Reformer on the Mat

Hi, I'm Claire Dunphy Hamani and today we're doing a reformer on the mat. Now the reformer on the mat is very advanced work. So in order to dial it back so that everybody can do it, we're going to be using bands and we're going to be using socks. The bands I'll talk about first, make sure your band is about one of your wingspans and then about about another arm length. And that should be the right amount for you. I'm using a light band. These guys are using heavy ones.

I don't think it really much matters. So whatever you have. And then for me, I'm using socks and instead of socks, these are just um, slide the old slide slippers. I can get them off and on pretty easily. So I'm going to keep them handy. And then the ladies down here just going to use their, their socks. So let's have fun with this workout. Monitor your own body and if you need to take arrest at any time or leave any exercise out, just do it. Okay, so here we go.

We're going to start with the footwork. So come on down to your mat and take out your tubing and make sure your tubings right around the same length on each side and you're going to wrap it around your feet. You're going to have about an inch distance between your big toes. Okay. Then if you straighten out your legs and grab the ends, take a loose wrap around your hands, just a loose wrap so your circulation can continue in your fingers, your heels are together, and then gently press apart with your toes so that you get a little wrap around your seat. You feel your inner thighs come together and you feel your abdominals work a little bit. Okay? We're going to keep, maintain that through the footwork.

Pull your toes back, the ball of your feet is forward, and then come onto your back. Bring your knees in, and then take your hands behind your head, your elbows. Press the strap out of the way, and you just support your neck as though it's on a head rest. Okay. Your thighs come about perpendicular to your body. And now just reach out, draw your abdominals back and then resist the tube as you come in. So we reach, pull in and just breathe naturally.

Try to push from the back of the legs and finish with the inner thighs coming together right in the center of the body. In stretch out. Come in, flare your elbows out a little errand. Yeah, come in and reach out. And now we go to the arches and you just let your feet come together. Wrap your toes around a little bit so that you have a little bit of a like you're a bird on a perch and push out and in and push to pull little faster. Now reach and in and reach and in.

Keep the abdominals drawing in and up. Reach and in retent in now flex your feet, toes, pull back and reach through your heels. Press away and in to make your legs. As long as the day reach and reach. Keep pulling the inner thighs and the knees together.

Push from the Tush and reach and in. I'll go out and [inaudible] day. Turn out a little bit. Pull your toes back and then flex and reached through the ball of the foot. This is tendon stretch and to keep pulling the inner thighs together. Three wrap around the seat for find your working level where you can keep your low back down.

Flex to 3.23 flex to 3.3 couple more times and finish here. Come all the way in and rest your head for a moment. Okay, take another light wrap with your hands for the hundred. You'll like this one cause it supports you a little bit. Okay. Bring your chin to your chest, stretch your legs out. Turn out a little bit and pull the inner thighs together.

You're ready with straight arms. Here we go. Inhale. Exhale. Make the arms long. Inhale, exhale. Breathe in through the nose and breathe out through the nose. Clean the air. That's why we breathe through the nose. Exhale a little faster.

Reach through the big toe side of your foot. Squeeze your legs together. Get your circulation going. My abs are burning at Tel and then finish. Take your knees into your chest. Wow. Alright, get rid of your strap.

We're going to save short spine for later and we're going to go right into coordination. Are we ready? Heads up. Inhale, arms to the mat, legs out. Hold your breath. Open, close. Exhale, half your air and then the rest of your area. Ready in with the air. Resist open, resist close. Pull out, knees in return. Inhale, hold the breath. Exhale. I've got a little challenge for you. You're ready. Inhale, right leg only.

Don't let the hips move. Less leg only. Exhale, one more time. Left leg leads. Keep the hip still hold on. Tight. Exhale, pull in and then finish. Come all the way up. Ah, it's time to row. So we take the strap again and your wrap it around your feet. Just make sure you work at it the same like are your abs burning?

I know, right? By the time I get your rowing, my abs are just happily on fire. Okay, let's get the heels together. Now when you're sitting, let's make sure you're pinched up off the seat throughout this set so we're not just kinda down in the body. Okay? Light grip. Again. All right. Sit Up nice and tall. Stay over, wrapped around the seat. Draw the abdominals in. Then pull your hands into your sternum. Lean back towards your lower back. Open your arms to the side, palms down, pull back. Bring your head to your knees, your hands to the base of your spine.

Stretch your arms up and around. Come up. You want a little bit more resistance? Take another rep and go back one open. Reach back and go forward. Use your powerhouse to keep you forward. Lift the arms and around.

Sit Up this time. Try to touch to the low back. Go into your sternum. Reach back and over. Stretch up and around. One more time. Sit Up and go into the sternum.

Pull it in tight. Don't touch your shoulders though and then pull back with the hands. Use Your abdominals to reach you forward. Lift and around. Come up to 90 degrees. You might need to take off a wrap.

If you just double wrapped and you're here in case you're at 90 degrees, lift your spine, hinge back, push through the feet stretched to the ceiling and go over. Now I'm up here, I can reach down, but you guys will go along the Mat to the base of your spine. This time, clasp your hands, lift your arms to the ceiling, release them and circle around. Come up and go right away. Back on one, up and out. Two over you. Go. Pull. Now draw your belly to your back. Interlace your fingers. Stretch. Lift the back ribs to the ceiling, and then circle around. Reach. One more time.

