Advanced Prenatal Reformer

Hi there, Lisa Stewart here, and we're going to do a reformer class today. Now this is an interesting class because this class is really, it's designed for everybody, but the purpose of this class is to give you a really nice kind of high end, immediate class. But I wanted to also make this class appropriate for advanced, pregnant or prenatal practitioners. So what that means for those of you who are doing this class that are not pregnant, is you're gonna explore the reformer without going to some of those traditional ranges of motion that we're used to. We're not going to be doing the a hundred in this class because that's really not appropriate for prenatal women.

But I don't want you to discredit this class thinking like, oh, that's just another one of Leah's prenatal classes. Absolutely not. This is wonderful repertoire that anybody can do. And whether you are pregnant or not, this is also great for maybe advanced clients, um, that are maybe older adults that you're, you're looking to do some different ranges of motion or for people who are overweight. Um, there's some really great options in this class. So I really want you to find that you enjoy this. Now, for those of you who are practicing this, that are, are, that are pregnant and are looking for some advanced repertoire, um, I also want you to be really aware when you do this work. Um, I would prefer if you were doing this when you were up into your second trimester, maybe early third trimester, if you're gonna want to do this class really beyond that, because there's going to be a lot of stability going on all along a lot of 'em, which is when you're really late into pregnancy. It's just a lot of pressure on that abdominal wall. So again, I just want you to proceed with caution if you are later into your pregnancy.

And again, just please, um, make sure that you're practicing with integrity if you are pregnant here, and for those of you that aren't pregnant, just I hope that you have fun and you just get a little bit more different repertoire out of this. So we're gonna start by sitting on the reformer. Ooh. And let me go back by saying for this class, you're going to need the long box of course that we have in the reformer and you're also going to need some hand weights. Any week that you want two or three pounds, four pounds is fine. If you're doing five pounds, then I'm going to give you a big old thumbs up because you're awesome. Okay. So we're going to start seated on the reformer facing away from the foot bar.

And you can have one, uh, one spring here, one full spring here, and you're going to just sit with your legs crossed sitting right on top of that pelvis. And we're going to start like, I like to start all of my classes with just some spinal mobility and just a little bit of pelvic mobility as well. So once you'd inhale and lift your sternum up toward the ceiling, feeling that reaching, filling that opening of the chest, and then excellent wants you to curve and round it in and come back into that nice flex spine and inhale, lift the sternum up, feel that rising, feel that lift, fill that back extension. And then Xcel drawed in and curve and inhale, lift. Feel that reach and exhale curve. Now I want you to take the arms up and inhale open, and then exhale, bring your arms overhead and curved. Just two more like that. And inhale, open that chest. Bring those arms down.

Yeah, and exhale curve and draw it in one more time. And inhale and Xcel. It's raw it. Go ahead and roll that through your spine, articulating through the vertebrae, sitting all the way up. Now from here I want you to take your head rest down and I want you to sit with your legs through the shoulder rest with your heels resting on the foot. I'm the head rest rather, and I want you to take your hands on the foot bar behind you. So we're going to get right into his little stretch of those shoulders.

I want to do a little bit more pelvic articulation, a little bit more spinal articulation just to keep that warm up going. So excellent. Once you to curl the pelvis underneath, you push away with your hands. Find that deep curl, really tucking the pelvis, feeling that connection to the abdominals. Then inhale, articulate, and come up and exhale. Draw the body underneath you. Keep your gaze forward, reach and inhale up. Now you're going to repeat the same thing, but you're going to lift your right leg up. Exhale, feel that hollow coming on into that nice rounded position. Lift that leg up as high as you can. Then inhale, come up, alternate with the left leg XL curl and draw it up.

Feel that length, feel that length and come up one more time. Each leg XL and inhale articulating. Come up left leg and adding onto it here. We're going to continue with a little bit of stability, a little bit of movement here of the legs, so we're going to inhale, bend that knee in. Keep that curve. Inhale, extend the leg and extend the spine. Inhale, Benj draw than the N. Curve that palace underneath you and inhale extent XL Benz Rod in and inhale, extend retreats. Reach and take it down. Lift the left leg at. Feel that power through the body and then curve it in. Draw that knee all the way towards your face. Then inhale, extend with that sternum up XL curves rod in all the way and in hell extent.

