldn't even really need that hand. I'm going to try one without it. And over this is I come up not using that left 10 it's all coming from the center and around. Now turn toward the barrel and if you have the flexibility mobility in your spine to square your shoulders directly to the barrel, go for that.

But try to avoid moving the hips to do it. I can do that and that's a little cheat for right now. So see if you can hold your pelvis steady and see what kind of upward spiral you have through your spine. Okay. And then I'm taking my back hand to the floor, front hand to you. It's going to slide down and I'm just going to try to mirror the barrel, meaning make the curve and then up, up, up, up, up towards you and over and uh, something feels right about the arm doing that and over and up and once again and over. If we're going to stay over, the front arm is reaching and true.

Now a little more square with my shoulders and take the leg up and down and leg. We're going to come back at this and just a sec. So two more and up. Now I'm going to bring my body all the way back up to the start. As I go toward the barrel, I'm going to bring my leg up with me. So dive in over leg up, lift and center. We'll do a total of four lift, lift and center. Last two.

Huh? Last one. You're going to stay over. Keep the leg up. No, I am going to post the leg and yeah, up and up and three and hold. Now straighten the leg and rebend. Yeah. Thinking for repetitions, I'm leading from the hip to the foot. Terranea keep my thigh high.

[inaudible] and last one and in and lower down. I'm going to do four more of each one. Lift, lower, lift lower. Oh, hold it up for more extensions one and to go beyond your comfort zone. Three really stretch your skin. Last one four and we're going to bring it in lower to the floor and come all to the other side. So I won't face you. I'm going to turn around. I get the ocean to look at kind of for a second. And here we go.

So establishing square, diagonal locally. So I'm sweeping my right hand over the barrel and exhale again, drag and come to vertical and over and rag to come up. [inaudible] so you're working those oblique muscles that exist all the way around, not just in your tummy but they are in your back as well. So if you're feeling that, don't worry, you should be feeling. Now we add the second layer. As you come up, you're rotating towards your back foot. Make a c curve, unwind and over dread.

Lift yourself up off the barrel and her too. Op and twist. And last one in this pattern. One of my favorites on the corrector. Now I'm going to turn toward the barrel and f again, try to square the pelvis, but take the ribs around it. Depending on your body, you may have one side more mobile than the other.

You're seeing mine. I'm going to take the hand to the floor and sweep or stretch and coming up. And I remember my arm felt good there. And two over reach a little further than the first time. Durag and last two or three stretching your back muscles. And last one. Are you going to stay over for holding here? Lift and lower.

So finding the muscles in your water or your attitude or your air basket muscles from dance, the glutes and the lower back up. We're going to add that with diving over four times. So we're diving over and lift the thigh lift and center. Breathe in. Last to twist leg, uh, and center one more.

Staying over for those additional leg lifts of four more times. We have the thigh and up. So I'm peeking through this elbow here. I can see my foot. That's a good place to go. Hold it there. Now stretched from your hip to your big toenail and rebound checkout.

So your foot and stretch work to try to keep your thigh going higher. Ideally it's in the same line as your hip and down. We're going to take four more Veatch, so we've got one. Two would be really easy to rest your rib cage on the arc. See if you can avoid that. Stay lifted from the abdominals and stretch, hence, you know, resting and three and four and down and lower.

Then come all the way up and harassed. I'm going to do one more of those transitions. The reason why I like this is it also recenters the spine and the back muscles. Uh, it also gives you the opportunity to see how much more you've mobilized. I know I have. I feel that very differently now.

So much. I'm going to do one more, one more time. I don't know if you've noticed how much change has happened just in 10, 15 minutes by moving vertical. Okay. Time to take off the step and I'll show you how to do that. So easy reach underneath the curve part hold. That's it. As you lift that, set this off to the side, the little Stephie.

We'll get back to that near the end, but let's go into some pelvic curl and some bridging. So what I'm going to have us do, I'm gonna move this slightly. Now you've also got a, the curve is taller on this side than that. I like the taller side for this work. So we're going to go down onto our back [inaudible] it makes sure my head is not on the wood floor. Okay. Okay. Traditional position as far as with between the feet and the knees, I'm going to take myself into the pelvic curl. Nice sense of lifting the pelvis.

Now I like to support my hips. Sometimes today's one of those days. Feel free to do this if you'd like. Bury that weight onto your elbow slightly and I'm going to take my right leg and reach it lower to the step. Now as I take it down to this step, I don't want to drop my booty down and get unweighted lift as if you don't really need the hands at all. Feel free to do that. Okay, now lift your fi, stretch those hamstrings. Lower. Touch the arch down. Let's go up and down. Meanwhile, the other leg is holding and pushing. Very firm down on the barrel.

