Deepen your Mat Practice

Hi, I'm Shelly power. We're here at plots anytime. Getting ready to do a really fun math class. Let's get started. All right, so go ahead and have a seat and then you're going to start lying down on your backs. Knees bent and feet flat. And we're going to start with a little movement of the pelvis. We're going to start with some warmup things and then we're gonna move on to um, some real exercises. So arms can be down by your side or if you prefer, you can put your hands on your pelvis just to see what's going on there with your hands. And we're going to start by first just being aware of the body position.

So back of the head, back of the rib cage and back of the pelvis. And so to help get even more in tune with that position, we're going to move the pelvis forward and back. So you're going to tilt your pelvis towards you and then tilt your pelvis away from you. Exactly, yeah. And some people refer to this as the pelvic clock if we were to go more and go around the circle. But for now, we're just going to go back and forth feeling your lower back, get closer to the mat, and then feel your tailbone area.

Get closer to the mat and you'll start to notice that there's space behind your lower back when you go towards your tail and less space as you go towards your lower back. And if you notice other parts of your body moving like you, your head nods or your rib cages move, that's great. It's a whole body movement that's just being led by the pelvis. And I want you as you do just a few more to feel like you're doing it without any muscles. So you could really squeeze, tighten the glutes, tighten the abdominals, but let's choose to do it with a little less effort. You got it. And we'll take that. Now the next time that you tilt back toward your lower back, coming toward the floor into a bridge to roll yourself up and you're going to stand between your shoulder blades and as you roll down, I want you to feel like you start to pull your sit bones or the bottom of your pelvis. Toward the back of your legs, back of your calves, and then we'll do it again.

So the tilt is not really muscular. I'm not after pulling your pubic bone towards your belly button, I'm more after getting your sip phones toward the back of your legs, depending on where you are in the room branch. Let's do two more of those rolling up and feel free to exhale while you're moving. That's probably the easiest. Let the ribs come down with you. Gorgeous. Yes, that's great. Let's make this next one, our last one, rolling up, feeling the pelvis. Pull away from the waist and away from the rib cage and then roll yourself back down. That's it.

Good. Reach your arms up to the ceiling. Now I'm only going to take the arms in an arc overhead and I break all the rules by letting you move your rib cage. Yay. So as you take your arms over your head, I will. Yay. I want you to feel like when you inhale, we'll do this one first one slow, then we'll take it up to speed. When you go overhead, I want you to inhale your ribs into an arch or into extension and then start to exhale, glide your ribs towards your pelvis and then allow your arms to come back up just to reach to the ceiling. So let's do that again. We'll kind of go in slow motion again.

So start your arms going when you get toward the end of your movement, inhale to let the ribs expand. Now bring the ribs down first and then the arms will follow. Yeah, a little four part harmony arms go first. Inhale to expand the up so you could arch your back by just lifting your ribs off the mat. And that's okay, but it's not great. It doesn't incorporate the breath with that so much. And then exhale, bring the ribs down and then the arms will float back up. You got it.

Let's do that one more time. Inhaling, allow the ribs to expand in all directions. Then feel the ribs go back down towards your pelvis to bring the arms back up and then let the arms come all the way back down to the mat. Great. And that just gives us some pliability. Starts the pliability in the rib cage. So bring your legs up to tabletop one at a time and place your hands behind your thighs. And we'll do an assisted roll up to come up to sitting first. And we're just going to go partway.

So I want you to put a little bit of pressure, your legs pushing into your hands to start to curl up. So just do that to where you're kind of resting at your lower back. And then hold there for a moment and press your legs away just a little bit more to the point where that kind of holds you there. And then roll back down. Press into your hands. Now you can press into your hands too much. So we'll get to that too. So it's not, not so much I keep pressing away.

Press toward me with your legs. Let your arms linkedin. That's it. Yes, exactly. And then back down. So this should be like you're doing it in your sleep. There should be no muscular effort. Yeah, a little muscular effect and come up just to there. Yeah. Now while you're at the rolled up position, see what happens when you pull your knees in towards you. So if you pull in and automatically almost tells you to start rolling back down.

