Stretch Out Strap® Mat

Good afternoon. Is everyone here ready to take class? Good. It's good to see you all. So let's just take a deep breath in and exhale, inhale and exhale. And then we're going to take our strap just to give ourselves a little feedback and we're going to place it around our back, around our ribcage, and then crossover in the front. So expect me to be moving around and sometimes to be stopping and starting, but you don't get to do that so you can see where the strap is.

If I were to pull this a little bit, I'm not going to break a rib. That's not my purpose, but I'm going to pull enough so that I can feel a little bit of resistance. And then I'm going to take a deep breath in on an inhale and imagine that I'm widening my rib cage because my lungs are filling and therefore the strap response. So you see the strap doesn't do it. We do it to the strap. Is that clear? All right, so a little pole. That would be your exhale. Inhale, exhale. Two more.

That was actually three more, but I'm learning to count. So, and you may find that if you're watching at home, I may do seven instead of eight. Don't worry about it. So when you're doing this and you let go of the strap, take a deep breath in and see if you, if you notice your ribs more than you did before, just let the strap go. Just let it go. Can you inhale? Do you notice your ribs down? Okay. So that's a nice way to start class to begin the breathing, which is part of the plot is work. Um, it was very important to Joe [inaudible] and I would like to suggest this occasionally, I may say inhale here, but do the breath that works best for you because if it's natural to you, that's what's going to be most organic and that's what your body's going to respond to. So I'm going to hang this back over my neck again and we're going to go over a few little incidentals on this.

Little strap has loops. It doesn't really matter where you are on the loops. For instance, if I put my hand and I had a whole bunch dangling off of here and just one here, it doesn't affect the work, however that may bother you, so don't worry about that in the middle of the class. The other thing is I have a prescribed with of where I'm going to tell you to put your loops and you may find that that doesn't work for you. So if you're here or you're working at home and you say, Gosh, she said put it in the loop, but you know I feel like one in the second and one in the third works. Then that's what you do. So here's how I count my loops.

You can just keep yours around your neck. This is the middle. This is loop one, loop to loop three. Anybody have any idea of what loop that would be? That would be Luke four and this would be the end or loop five just now. Now you've passed the test and you're all ready to start, but we have a few other things that we want to talk about. We're going to talk about our arm. See this is your arm and a seesaw.

So in a seesaw the fulcrum is in the middle. Do you remember riding on a seesaw when you were a child? And if two kids were on either end and they were pretty balanced. It was a nice Saul ride. And then my daddy, he liked to have fun with me and he would get on one end and put me up and put me up and put me up. Remember that. And so actually we have seesaws in our bodies, but our long bones, like our arm doesn't work like a seesaw.

What happens is the fulcrum moves here. This would be your shoulder joint. And so that way the arm can actually lift up and maybe even touch the ceiling. If I had a seesaw for an arm, I tell people that t-shirts would look pretty funny. Okay. So we'd have to design all of our clothing again. So when we have a long lever like this, the advantages, more range of motion, that's what you're going to be doing with this strap. However, it's not as efficient because you have to have what kind of weight, more or less weight here. Yeah, you have to have more.

So let's experience that for a minute. So imagine that your hands are hanging down here and that you have something very heavy in them. Maybe it's a heavy lead ball. And then let's just lift our arms up, which is an exercise and down. Now imagine the ball is in the end of your arm. It's in your hand and down.

Can any of you imagine that lifting something that's heavy and Ledon and down and lift. So that would be really inefficient. Does anybody like the way that feels? No. Okay. So what if we put the led behind us and that would be which bone do you think? The scapula or the shoulder blade? So imagine the shoulder blade now as weighted, and your hands put some feathers in your hands.

And as the shoulder blades are drawn toward the floor, the feathers are being lifted. So let's think of that. You can think of weight down and you can breathe if you'd lie and down. So I suggest you think of these images before you start doing any of this work. Otherwise you can get organized around your hands. So did that feel different? All right. So when we work the strap, that's what we're going to be thinking about.

Now there's one other little detail and it's really important. I want you to take your hands and you hold your palms up. And this is called Super Nation of the hand. So the Ritz moves and yes, I have an image of Supa nation and I think I'm at King Henry the eighth court. And they didn't have any cutlery.

And so they had to shovel everything in their mouth like soup. So that's how you remember Supa nation. Okay? Soup Soup, a nation. Trenchers Henry the eighth. Uh, we have five wives here to now press the hand down. So the palm is facing the floor. So if you were a four legged animal, you would walk. And that's pro nation. Okay? So they're super nation and pronation. Now how this works in [inaudible] is I want you all to supinate and put your hands down and lift them up. And notice, do your arms go straight forward? No, they go sort of on a diagonal.

