Connecting to your Body

I'm Debra Cole away. I'm from Boulder, Colorado and I'm going to be teaching an intermediate level reformer class. We're starting with the foot work on forest springs. Before we begin just to get your breath going, I want you to go ahead and take your arms out to the side. Take a nice wide stretch, hold the weight of your arms up off the reformer a little bit so that you're not just hanging in your joints. Feel as if somebody had you by one risk. Somebody had you by the other wrist. Take a nice deep breath.

Maybe even think that your thumb is an extension of your collarbone and your little fingers and extension of the base of your shoulder blade. One more big breath into that. Bring your arms as close to your body as possible, as straight as you can manage, and then press the palm down, the risks down and see if you can make a connection ongoingly from the hand all the way up through your arm into the back of the shoulder, the shoulder girdle as a place of support for your rib cage and your spine. We're in our [inaudible] v so knees are shoulder with the part. You're reaching the ball of your foot up onto that foot bar, trying to get as much contact as possible through the little toe side as you do with the big toe.

We'll begin now on an inhalation stretch back and exhaling as you return. Get a little bit of a rhythm going now out and try to stay together. So if you tend to go slower than you have to speed up a little. If you tend to be the quick one, then slow down just a hair. See if you can feel each other across the room. Breathing in, breathing out, and find that height of your ankle that you can maintain.

You want to keep the ankle up and focus on extending in the hip. One more time. Breathe it in and now exhale, soft landing. Hold the springs closed. We will come to bird on a perch, so legs and feet together. Wrapping your foot around that foot bar. Breathe in as you press back. Exhaling as you come in and doing your best to keep the legs together, to keep the end step of your foot parallel to each other. If you have to, I would rather you take your heel a little bit apart, but keep your big toes together. Breathing in as you go.

Exhaling deeply. Squeeze, getting length, getting depth. Two more times. Breathe it in. Exhale. Really keep the pressure on your foot the same as you come in, staying in this time. Exhale all your air pull from the back side of your legs. Lift and come onto your heels. Now you get to stretch. Open the sole of your foot, so in with the breath as you go back, see your toes flexing backwards over your knees. Deep flection in the ankle.

Focus on the elongation of your spine and the opening of your hips. You don't want to feel your knees pressing down into the floor, so as you extend back, you've got to straighten those legs by opening your hips. More. Exhale, deeply flex. You don't want to feel any pressure in the tendons in the back of your knee pushing down into the floor. Let's do two more together. Really get the ankle to flex back and the toes and then come on in and hold the springs. Come down onto the balls of your feet, legs together and in with the breath. As you press out, stay out and lower the heels. One, two, three and rise.

One, two, three. Exhaling deeply, two, three and rise. Now if it doesn't bother your neck, I want you to actually pick your head up and look at your feet and look at the alignment of your ankles. You don't want any twisting out or falling in. Draw those legs together and make sure that your kneecaps are pointing straight up to the ceiling as well. And then go ahead and lay your head down for the last couple hole from the backside of your legs as you lift your heels. And then as you lower, don't allow the ankle to drop, but more like you're curving, curving your heel around something. This is the last one, so go ahead and go up as high as you possibly can. Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, bending the knees, lift the heels even higher. Now hold here. We're going to transition to the hundred so curl your tail a little bit to pull yourself away from the shoulder blocks. Beautiful. Reach back for your handles.

Lower your foot bar. There you go. Straight legs down on the foot bar. Arms up toward the ceiling on an exhale. Come into position and we begin on an inhale. One, two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three, four, five and in two, three, four, five. Then that's it. Let your shoulder be free. Reach your shoulders back up into the shoulder blocks, and then find that bend in your thoracic spine.

If this is too much for your lower back with your legs this low, you're more than welcome to bring them up higher. I'd rather you turn your feet out less and get a deeper power inside your hips. Think of drawing the back sides of your legs together. Let's do a few more. Breathing in, filling, filling, filling. Now power it down. Power down deeply. Squeeze it out. Exhale, narrow, narrow, narrow.

360 degrees around that waistline. One more time. Big Inhale. And on this exhale, bend the knees, bend the elbows. We're going to transition to short spine, so take your handles in one hand. Pivot up to sitting, look down at your springs and go to two springs. Now as you lie down, make sure you put your headdress down. Keep your knees bent into your chest. Careful as you.

So you're going to hold those over your head so you don't drop them on your face, right? So hold them back here. We're going to take one loop into the handle. That's it. Keep the knees close to you and then the other loop into the other handle. Okay, so you want to do both. First you're holding the two loops. Bring your feet up, lift your hips, and bring your feet into the leather loop. Adjust the strap across your foot and pull your heels down to your bottom.

You're in your frog position, essentially, right? And we'll start from here. Okay. Arms are pressing down by your sides and an inhalation. Take the legs out to a 45 degree angle to the hip, reaching up and over. Lift the hips. Exhale. The carriage brings you home.

Maintaining the lift of the hips. Breathe in and bend your knees toward the shoulder blocks. Hold the feet where they are released through the back of the hips, reaching, reaching, reaching, using the abdominals to squeeze all that air out at the last minute. Bring the heels back down again in with the breath. Extend the hips. Lift the feet up over the face, pressing down through the arms. As you inhale, keep your shoulders into the shoulder blocks. Roll the hips away from the feet.

Exhaling. Exhaling when you can find any more abdominals. You let me do it. Okay? Pull the heels down, keeping your thighs on your body just as they are, unless it hurts your knee, okay? Okay. I want you in this tight squeezed out flection. You're going to gain power this way. Inhale out to 45 exhale. Extend up and over.