So a lot of people do that when they're doing the roll up, especially the Sistas when they pull their knees in so much that it's like they're meeting themselves, coming and going. So we want to send the legs away, just that right amount. So on your next one, come up and come all the way to sitting. So with the legs reaching away, let the weight of that happen. Great. And then sit up on your sip bones, pull your legs so that you can pull your body into a little bit of extension. And then as you roll back, roll behind your sit bones and then allow yourself to go down. Let your feet slide along the mat until you pull them back in. So keep a hold of them right. And then they'll just come in whenever they need to. Yup.

So they'll come all the way in. Right. And so again, I'll explain it better. So come on up. Come to sitting right. So now when you roll back, take your inhale. So you get the stretch of the ribs like we did before. You're going to leave the feet, you're going to roll back as much as you can, and then the feet are just going to kind of glide and then they'll naturally just come in whenever they do. Yup, that's it. We'll do that two more times. And now before you go and exhale through the roll up to sit tall.

Good. Inhale and sit tall or way up on your sit bones like yourself, arch a little bit. And then roll back. Leave your feet on the mat for as long as possible. Then they'll glide towards you and then they'll fold in. This one will be our last one. So roll up again, exhaling up to the top and I'll stay up at the top and inhale and expand the ribs and then come back to a centered position. Just stay sitting while you're here. Good.

So now we're going to go into the full roll up and extend your legs out in front of you. Extend your arms out in front of you. Now, same kind of feeling. We want to let the legs, like we talked about in bridging the feeling of the legs lengthening away a little bit. Sometimes that makes the quads go though. So the more you tense your quads, the harder it becomes cause that's part of your hip flexors. So we want to just keep the legs lengthening. It might just be the image of that sitting tall with the arms out.

Take your breath to get ready and then as you exhale, roll your pelvis back. So feel how you're rolling through all the segments of the back of your pelvis, all the way to the bottom. Inhale, take the arms over head and then exhale to curl yourself back up and go all the way into the spine. Stretch as you go. Keep going into spine stretch so you feel like the arms are lengthening and the ribs are pulling back. So there's a little bit of opposition there. And then from there, roll down. So don't come up to sitting, just rolled down from there. Let the shoulders whine a little bit. Great. Inhale, take the arms overhead. Now, don't let the ribs go too much.

Now keep the ribs a little bit more connected and then we're all back up. Roll all the way into your spine. Stretch forward. Check that there's space around the shoulders and then ruled down from there. That's it. This next one will be our last one in how keeping the ribs connected to the body so they don't arch up too much. Exhale, curl up, rolling through, roll all the way into spine stretch.

And from here, roll up to tall all the way up. Let's move right into mermaid. So let's everybody put right leg in the front and left leg to the side for mermaid. Now does everybody feel comfortable sitting in this position? Is that okay? So if you notice when you're doing a mermaid that you're way up like this, and this is your starting position, not great. Find something to sit on, grab a cushion, something you can even a big beach towel rolled up so you can sit.

So your body is more or less vertical. So we're going to stretch to this direction. Going up and over. And then back up and go the other direction. That's it and up and over to the right and up and over to the left. Yeah. This next time when you go to the right, I want you to hold and you can keep your left arm over the top or you can even just let your left arm come down. It doesn't really matter.

What I want you to do is to move your shoulder and your arm around a little bit, so come up onto your hand and just do a little playing around with your shoulder position. Yup, and you can push it forward. This is not the position that we're going to use, but you can experience it, see what it feels like and then pull it back so that you feel like your arm bone is going right into the side of your shoulder and rib cage and then take your arm back over to the top. This is going to be important because we're going to do some other movements that are similar to this and then come back up and go over. Great. Now we're going to go all the way down on your side and decide, same thing while you're here, while you're getting ready, do a little exploration. You can't do it quite as aggressively, but find that position so that you feel like your body is being supported by your arm and you're not just hanging, hanging out, lift the ribs. It's what exactly, exactly on the box.