Now I'm going to take one more and just hold it over. Push this foot on the barrel. Two brides lift this foot higher and I'm going to push and lengthen and three and four and five. I'm going to come to 90 with this leg. Now let go. Lower the hips completely. This is like a telescope and push, push, push.

So let's come down for two and up. Four, three and down for two and up. Four, three, one more. Down in Djing, those hips and up. Four. Three, replace the foot and let's unroll to massage the spine. All right, reconnect. Roll yourself in, opening through the hips please.

The hands stretch the opposite thigh. Hips are still level. Brush the leg one. It feels good to stretch those hamstrings after all of that work. Three for meanwhile, this foot's pressing down from five. Excuse me, that was four and five. Okay. Push this side. Lift your hips. Stretch the hamstrings for five, four to one leg to vertical. Hands Away.

Now sink down in [inaudible]. Push and up. Down into one and two. Up in one, two, three, two. Couple more. Remembers the glutes. Strength is hip extension. Last one down two and up in three. Replace the foot. Reassess your line. Rolled down all of the way.

Alright. How'd your knees and cross your ankles and just stretch and stretch. Yeah. And there we go. Okay. So what we're going to do now is come up to standing and I'm going to do a standing roll down and I move my barrel toward me a bit. I don't know, I'm about my own foot length away.

Try that out and just take yourself into a nice stand. Breathe. And as we exhale, rounding forward, softening the knees. You're going to land your hands lightly on top of the barrel. Lift your heels up and down. Lift. So what do you want to have? You focus on light fingertips touching here.

So not a full weight. Bearing onto the arms is if you really don't need to touch this at all, but please do one more. Lift up and hold. Now feel the stomach second really pool round yourself into your c curve. Hold this position. You're going to feel your thighs working quite a bit. Now I don't want you open your highest heel position, but not all the way flat.

Find something in between. Hold the Seeker stand more weight on your left foot. Bring your right thigh to your chest, reach back and touch the floor. Bring this thigh in. Reach back. Try to hold yourself in the same position over the standing leg.

So this is a little like mountain climber on the chair or single knee. Stretch on the reformer and four three Oh two last one in and stepped down and the other thigh up. Reesie curb and reach back and in. Reach back and again and you can lightly touch the floor with those toes. Not O, not worried about that. Four three keep pulling the strength into the stomach muscles. Last two, last one, and then hold and come all the way down.

Restretch the legs. Hold yourself here for a second and then lengthen into more of a flat back position. And still hands are light. I'm not bearing all my weight, but I want you to have your poems open. Okay. Soften your knees and can you st your sitz bones up a little higher. And I'm going to reach my chest toward the arch and toward the ocean a little bit. And then on the exhale, recurve, pulling the stomach in. Two more of these. Let it flow. Open the sit bones.

Yeah, articulate and wave through the spine and then lift and round. One more to go. Reach back and open. Ziff. Right now we're going to hold this position as if I'm going to drag my hand back on the barrel. I'm not, but I'm thinking of that to connect into the side of the arm and into the side of the back and just hold and add a PA on, around and coming all the way to standing. All right, so one more yummy little stretch and that's gonna be for the calves. And we're going to use the step portion here.

So I'm going to turn it just on a diagonal. Oops. Yeah, let's wait. Amy, I guess I'm going sideways. So here it is. Okay. He'll end the low end. He'll on the low end, so may throw you off balance a little bit, which it might, it should. Uh, it's a fantastic stretch for your calf. I'm going to soften my knee joints just a little bit so I'm not locking them back. Well, your sacrum under, it's a long train and we're going to round over into a standing roll down, seeing if you can stay in this foot position.

I'm very, very challenged here and I don't want to sink my weight all the way back on my heels. I want to try to come forward rather than going back and the roll back up to standing. Think about where you can bring that sacred under slightly forward. Lengthen up the front of the body. I'm going to take one more of those. Ah, you have to kind of give in to this. I, when seeing for myself, let those heels be heavy.

I have a little fun. If you'd rather challenge yourself to go to the floor, go for it. See what happens. Be careful not to drift back, pulling up. The last thing I'm going to do and I want us to do together, I'm going to step up onto that part of the arc, all the way up, putting my hands on my shoulders, my fingertips on my shoulders, and just find a little bit of an upper back extension. [inaudible] so I have my fingertips on my back. I can feel, give a little feedback. The sacrum is under, the chest is up, the body is open as take a deep breath and find yourself to a vertical stand. Lower your arms and we can finish for today.

Thank you so much and keep tuned in and watched for the next class that I'll teach on using the plots arc on the reformer. Thanks a lot.