Fascial Dog Series

So we are ready. We're ready to really have some fun with a flow series that I call fashional dog. And you may have seen this in the Pilati style article that I wrote in the July, August issue of [inaudible] style. And the article was called core from the body's perspective. So what we're going to do is use a surface.

You can see here we have a bench and a chair. Pretty pretty simple setup. The most important thing is the height of it has to be not too high and not too low. Pretty much sheer height. Think about that because basically what you're looking for is how can you release back from it and how can you hover and go forward and not be jammed in your shoulders and neck. You want to be able to release into the chair with your hands and your head and feel your waterfall of your shoulder blades down your back.

So I'm going to guide you in that, in that release. This is, um, phase one where, where, where, looking at how we create space, how we create space between the front of the body, the back of the body and the sides. So how do we use peripheral support? Soften and open up your eyes. Notice if you have a hard vision that everything closes, but when you soften like children do and allow your eyes to see the sides of the room, that'll actually allow your key, your chest to open. And that happens through opening and using your whole hand.

Not just one part of your hand, but how you use your whole hand, how you use your whole foot. Feel your whole foot. So when I talk about rolling through the Helix of the foot, that's what I mean. You roll from the inside to the outside and that's how the foot works. It works that way. It's a [inaudible] fire role. So we're going to [inaudible].

We're going to energize the whole body in a very simple workout. Phase one, thank you all for being here. This is wonderful to have you here. Place your hands on the front edge of your chair or your bench, and send your sitting bones away from your hands. Rather than setting your feet first.

Release your hips back so your sit bones move away from your hands and that will tell your feet where to be. Now from there, soften your arm pits. Fill your chest widening and right there. Roll your feet from the inside to the outside and feel how that talks to your hip sockets. Soften your hip sockets, soften your chest, and then come back to center. Allow your inhale, exhale and release your tail. Release your head and find your hover.

Just allow your solar plexus to float up as your head and tail release down. Feel your heavy heels. Feel the waterfall down the back. Allow your inhale and as you exhale, float onto the ball of your foot, softening your elbows and your knees and allow your heels to be heavy. Keep allowing the heavy heel as you float your head forward towards your hands, staying in that hover, soften your elbows and find that place. As you come forward. Find the place where your shoulder blades release down your back and connect with the internal belly up the front. Stay in the hover.

Allow the inhale there into your back. Exhale and release back away from your hands. And as your sit bones go back, you may be able to find, May. Find that you can sit down a little bit more. You can go more toward your feet and do that again. Allow you just find your own pacing.

You can do it three times. Allow the inhale, exhale and find that feeling of hovering your spine. Find the roundness of your spine. Allow your shoulders to relax down. Feel your body. Feel the opening of your hands, the temperature, the texture onto your hands and feet. That allows your whole body to open to core coordination.

Very different than core control where you're gripping your belly. Now from the heavy heels just floats your hover and as you began to come forward, keep your heels heavy and just float. Relaxing the shoulder blades down the back. Feel your spine floating your whole spine back of the head, back of the chest, back. The low back is hovering and floating toward the ceiling.

In the under side of your belly is dropping back towards your spine. And then you allow the inhale here as you come forward and to feel the back of the arm to the shoulder blade to belly. Allow your inhale. Exhale you come back away from your hands. Feel the breath and how does that allow you to sit down maybe a little deeper, keeping your heels down. It's right heavy heels and only go to where you can feel a lengthening in your back. Allow the inhale.

Exhale last time. Straighten your legs and feel the heavy heels. Heavy head, heavy heels. Solar plexus floats up. And then once you felt that hover floats your hover, find that [inaudible] internal support. You might even while you're up with the heavy, he'll go into the helix again. Roll your foot from side to side, inside to outside. Feel the internal spiral, an external spiral. As you come forward with heavy heels, feel the shoulder blades sliding down your back.

Meeting the internal lift up the front, allow the inhale there into your back and release back away from your hands was your heels touchdown. You're lengthening your spine and then press down through your feet and come up to sanding. Ah, you see how we're creating an opening? Beautiful. So that was phase one. Now are we going to go into phase two? We're going to use that feeling to evoke the core.

We're learning how to be a core whisper. [inaudible] yummy. So that feeling is we come forward this time. You'll see why we're going forward with the waterfall down the back is because we're going to come forward and look up and extend the spine. Hips coming toward hands and you'll see how important it is to keep filling that waterfall down the back feeling. So let's go back.