Lift the leg still. That was like 12 years ago. You're on a box. Take the leg forward for your sidekick and exhale behind and you can do a pulse or no plus whatever you're used to and feel like your body is able to maintain throughout the movement. So whatever stresses your leg is putting on it, the body can hold. Exhaling behind. Inhaling forward, exhaling behind. How's your shoulder doing? Keeping it there. Good.

Let's do one more. Going front and coming out to the back and come up to sitting again and we'll do mermaid on the other side. All right, good. So we'll do a couple and how it feel like movement. Instead of going, okay, now I'm going to do mermaid and it's kind of stuck there. Let it move, go into it, come back out of it. And on the third one we'll hold. Okay, so come up and over pause or for a moment make sure your spine feels like it's curved and it's not going straight and then up and over, that's it. So up and curve, the ribs and back up. Now in this next one we're going to hold, and again you can take your right arm over the top if you want or you don't have to, whatever you, whenever you feel like, but play around with your shoulder position.

So purposely push your shoulder forward, which during a really strong exercise like we're going to do later on and something like a side plank, you wouldn't want to do that, but sometimes we don't know. So it's good to feel it, find the centered position and then come back up and stretch to the other side. One more time. And this time when you go out, go all the way over, slide out onto your side, getting ready for sidekick, elbow under your shoulder, and again, feel play around a little bit. This is, this is the time to explore, not, not later when we're inside plank, find that you feel like your shoulder is right. Align, so your arm is pushing into the side of your body. Hold there, let the top leg hover. Stay there for just a moment and then start to let the leg go forward and go back and come forward and go back. Lift the ribs. You might even bring your elbow under you just a little bit more. Yeah, and go front and go back two more front and stretched to the back last time front and go back and hold there just for a second. Yes, great. Come back up to sitting and face each other again as you were in the beginning.

Now the success of this depends on what your floor is like. So if you have socks on, this goes really well. Or if you're in carpet on the mat, sometimes your feet get stuck. We're going to do a version of single leg stretch, but in sitting, so you might choose to have your feet on the floor instead of on your mat. You can see it and you can just scoot forward if you want.

We're not going to be here for too long, so sitting tall. Now we all know are in position, but for group of beginners, sometimes it's easier to do it in sitting than it is to do at lying down and trying to find the position and hold yourself there. So we'll take same hand to ankle or so opposite hand to knee and stretch your other leg long. That's it and change and you can just slide back and forth. You can come to a full point of your foot or you can keep your foot on the floor. It doesn't matter.

We're just going to work that just for a little bit and change and change. Now keep doing that, but roll behind your sit bones just a tiny bit. So roll back a little. So we did it and tall sitting. Now we're doing it in slightly rolled back sitting. So now the abdominals are a little bit more active, but keep your feet more on the floor so don't work so much.

I'm all about working less. I know whoever told you that, let your ribs move. Don't work so much. Oh, she's crazy. Okay, so now pull your favorite leg in and hold it there and you're going to roll yourself back to the normal position and that's it. You got it all the way back and let's keep going with a single breath on each switch and change and change. Now while you're going, you all know this, I won't talk for too long. See if you can expand your back lower ribs into the mat. If you are on memory foam, I'd want to see your ribs expanding to more sets.

Reach, reach, reach, reach. Pull your knees in, roll yourself down. Beautiful. Let your feet come down to the mat. All right, going into a little bit of leg circle. Now I teach like circles a little bit. I teach most things a little differently and especially like circles because I want movement. All right? When I watch back in the day before plotters, anytime before even everybody had all these DVDs and great things, there were only a few people doing videos. And Elizabeth Arkham, who I had the pleasure of working with would always do these amazing legs circles. They were giant and she'd be turned and talking to the camera and doing, you know, 10 other things. And I thought, wow, that's fantastic. Yeah.

But you see people in class, you go to a class and people are doing leg circles right? And it looks like they're having a convulsion because they're so tight. They're working so hard. So we're going to work a little less, um, on this. So you're gonna bring your right knee into your chest, leave your left leg where it is. It's going to stay bent foot flat on the floor and just hold your leg in.