And that has to do with the architecture of the elbows. So we're not going to get into that. But what we are going to notice this, depending on whether our palm is up or down, it affects her wrist, the bones, the elbow, the humerus, the Scapula, they're all related. Now if we proud eight and we bring our hands up here and we press forward, what's the difference in your arm movement? Yeah, it's more parallel. So when we change the position of our Hams, it's related to the position of our Scapula, scapula in our back or to our lead ball, sliding down our back.

So are we ready to begin? Okay, so let's start with a stupid aided position or a pronated position right up here and in this pro unaided position. I like to think of I, I like to relate all of the equipment work in the mat, work together. And so I'm thinking, Gee, rowing front, my hands are relatively here and I'm going to press out and pull in and I'm going to feel like as I press something away from me, maybe there's something I don't want and I'm pushing it away and I'm thinking of my scapula leading my hands and I hear breathing and that's lovely. And in and out. Now I like to stand with my feet so that my ankle is underneath my hip joint. Whatever's comfortable for you. Good.

Now let's start to bend and in. So your tailbone goes slightly back as she banned. So don't about trying to keep yourself in some kind of a level playing. It's not really possible. Just feel a nice span. This keeps us organized over hip joint in a healthy way and in and out.

And one more and in and then come down. So that was the first loop. Let's go to the second loop so that, yeah, there will be a little bit of organizational work here around the loop. And now we're out here and we're supinated. And guess what? The loops allow us to go out on that angle. So that's called the carrying angle. Because if you could imagine, oh, there's something precious, a baby and you're lifting and lift and that and I think, yeah, and maybe a dog.

Would you prefer a dog and down and lift up? They told me these classes are very informal and I appreciate that. And down. And then again, Ben tailbone back and breathe. [inaudible] I like to see your smile and one more and down. I didn't just think about your scapula.

Think of them as weighted and allow your arms to dangle and let's move out to three when we get out to the third loop, I want you to think about the rowing. When you're actually doing rowing front or rowing back and you're making this a well growing back and you're making the circle your s, your straps are pretty much this wide. So we're going to lift up to about right to our forehead and down and lift up. And this is where you really start to use the image of my scapula is sliding down my back, my fingers are weightless. I'm reaching up for something that I really would like to have.

There's something nice up there in the top shelf and one more and coming all the way down. Now lift out and you're at the top of your head. And what will happen is the hands will start to slide in the strap a bit. Now they'll do this. Naturally, you're doing this all the time in on your Polonius equipment, but you may never have stopped to think about it. Now, you know, it has to do with pronation and supination and all the joints adapting to what's happening in your shoulders. So you're going back and you'll notice the arms starts to go into a pronated position. So if you were a crab, your feet would be flat. Yeah.

And then come up and come down. So we lift up, hand start to turn, rotating and up and down. Now, if this doesn't feel comfortable in your shoulders to go behind your head, don't do it. For instance, Amy's done a lot of this work and you'll notice she's going a good distance back there. I am not going that far back. And then as I watched Lee, I know we don't have mirrors, but I'm gonna Mirror you and it may be happening to me where one arm is slightly not level and down. That's okay. Just can't fix something you don't notice and down. And one more. Up and coming front and down. Look at the center of your strap and you'll see there's a little white label that optp put on here.

And we're going to imagine that that is pivoting around a spot on our chest. I'm pressing up with one hand, pressing down with the other, and I'm going to change and change and change and change and breathe. Now, Amy mentioned over there in the corner, this is hard. Feel free to shorten your loops if you need to. So maybe, ah, you need the length and then go ahead and do that. And linkedin, sorry, and come back to center. So let's go up, let your sternum come to the ceiling, look up, and then bring the head forward and look down. There's something down there that you really want to see and look up and look down.

And as we're doing this, we're trying to keep the strap taught so we can feel the connection of the arm muscles into the back. And one more up. And let's just place it here. And down from this position, we're going to open up our legs and get yourself a nice wide base. So we're going to turn toward the ocean. So on an inhale, I want you to just turn and then come back to the center and then turn and back to the center.

So let's stop there for a minute and press out and then pull the label right to the center of your sternum and press out again and label to sternum and press out and labeled to sternum. So the label has a relationship to your sternum. In other words, the positioning of this strap is going to stay in the same place. Now turn, inhale, and exhale, and inhale and exhale. Now I'm going to demonstrate something. I'd prefer not to see this. You see how the strap is sliding around my chest? So let's try this again. And to your right and center to your left and center to your right and center to your left and center. Now to your right and press it out.