One more time and rod in and inhale, extend retreats, reach and take it down. Lift up all the way from me. Find that position, release those shoulders, release that stretch through the elbows, gently bringing it up up. Flex your feet and it wants you to reach forward. And I want you to grab just the back of the shoulder, rest on those little, uh, handles for the straps and then wants you to reach forward and find that extension of your spine. Reach your sits bones back. Is this early in the class? If you can't quite achieve the maximum position that you want, don't worry about it quite yet. Just feel that connection there in high.

Wants you to bend your knees and round over and literally pull back against those handles. Stretching your mid back. Then inhale, reach up. And if you have a pregnant belly here, you might not be able to go very far. You might be holding a more to the shoulder rest, which is fine. Just work where you can, depending on how far you are in your pregnancy. And inhale, reach. Find that extension, feel that power through your back. And one more time, take the curve in him and Xcel reach. Find it, find it, hold it, fill that back extension and slowly come on up.

So now I want you to sit on your side as if we were going to be doing the mermaid here. Um, so one leg in front, the other leg back here, and go ahead and bring the arm out here. So from here we're going to work on manipulating this movement from the pelvis. Usually with the mermaid we press out from the arm. That's kind of our initiation here. I want you to think from the pelvis here. So actually go ahead and place your hand on that pelvis on the ridge of the pelvis. And I want you to bring that outside that away, cause I don't know which side you are on your reformer.

Bring it up really tilts. I want you to fill those obliques, keep that transverse abdominous in, lift up, lift up the duck, and then take it down and feel that stretch. Now what I love about this is we're getting that really beautiful oblique work here, but we're also getting this really nice articulation and mobilization deep in the hip joint, which is really nice. So lift up, lift up to the tub and take it down. And since you feel a little then Sassy, should I say up and down one more time? You can feel that warmth in that hip joint. So hold it up. Take that arm up. Now with that side thing lifted, I want you to bend even further and lifted up and bend even further.

So it's just a little bit of a movement. So it looks a little bit awkward, I'm sure, but I just want you to find that curve. I feel this stretch on the opposite side and I'm really feeling this depo bleak. Work here and lift up one more time. Find that bend come up, take the hand back, tented the hip, lower that hip down and sit there for a moment. You can feel that warmth in that hip.

And let's go ahead and turn around and do the other side. So finding that mermaid position, hand reaching out, and we're going to move from the pelvis, lift the HIPAA and then draw it down. So remember, you want to make sure that you have all of your laymen in place, shoulder, shoulder, hip, hip, feel that squeeze and then draw down again and lifting up. Yeah, and drawing down. Yeah, lifting up. So feel that obliques, QL back extensors, Lil getting that lateral tilt to the pelvis.

Fill that side of the pelvis or reaching out away from the center line and take it down. One more time, lift it up, take the arm up and press down and bring it back. So keep that pelvis tilted up. You're just now manipulating that upper body. And you can see how my spine is laterally curving here over to that side. I'm stretching out the opposite side. One more time. Take it down, press up, arm down, come back to center and release that pelvis down. Now to finish up there, little warm up here.

I want you to come on all fours [inaudible] and I want you to place your forearms on the bar and take your feet up against the shoulder vest and go ahead and place your forehead on your arms. I want you to find that neutral position and bring your knees back underneath your hips. You're really feeling that connection through your spine. Now exhale, you're going to curl the tailbone underneath you and you're going to draw the legs until you fill the stopper. So feel that connection. Then inhale, articulate it back and Xcel. So I'm still on that light spring. I'm on one red spring, so I'm not really interested in working against heavy resistance here. But what I like about having the lack of support coming from the spring is that I'm having to use my muscles for more control versus working against resistance. So it feels different. And I encourage you to experiment with that.