And all of this, I'll just talk you through in the beginning cause that'll be a little different. And you're going to hold the back of your thigh and just a few times, extend and bend your leg. And while you're there, notice that your lower back because your legs are pulled in quite, quite close to you. Your lower back is touching the floor. And for right now, that's fine. Just leave it there. Yup. Now if I came and balanced a glass of water on your foot, now when you bend, pull your knee more towards you, keep that glass of water balanced and then press back up. So now we're getting a little bit more of a stretch and you can resist a little bit in both directions a little bit, not a lot, just a tiny bit, just to get a little bit more access to our flexibility. Now on the next four, you're going to take four more.

You're going to start to move your pelvis back to your neutral position where your pelvis is more or less horizontal, but take four of them. So you're going to do a quarter of the way and a quarter of the way in a quarter of the way. And when you feel like you're back to your neutral position and you've got to release your hands a little bit because the reality is our hamstrings are not always that flexible. So sometimes you got to release your hands a little bit. I want you to do a femur arch or a leg arc with your other leg and just test how easily can you move your leg around. It should be super easy, right? Ease, not easy. There's simple good. So keep that feeling.

Extend that leg, your left leg out onto the floor and you're going to start your leg oval so you can let go and you're going to start your Ogle. Let's go out to the side and oval down toward the floor and back up so it doesn't have to go wide yet. It's going to go up and down and see what that feeling of length that you can get down to the floor, right? Without a lot of gripping and holding. Beautiful and then changed directions and now you can start to go a little bit wider, right? So you actually feel and allow the leg to move instead of bracing.

The more you brace, the more you have to work and then it becomes a lot of work to more, one more. And then take a break, let the leg rest, do whatever you want with it, you can stretch it in or stretch it out. All right, so let's do it again. So again, the point of it is on the other side is to get access to the movement that we already have. So we're doing a little contract, relax, stretch, and then we're doing a little bit of movement to get the pelvis set and we're not doing things like really commonly do your leg circles and push your leg really heavily into the floor. What if you really pushed down? Eventually your pelvis is going to lift off, which totally defeats keeping, you know, the whole, the whole sense of stability. So so right leg bent and foot flat, left knee in towards your chest and just to a couple of gentle Ben and stretches and then find the water glass and start to do a little bit more of a contract. Relax where you're pulling your knee into your chest and pressing away.

And again, at first the low back is down so we're not, we're not going for our neutral alignment. Yup. And then when you felt you've done that enough, start to do about four repetitions to gradually take your leg a little more toward or your pelvis a little more toward horizontal. And then when you think you're there, test it by moving this sec and you'll feel it. You'll know, oh yeah, this like just moves around really, really fluidly or I need to make some more adjustments. And when you feel that, then stretch the leg out and let's do six circles in each direction, starting with an oval and then as quickly as you wish, taking it out to more of a circle. That's it, right? So the leg is moving in the socket, the socket is staying still. So the more you practice this, the more length you feel, the easier the circle becomes without a lot of bracing. This looks great.

Make sure you change directions. We'll do about six in the other way. Fill the back of the rib cage there. The rib cage and the shoulder blades are heavy on the mat. And when you've done all six, then take a break. You can pull your knee in or whatever. Feels good to give you a little stretch. Yeah, it's a little different.

It's a little weird. Sometimes it takes a bit. You got to practice it a few times before you go. Oh right. That's what she meant and that's fine. Yeah, just takes, takes time to do that. Good. Very good. All right, so let's go into a little bit of um, work on our front. So let's just roll up and then come around to have heads to the center.

Lying on your front. We get into a little bit of extension work. Place your hands down beside your rib cage. Like you're going to do the swan, although we're not going to go into it yet. And I like your elbows poking up to the ceiling a little bit. So bring your hands down towards your lower lower rib cage. And at first when the instructor is talking, great to just rest your head on the mat. Once you get ready to move though, I want you to bring your head off the mat. So you're looking down still.