Now you know you have the center of the strap right over your sternum. Yeah, bring it back in and center. I would prefer the least amount of pelvic movement possible for right now. Okay. And turn and out. And I have another part to answer if you all will keep going and turn. The reason I don't want your pelvis to move is because I don't want your opposite knee to twist.

So if I were going to decide you all could feel your right knee twisting, we don't want to do that. And we're also not trying to organize ourselves along the lines of the sidewall. Does that make sense? We're turning the distance that our rib cage turns and one more set and out and in and center. And this might be enough. However we can do the full range of motion now.

Side Center, side center. Think of spine twist center. Yeah. Think of your scapula sliding around the rib cage. Yeah.

Good. And then bring everything down. Are we feeling our arms yet? Put this thing around here. We're going to do a little piece of movement that I've adapted from something I learned from Eric Franklin. And so I want to work the legs first and it has to do with your pelvis question. So from here I want you to just bring your knee in like this.

So now relatively both knees are facing the same direction. If I were to stay here in turn, this knee would be twisted and then come back to the center and then twist. And if we get low, it's actually better for our balance and center. So this is an exercise and center. I suppose we could do some nice arms with it, but we don't have to and turn everybody comfortable with that.

And turn and center. So now three loops. Count One, two, three. By the way, it'll get, you'll get too comfortable with this, so you'll just be able to put your hands in there. So if you're teaching at helm, expect a lot of futzing around with the strap for awhile. So from here up down now we're going to go to the ocean, twist and center and up and down and twist and center and up and down. Gotcha.

If you can add a spiraling motion of the head, that's really nice to feel that and I like to feel the rebound back to the center. Last set one more to the other side and twist and center and lift and down and shoulders up so that answer your question helps you understand when you move your pelvis and when you don't move your pelvis and it has to do with the range of motion in your body too. All right, let's put the strap out here. Let's pull in and out and in and out. Now sometimes you'll start to see funny things if you can try to keep it in a nice horizontal plane and we're going to do something that I call my kayak and we're going to separate the scapula from the thoracic. So start to row and I'm not going to say row right or left because I don't want to just row, row, row. Now right now, as you row your scapula are sliding around your rib cage. Yeah.

[inaudible] now start to add your thoracic spine. So your rib cage rolling. Rolling, rolling. And breathing. Now I'm going to look. So don't look at me. I'm not doing. And now stop the thoracic and just keep your head forward. Can come all the way down. Hey, good. Eat breath. Hand out another deep breath in. Good.

And let's take this up to the top. Press her hands out as much as she can and make sure your elbows are slightly bent. Think of your scapula sliding down your back. And we're going to bend to the side. Now my side bend, I'm not thinking of how far am I taking my strap. I'm not even thinking. Is My strap organized in a straight lines? So vertical? What I'm feeling is if you all filled your uh, left long and then emptied it out, can you make the sideband come from the air going in the right lung?

Does that make sense? Nice. Inhale and an exhale. And if the scapula slide down your back, you could even have a relationship of the scapula and the lung working together, keeping the feathers in your hands. And then Amy, you're actually needing to take your strap in one more loop. Um, yeah, keep going. So you want to have some space in here. When you have yours out here, you're a little bit on the top of your head. Okay? So these kinds of things are always a well done if you can see in a mirror.

All right, so from here we're going to bring this down and lift up and down and lift up. And then I'm going to turn from overhead and lift up and go to the other direction. Now my strap is vertical, but I'm not side bending. And let's pick up the speed and turn up. Turn. Ah, K I'm gonna Watch. Keep going. [inaudible] turn. Let's see this. Flex feet.

Turn and turn and turn and come back to the center. Make sure you have a little space in front of you on this little piece of boom. I want you to think that you're standing off the end of your Cadillac and you're doing punching or a lunch. So I'm going to press out. We all have enough room. Maybe we need to stand sideways, let, let's stand sideways.

Have you stand sideways. Now let's have foot come out. You're feeling the Scapula in the strap and what you're going to do is think about your back leg. Your back leg is what's going to bring you back in. And your strap is going to come with you, change legs out. Imagine there's some gum on the floor and you have to wipe it off with your foot that's in front of you and pull in and out.

Pull in and out, pull in and out, pull in and out, pull in and hold for a moment. Uh, you all do this very nicely. I just like to show from the side when you're doing this, if you are a dancer, it is so easy to do dance. And so you lift up and you bend and you press back and you come in and a different movement. So what we're really trying to do here is come out and think of our center, think of our standing like, and can we pull herself back in? All right. Yeah. Yes. I just, I brought it in because it's, um, good feedback. So let's try right left, right, right. Left.