Set up the same phase one set up. We've had kids go back away from hands. Allow the inhale. Exhale, find your hover. Sit bones down. Head heavy, solar plexus floats, heavy heels. Then we float the hover just like we've been doing, keeping the heavy heels. As you come forward, and as you come forward, feel the waterfall down the back. Meet the internal belly up the front. Now, right here, instead of going back, we're going to look up and as you look up, bend your knees and bring your hips towards towards your hands. However your knees off floor and just feel the lift of your chest lift of your chest as you release your tail down. Then allow your inhale there.

Exhale, look down and come away from your hands and sit back and see if you feel you can sit down in the squat. How you're hips are opening your theater, opening. Your hands are opening. And again, inhale, exhale, find that hover. Feel the helix of your foot opening up. Feel your hands opening up and then float your hover. Find that internal support. Feel the release down the back. Meet the internal lift up the front inner ankle lifts up to inner ear as you heal to get heavy, and then you look up, okay, and feel the waterfall down the back. And now here, while you're here, you might want to play with reaching back through one heel. As the other heel comes forward, you can feel how you can play with each heel and how that allows your hips to come towards your hands even more. Yeah.

Letting the hip come forward and then you look down and hover away and sit last time Lao, the inhale. Exhale. Yeah, keep noticing how your body is opening more and more and more than just go toward the float of the hover, feeling the heavy heels internal lift down the back up the front. How that's a natural opening to allow your hips to open, to allow your chest to open, how your heels can release back one at a time. How that allows you to just feel, you can look from side to side, how that releases your neck and then you look down and hover way and you sit down and then you press down through your feet to come up. Beautiful. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, so we've just, we've energized and opened so much.

It's a tremendous fashional opening. And now we're going to take that into phase three. So notice how we've opened to space with open spatially in the body, and then we'd be evoked the core. We've asked the internal lift with sensory awareness, right from foot to head, a foot, the on the head to foot is just opened up and now we're going to take that into a deeper spiral. Okay? And phase three. So we'll go into a lunch and whichever foot is forward, that hip releases back toward the back foot.

This foot can also be, it's also a great way to do this with your back foot on the wall. Using a wall is really helpful. So from here, you spring, first of all, two directions of the spine, always down the back, up the front, we're coming off the back foot onto the front foot. And then from here you can move your hands so that they're more underneath your chest. And from here, just keep the hips level at first and it really helps to have a wall right there. Inhale, soften that, this standing leg, exhale and reach back with that standing leg hip, which opens up and lifts through the inner ear. And then from there, stand into the standing leg and begin to fire roll your pelvis, open up your pelvis. As you press down into your foot, put your hand on your low belly and move your pelvis toward the ceiling. It's like you're opening up as you reach out.

And then from here you can reach up, you can reach up toward the ceiling and come down. That hand comes down and double spiral the other way. Opening up reach, yeah, come down. And generally you will do that three times each direction opening. Feel the outer border of the standing foot and feel have that opens.

It's really useful to feel that opening. Feel the waterfall down the back, opening up and how the waterfall down the back and the bottom hand opens up the top hand and then come back down and go the other way. Spiraling. Notice how you're really enlivening the internal and external rotators of the standing leg. And last time opening up outer leg and feel the reach back, the reach back through that leg in the air, talks to your head moving in the other direction and then hand comes down and you go the other way.

Spiraling. Opening the hands away from one another, chest opening, and then bring the back leg toward the front leg. Press down to stand up. See how that's just like opening? Yes, other side. Isn't it great to have another side? [inaudible] so spine in two directions, feeling the back leg and we spring off the back foot onto the front foot. First day level. Inhale, soften the bottom leg.

Exhale as we feel that hip reaching toward the extending foot. Inhale, soften, Eh, exhale. So you're freeing up the fascicle sheets, freeing up, having the muscles work together, thinking, always thinking, coordination, core coordination, everything working together. And then we spiral that back leg to open up the pelvis, open up our hips and feel that opening as you reach back and how the arms reach away from one another. As we reach back and then press down and counterweight counter spiral, opening up, feeling that hands and feet opening and then we played with it.

Three directions, three, three spirals in each direction. Just feel how you're talking to your body. You're in a conversation with your body in relationship to gravity. Notice how the upper arm has the shoulder blade heavy into your down hand and how that helps and how that allows your leg to lift more. Feel how the weight of gravity gives us lift.

We're yielding into gravity. We're allowing the weight of our body to support lift instead of pushing, wielding, wielding into gravity last time, each direction and notice how staying in your whole foot feel the whole, the outer border of the foot, the inner lift of the foot, the domes of the foot. How that creates lifts through all the domes in your body. Lift of the ball of the inner ankle. Lift of the pelvic floor, lift of the diaphragm, lift of the armpits and across the chest.