Try It on a blue spring, try it on a yellow spring, and then try it maybe on a heavier setting as well. So just play with that. Now from here, it's rotten. Now I want you to take, if you can, your right arm down onto the carriage. So I have my head resting on my left hand. My right arm is down. So then I'm a little bit more of a diagonal. Now this is how I'm going to get a little bit more ope lead connection. I'm going to take the legs back, finding it, finding it, finding it, and then I'm going to curve and draw it.

And some thinking about rotating my pelvis up and under to the left. Inhale, exhale, curve and Gerad him. So I'm feeling a really nice connection with my right oblique here. Inhale, exhale, drawing it in. Two more. Inhale. Exhale, drawing it in, feeling that really deep connection at the very end. And one more time. Inhale and exhale, drawing it in.

And let's do the other side. So remember this is all about finding that pelvic floor, that abdominal connection. Notice how many shoulders stay really steady. Inhale XL. Permit a, curve it in the feel that rotation spiral underneath your body. Inhale. Imagine if you had a light on this left hip bone. That light would be shining up around under your body, up and over to the ceiling does how much rotation you want to feel, how much power you want to fill in that rotation and curve.

Let's continue a few more and inhale XL curve drawing underneath you. Feeling that connection through your left obliques. Inhale and Xcel. Draw it in. Draw it in, jot in, hold it. Come back to center. Take both hands up on the foot bar. Reach those legs behind you. Get those knees right underneath those hips.

Feel that connection there through that nice neutral spine, holding that position, holding that position. Bring your knees in a little bit closer and just feel how that widens your pelvis a little bit more. Widens those sits bones. Hold that connection, bring it in a little bit more. If it hot widens a sitz bones, keeping that connection through the body holds in the abdominal wall in and finally come all the way into the stopper. That how you get that deepest stretch through your pelvis is that deepest stretch through your glutes as you feel those sitz bones nice and wide and open. Feel that connection and then go ahead and curl the pelvis underneath you rolling at rolling all the way. And now we have a nice easy warm spine and we're going to move on to our footwork. So you can load your springs as heavy as you'd like.

But I want to warn you, we're going to do this work with the long box. So take the long box here and you're going to need about three or maybe four springs, whatever you feel comfortable with. And depending on what you want as far as the distance that you want, you may want to move your carriage back or you can always take your foot bar down, whatever is working on your particular reformer. And then I want you to go ahead and grab your hand ways and go ahead and sit up on your box. So from here we're going to do a footwork series and you'll see this series and some of my prenatal classes. But I want you to experience this without being, because it's really a kind of Nice way to do your prenatal or excuse me, your footwork series.

So all you really need is one spring or one wait. So go ahead and take that one down. So we're going to start in a wide v position and these little handles on the mon box come in really handy here because you're gonna use that to keep yourself lifted upright. So you can see how I'm really on top of my sits bones. I have energy reaching up and I'm pushing my heels into the bar. Some feeling that connects with through my back.

My right arm is released cause I'm gonna go ahead and do some arm work as well. So XL, I'm gonna press back in. I'm going to feel that connection all the way up through my body. Then inhale, I'm going to draw it in XL press. We're gonna do five of these in Helen. So I want you to think about that deep articulation at the hip joint and that deep bend and folds at the knee joint. Two more exhale and draw it in. One more exhale.

Hold that position and little pulses with the legs. One, two, hold the arm at three, four, five, six, seven squeezing from the back of the legs. Nine squeeze out. 10 holds it. Now from here, you're going to rotate. Bring the arm down and around, coming through and rotate. Bring the arm down and around and coming through to more and rotate. Fill that upward spiral of your spine, but yet that stability of your pelvis and twist and rotate. Hold it there.

Now you're going to bend the knees in and you're going to sweep around into a curve. So see how I kind of doing a little hug with that arm? My other arm is still holding onto the strap, so I'm in this curve. Again, if you have a belly, just move as much as you can. Then inhale, untwist and articulate. So you to get a little bit of shoulder work here, a little bit of spinal work. Inhale, exhale, untwist, boom. Inhale, Xcel. Find that rotation. Feel that stretch. One more time. Inhale and exhale. Find it, hold it open, and let's do the other side, meaning the other arm. But now we're going to go with our toes. So hold that position in the center and reach. Feel that lift, feel that lift there, and come on down XL.