And just feel that again. You all were doing lovely. I want the audience to see the difference and out pulling out in. You can tell they're all doing it. Lovely. Cause you can hear the squeaky feed and, and now, and, and, and press down. So let's come to our mat and what I'd like you to do is stand on the end of the mat facing each other and I will demonstrate how we're going to get down. I'd like to show you one of my preferred ways to get to the mat.

But please remember at home, if you have any joint problems, it's just fine to get down however you can. So we're going to bend one knee, put the other knee down and sit over and center yourself and get ready for the one hundreds. Oh [inaudible]. So for the 100 you're going to have your hands in Luke two and I'd like you to roll all the way down one vertebrae at a time. Some of this I'm going to demonstrate some of it I'm not, but I think everybody here knows what a 100 is.

So lift the strap up over your head. Nice. Inhale, exhale and get the arms onto the floor. If you can. From here, I'd like you to bring the indies in to your body and up. So the knees over your hip, Joni, good. Lift your head, neck and shoulders, and bring your straps to your knee. Doesn't have to be touching. Now this is where it will start the 100 for those of you who know how to straighten your legs vertically or would like to lower them, that's up to you and you're going to be pumping. And here we go. And inhale, three four, five out oh three Oh four five try to feel the breath. Inhale, take it all in. Empty it all out.

I like what Ruth did. Adjust when you need to. It's not a race. One, two, three, four, five, exhale and hold five very nice. Lower your legs down. You can bend and stretch them out on the mat and then bring the strap up over your head. Now Karen, if you could slide forward a bit. I always feel like my head's hanging off the mat.

It's like dropping into the Grand Canyon, so always feel free to center yourself to work for your body. Let's do five roll-ups and roll up and come forward and roll back and down. Now use the breath. It's comfortable, but let's use a four count and coming up to three, four rolling over. Nice articulation in this group. Four and one two three up and overreach and back. Anything about your ribcage? Three, four and up to three.

Four reach over to three n stretch for a minute. Hold that position. Just really a nice big inhale and exhale and then lift your arms. Roll up one more time and we're going to get ready for the rollover. For the rollover.

You're going to position your feet in the second loop where you just had your hands. And again, this starts to become easier. The class will know what to do. Basically, you want your feet inside of the math. So from here, if I've got my feet in the loop, what I'm going to do is bend my knees up and stretch them out and bend up. If you can without the mat sliding and stretch them out and then bend up. And from here, keep the strap abducted and roll all the way down and lift your legs up. And we're ready for rollover. Now before we start rollover, what I'd like to suggest is that you can't really open and close your legs with the strap. So we roll up and over and hold.

Sit bones on the ceiling and roll down to three and four and up to three and four and down. Two, three, four, up and over. Two, three, four and down. Two, three, four and up over three, four and down. Two, three and hold on for now, keeping this strap taught. Bend your knees and place your feet on the floor. Stretch your legs all the way out and roll up. So sometimes it's fun to do a roll up with a strap on your feet. Excellent. Excellent. Ladies. Now put your hands where your feet were.

Bring your feet together and sit tall. Make sure you're on the end of the uh, of the Mat. Feet together, feet together. Good girl. That's it, Karen. You're doing great. And you're going to roll down articulating down one, two, three, four and take a deep breath in at the bottom because you're going to be glad. So now you're going to lift your head, neck, and shoulders as if you were going to do the one hundreds that the head, neck, and shoulders. You're going to bring your right leg straight up and you're going to use your strap as if it was a level. So if this was a carpenter's level, you wouldn't want to have the bead going up toward the right or the left hand.

Yes. And so you're going to be able to see if you're wobbling at all. Good. Take a restaurant, your head if you need to go ahead. Put your heads down. Now when we do the circle, we're going to do five around and then five across an n and then we're going to change legs. Here we go. Head, neck and shoulders, up and across, around and up and to around an up and three and up and four and up and five and out, out around and up. Two and up, three and up, four and up and five and uphold. Just press up a little bit more if you can and then lower your leg down.

I'll let you put your head, neck and shoulders back down on the floor again. Now I'm going to offer up a challenge. You do not have to take me up on it if you should choose not to, but lift your strap up for the other side and bring the opposite leg up. The left leg up. Good lift, head, neck and shoulders. If you would like to, you can take the bottom leg about an inch off the floor, but you don't have to and across, around and up and to around an up and three and up. Good.

Four and up and five and reverse out of round up two, up three and four and five and the leg goes down, head down, arms up and over. Take a deep breath and whenever you get a breath, take a breath in and then do another roll up and come all the way up from here. Of course we have to do rolling back. And so I've got my back to the camera so that you can see exactly where I'm going to be placing my strap. I want it to be around that place just a little bit above my sacred, right in my lumbars. That place, it's always flat, you know, and doesn't want to round. I always think if, if you take the air out of a tire or a ball, it doesn't really roll. So we're gonna wrap around. And the other thing is it helps keep the heels close to the sit bones.