You haven't nodded your head up, but your forehead is hovering off the mat. That's great. All right. And we're just going to do a little bit of a prone press up or a baby baby swan. So you're going to start by reaching your elbows back towards your heels and you're going to start to put your lower ribs into the mat. You're going to start to look forward maybe toward the edge of your mat.

That'll be individual for everybody. And then roll back down bone by bone, rib by rib. Take a breath in to get ready and lengthen your spine. As you exhale, think of part of the exhale as being letting air out of your rib cage and your lungs so you're more pliable. It's really hard when you've taken a full breath roll back down to move. So you want to let some air out to increase the pliability. So again, press up now. This time, stay there again. Maybe looking out to the edge of your mat. Hm. Not a lot higher than that.

And lift your hands and balance them. Good. Put your hands back down and feel like again, if we were on the memory foam tempurpedic mattresses, you're gonna let your ribs sink down into it. Yeah, that's it. Do it again. Take a breath in and let your ribs exhale down into the mat. So you're again going to be using less muscles in the bones of your body. You're going to hold there and then roll all the way down. Good. Remember that, because we use that in a moment. Reach your arms all the way straight.

Now down towards your feet. How we're going to go into the dart. So we're going to do that same exact thing, but without the help of our hands on the floor. So however your head, so your forehead is off of the mattress to start. And as you exhale, moving only through the upper body, you're gonna reach your fingertips along the way from your shoulders and go into the same position, right? That's it. So you're just, again, just gently looking forward. It's not about coming up, it's about moving the upper back and then roll down. Turn your head to the side this time and go again. So reach through the fingertips and allow the lower ribs to go into the floor, into the mat. That's it. And laundry head forward. Just a touch. That's it.

Now if you feel like that's uncomfortable on your shoulder, you can turn your palms either up or down. So come down for a moment. Turn your head to the side. So traditionally this is taught when I've done dart with people, they do it with the palms up, which rose the shoulder forward a little bit. So if you feel like you can't get your shoulder back and around or back and open, turn your palms to the floor. And that sometimes is helpful. You can try it both ways. So let's do it again and reach through your arms.

Let your ribs melt into the floor. Your gaze starts to come up a little bit and exhale. Once you're in that position so that you feel like you give into it. And let's stay there. Now stay there and we're going to go into the hundred. She's lost her mind going into the hundreds. So here we go. Inhale, two, three, four, five, and exhale, two, three, four, five.

Now you can leave your legs down or about halfway through. You can like your legs come off of the floor. Exhale, good. Inhale and exhale and anthill. Great. And it's hard to get your arms to go up and down.

They want to go in and out. That's it. So up and down to the ceiling and the floor. Let's do two more sets. Great. Everybody looking good. And this will be your last set. And let that go. Turn your head to the side. Come all the way down. Just Jiggle your legs and roll your hips and everything back and forth a little bit. Let that go. I know. All right, when I saved my most important stuff right here. All right, so let's go in now to the full Swann.

So bring your hands back to where they started and when we were doing the press up and we're going to go all the way to the knees and we're going to do a really gradual crescent shape of the body. So we're not doing a huge backbend. We're also not leaving the pelvis down on the floors. You're gonna come all the way to where your weight is on your knees. So exactly. So you're going to, you're going to reach your elbows away and come up to your swan position. That's it. Now, what makes it easier? Again, kind of like what we talked about, um, earlier, is to bring the heels of your hands in an under you.

So if you can balance with your arm supporting you rather than all your muscles supporting you, it's a lot easier now. Smile at each other across whoever you're looking at. And as you roll down, keep smiling at them as long as you can. So start by bending your elbows, put your thighs down, then your pubic bone, then your belly button, then your ribs. And now you can start to not look at them. That's it. Inhale to lengthen your body. Exhale, reach your elbows away and peel yourself up and look across and smile at the person on the other side of the room. Lift up through your pelvis. So again, gently sagged down a little bit. Okay. So that's not really where we want to be.