Feel that lift to reach straight up and inhale. Now making sure that you're keeping your heels nice and steady here and take it down. Xcel up and take it down. You should feel really long, really elevated here. Hold that position and pulses. One, two, three without moving your body. Don't undulate that body.

Keep it nice and steady. Seven, eight, nine, and 10 hold it. Take your breath in and rotate. Turn it. Come back to center. Inhale and fill that lift, spiral that spine. Exhale and inhale back to center and fill that power through your legs as you find that rotation and back to center one more time. And inhale. Now holds it here.

Take your breath out and then take the inhale, rotate the spine, come all the way back in and XL unfolds and inhale, twisting around and exhale. Take it out, unfolds and inhale, twisting it around and exhale. Take it out. Unfolds. One more time. Inhale, feel that sweep of the body and exhale, take it around and hold, hold holds and bring it in. Woo. Feels good for that. Nice. Showed their work. So let's go ahead and bring the legs into a little bit of a smaller v on the heels again. And this Emoji to take your, excuse me, the switch arms, your right arm out to the right side. And actually a little bit smaller here cause we're going to do some single leg work. You're going to take your left leg out in front of you.

So this is going to be, uh, can me a good challenge here. And when you push the carriage out, I know you can't see my arm, but that arm is going up to a lateral raise right out to your side. So just a few of these guys, Xcel, you're going to take the carriage out, fill that press, and in Helen Xcel, press it away and inhale in Xcel. Press away and inhale in one more time. Xcel, press away. Hold it, fill that lift, fill that lift.

Don't drop your leg like I did. Keep it up and bring it all the way in. Let's do the other side. So just short and sweet for that one, cause a really big challenge on that leg. That's thing up that floating leg. So coordinating all of that. Now it's super easy here to fill the temptation to rotate your pelvis or rotate your torso in a particular way. So I really want you to focus. That's why we're only doing four of these, that squareness that, um, that stability of your torso, that stability of your pelvis.

So really focused on that here as you're moving the leg and moving the arms, Xcel, press out and inhaling. Exhale, press out. And in Halan Xcel, press out and in Halen. One more time. Exhale, press out and inhale and hold it. Now let's come back to parallel on the toes, a little wider stance.

Go ahead and take your weight and just place it behind you. And I want you to hold both hands on that strap on that handle. You're going to take the legs out and you're going to extend it. So your a little bit parallel so it feels a little bit different because your thighs are touching the back or the bottom of that box. So you want to feel that lift and you're going to lower your heels with an inhale and XL.

Now you can certainly try this with your arms out to the side. The only reason I have you hold onto the strap primarily so you don't slide away on the box. So if you really want to work here with the balance, go ahead and take some nonslip and place it underneath your bottoms that you really have that security so you're not going to slide across the mat. So lower those heels or the box rather. And two more and up. One more time and hold it. Fill that lift, fill that lift. You're going to bend your knees in.

And now in this parallel position as white position, you're going to do some more pulses for me. Squeeze one, two, three, four, five, six, seven pulsing, filling that work from the back of the legs nine and holds it on 10 feel that reach, feel that reach come back in. Now I want you to go on the heels and I want you to grab the weight. I'm going to just pray that I don't slide away here so we can extend. Hold that leg or excuse me, hold those arms up, feel that lift and give me a little pulses here. Exhale, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, holds it on 10 and you're gonna round forward. As much as you can, feel that contraction, feel that curve and then come up.

You're going to hinge back. Keep the energy pressing through the heels and come up. You're going to her forward feeling that rounded positions. Hold that energy through the legs and roll that. You're going to hinge back just an intro so it's not very far to feel the beauty of that work and curving over.

Finding that curve. Really threading that belly button and filling that contraction. The underside of the pelvis is really narrow and rolling right back on top of the sitz bones and then hinges back finding that position over the top. Bring the arms up, take the legs out to the side here, lift all the way up. Find that position and then what you decide. Bent over to the right and come up.