So from here, take a deep breath in and press your lower back into the strap and then inhale and you can straighten your back a little bit and press into the strap and inhale and press into the strap. Good. Now I'd like you to scoot forward a bit just so when we roll back, we don't have anybody going off the end of the mat. Excellent. Here we go. Rolling back five times and rolling back and up and two and up. Three and up.

Four and up and five and up. Great. And then you can put your feet down on the floor. Take the strap out from around your back. And while we're there, let's size herself up. I hadn't considered this as a part of my choreography, but maybe it would be a good idea to do for the camera. You're going to put that strap around your neck. And anybody use Amy here. So I like to have my hand in loop three or two.

Okay. And I'm going to lift my hand up a little bit. So will everybody get in this position and then feel as if the strap is coming up the back of your neck, cradling your occiput. And Hey, now start to roll down to your ab series position. So you're gonna roll down, articulate through your spine, articulate through your spine, and go ahead and put your neck on the floor for a minute. So what I always say when the, when the strap is behind the neck and it reminds me that Joe Palladia did a lot of neck work and it's been lost. So this starts to put it back in. So I want you to lift your head, neck and shoulders up using the strap. Just as feedback.

I don't want you to yank on your head, but I want you to feel the back of your head is cradle. Do we all feeling that? Okay, so it gets better from here. Bring your legs in for single leg stretch. Ready and stretch one and two and three and four, five and six and seven and eight and one and two, three and four, five and six and seven and eight. Now bring both legs in and reach out and come all the way in.

You almost feel like rolling in a ball, laying down and in. Excellent. I love the breath. And here, inhale, exhale. So you fill up all your appendages. And then you blow it all out and hold it there. Straighten the leg straight up for the scissors and let's lower our right leg down and change from the hip joint to three. So really feel a ball inside of your hip joint rolling so that you're not thinking foot up. You're thinking hip moves and five, six, seven and eight.

It's almost over. Lift your leg straight up. Good. Now some of you have a flex and appoint routine in here. I'm not going to insist on that, but let's lower leg, double leg, lower lift and bring them all the way up. Now hold it. You get a bonus of a little curl in your upper body and down so its legs down, legs up and stay. Extra curl and legs down, up and stay.

Extra curl and leg down, up and stay. You guys are troopers and in now put the legs on the floor, bend them, stretch them out long. Let your head go all the way down to the floor, but don't move your strap because as I was doing this at home, I suddenly had this vision. What an excellent place for a neck pole. Yeah, so when we do the neck pole, we're going to only do three of them and yes, this is a hard one to do. For those of you who are at home, you all know that and so they're sitting here going, oh my God, everybody's going to look at us. Just feel the neck.

Here we go and round up and forward over, over, over, over, over and let the strap touch the floor and really feel the length in your neck all the way through your spine and then from your tailbone all the way up in your hands will come out a little bit and just a natural movement there. Hinge back and articulate down. Good. Now we'll keep this moving. Roll all the way up, up, up, up, up, up and sit all the way up. Let look good today, Amy from our rehearsal last night and all the way back and down. I promise you this is the last one coming up and then roll all the way up and round forward and sit up. I think you've earned a spine stretch. So you are going to put your feet in Luke two so the center of the strap will be between your feet and then go one, two.

Now this is one of the few pieces I have, um, where you actually are using your feet and your hands. So you're sitting up here like so. And what I love is I can feel the lift of my hands, my scapula are down, but my hands are lifting. So I feel this connection all the way down through my arm. My feet are abducting, so I'm pulling it apart so I really feel the connection in my legs.

And as you spine stretch forward, see if you can keep all of that connected and round forward and articulate up as you round forward. Your scapula will slide around your rib cage and as you come up they'll slide together and round forward and come up. You have to do one more where I get myself situated here and round forwards. That's how everything's done. So the teacher can get things going and come all the way up.

Straps taught. Bring your legs in like so round back so you're slightly behind your sit bone and see if you can lift your legs and straighten and bend and touch and straighten and touch. Good and straighten and touch. Now I'm looking at some of you, Lee and Amy, you need to move forward a bit cause when you're rolling back I don't want you to rolling off the Mat. Please watch that at home too and rolling back back and come up and roll back and come up and roll back and come up and you all earned no more.