Lift of the pallet, lifted the cranium. How's everything naturally lifting and connected. And then that lead comes to the other leg, you press down to come up. Ah, that was pretty beautiful. So it's been fabulous to be together.

Just really love being with you and uh, loved being with you and it's just been a joy. And now we're going to do is I'll take you through a, um, uh, flow, uh, where you can see how I would normally do it without the explanation. I'll do it as a, just a, a flow. And I'm going to use a wall this time. So I'll show you how you can use the wall to create, um, more support and how that just gives you, it gives you a deeper release, uh, with your flow. So let's do it. Wonderful.

So let's now flow together in the fashion dog flow. So let's begin. You're hands are on the chair. Sit downs. Moving back, I'm feeling my head and tail. Exhale, find my hover hale, heavy head heavy float, the hover coming forward. Shoulder blade to deep belly brings me forward.

Feel the rotation through each foot. Roll back, allow the breath, exhale sitting down. Inhale, exhale, heavy heels straightens the legs, drops your head, drops your tail. Allow the hover to float grass, heavy heels coming forward. Opening hands, opening feet, refreshing. Allow the inhale. Exhale, sitting down. I can feel space opening again. Allow the inhale.

Exhale. It's almost like I'm breathing through my feet. Opening the hands, breathing through my hands. Find the hover. You began to sell. You only breathe. You feel the breath in your skin. Wow. The inhale, eh. Exhale, not just lung breathing. It's every cell breeds.

And now we go to phase two. Lao, the inhale, feel the heavy heels. Keep the heels. Have the hover coming forward evoking core. Feel the lift up man. Looking hips forward, chest open, feeling the back of my arm connected to the deep belly and then hover back. Okay. And release.

Refreshing hands, refreshing feet. That opens up portals to the whole body. Opening up, looking up, chest up, opening, opening, opening. Ah, uh, and sit, breath. Feel the helix. Open the helix of the hands and feet opening, eh, that and coming up, springing off the back foot onto the front foot. Find that spiral and you can go on the ball of the standing foot to feel the wall behind you. Notice how that really opens up.

I'm on my left leg and I can feel my my right hip opening as I go on the ball. That foot, creating space on the left side to release the right and then I'm spiraling and you want to notice where on the wall do you want your leg that allows a hip opening. How do you feel the lift of the low belly? How does the lift of the inner thigh and the movement, the spiral, how does that move your arm? Eh, I don't know. Spiraling. Opening. Take my foot down a little bit on the wall, which allows me to go deeper into my spiral from too far too high.

Sometimes I can feel it fights the spiral. It's not important. How high different days. Different spirals. Yeah. Opening. See, I'm in a conversation with my body rather than I have to have my foot in a particular place. Where does it want to be? I'm asking deeper spiral, eh?

[inaudible] so yummy. Incredible. I can feel that I'm, it's like I'm doing structural integration to my body through movement. Ah, this is body work. It's like Emily Conrad said, movement is medicine.

Eh, Woo. Woo. Are you having fun? Okay, other side. Here we go. Come on off the back foot on the front foot. Stay stable at first. Stay level. So as you go on the ball, that standing leg, you're creating space in your pelvis. Feel the lift up of the ball, the sweat and how that gives you space in your back and your pelvis and then go into your spiral opening, asking, asking the open to happen.

Then you get more. You don't get a lot by telling. See the tray likes it. Inhale. Exhale. How does that, how does my right arm get connected to that left foot? [inaudible] opening. What? Deeper?

Yeah. See, notice that my head foot comes down a little bit. I get to bring that hip around a little more. I get more release in my ribs. I can feel my whole jaw letting go.

Softening. Seeing the sides of the room, allowing my gaze to be soft, open. Mm. And notice how I'm playing with the elbows and knees. These are kinetic centers. These are places that we negotiate movements. They can lock you out or they can help you.

Oh, I need that right there. Oof. Oh Wow. So you know, the thing to know about movement, at least what I'm discovering is I play with it like this, is that we can actually unravel history. We can actually unravel the tensions and the things that are emotions and, um, deep holdings traumas on a very, very deep level. If we think in that way, how do we let go? Just how do we let go? We know what on some levels, but to really, really give ourselves the luxury of listening, paying attention, responding rather than reacting and allowing our bodies to be the incredible organism that they are. That's just self healing, self regulating, self actualizing. Thank you so much.

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