Mobilize the spine laterally here over to the left. Inhale and reach to come up over to the right. Inhale, contract the left side to reach and come up and over to the left. Inhale, contract the right side, lifting, come up, hold it, find it and bring it down and rest. So a little different for footwork.

It's really about that since of that postural control, that deep articulation through the hip joint, which I really love because it's a very different dynamic than when we are lying on our back. And we're doing our regular footwork on the reformer here. So I want you to take your springs down to a blue or red, really whatever you prefer. And we're gonna work a little bit on some abdominal work. Now we're going to be kind of working in this teaser, but kind of in more of a classical sense, the teaser that has a curved spine versus that really extended v shape. We're going to work more in this little tuck of the pelvis in this cursor and we're going to be playing with some balance.

So this is what I'm talking about with my prenatal women that are practicing this. If you're advanced, awesome, but I still want you to be safe here because we are going to be doing some balancing work, but I want you to feel the challenge of this as well and hopefully that is good for you. So for all of us who are not pregnant, I really want you to feel that connection of that pelvic floor contracting. So contract that pelvic floor, stabilize with that, stabilized with the abdominals, and then you'll see the playing that we're going to do with the legs. So go ahead and take your straps from behind you. Your legs are on either side, you're straddling the box here on either side of the box, on the carriage. So I want you to start by Xcel just doing some little rollbacks, bringing the arms up, finding that connection here, really reaching those arms forward, feeling that connection. So here, my pelvic floor is contracted and my abdominals, everything is lifting up.

I'm not bearing down on that pelvis and inhale app, so your range of motion may not be as big as mine and that's fine. It doesn't need to be. It needs to be wherever you are. It can be very small here, but the point is you want to feel those sitz bones draw together. The energy of the two hip bones draw together. Then the curve of the lumber spine in the pelvis goes into the posterior tilt.

Now hold it there. Now this is going to be the challenging part. You're going to lift your legs up, find your balance, find your balance, hold it there, keep that curve and then bring it up and we're going to make that a little bit more cohesive. So rolling back, find the balancing up. Feel that curve, fill that curve and lifting up. That's the second part. The third part you're going to come into, it's going to sweep underneath. You're going to float those legs up and you're just feeling a little bit more challenge are going to extend your legs up into the v. You're going to bend, bend them back down and up. Oh, and you're so fancy doing this, so you're going to curve and it's just like your legs float up like they're effortless and then they just, they're not done floating. They're going to go little bit higher and up.

You're going to bend them down a hold that connection, see how nice and hollow your abdomen is, and then come up for the little gentle release. One more time and curve. Float those legs up and extend Flexi fee. Draw the legs together. Exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. One more time, exhale, point and come up. Ooh, I came to that one a little fast and curve.

Find that control. I'm talking to you, but I'm talking to me to fill that balance. Flex the feet together, add arms. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. One more time. Inhale, exhale and find it. Reach that those arms stretch behind you and rest is this a little bit of a nice abdominal series that really taps into the hip flexors, the so as that quadriceps as well. But finding that, but it's not that major pressure that's coming down onto the pelvis. It's really that aspect of can we use our abdominals to help us find this magnificent balance and to help find a stock control? And that really, in my opinion, makes the work.

That's what makes the work advance is having that element of control and having that element of grace in that control. So we're going to move onto some hip work. I'm going to go ahead and um, bring my carriage back in, which I didn't do after my foot work, so I apologize, but it didn't feel too bad on the abdominal work. But you can bring your cares back in if you'd like to. We're going to work on a hip work series in a kneeling position. I love this series because it's a really big challenge for the stability.

We've done a lot of this, uh, hip flection works. So now we're going to work on the hip extensors to kind of balance that out a little bit, couple of different options here, um, for where you're going to position your hands to go ahead and place your, let's start with the right foot in that strap. And I know I've done this in a previous class where I worked down on my elbows, but you can either hold the outsides of the head rest here or you can take your hands and put them flat or you can come up a little bit higher and holds up on the shoulder rest. Or if you absolutely need to, you can come down on your elbows. So you're changing the angle of the hip extension. But if that's what you need for more stability and control, then go ahead and do that. I'm going to choose to work here, which is actually a challenge because your arms are very narrow versus working in a wider stance. So I liked that aspect of the challenge.