Lift your hips. Lift them up, closing the spring right in with the breath. As the knees come down to the shoulder blocks. Keep the feet where they are. Roll away, roll away, roll away. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. And then pull the heels down at the last. So basically the starting position is the ending position.

So where you end is where you start. Okay, so last one into coordination. Inhale, as you extend out, are governed over. Lift those hips, closing the spring, bend the knees. Think of pulling the knees back into the shoulder blocks so they're not behind you. Release. And now right before the sacrum touches, reach up, grab the wooden handles, take your four finger, put it in the loop, keep your legs close to you. We're going to go into coordination, so you kind of shake that out and end up with just the wooden handle. Elbows into the waist. Head is up. So go ahead and bend your elbows. Beautiful. All right. Try to keep your head up for the whole time. Inhale, extend out. Really reaches those handles. Open the legs, close the legs, deep belly as you exhale and bend.

So you're going to hold the inhale until you come back. Inhale, keep inhaling. Exhale, deepen and band. Good. Extend the hips. How low can you go? Open. Close. Exhale, bend. Good. Now rest your head for just a second. Try not to do this. Little Chop Chop. Get some juice in those hips. Okay, so breathe. Lift the head again.

Let's try this. Tad Slower. So inhale, extend. Now, open the hips, pull them apart, and then stretch out. And then lift the backside of your legs, bending deeply. And last time, inhale, extend. Don't go chop, chop. Go around the corner. And then exhale. Beautiful. Go ahead and put your head down, replace your handles, and then we're gonna step off and get ready for stomach massage. Okay, so go ahead and pivot up to sitting. Add your spring's for stomach massage. Four, three. Go ahead and put the foot bar up and get your sticky pads. So you want to sit as close to the front edge of your mat as you can and then use the second pad basically as a ledge or, or a brace for your sacrum. Okay? You can do it this way.

Some people like to make a little, um, angled wedge like that, but this is fine too. Okay, so have a seat center yourself. Start with your feet down on the wooden frame for just a sec. Use the strength of your arms to lift your pelvis up and move it as close as you can. Stand it. Okay. And then pressing your hands onto the edge of the reformer. Look up a little bit and use that strength that we found right at the beginning of the class, right tip back just from your hips a little bit so that you can find enough belly to pick up your feet. And here we go in with the breath.

As you press back lower, lift the heels and exhale as you come in. Inhale out lower lift. Exhale as you come in. Look at your own feet and knees. Make sure that you're not twisting the feet, but that the weight is balanced and even over all the metatarsal is. Draw the backsides of your legs together and use the lower lift as an as a moment to get more room in your hips. So look up at me for just a second. Go out and I'll stay there. Keep your heel up. Okay.

Lift up out of yourself. Yes. Lower the heels to make more room. Pull the backside of your legs together and bend over. Now as you come in last time and with the breath, lower lift. Exhale to come in. Stay here. Reach between your legs. Take a spring off, try not to put your foot down and then take your hands back to the shoulder blocks. So you want to be on the top of the shoulder block, not letting your wrist hang or your elbow hyperextend.

Push down to lift up in the the lower body. The same inhale as you go out. Lower lift, exhale, come in. Beautiful. So you can inhale the whole thing and use the exhale to come in and out. You got it. There you go. Watch that turnout. So as you go, you got to keep it just like it did the foot and just in the foot work, right?

You don't want to press into the backs of your knees. Think about your inner thighs. One more. Think about your inner thigh seems coming up to the ceiling. Okay, great. And now if you're, if you're on two, you have to stay on too. Okay. So try this. Hold the sides of your bar. Be careful that you don't pull, pull it up.

So how do you keep that bar down? Right? You have to use the back of your legs. Have to use the reach of your hips to pull the Kerogen, and then use your arms on the bar to lift your chest. Lift your, lift your torso, lift your heels. Yeah, and then hold that reach. You got it. Go out. Actually, I'll come right back in. Beautiful out. Come right back in. I don't care if you make noise. Okay, go out. Come right back in. Go Out, come right back and last time. Now keep your left arm really forward as you twist to the right and then pull the come home and go pull to come home and go pull the come home.

That's it. Beautiful twist from the ribs last set out. Pull the come home last time. Keep those heels up. Beautiful. And step to the side. All right, great job. So go ahead and get your long box and we're going to keep these pads right. We're going to do the swan. So the foot bar comes down, you can maintain your two springs, one pad at the edge for your size, and then one pad for your feet.

Okay, so stepping on, let's square your box off a little bit. I really want you to get on. Okay. Not like that. Please step off. Okay. So go ahead and hop off. I'm gonna just may I demonstrate just for just a moment. Okay. So you step on and you really want to do the preparation to give you what you need to do the exercise. So if you get on like this, it's not going to work out that well. Right? Okay. So you, you're on the balls of your feet and you have this spring in your stuff and you're waking things up and then you press and you extend yourself out and then reaches far over the boxes.

You can flexing your spine and reaching your arms into the well. So the getting on really gets you into it. Okay. Alright. Sorry, I dropped your pad. Okay. So start with the balls of your feet on that edge and your V. Press the carriage out land mid thigh.