Bend your knees and put it down. That was excellent. I've never gotten whole group. This is really hard. Really hard. W why? Why is it easy since you brought that up? I mean it's harder and it's easier for me because on the spine stretch, the first time I did the spine stretch, I went, oh wow. Cathy grant talked about a piano muscle that went all the way down the side from the little finger down and I will up all piano muscle.

And then I realized I had a piano toe. So the piano muscle really goes from the toe all the way up the leg and I'll do it the back and out the hands. I say this all the time now, we're not supposed to be perfect practitioners if we, if we were, we don't need to come into the store and there's no reason for any of us being here. So we change and if we see our imbalances then we can do something about it. But the first step has to be, where am I in at right now? How am I feeling today in this moment, not tomorrow and not yesterday.

So now that you've had that nice little break, it's time to do the corkscrew. So put your hands [inaudible] in your loops and I think we have on corkscrew. I'm just looking at my little notes. I liked in loop too. And so I'm going to show you what we're going to do here. Now, this may seem a little it easy, but it's not. So my hands are here and my knees are bent and I'm going to put my elbow on the floor psych and use my elbow to press into the floor in this particular exercise. Rather than make a pretty tabletop position, I'd like you to just feel as if your feet were weighted and your knees were over your hip joint. So as we roll to one side, we're really focusing on the spine and come back in and we're going to do a couple of those. Then we're going to go over, extend our legs, come in, and then we'll do the full corkscrew. But we're not going to do any rollovers.

Okay? This should be enough. If you do this well, you don't have to do the rollover. All right? So let's position our knees over our hip joints. Let's feel that the feet are weighted. Okay? So the feet are not doing anything. Yeah. Now roll over her onto your right hip. Good. And then corkscrew back to the center and over to your left hip.

And if you can eyeball, as you come back to the center, your strap, you'll notice as you roll is strap. If it were a carpenter's level, you don't roll the strap, you roll the spine. That's the corkscrew and center. And let's do one more of those over. Now stay right there. Extend your legs out, bend your knees and come back in. So that would be the sequence and over and extend and Ben and in and over and extend and bend and pull in.

Last one over. Let it extend, been back and reposition your carpenter's level. Let your legs come straight up into the air. We're only gonna do two sets of these and let's all go to the right first and circle around and lift and two around and lift. Now if you haven't reversed directions, do so around and lifting the hole for a minute. We're going to do two more, even though that's uneven.

Notice if the weight is uneven from elbow to elbow. So let's go to the right and then to the left and the right around and up and the left around and up. Bend your knees, put your feet down, stretch them out, long and roll all the way up from here. We're gonna do a Saul and in the you're going to be a number four. So again, I'll turn my back to you. I'm going to have, I guess I better have number four here. I'm gonna have this just a little bit behind my back. You know when you're drawing off between your shoulder blades, that kind of a feeling.

And I'm going to reach my forward hand out and let this hand come a little bit down. And I don't need to have a straight arm. What I would like is to have the shoulder open and come back and turn and come back and exhale, ring the air out and back. Exhale. Feel that forward hand pushing forward and turn and back and turn and back. And then let the strap relax. So from here in a very beautiful, organized way, put the strap in front of you and then jump up and do a backward flip and land prone on the floor with your heads facing each other. Ready? And one, two, three. That was excellent.

And he answer in number two. And you're going to do a swan dive. We're not going to do a full swan dive. We're going to do a swan dive prep first. So you're going to put your hands close to your shoulders. And even here I feel like pulling apart gives me some feedback into my scapula.

So you're going to press up with your sternum on an inhale and see if you can go all the way up. Go ahead and straighten your arms. Yeah, that's it. Me. I wouldn't hyper extend my elbows, but just go up and then come down on the exhale. Good. And see if you can use the strap to feel the connection. As you come up. Inhale, sternum goes up, the Scapula will come closer together at the bottom and you want that connection and all the way down and all the way up. Inhale good. And all the way down. Now we'll do a little faster in the hands can come up and lift up and down in hands-off and up and hands-off and up and hands off.

That's it. And up and hands off and come up and hold and roll back down. Now take the strap and get it behind your back, keeping your hands in the loops and you can do whatever you need to. You don't have to take it over, uh, in a full stretch. Now we're in this position for the cameras. I'd like to say this.

I know that everybody turns their head to the right and the left on the double leg kick. I actually think for some people who have cervical spine issues, that can be harder. So I'm going to ask the class to just lift your head slightly off the floor. And, and so you don't have to touch your nose onto the mat. And from here I want you to just bring your strap up behind your back and it'll be slack. It's not taught. Now take it back down and lifted up and then round your arms.