I'm gonna bring the leg out, makes sure that my hips are nice and square and I'm going to lift that leg straight up. Exhale, inhale down. So the movement isn't that big to begin with, but I'm really accessing the gluteals and the hamstrings for the hip extension without overdoing the lumbar extension of my spine. So my pelvis is going to naturally adjust to the hip extension of course, but I don't want to just let it go and let it go free. I want to keep that sense of control up. Couple more lifting up and two more.

Lifting up last one and hold it. Now I want you to bend that knee in external rotation in as high as you can and then exhale, take it out and bring it to where your heel comes back to the midline of the body in how? Bend the knees and notice how I'm keeping my spine really steady and exhale extent. Inhale, drawed in XL, progress with those glutes and extent. Inhale Gerad in and exhale, press extent reaching it in. Inhale, exhale, hold it there.

Now this time current your legs back to parallel, lifted up a little bit higher. I want you to bend your elbows and go forward. Lift that leg up as high as you can. Then extend and bring the leg down. So the sequence is going to be hip extension, hip extension. So much so that you tip your body forward, bend those elbows and you're not gonna be able to go very far down there.

And now lift the backup. Keep the hip extension and bring it down. Now try not to let the abdominals go. Keep them connected. Keep them connected as you go forward. Forward. Feel that length. Lift that back up. Fill the power of the back and bring it down.

One more time and lift forward. Feeling that control, controlling that carriage, controlling that movement, controlling those lines of your body. Lift the back cap and bring it down. I'm just gonna adjust a little bit here. Excuse me. Now take that leg out straight behind you lifted up.

Now this time I want you to rotate. Bend your elbows. Rotate that hip. So you're gonna look back at your foot. Now bring it forward with an inhale and exhale. Take it back. Woo. Excuse me. Bring it forward. Really tough on stability here. Exhale, take it back.

You don't need very many. Inhale and exhale. Take it back one more time. Inhale and big exhale. Use those hip extensors. Use those hip extensors, bring it back, extend your elbows finish nicely and come on in [inaudible] now, isn't it so nice to know that I'm working really hard with you. I'm shaking, I'm sweating, so we're in it together. Let's do the other side. Now that's why blue spring is really lovely here for you're doing it at a red spring. I want to congratulate you and you're my hero. Okay, so let's continue with the other side. Finding your position, extending that leg behind you, squaring off those hips, and inhale, bring the leg up and take it down. Inhale, exhale.

Now it's really important that you keep your leg very parallel here because it's going to allow you to feel the more medial aspect of your gluteal muscles. If you accidentally rotate your hip, you're going to kind of bias towards the lateral aspect and I really want you to feel those inner aspects of the glutes here, the medial aspect of the hamstring muscles as well. [inaudible] and excel up in him. That's not me. And one more time up and hold it. Flex your foot. Now rotate your leg outward in hell into a frog and exhale.

Come back to the middle line of the body and inhale into a frog and exhale. Push it back. Inhale into a frog and exhale. Press it back, keeping check of your upper body, your abdominal support, your spinal support. Exhale, take it back again. Inhale and exhale one more time and inhale and hold it there.

Rotate the leg parallel lifted up. Then those elbows inside the shoulder rest. Lift the backup lifted back up. Find it, find it. Take the leg down, lift the leg up so much so that you tip yourself forward, finding it. Then lift the back up, hold that leg up, hold that leg up and take it down and up. Notice that you have to really keep your mental control here, your fatigue, starting to set in the fatigue in the muscles, but also the fatigue of just the repetition. You've already done this whole series on another side and having to repeat it again by holding onto that focus, and I lost counsel. Let's just do one more and over.

I lift, lift, lift, lift. Now the hardest part, bend the elbows. Rotate and look at that back leg forward. And exhale, draw in. Inhale forward and contract. Exhale, draw in. Inhale forward and contract. Exhale, draw it in one more time. Inhale and exhale. Hold it, finish it, extend those elbows, bring it back and rest.