And then stretch yourself as far over the box as you can, reaching your arms into the wall. So it's just like if you're on the barrel, but you're not in with the breath. Now reach your arms out, lift up that rib cage, bending the knees a little bit. Come into extension, keep coming close to the equipment and take your arms out to the sites. And with the breath stretch forward, lift up again. Go into a deeper extension, pulling the carriage back through the backs of your legs and with the breath and exhale, curl forward. Okay, so you're gonna bend and straighten the leg a little bit as you go. So you come up and I've got to close the springs a little bit with the backside of your legs. I need you to come backwards towards me if you can. Okay. And then you want to watch, um, do you want to watch Amy do one? Okay, so one more time, Amy. So breathe in so you can start, let's just, you guys may have it a little bit differently than what, yeah, so start over. Okay. Relax your head. You start with a little bit of bend in the knee.

Okay? And you feel the power from pressing off the ball of your foot. Don't go yet. Please see into the hips. Okay, so it's not a crime to move the spring in and out a little. You're doing it on purpose to power up these hips. It's a little bend when you start. Okay, so this is stable.

It's Kinda like you had a strap across your ankle. Press up on me a little bit. You feel what that does? Beautiful. Okay, so we're going to keep that as best you can. Understand that it's difficult. So reaching out through the ribs, come on up. Close the springs by pulling the hamstrings. Not all the way, just enough to give you some more room. Exhale, take your arms out to the side. Now lift the backsides of your legs as you extend forward. Hover, hover, hover. Come back again into your second back. Then you're doing great.

Pull the carrots close just a little. If you need to. Keep lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, less neck, more, lift. Good. And now you've got to go up and out again with the backside of those legs and release over. Awesome. Do you want to try it? Okay. Beautiful. Do you want to not do any, yeah, you watch now you watch. Okay. Okay. So it's hard when you're long. I understand. Okay. But let's see if we can start with your arms in the well. So it's, it's, it's an active, uh, really an active region, not a shape, right? Okay.

So stretch the belly up off the hips. Use the strength of your pelvis to come backwards. Take your arms to the side. Exhale. Good. Now go out again, lifting the back side of your legs and now come back to me again. Come into your second back bend. Don't just throw your head back. Do it from your pelvis. Come on, reach your heels back a little bit. Yes.

Now come up. Okay, now reach forward ears between the arms. Little scoop. A little release. Okay, so you know, so much easier on the barrel. Right? But once you get that feeling, this isn't so bad either. Go ahead and bring the carriage all the way in. And step off. We're going to go to pulse strap in tee now. So one spring, some people will tell you you must move the spring at all, but I think it's fine to move the spring as long as you're in charge of it because you want to give yourself that freedom of movement. What you don't want is, is letting the ankle fall and everything just kind of hangs. But if you manipulate the spring on purpose to give you good range, I think it's good. All right, so you gonna lie on your belly now with your shoulders at the front corners of the box. And um, how do you hold your strap so it doesn't clink on the floor?

Do you know how to do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So the legs are stretched out behind you. The head, neck and shoulders are totally relaxed down. So in a way it's kind of like starting your swan all over again, right? So breathing in, pull the hands back, look forward, open the front of your shoulders, stretch the belly. Long lift, lift, lift, and then exhale, staying long. Release your arms back down to the side. The head and neck totally releases forward at the end. And then again, pull straight back. Keep your arms as close to the sides as you can.

Open the front of the shoulders and then release back down. One more time. Inhale, feel that breath, lift your chest, lift your chest, and then exhaling as you come back down. Now bring your hands more toward the loop for the t. So we're going to have to go down on the strap a little bit. There you go. And bring the arms up, shoulder height, straight wrists, punch out through those knuckles. Nice long neck. Beautiful. Inhale.

Pull the little finger to your hip. Exhaling. Lift the arms up and come back around to the side. Do your best to not let your shoulder roll forward, but keep the front of the shoulder up. Inhale, pull. Exhaling as you come around. And one more time. Pull, punch out through those knuckles. Lift the chest and release. Beautiful. So now take the handles in one hand. Step to the side.

We're going to transition into the backstroke. So you need to add a spring. So you've gone to springs on Swan, one spring on pole strap and t. Now we're back to two springs for the backstroke. So when you get on, you want to sit Romana used to say sit in the air. Basically, you're sitting so far down off the box that when you lie down, your tail is up. Okay? And as you lie down, bend your knees into your chest, knuckles to the forehead. It's good forward. Okay? I can't picky. That's it. So when you lie down, nobody ever believes it you to come all the way down. It's just puts you, I know that's the thing. Yeah. That's why you have to sit in the air.

Because if you feel like you're at the edge, then you lie down, you roll back. Okay? So the same strength that you just found, press up to the ceiling, open out to the side, pull forward, reach for your knee caps and exhaling. Bend everything back in. So Nice and light up on one out on to pull three hole, four hole five exhale on six. One more time. Up on one, out on two. Beautiful. Open the hips. Reach retreat to retreat, and exhale. You want to reverse that? Okay, go forward, reach for the knees, circle round, free the hips, free the shoulders, lift yourself up, reach and exhale, curl everything back in. And with the breath, open the hips. Good, great for the knees. That's it. Open the arms to the side. Pick it all up, up, up, up, up, up, and exhale. And one more time. Open those hips. Find the backside of your legs, release out to the side.

Pick yourself up and Ben and see if you can stay in that nice selection and transition to teaser. So take those handles in one hand. Pivot up to the side. That's it. If you've gotta put your feet down, put them down, take the spring off. Good job, and roll yourself back down. So now you'll be no, you'll actually be a little further back. So when you lie down and your legs are extended off the box, you should be able to relax your head, neck and upper back off the edge. So it's Kinda like the corners of the box come up and open up your shoulders for you. Okay, good. So here we go. Bring the head up, take a breath. Inhaling all the way to the top. Exhale, lower your hands down towards your hips. And inhale. Bring your fingers up to eye level. There you go.