So you feel like you're making a circle behind your body. Yeah. So it really feels like more like a circle. Good. More like a circle and then come down a little bit and then up and make a circle. Next circle right here. Good. Yeah, we're just doing arms for a minute and then as you been, puts your elbow on the floor and scapula separate. Okay, so now let's start. Take an inhale and then three beats with your legs. Inhale, n d two, three. And as you come up, lift your strap up, make a circle in your arms and down. And one, two, three and up and one, two, three and up and down. That's great.

And then bring the strap. Um, I'll just leave it there. And why don't you push back into the rest pose. No, I always joke that this is not really a rest pose. What you're really doing is scooping out your belly, pulling your tailbone down and lengthening your spine. Karen. I love the length that you're getting there. That looks great.

Good nod length. Okay, good. And then bring your feet around to the center of the room and I'm going to demonstrate what you're going to do. Once again, if you do this class several times, you'll know exactly where you need to be. I'm going to be in four or maybe five. It depends. And I'm going to lift up and I'm gonna find my shoulder bridge and I'm going to place the strap underneath my sacred almost at my tailbone.

It depends, and I'm going to use it as a reminder. Okay. That would be tailbone up. And then sometimes the rib cage wants to get higher. So let's all get into that position so we can find the difference going up. Uh, it's four or five. It depends on you, Leah. You may be five. I don't know.

[inaudible] yeah. Okay. So let's all go up find her shoulder bridge and you feel the shoulder bridge supporting you? Yeah. Yeah. Your, your, uh, your head gets a little off the mat again. Do you want to move? You're fine. Okay. So pull up there. Now as you're reaching with your arms, they don't have to be straight. They can be in, in a slight circle. Now articulate down and keep your tailbone lifting, lifting, using the feedback of the strap that Ruth talked about and down and again up to three. Four. Good. Now notice that the strap tells you that it's your hips that are up.

It's your tailbone that's up. You don't really want to stick your rib cage up and rolling down to three, four, position your feet closer to your sit bones than maybe they've been and bring your legs together because we're going to do down and up the whole shoulder bridge down and up that ready and rolling up. Two, three, four. Let's do just four of the legs. Lift the right leg up, ready and flex down and lift and two and lift. Notice if one of your hands is starting to dip to the floor and put the foot back down. You see what I mean? Sometimes you'll see this happening in your hands. Guess what? It's not your hands.

It's your hips or your pelvis and the other leg up and flex down and up. Two and up, three and up and four and up and press down. Pull up a little bit and then articulate down. Now this class did that so well that I think what we're going to do is the bicycle. So you're going to go up there and it's going to be pulling, I call it pulling sand two, three, four and then pushing sand two, three for you. We know that it's the leg that's on the floor. It's that hamstring that's really going to talk to us and rolling up. One, two, three, four with the right leg up and pull and lift two and lift three and lift and the fourth and reverse Polish. Lift, push, lift. Get those up and the table. Ben, hold and put the foot down and I think you deserve a roll down and roll down.

One, two, three, four. Reorganize your shoulders. Slee yeah, looking a little tough in there and rolling up. One, two, three, four. Left leg goes up and pull. Lift to lit three and four and reverse. Push out nice legs, people out and out and out and put the foot down and articulate down. One, two, three, four and straighten the legs out. Good. And then roll up. Roll up, roll up, roll up, roll up, roll up, roll up, roll up and take the strap around and put it on your feet in the first loop or sorry, not on your feet and your hands on the third loop.

I was getting ahead of myself. All right, spine twist when we just did this one standing. So let us to me first and we're going to take an inhale and come to me. X Hale three inhale and ex hale three in out to three and one. Notice the relative levelness of the strap, maybe a little high on you Leigh. Lower down a little bit, the strap. Good.

And make the sternum be the most prominent thing that we see and come back and press it down. But from this position we're going to do a little change. So if everybody will take your side where its position and come toward me like this and I think we should all have. Yeah, we're in. We're in a good position and press your strap over your head. Now this is the tricky part.

You're going to put your hand down more toward the front of the Mat, then your elbow. So we're not like this. We're out here. And then we're going to take our hips and position ourselves back here. Good. Now seeing if you can take this over your head without hitting your hairdo. So yeah, so okay.

Maybe you may need to shorten your loop, Ruth. He may need to shorten. Yeah, yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect. Okay. Now we're going to do flex flex stretch without a strap. Here we go. And flex flex stretch.

Flex, flex stretch. Two more. Flex. Flex stretch. Flex, flex, stretch. Now Flex. Flex wrap in front stretch. Now Ruth, don't go so far back. And Flex. Flex, stretch, flex, flex, stretch. Now the strap is not doing the bead, just the leg and come back to the center. You can have your feet flipped or you can have your feet pointed.