That was awesome. Really good work, but we're not done yet, so keep that there. Let's take those straps out. Nice. Okay, let's keep moving on. We're going to do a little bit of a series, a plank series, articulating the spine a little bit. So I think you may want to work on one spring. You may want to adjust it down to lighter spring if you think you need it. But the setup here is going to be really fun.

I'm going to place your toes on the, what I call the platform here, and going to place your elbows down on the carrots, but you're going to hold on to these handles in the back here, so make sure you're really secure with your shoulders. You want to feel that serratus anterior opening up the scapula. You want to fix the Scapula next to the rib case with this Serratus, you want to feel that sense of the lats connecting to hold those shoulders in place. Hold those arms in place, fill the rum boys and the Trapezius all connecting there through your upper back and then go ahead and fill your spinal extensors at the same time. So here I'm going to keep my bottom up in the air and I'm going to extend and it's going to drop down. Then inhale, I'm going to draw it in and want you to rest on the inhale. So when you take your legs out in, your body drops down, you have a lot of support coming from the abdominal.

So this is where if you're pregnant here and you're an advanced practitioner, you should be able to support your tummy in this position. If you feel like the pressure is too great, you can't control your spine, then please don't do this. So take your breath in. You can always just hold this position and lift your knees is also a good modification. XL. Press out in Helen. Rest your knees for a moment. Xcel, press out. Inhale, bend your knees. Last one, Xcel press. Now from here you're going to rotate the right hip up the left hip, down, back to center, XL, rotate and back to center.

Exhale, rotate and back to center. One more time. Xcel rotate. Come back back to center and bend the knees in. Go ahead and come back into a little [inaudible] physician. Okay, so we're going to go back into another series of the rotation, but then we're going to translate the movement into a side plank. So really nice little challenging exercise here is to take your breath in.

Exhale, press at those legs, find that plank position. Rotate the left hip underneath you. The right hip up. Inhale, exhale, back to center. Inhale, rotate the other direction. Exhale, back to center. Inhale, exhale, back to center. One more time. Inhale, exhale back to center. Now release your right arm. Keep that left arm out and rotate all the way into a side plank. Now adjust your feet carefully on that platform to make sure you feel secure. Drop the left hip down with an inhale and XL.

Press it up until a little side bend. Inhale, take it down. Now notice there's a little bit of movement of the cares, but I'm really trying to keep that carried steady underneath me. Last one, hold it. Come back to center. Rotate over to the other side. Find the side plank. Connect with that right shoulder underneath. You. Inhale down, down. Xcel drawed up. Inhale down.

Exhale, squeeze and pull it up. One more time. Inhale, exhale up, up, up. Rotate back to center. Find it in Helen and 10 little pulses out. One, two, my hips. Stay up. Fuck. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Squeeze on 10 find the connection and draw it back in. Whew. And Go ahead and roll yourself up nice and gentle here. Yay. Okay, so carriage is going to come in and we're going to go into a little arm series, a little lunging series here. Now I'm going to preface this by thing.

We're going to be leaning over. Your hips are going to be behind you. So I'm going to demonstrate it twice, facing this way, facing the camera. I don't want to go around to the other side where all you see is my bum. So I want to be able to demonstrate it for you. So I'm going to do it twice on the same side, but I'm going to need you to make sure that you do the other side so that you can get both sides here. So we're going to work on half a spring.

And if you have the arm strength left in you after some of those plank exercises, you can go ahead and do it with a one full spring. So the connection is going to be this really nice squat here. So I'm really reaching my pelvis behind me and I have my right arm. In this case on the cares, somebody's pushing the carriage forward and back. So I want you to take your left arm and reach up toward the ceiling.

Exhale, you're going to press that carriage away in how you're going to bend the elbow and thread the left arm through and rotate to the right XL. Take it up in hell. Thread it through Xcel. Take it up. Inhale, thread it through. Two more. Exhale, take it up and inhale. Notice I'm getting that rotation through my spine XL.