Exhale down to the hips and inhale up to eye-level. Last time down to the hips. Exhaling. Inhale. Bring the fingers up to eye level. Now lean into the strap. Keep the spring. We all, yeah, and roll down. They'll keep that spring. Don't drop your hands. Keep your hands up and lower your spine. Yes. And then release the neck, shoulders, and hip. Let's add a circle. So go ahead and bring the head. Inhale, everything arise at the same time. That's it.

Now circle the arms out to the side. Exhaling. Good. Feel how the boxes pulling back under you as you lift, you'll have that spring is lifting your hip for you. There you go. Last time. Now stay up. Reach into it. Keep your hands up and go back down. That's it. Put your feet on me. On my chest here. All away. Okay, very good. Now I would say drop your handles in the weld but don't cause of the wooden floor.

So then one knee and come on up and then just put your handles. We have a rubbery kind of floor in boulder and we're going to go to short box. So pick the box up. I would put it probably between the shoulder block and whatever hardware you have and then grab your short bucks, pull and take your black sticky pad and place it on the box. So not that differently from with stomach massage, we're going to use this pad to give you just a little help with the tip and something to press your legs into. Okay. Add a Springer to, it doesn't have anything to do with the exercise particularly, but just to keep your carriage from moving around. Okay.

So have a seat and then place your feet under the black strap. Go ahead and put your pole behind you. All right, scoot back. Yup. Okay, so take a moment and take those little handles on the side of the box. If your arms are long enough, grab them.

Then if they're not long enough, just fifth and push down on the box. What I want you to feel is that you can lift yourself up in this position. The thing that's nice about grabbing the handle is that it's almost like picking a little stool up under your butt. Can you feel that? It's almost like on the one hand, I know, maybe just use the tip of your finger. Yeah, I know they're just too low for you. That's okay. So, but what the idea is here is that when we sit often and when we sit with our legs outstretched, the tightness in the quads or the low back has a tendency to just pull us down and it puts you in a not so happy starting. You know, you want to Ha, you want to sort of like with the Swan, you want to be in the mood to start, you know, so you want to feel as if you could lift yourself right up out of the hips and then the legs they pull down and apart to strengthen up your seat to strengthen up your base. Good and flex here.

And then as you go to grab yourself around the ribs, it's like somebody else is pulling you back and bending you forward. So go ahead and bend as far as you can go until you feel that moment like, oh, if I don't pull my hips back and scoop up my abs, I'm going to fall off the box. Okay, so we'll start with the round back. Rolling back your pelvis. Okay, let that black pad come up and help get you some room in the front of your hip. Exhaling as you come forward. That's it.

So the idea here is that when you flex your ankles back on the strap, the force of you is going over the box backwards. You don't want to feel like you're falling and sliding down the box. Keep your eyes internal. Exhale as you come back. So you don't want to get into these knees and slide down. You need to pull back. And if you need to bend your legs a little bit to feel that, go ahead.

Sometimes it doesn't feel that good, but you feel the difference, Amy. Yup. Good. Exhale as you come back up. And now one more time. Rolling the pelvis back. Keep the head forward. Now Bend forward, even though you're going backwards. Beautiful. So even though you're going backwards, you're bent forward and then exhale, dive into it. Reach down, take hold of the stick and reach that up overhead.

So lifting that pole up for flat back is the same as pushing down on the box. It's like somebody came and picked you up. So looking down toward the foot bar, lift and stretch backwards. Inhale. Feel your whole spine long and lifted. And then exhale, strong hips, strong belly come back. So please don't look up because that's gonna throw you right. Look at your feet. Look at the foot bar. Look at my hand. Exhale, lift the stick.

So when you want to go backwards, if you want to go farther, it's not here. You've got to open those hips. So take all the weight off my back hand here and use your belly. Exhale one more time. So I'm going to put my hand on your back. I don't want you to have any weight on me. Awesome. Look down, look down.

Exhale, come back up. Now take that stick and hook it over your feet. Hook it over your toes, pull back on the pole, but push into the pole with your feet. You feel that connection, this beautiful lifted pelvis, and then roll back up to sitting. Bring the arms up overhead for side bend. Inhale to the right over you. Go for the first one. Let's keep the opposite hip down and exhale as you return. So let your arms feed back into your shoulder girdle.

Let your shoulder girdle wrap around your rib cage and let your rib cage. How's your spine? Right? Okay. And if you could bring your hands a little bit more directly above your shoulders, that would be great. Last time to the right come back and up and over to the left. And I just want to fool around for a minute. Okay, so I went the wrong way, didn't I?

So let's go to the right and you know how you're trying to keep your hip down, right. Okay. So now reach so much out that the hip comes off a little. Take your right hand and put it on the box. Try not to let it shove your shoulder up, but give you a feeling of lift in your, so push down with your fist. That's it. You feel that? And keep lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting.

No falling. Reach the right arm up to the Paul and come back. Isn't that nice? Yeah. Okay, so let's go to the left. So first to call and you get this like fanning open of your rib cage. Okay. But then keep reaching so much. The hip comes up, a little push down to catch you. Wait. And then keep lengthening, lengthening, lengthening, reach out, grab the stick and Exhale, come back. And if your shoulders are tight, just put the pole down for a sec. Okay, we're going to start with a smallish twist to make it a little bit bigger. Okay, so keep, keep all that room breathing in. Rotate to the right.

Okay. Roll the pelvis back like you did in round, back. Keep exhaling. Now to bring that right side back to the middle. I'm sorry I said that a little wrong. So inhale, twist and roll the pelvis. Exhale, find the waistline and come back. There we go. And with the breath, as you rotate, find the support of the pelvis.