Lift and lower lift and lower lift and lower. And the last one and lower. Now bring the strap toward your leg. And this reminds me of Cleopatra on the machine, so everything together and then really stretch. So it's like rib down, rib up, rib down, rib up, and then come up and bring the strap up and they're gonna reach. Inhale and exhale, lung filling up on your rights. Hi. And one more and up. Now we're going to do a rotation.

Inhale, think of Joe's admonition ring at all the air and inhale and exhale. Inhale, wring out the air. Now when I'm doing this, I'm not thinking how far can I go and really feeling what does my sternum really want to do? How far? One more over twist and up and in. And then Hanse behind. Cause we do have to transition to the other side, but it seems like this is a good place to do hip circles with stretched arms and circle around and up and to nope and Ugh and three and up and four and pole.

That's good. Bend your knees. Now we need to go in the other directions for, for the side blind legs. So you're going to come up. Remember if you're at home, your hand is not here. You're out here on a diagonal position, your hips behind, check overhead. And I start with just the legs flex, flex, stretch. I like the feeling that my stress, she gives me like another support to feel my lateral position and flex, flex ed and flex likes overhead and you don't have to do a big rotation here, especially if you have anything going on in your back and hold. Now lift and leg lowers and it lifts and it lowers and it's not a big kick because you're lifting something weighted here and lift and lower.

Now lift and reach the strap towards your leg. And then as you go the other direction, feel the Mermaid, I mean the Cleopatra over and lift the rib cage. Rib Cage goes down, rib cage goes up, rib cage goes down, rib cage goes up and the rib cage goes down and it goes up. You come forward into your mermaid position and reach over on the inhale up on the exhale. Think of your left long expanding, open up your ribs and, and uh, and Oh right.

And now the ringing now and over. And if you really rung out your lungs, you probably won't turn that far because your lung is not going to move to the opposite side of your body. It has its place in there. So visualize your lung and turn and back and up and over and turn and back. Good. And come up very nice. And put the strap down and then place you feet so that your neighbor can see your soul souls. We're, we're special.

If you do [inaudible] you have two souls. Yeah. And they're both good. So with this one, again, I'm going to use this as a wall. So sometimes I've taught people how to articulate through their spine for teaser, by putting the feet on the wall so they use their feet together. So now you're [inaudible] just roll down to here. We're not gonna go all the way down and roll and come back up and roll and down and roll. End Up. Good. We can go on further with this group.

Straighten your legs and just roll down. And because of the strap pulling, you can really feel the articulation of your spine. Yeah. And down. Now bring your legs all the way down and come all the way up to your teaser. Good. And all the way down. So I'm actually cutting the repetitions because, well, they're getting it and hold now don't, don't, don't make a liar out of me and circle and two and three and four and reverse two, three, four and Ben and come up. Very nice. Okay, so that was wonderful. Teasers. Everybody. Um, we could use you as decorations for the coffee table.

You look so good right now. Bend your knees and let go of the strap and move forward for seal. So for seal, I may have to do this forward. You're going to come around your back and loop these straps in and under and out. So if we were to lift our legs and we were to give a little pull, do you see how that really gives you some resistance? Is that what the clap was? Is that what it was supposed to be? And so as you do your seal, you're going to clap two, three, rolling back and clap. Two, three.

And let's all do it together. And back. Clap. Two, three, front clap, two, three back, clap, two, three. Front clap two, three back, one, two, three and one, two, three. And take the strap out. You might prefer to do your finish on the floor or on the mat. It's up to you. We're going to do the little pushup. So if you take your strap, get in the plank, position your hands in to my maths tend to stretch so I have to go off on my floor. All right, so plank position please. And just a little bit of leg pull front without the legs off.

So in your plank position, pull yourself over the strap with your sternum. Now push your sternum back. Now pull your sternum front and push your sternum back. So it never was about heels up. Heels down. It's sternum and sternum and sternum and sternum.

And then find a position for your push up and push up three times one and two and three. Excellent ladies. Now go do an upstretched position. And then if you've looked at Joe's old archival stuff, you can walk in on an elephant walk, one, two, three, four and rolling up like a washer woman, one, two, three, four, and lifting your arms over your head. And thank you very much. Now I have a few things I would like to say.

When you're using this for yourself, you don't have to use it for every exercise. You'll notice that unless the exercise is symmetrical right to left, then it's going to be silly. For instance, to do a crisscross. So you could just put it down. If you want to do your Chris Cross, sometimes I'll only do three or four in a class to keep the class moving. If you only do the strap for the sake of doing the strap, then what happens is it can get a bit gimmicky. So this was a class that a lot of people, they wanted to see more of the material.

So I hope you enjoyed it and thank you very much.