Hold it now from here, step out with your left foot and lunge. Fill that lunge, and then control and thread it. Thrill. Forgive me, I'm actually going to go a little bit lighter to a yellow spring here. Go with that if you want to join me on that. So you're going to rotate and lunge. Push, fill that lunge.

Extend that right leg as strong as you can behind you. Then find the balance and thread it thrill in hell. Lunge, reach and thread it through. One more time. And inhale, lunge and reach. Hold it, hold it. Now keep that right on straight and you're going to transfer the weight to the other side and reach here.

So now my back is extended and I'm reaching toward that front quarter of the reformer. And then I'm going to sweep it back around and bring it around. Some just going from lunging on the right leg to lending on the left leg, bending, ranging on the right leg to lunging on the left leg. Reach one more time, Ben and Xcel reach. Hold it, hold it, step in, thread it through and rule yourself up. And that's your first side.

So now I want you to go and walk around the reformer to the other side. You're going to do the other side, but for the integrity of filming, I'm going to go ahead and stay on the side and we're going to do the same thing again. So you have to, I'm going to be all buff and my right arm would be very impressive. So I want you to go down into that squat and find your left hand connected now into the reformer. So here we go. You're going to come up into that extension. Now push the arm out, exhale in health, thread it through. Reach. Inhale or exhale and inhale. Thread it through.

So now you're pressing out with your left arm and your right arm is going up. So doing the opposite, and one more time. Hold it there and come through. Now we're going to add the lunge over onto the right leg, so lunge over reach and find the balance and thread, thrill and extra lens over reach and find the balance and thread it through. And what I mean by that balance is as that transfer here where you're balancing on one leg for a moment before you thread.

So it really is that nice sense of control, reaching through one more time and hold it. Now you're going to lunge over to your left leg, sweep your right arm around to the front corner of that reformer, and then you're going to be running over to the right leg and fill that rotation. So sweeping around. Inhale, exhale, press and inhale, sweep it around. And XL, press last one, sweep it around, and exhale, press, hold it, hold it, and come in. Find the rotation. Your right arm is threaded through and slowly roll up, roll up, roll up and roll up. Wonderful. Okay, we're going to finish with our long box on the reformer. I'm going to do a little bit more back extension, but what I like about doing this back extension is this, this really nice sense of getting this deep articulation through the hip joint so you can work on a blue spring is probably preferable, but you're always welcome to do a heavier spring if you'd like. So essentially what we're going to be doing is a modification of pulling straps.

So I want you to hold onto the rope and I wants you to lean forward in between your legs as much as you can still fit. This feels different, right? Usually our legs are extended behind us, so you're getting that deep articulation through your hip joint. So try to extend your back on a flat line is if you're relying on your tummy now XL reached the head, neck and chest, your arms are going to go wide and bring it up. Inhale, bend, extend and take it down. Now, depending on if you're doing this and you're pregnant, how big your belly is going to determine how low you can go in between your legs, but it's certainly not going to sacrifice the back extension portion here and bring it down again and XL up. Fill that back connection. Fill that power through your back. Inhale, fill the width of your pelvis behind you underneath you and take it down.

One more time. Draw it up, draw it up. Inhale, Xcel reach. Bring it forward and around. Come all the way forward. Hold it there. Draw the arms back, elbows, low, lift or chest up. Lift your chest up. Feel that length, feel that reach, and then just come forward and bow forward. Reaching forward.

Feel that stretch to your hips. Feel that stretch through your back, rolling up, getting tension on the straps. Bend your elbows low. Fill the bottom of the scapula coming together. Lift the sternum up, lift the sternum up, and then reaching forward. Bowing forward. Gently let go of the straps relaxing forward if you can. Okay. Filling that breath.

[inaudible] feeling that stretch through your hips. Breathing in and roll yourself up. Feeling that connection through your body. A lot of stability and strength and control in that session. A lot of that back work and just looking out in front of you, whatever your view is, wherever you are, whatever you're looking at, just have a nice steady gaze thinking yourself and congratulating yourself for doing this nice challenging work, but appreciating that the challenge was in the control and the effort and the grace. One big breath in together and exhale and you're all done. Thank you so much.