Don't fall on me. Come back up. I need you to curl backwards more. Curl your tail and roll your pelvis so you're not falling. You're holding yourself up from here. And then exhale as you come back. Let's do that one more time. So give me a little hint of flection. Give me a little hint of flection and hold yourself up from inside.

So first you rotate, right? And then you use that power. You're not just falling, you're picking yourself up and twisting and then exhale as you come back. So when I'm sweating profusely. So you know you're actually arching a little bit and I, and I don't really want you to do that right away. Okay? What I'd like you to do is find that support more from underneath.

So you've got to bring your legs into it. It's not like my legs are sitting here and I'm doing something with my torso. So if I were to push you backwards, you know, that's what I want you guys to feel that this isn't just a shape, like with your feet stuck under the straps, there's a power that's happening. You're being driven. So you need to go backwards on your box more. You, you know, you could almost pull the spring open by, can you feel that potential? It wouldn't really, but you could almost pull the spring open by having your hips pull back so far. And that's where you want to generate the power from. I mean, yes, you're reaching, yes, you're twisting, but you gotta stay connected to your lower body. And when you rotate, there is a little flection involved.

You're not losing that altogether. So don't go any further back. Lift the hips up into you and twist your rib cage. Don't go any further. All K exhale, come back. Do you feel the difference? Come all the way up to the top again last time. And I swear I will quit that. Don't lean back first. Maybe that's a style thing that you've learned. Okay.

Rotate the ribs. Bring your pelvis with you. You've got to drive your legs into your pelvis for this port. Twist more. Yes. And then pick yourself up and come home. That was beautiful. So go ahead and put your stick under your legs. Take your right leg out and then scoot back until your strap is a little bit Todd again. Okay.

So Hook your right elbow or your right forearm under your right thigh and hold your right wrist with your left hand. So right away, square everything off. You know it's very common if the hip is tight, right? And you lift the leg, it wants to open and then you find the room by hiking up your lower back. So for some of us we have to almost be like, we're over over crossing to keep that. Okay. And then start to extend your shin up to the ceiling and then let it go and let it relax. Let that fluid get into the knee. So inhaling, as you stretch and exhaling, as you lean back, you're trying to keep that thigh absolutely on your chest. And if you feel tight when you do this, it's totally okay to lean back a little, but maintain the forward flection using your arms.

Let's do one more. Stay up. Add the flexing and the pointing through the ankle. And every time you reach that heel up, imagine you're picking the whole back of your leg up so that you're getting lighter and lighter and lighter and lighter. And remember that feeling of the box coming up underneath of you. Stay up this time and walk up to your ankle, keeping the knee the way it is so don't suddenly push into it. Elbows are bent.

You're lifting your body and flexing toward it, towards your leg. Tip back till your leg is perpendicular to the box. And now begin walking backwards. Inhaling as you take yourself backstay forward. Flex. Don't take your eyes back and exhale, come back. You're going backwards and space, but your body is in forward flection.

You're taking that and you're carrying it back. If you choose to go into the full extension to think we might as well try. It's not just a sudden drop. Right? So you're gonna walk back. The further back you go, the more you got to extend this hip. Now use the strength of your arms to open the chest and then roll the head forward. Walk up, up, up, up, up, up, up. How are you feeling, Amy? Good. Okay, so I'm going to stick my leg under you for a second.

So go ahead and start coming back. Stay in forward. Fluxion as long as you can. Deeply, deeply flex, deeply, deeply flex. Bring your right leg towards you a little bit. Now feel my leg. Don't take your head. Take your shoulder girdle. Take your chest. Exhale, open the collarbones. Good.

Now Roll your head forward immediately and start walking back up. Yes. Okay. Now stay. Take your right hand to the end. Step of your foot. Take your left hand to your little handle. Okay. So pull up on the handle to give yourself some power. Take your leg out to the side and tobacco a little bit.

So think of your sit bone. Think of your sit bone coming out to the side. Very beautiful. Okay, dive forward. Bending your knee up into your shoulder. Switch hands. So now take your hand to the your left hand to the outside of your right leg. Okay. And make sure that you're not hyperextending or twisting anything. Okay?

So get it all the way up and feel like there's a strap here. So you're pulling on your foot, but your foot is pushing into your hand that lifts you up. You feel that, and then you twist. Beautiful. And then if you want to go into the figure four, you can go ahead and cross that leg over. You got to be careful that you don't hyperextend your knee though, right? So you have the tendency to hyperextend. Then you've got to take your foot out. But a way to avoid that hyper extension is to feel that thing we've been doing the whole time, which is to pull your hip back. All right.

So come on up and let's do the other side. Can you kind of get this now that everything's going that way and it really flies in the face of what's hard for us because we're tight and we're tight. We want to fall down this way. And what you've got to do is because think about what happens eventually you going to that full back bend, you do leg circles or a walk over or whatever you do. Right. And so the energy has to go this way. Yeah. Okay.

So right off the bat, pull up into yourself. So it's not like I'm just sitting there straightening my leg. No, I'm pulling everything through me and it squirts out my tall skirting. Yeah, but you know that gum, you remember that gun? Yeah. And so, yeah. Okay. And release. And I really, you know, I always remember this because of the synovial fluid. So there you are, you're trying to get moistening, you're trying to get range, you're trying to get circulation, but, but we do it like this, you know? No, no, no. Comb it up. And then on the way down, just like let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, and then take it over again.