So pressed through the floor and lift up. Lift the pelvis up. That's great. And now keep looking across and smile as you roll down. So you're looking at somebody the whole way down until your ribs start to come down. And then you can look at the floor. Good. Let's do a little bit of rocking on our next one. So come up exactly the same way.

Starting to roll through the ribs with the front ribs. Expand down into the mat to come up. Look and smile. We're going to do four rocks, just keeping your hands near the Mat. So you're going to start to rock forward. The legs will come up and back up and 2:00 AM back up, smiling and three and up. One more time. Four.

And come up and hold and press yourself back into child's pose and take a break. So I always want people to like the Swan, not, not a, it's not a favorite that we think sometimes. So, all right, bring yourself up to sitting and come to the sit at the front of your mat. We're going to go into a little bit of rolling, rolling like a ball and we'll of course do it. Um, the Shelley way at first. Um, so that it's fun. So I hope I didn't sound so good. Sorry. Not Joe's way. It's not fun. No. Okay.

So you're going to have your hands, not the traditional clasped pulled in but open. And I want you to roll back just behind your sit bones and walk your feet in and find your balance. Yeah. And it should be pretty easy to hold. Nothing major yet. Yeah. And then I want you to roll back just slowly again, making sure you don't let your head hit the floor, roll back, allow your legs to do whatever they want to do and then come back up. I know. Breaking all the rules. So roll back.

What we're told not to do is to let your legs straighten out and then use your hamstrings to help you roll back up. But do that because that's going to produce the quality of movement that we want. Yeah. Do it a couple more times. Roll back so that it feels great. One more time. Now bring yourself back into a more traditional position so you can wrap around both legs or you can cross the legs. You can pull them together. Keep the same feeling, even though now the body position is different.

So hopefully you're smiling at least on the inside. Roll back and roll up. Yes. Good. So I find that we're so worried about getting back up that we missed the entire role. So there's a role, there's a little suspension and then you come back up two more times. Role and beautiful. One more time. You guys are hired. I'm going to come back here and come up. Good. And I'll stay there. And let's go into open leg rocker with the same feeling.

So keep the legs in for now. Hold wherever you to hold to go into a single leg lengthening and then Ben back in and then do the other leg up and bend. And let's do both legs up, pause there. And then a little slower. Sometimes you don't want to hit your head roll back. You can let go a little bit if you wish to roll back up. And whole.

Beautiful Roll back and come up and hold. We're gonna do one more and roll back and roll up and hold gorgeous and fold your legs in. Stretch them out in front of you and roll yourself all the way down to the mat to get ready for rollover. That was fantastic. Love that. You guys making me look good? All right. Fold your legs in and extend your legs up to the ceiling.

So we're gonna do a little bit of roller and a little bit of corkscrew. Um, that's our next bed. So with the legs up, I again want you to think of that and feel that, um, exhalation as allowing the body to be pliable that we use during swan. So as you let the weight of your legs go over, you let some air out. So yes, it's gonna help you get your abdominal muscles to be active and to support you. But it's also gonna let you be more pliable. Open your legs to about the width of your mat, and then rolled down the feeling of stretching long through your heels and coming down. And you can do a full circle. In a big movement if you want, or you can just bring your legs together. That's your choice as you go. Exhale.

Good. Now while you're here, pause in your roll over. So your feet and your bond are about the same height. And I want you to press without lifting your feet any higher. I want you to press your thighs toward the ceiling so you're not actually moving. You're just activating a little bit. Yeah, keep that as you roll down. So keep the feeling of a little bit of length in the spine, but not so much that it takes away your ability to move. That's it.

We're gonna do it one more time. Rolling over. Find that point of pressing the back of the thighs up. Still staying at your shoulder blades. Open the legs and roll down. Beautiful. Yes. Great. Now let's go into corkscrews. So same rollover, exactly the same, keeping your sit bones the same height. I want you to let your legs start.

Your feet come to the right just a little bit. Now the tendency is is to move the pelvis so that your sit bones change height. So I don't want that. So just go over to the right and you're going to begin to roll down your right shoulder blade, right ribs, right waist, right hip. Do as big of a circle as you wish to roll back over onto the left.