Take it up and now had the flex and the point and the flexing and the pointing is not just your ankle. It's like you're squeezing a sponge out or something. You're like, it's like you're at an oil rig. You know you're trying to get the oil up from the pelvis and out the toe. Now what happens next do you see is you've gotten so tall that it encourages you to reach up and there's no Biggie, right? So you take that leg, you pick it up, you flex forward, and then you tip back until the fire's is perpendicular. And then you stay there and start lowering yourself.

You're not falling. You're literally choosing to lower yourself back and then exhale, come back up and the foot in the strap. It's really, it'd be nice, you know, if somebody was pushing on you the whole time and helping you to get that extension. So you press down at the back of the right leg, exhale. As you come back up and you, and you use your arms relative to how far back you go. Let's do the fall. We'll do the full back bend again. So you walk, you walk, you walk, you walk, you walk, and then you keep moving your hand down. You gotta keep moving your hand down. And if you can't, you can push your hand on the side of the box. Like try this two hands.

Feel that how great that feels. And now consciously lift your chest up to the ceiling. Use Muscle. Don't just fall. And then roll your head forward. As soon as you can, grab that belly, grab your leg, walk it up. Gorgeous. Take your left hand to the end. Step the inner in, step, the right hand, and even here to push your leg up into your hand. Don't just crank on it, you know, release it out to the side and then start to curl forward.

Bending your knee up into your shoulder and then switch switch sides, take it over. Beautiful. And you just be careful with that knee. Okay. So you have to feel it. Come from the hip, not the knee, right. And no twisting of the foot either. Yes, that's it. Beautiful. Okay. And then come up again. And if you want to go into that figure four. So here's the thing, like feel this.

If you go into the figure four and you're pressing on your knee like that, don't, don't do that. Grab your straps again to grab the side of your box, the little handles, and pull yourself backwards. Pull yourself backwards so you're not hanging in that navy. Feel what I'm saying? Okay, go ahead and sit up. So let's get rid of the box and we're going to go into the long stretch series. So the pole goes away and the box goes away.

And then as you come down the side, put your headrest up and put a sticky pad in your headrest. And with these strong springs, I think we can do one spring for long stretch. Okay. So one spring you stand to the side of your equipment, okay? So your right hand, your left foot, your left hand, and then stepped directly. Shoulders over wrists. Inhaling, press the carriage back you on the balls of your feet. Exhale, come forward. You want to feel as if you've gotta walk your toes a little bit farther forward so you're on the ball of your foot. Okay? Lift the hips. Inhale.

Do you feel okay on that one? Spring and exhale as you come forward, keep the pelvis lifted. Keep the pelvis lifted. You want to feel like you could. One more. You want to feel like you could pick your toes up. Don't fall on me. And then exhale, come all the way forward over the bar. Carefully lower your knees at a spring. Tuck your toes in front of the shoulder. Block for down stretch. Okay, so strong arms. Hold that bar. Okay, fill that.

You're going to pull the strength of that foot bar up into the strength of your shoulder girdle. Okay? So breathe in as you take the carriage out and then exhale, bring it home. And if you can walk your toes more forward so that you're on the ball of your foot. So on the foot end of things, not the tippy toe ended things good. Take it out one more time. Lift the heels. How light can your knees be right now? And then exhale, come in and try to walk up onto your fingertips without losing your extension. It's a little scary at first, but then you feel what that does to you. Yes, it lifts you right up, out of your hips. See? Okay, so now slide down to your hands. We're going to transition into op stretch.

So dive the head in. Kirlian. Lift the hips, adjust your feet without moving your carriage. So the you're on the ball of your foot, holds your springs in place. That's it. Keep the weight over your arms and now press the carriage out. Extending the hips more, more, more, more, more, more, more. And then come forward. You know, I wonder for you if you need to be in second gear here, okay.

You could take a moment if you want and do that. So you can keep going. Press the hips, keep your head down. Now come all the way in and then lift the belly. Good. And then take it out one last time. Press feels better, Huh? And then come forward keeping the hips. Okay.

And then let's lower the heels for elephant. Okay. All right. So really if you're going to be in second gear, you need to block your tracks somehow so that your springs don't fall out. So I'm going to bring you right back into the first gear. There we go. Okay. So it keeps them weighed over your arms. Equal weight, arms and legs. Drop the head. Curl up into yourself. Strengthen up your hips as you press out, and it's helped pull home and press out. And I tell, pull home and out, and exhale. Keep releasing the head, the neck, the upper back. There you go.

Plant those feet two more times in with the breath. Exhale. Last time. Hold the springs. Rise up onto the balls of your feet for Arabesque. Feel four points, two legs, two arms. Take your right leg back, curled ahead in, and three Arabesques. Press out through the leg. Exhale, bring the belly home. Good. Use the heel pressure on the shoulder block to engage the back of your leg and with the breath, exhale. Feel the lift of your belly because your head is curled in and switch legs.

That's it. Press the heel, lift the leg. Inhale out. Exhale, home and in. Good job and in. Lift the leg a little higher when you come home last time. And then bring that leg down. We're going to do the flatfooted version, so press your heel flat down to the mat. Take your right leg up one more time. Inhale, go out. Exhale, come home. Keep the weight of your shoulders over your wrists. Curl the head down. Good.

One more time. And with the breath, exhale, beautiful. Lift your belly is so much. It's easy to bring this leg in and then switch sides. There you go. Try Not to shift into the outer hip, but stand on your inner thigh, right. Inhale, exhale, and inhale. Exhale. There you go.