Stopping at your left shoulder. Great. Roll down on the left, left ribs left all the way around to roll back over and come back up. One more in each direction. Going around, circling, exhaling to roll back up. Last time, going around and back over. When you get into your shoulder stand, pause. Bring yourself to the center. Now reach your arms overhead.

You can let your hands rest on the mat or not. Sometimes on the mat is too is too far back. And do a regular roll down from here. Just a regular roll all the way down. Keeping the sense of lift through the pelvis. Just enough.

Good. Oh, so I've found that about in any class I've taught about a third of the people think it's easier. So I don't know anybody easier, not easier. When I teach and I say that and people are like, whoa, you're crazy. That's not going to be easier to say no. About a third of the people in any class find that it's easier with arms overhead, I dunno. Yeah. Yeah. It takes away, again, the, the tricep part, which can sometimes people press so much that they either do that or they start to kick in their extensors. She makes it really hard to roll over. Really counterproductive. All right. You know, common sense, not common. Good. All right. I want to do a little bit more um, side work and get into our, um, more advanced shoulder work.

So come up to sitting and let's do, yeah, let's do head center first to do regular plank. We're not going to do like pull, um, leg pull front, but just going to do regular planks. So come in to Quadro pad just to start. All right. So one of the things that's helpful when we're getting into plank position, um, when we're on both hands is to press open through the hands. Like you're trying to stretch your mat apart sideways a little bit. Again, too much is just too much. So do that a little bit and then take one foot back and the other foot back into your plank position. Go ahead and pause there.

Oh, it's so nice when everybody does. Beautiful plank position. That's gorgeous with grace. Put one knee down and then the other knee down. Okay. This time when you do it, have your feet a little bit apart, not so they're just not quite touching cause we're going to turn into the side plank from this plank. So go out into your plank position again and hold there. We're going to turn to the camera, so you're going to bring your hand underneath you a little bit and then you're going to turn over and you can let both feet stay on the floor if you want. Help with your balance or you can stack your feet if you want to.

Challenge your balance and stay there for a moment and then come down gracefully black into your plank. All right, so now you know what's coming. We're going to turn toward the windows now and I want you to find that same alignment that you had with your shoulder as when we were doing mermaid. Good. And I would say next time bring your hand more underneath you. Yeah. And then come back gracefully to the front. One knee down the other knee down and take a break. All right, so we're going to do it again. So again, common mistakes hand out too far, right?

The more I put my hand out here, I've got to use all of these muscles to keep me from, from sliding out. So I want my hand, especially the heel of my hand, just about under my shoulder. And that's going to give you the best support and then you can move from there. So from that, now we're going to do side plank. We're going to go into the twist and then we're going to change.

We'll do it facing this way. And then we're going to go into the side bend in both directions. So from your plank position here, you're going to go down toward the floor first and then up toward the ceiling. And I really want you to push with this arm to push your ribs up into a giant [inaudible], a mermaid. Okay, and then we'll come down [inaudible]. Absolutely. Yeah. You can have your feet, you can have your feet staggered.

Yeah, yeah. If you want to do it with your feet stock, by all means. I wouldn't want to stop you from doing that, but staggered is absolutely fine. All right, so come into your, into your plank position and we'll turn to the front, bringing your hand under you come the other front, this front and all right, hold there. Now press down into your hands. Start to curve under to go into the twist. Your bottom is going to come up to the ceiling and then gracefully stretch back out into your side plank with great shoulder alignment. Yes. One more time.

Curl under round the spine just a little bit and then come back out and hold. Let's just do the side lower here since we're here, so Ben down toward the floor a little bit and then go up and over. Press the floor away to go into more of a curve. Up, up, up, up, up. One more time. Come down, bending through the ribs, and then go up and over. Good. Come back to your side plank. Come to your front plank.