Inhale. Exhale. Now hold the spring. Cross your left leg over your right. Step to the floor, close to the foot bar. Turn around and come on for long back stretch. You good sweaty. But yes. Do you know this exercise? You can leave that pad there. Doesn't really matter. Okay. All right. We're taking a break apparently. Like your hands. There we go.

All right, so fingers are forward. Go ahead and bring your feet into the shoulder blocks. Lift the weight from underneath and shift yourself back over those triceps. A little bit of bend in the elbow. Press the carriage out. Inhale. Exhale. Bring it home. Good. And with the breath down and out, that's it.

And feel those inner thigh seems again, right? Like before it. Press it out. Lift and I'll keep those legs light and reverse. It can be tiny. You don't have to go big, you don't have to go far. Just keep your weight up. Hold your weight off those springs last time. Lower Pole. That is beautiful. Step to the side. Take a nice deep breath.

Put your foot bar down. We're going to do the long spine stretch. Okay, so get rid of your pad in the headrest. Put Your headrest down and you know how to add those extension straps. So you take the handle next to the loop. You want to take your extended strap and then try not to have a twist in it.

And the other thing to pay attention to is that when you clip it, make sure the clip goes to the outside. So when you lie down and put them on, if you drop it by mistake, it won't fall on your face. So talk. There you go. So we have two springs. You've had two springs for a while now. Okay, twist. That's okay. So go ahead and lie down and then reach back. Take hold of the straps. Bring your knees up. Okay. Can you get that a little awkward, Huh? Yeah. Sorry. Okay. There you go. And then bring the feet high.

Do an Amy. Okay. Bring your feet up into the strap. Now listen, don't, don't open your springs. Okay. Keep your springs closed. Now I'm sure, especially for you, sir, that when you go to straighten your legs, you're not gonna be able to keep your pelvis down. That's fine. That's not the point you remember in shorts by how you were pulling, pulling, right. So you want to keep the sprains closed right now and keep your arms straight. Okay, here we go. That's okay.

As long as it doesn't bother you. We got a little twist there. Yep. Okay, so Amy, close your springs by pulling your hips forward. That's it. Nice strong arms, straightened legs right where they are. And now on an exhale without allowing the spring to open. Roll up onto your shoulders. Exhale, go right on up. Keep those steps Super Taut. Okay.

Open the legs about the width of the equipment. And now pull the chest open as you inhale and arch the legs over, over, over, landing. Close the legs and we begin again. Come in as, as soon as possible. Lift your hips as soon as possible. Exhaling. That's it. Open leg. So now the exercise starts on the inhale, right? Don't roll yourself down. Lifts and extend your hips.

If you need to soften at the knee. There you go. Close the legs. Start closing the springs. Lift your hips as soon as you can. Exhale it up. You got it. Keep the springs coming in. You okay if I pull on you. So we got a close rate's going to close. This brings us and then open the legs. Now lift your chest. Lift. Extend. Extend the hips.

Reach the legs. Okay. Want to try one more? Okay, so you start coming in SEL. That's great. Let's go zip sooner. Yes, Mister, that was awesome. Yes. Okay. Open the legs. Now listen to me. Try to lift your chin up a little bit. Okay, so you see how you're flexed. I don't want you to like arch your back, but I do want you to try to extend your hip. So what you gotta do is maybe soften your knees a little, cause your hamstrings a little tight. Take the thigh, take your thigh out the window. Yes. Gorgeous.

Gorgeous. Okay, so it's different than short spine. It's more about extension, not so much rolling. Yeah. Okay. I think that's enough of those, Huh? So there's a very nice dismount, which is that you go up as if you are going to do it again. Exhale. And now take one foot to the floor. Let it drop. Come back up. Sorry about the claim. What's that foot? Take your other leg down and now here is really fun part. Roll down.

Pivot to the side. So just roll down, pivot to side. Keep turning in that direction. Stand up. Okay, keep turning to me. Put Your headrest up. Could your foot bar up and come right back on for knee stretches? Isn't that fun? Yes. Yes. Okay, so it's very graceful.

And then here we go. So round back. Let's do, how about eight round, eight extended and the knees off. Okay, so here we go. Inhaling as you press out, exhale, come in, inhale out, exhale, come in. That's it. Sit Way back. Go and return. That's it. How light can your knees be? Even if they're down and you've got to close the springs. Close the springs the whole way. Two more times. Close them. That's it.

And close them. Good. Now hold the springs. Look up. Come into extension. Stay sitting back though. Yes. And bring that chest through. Go out. Inhale. Exhale. Push the heel against the shoulder block. Keep using the strength of your arms to bring those shoulder blades through. You bring the chest through to deepen the flection in your head. Good.

Two more times. Last one. Hold it in. Now for this one, you start to curl, right? You lift your knees off and you shift your weight so that your shoulders are over the spring attachment. So you may need to adjust your toes a little bit. Bring your toes a little bit forward. Toes. There you go. Here we go. Inhale. Exhale. That's it. Think of your knees going down and forward. Curl the tail through. Use the strength of your arms to keep you afloat.

Three more. Pull it all the way in. Two more. Last time. Carefully lower your knees. Carefully lower than these. Beautiful. Step off. Add your springs for the running. So four springs. Very nice. Keep hearing your breath. Keep feeling your breath, feeling your sweat. So guess why you're right. Back at the beginning again. Yeah. Don't you feel great. Okay, so nice long little toes.

Inhale as you press back and suspend and then alternate. Lower the one knee and then bend and bend and bend and bend. Keeping the weight. 50 50 go ahead and bring those hands close to you again, Aimee. Palms flat. Reconnect everything you've done right. The powerful ankle, the powerful feet, the open hips, the energy being driven up little faster now, a little lighter, up and up. Strong arms, big open chest. Beautiful breath and, and, and last one. Bend both knees. Come in, take your soles of your feet to the corners of the bar for bottom lift.

Make sure that the turnout is at the hip. Okay. Feel that deep, deep corkscrewing rotation float. You're sacred. Just a hand of like a fist off the mat. Inhaling as you press back, deepen the rotation as you come in. That's it. So level, sacrum and pubic bone. Okay, so look at me and tip the pubic bone down. The opposite of what you're doing. Yes. Beautiful.

Is that all right on your lower back? So it's not tipped up. It's, I don't know. You know what I think of like a spatula or a cookie sheet or a drawer? Something. You know where like if you just had a bunch of hot chocolate chip cookies, you don't want them falling on you and burning you. So you have to keep them level. That's it. Beautiful.

You can increase the turnout if you like as you come in. And then stay here. Lower yourself down. Beautiful. Bring your feet and legs together. We're just gonna do a couple more things, right? So roll up, uh, come to standing. Go to two springs, and we're going to do front splits and front splits. Kneeling. So go ahead and step up onto the carriage.

Take your right foot to the center. No, please do your front foot first. So walk forward, be in the center of your carriage so you're in control. Take your right foot and place it to the center, or slightly to the right of center too, because God forbid your springs should break or something and you're all the way back there, you're gonna lose it. So you've got to put the one that's on the stable thing first and then be very smart about how to take that back leg so you can hopper our walk heel toe, heel toe. The back leg is turned out. You don't have to force the squareness of your hips right now, okay? But you really wanna feel a support from your back ankle into this shoulder block.

If you are really tight in your calf and you can't keep your little toe side of your foot down, then it really behooves you to have some kind of a pad so that you're not swiveling around on that foot. This back leg is super important, okay? So this hip is up, your bent is deeply into the front one as you can. The spine is in forward flection and you're looking backwards into the secret depths of your abdominals. Okay? So on an inhalation, we're going to press the carriage out from the power of the back leg. Keep pressing the back leg out. The front leg might straighten some, but it's not the first thing that happens. Exhaling come in deepening the flection of the front leg.

So I don't want you to drop immediately into this front knee. The splitting happens like a scissor between the two thighs. If you want to go farther and you can, it's got to be because your back hip opened more beautiful. And then exhale, deepen the reflection of the front leg. The heel doesn't have to be super high in front, but you do want to keep some, some energy in foot. Okay, let's do one more bend in. So you feel me touching your heel, right?

Don't drop that push into both feet. There you go. And then exhale, come in. Now we're going to go into kneeling front splits. So lift the back heel up, pivot. It might be a little awkward. Bring your knee down and then readjust your back foot into the shoulder block. So essentially now lift your chest.

So basically you're in like a one legged down stretch. Okay. And two, don't expect a huge movement necessarily keeping it lifted. Press two feet, right? Two feet. Take the carriage back. You gotta keep your hands down though. Okay. Okay. So it's gonna be small, right? Yeah. So take it back as much as you can. And if you practice it this way and you commit to this, it will get bigger. If you cheat, it will exhale. Come in. Good.

Now think about your inner thighs a little bit and how light that back knee could be. Almost like the back heel is going to lift up and back and propel you. Does that help you? It does. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now come on in. Hold the kerogen. Excuse me. Lift your left arm up. Try not to sit into that hip and take a nice side bend over, over, over, over, over, over, and then come right back up.

And if you don't feel too nervous, take both arms up. Lift the chest so much so it picks your weight up and maybe the carriage opens a little bit and then come right back in. Okay. Bring your hands down. We got to do the whole thing on the other side. So push off your back. Legs lift, stand up. Okay. Walk your back foot in a little bit until you're in control. Okay.

Hop It in and then switch sides. So take your right leg down, walk your left foot forward onto the bar. So on the ball of your foot, we're going to do the straight legged one first. That's it. Make sure that you have a good connection to the little toe side so that you don't take the force. If, if you collapse into your in step, you're going to take too much pressure on the medial knee. Okay? So you have to keep all this lifted and find the power in this back hip. Don't hang in the front of that thigh. Here we go. Breathe it in. Split the legs. There you go. And exhale, come in.

So for you Hakey think of lifting this higher to the ceiling up. Not turned out. More. Exhale, come in, but literally don't try to go as low. Lift up and now back. Feel the difference. Very beautiful. Come back in. Deepening the flection of your front hip. One more time. Big Inhale. Curl into yourself. Curl into yourself.

Exhaling. Draw it so far forward. You see that it's easier to rotate this hip and fix the foot, right? So we're going to transition into the kneeling. That's it. So lower the knee, have the toes bent in front of the shoulder block. Do your best to keep your chest up on this one and then take the carriage out. Even if just a tiny bit, breathed the spine up and then exhaling, bring the chest through. That's it. Try and work the back foot, back leg. How light could this, maybe in this moment, how much could you think of scissoring your inner thighs together.

Almost like you were going to pick that back knee up altogether and then come in and take the right arm up. Good. And then not the head right side. There you go. And then come back to the center. And then if you wanted to try the balance, that's it. This is a nice prelude to Grande's, right? That's it. Lift and lift and lift and lift. And then come on around. Put your hands down. Good. Lift your back leg up, walk it forward a little bit and carefully take your front foot off and step to the side of your equipment. And then just stand there for a second.

Holy Moly. Right? And feel those legs under you. Feel those feet on the ground. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. Beautiful class.