Turn right over to the back toward me and two times with a twist going under, turning around your arms. So to come back out. Your body's turning around your arm. Curve under, pull up, pull the ribs up and come back out. Good. Now stay there. Side bend toward the floor, looking up and around and over. Good. One more time down to the floor. Push the floor away and expand. Expand, expand, expand. Very good. Come to your side plank. Come to your front plank and gracefully flopped down and sit back in child's pose.

Clients are always so relieved when they can flop down. Good. That looked beautiful. I looked great. All right, press back up onto your feet. So just in a squat position here, and you're going to straighten your knees, keep your body down and hold there for a moment and you can have your hands down or you can bend your knees a little bit. You can do what feels comfortable shift purposely shift your weight back on your heels. Yup. And now shift your weight a little bit forward onto the ball of the foot. And this is where I'd like you to stay as we do our standing roll up.

And you're going to take your hands and you're going to find your own sit bones, which is the bottom of your bottom. It's also where the underwear line used to be before it got longer or got shorter. So depending on where yours is, it may not be here. Good. So feel the sit bones and engage the muscles between them. Just enough to feel like there's a little engagement without a major glute squeeze. And then begin to roll the pelvis. So we're going to come up to standing.

You're going to roll the pelvis and I want you to send your fingers down the backs of your legs. And then whenever your hands just naturally come away, just keep rolling up to come to standing and pause there. Yes. So whole point of this is to not do our standing roll down looking like this, which is really just a big hip hinge, right? We miss the movement of the pelvis on the legs and then we miss the movement of the spine. So keep your weight ever so slightly forward and begin to nod your head and roll down as far as you can roll without moving your pelvis.

Then when you can't go any farther, continue and notice that as you're rolling, your pelvis is moving over the tops of your thigh bones. Yeah. Now you can put your hands on your siblings or not. It's up to you, but engage the sip on muscles just a tiny bit and then begin to roll back up, keeping your weight forward. So the feeling at first is like you're moving your pelvis and then your spine is following. Press your feet down into the floor. Great. That looks wonderful. As you come to the top, inhale and again, exhale, enroll down as much as you can without changing your pelvis.

And that means also not tucking it under. That's also a common, a common mistake on the roll down. And when you can no longer do that. Keep lengthening legs and you're pushing the floor away. Continue all the way back down. Good. This will be our last one. Wait a little bit forward on the ball of your foot. Just a tiny bit. Engage the sip on muscles and when you roll up this time, see if you can roll up at least a quarter of an inch without moving your body.

See if you can just move your pelvis and then your pelvis pulls your spine back up. Press down through your feet. Yes. Good. Keep doing that. All the way up. Make sure as you get to the top, your weight is forward on your feet. Hmm hmm. Different. Should we do it one more time? All right, let's do it one more time. One more time. Whoa. It was like amazing. This roof, the whole, the whole room went. Alright. So wait a little forward.

So when you're, when you're doing this, if you're watching yourself in the mirror, if you're in class, if you're watching your students, however, using this one thing that we don't want to see, which I'm not seeing here, which is great, but just in case you do is this, right? So the roll down comes with a knee band and I actually had a physical therapist tell me that he could not roll down this far without bending his knees because his hamstrings were too tight. And I thought, Gosh, I'm not a physical therapist, but I know that by doing this, I'm not stretching my hamstrings, maybe the nerves, but my hamstring muscles, I haven't moved my pelvis yet. So there's no possible way. What he was doing was just really poorly organizing his movement and his thoughts about it. So I want this to be kind of loose and then you move and you go as far as you can as far as kind of large canyon fires, you can fudge can't. And Yeah, you'll start to feel something, but hopefully it's not those stretch on your hamstrings until you start to move your pelvis. Great. You guys, it looks wonderful when you get to the bottom. Take a breath and start to exhale. Now move the pelvis, but don't move your body. I like to ask for the impossible.

So move your pelvis and then keep going. Let your pelvis rolling over your leg bones. Pull your spine up, keeping your way forward. Yes. Press down through the floor. Send the floor away. So in the top of your head to the ceiling. I love it when that happens. Good. All right, and we are finished, so thank you all. That was wonderful. Thank you so much.