Lift, hinge. Remember you're reaching into the strap with your feet up to the ceiling. Lift out of your waist, pull down and back. Lift and around to your toes. Great. Alright, now for the next one from the chest, you take this and you bring it behind your back.

So you're gonna just bring the, bring the tubing behind you and then kind of hold it partially. Take a wingspan and then twist your hands. Okay. Alright. Bless you. Sit Up nice and tall. Keep your quads relaxed to see if you can sit up out of your seat.

Palm space down. All right, and the strap is going to hit you around your waist. Just reach out to eye level. Keep tension on that. As you lower the arms down, reach forward and up. Stay forward with it. And then open. So if it slides up, your back means you're sitting back too far. So lean into the wind. Here we go from the beginning, reach out.

Deep breath in. Exhale, lower the arms. Inhale, lift, lift, lift, and exhale open. So we reach our arms to pick up our lower back. So inhale, reach, lift out of the low back. Push out lower. Keep tension on the strap. Inhale, lift. Now push forward and not, let me see you. Pick up your waist and draw your belly to your back and bring your ribs into your back. And then exhale, get taller, taller, taller, taller. Now we'd go from the hips. So you just take your hands next to your hips.

Flex your feet. Okay. Curl into yourself, head into your knees, push out along the Mat, past your heels. Keep your arms straight, and then roll up. Sit up tall while you're reaching out. Reach forward and up. Stay forward and open around. Okay. And again, round forward and push out.

And then roll yourself up to the top and then open, open, open. So you're having an issue with your shirt. So I'll give you a little something you can do. You can sit on this. So go ahead and sit on it if that's happening to you. Okay. And won't take, Huh? Okay. So you're gonna take it from here.

So you're going to sit up and then we'll use [inaudible]. We'll sit on it as we do shave and hug. Okay. So here we go again. Round forward. Whoops. Let me get my strap. Push out. Roll yourself up. Now push that strap up.

Pitch forward a little Mandy a little bit more. And then open, open, open, open. Flex your feet and round. And as you push forward, draw your stomach into your back and roll yourself up. Push forward and up and an open to the side. Great. You can keep your legs out in front of you or you can sit cross legged, whichever you prefer. I'm going to keep my legs out in front. And next we have the shave. So you take your strap, you bring it up behind your neck, and you make a diamond shape with your thumb and your fingers. Okay, now pitch forward a little bit and let's get your tail pulling down and your ribs pulling into your back and your crown, reaching up and then hands at the base of your neck. Push up and shave off your head, neck and return.

And again, up. Lift your waist. It's not an arm exercise and come down. Deep breath in. Lift. Exhale, return. Deep breath in. Lift and return. Open the arms to the side for the hug. Okay, elbows lifted. Elbows up, palm spacing like you're holding a Mug in your hands.

Deep breath in. Hug a big tree. Exhale, push out in the way. Elbows up. Inhale. Feel the air into your back. Exhale. Let's have more breath in. Use the breath and use it into your back. Sit. Sit, sit. Exhale. Every turn seems like an easy exercise, doesn't it? Exhale now blow the breath out. We just reverse your breath. More.

Breath out more. Breathe out more. Breath out. Breathe in, get all the air out, get all the air out, all the air out, not even an atom of air left. And then you take a nice breath in and then exhale, go again, blow, blow, blow. Lift your chest a little and exhale open out, and then you have to relax. All right, we don't need this next for the backstroke, so you can just put this next to you and let's take a nice roll back in eight, seven, six take all your counts. Five, four, three, two knees into your chest. Head stays up. You're pretending. You're holding the handles as though we were on the reformer. Arms and legs stretch on one.

Open on to pull around and hold and hold and hold. Come in with breathing. Inhale up. Exhale, open. Inhale around, hold, come up higher. Come up higher. Exhale, come down. Now let's see more. Reach out of your legs and arms up, out and around you. Go. Squeeze. Now we reverse it.

Press out and hold. Hold it there. You're gliding through the water here and then open up in and down again. Energy out and keep reaching, reaching, reaching together. And in one more time, energy, how? Through the toes and the arms are powerhouse, pulls back, open, open in and down. Well I think we're ready for the teas or straighten your legs out and take your arms out to the side a little.

So when we do the teaser on the reformer, we have handles in our hands. So we're going to pretend we have that. So we're going to start with the arms out to the side a little bit. Bring your chin to your chest. Now press forward and bring yourself up.

Arms lower. Lift one. Keep your palms up lower. Lift to reach for your toes. Lower lift three. Now reach for your toes. As you pull away from your self, pulling your stomach back, roll yourself out. Bring your head up, push into your straps, come up and circle round one. Lift around your arms, list you and they lift you and then reach out. As you roll down, you kind of pass through your hundred position on your way down. You see that?

Cool. Huh? Ready? Here we go. Up you go. No rest for the weary here, girls, here we go. Circle the other way. So you lower and lift. Stay seated behind yourself and lower and lift. Reach out and roll. You know what I love about teasers?

They tease you. So I'm going to tease you right now. Here we go. Bring yourself up. Squeeze your legs together, arms to the right legs to the left, back to center, and the other way and center. Circle the legs one way and the other way and roll away. Oh, you know Kiddo. Woo. All right, bring yourself up and we're going to turn our box and go to the short box. So here's what I want you to do with your straps, because normally we would have our feet underneath the strap.

You're going to take your strap and double it and just, you can do it in one of two ways. You can just tie it in, not while it's over your ankles like that, or you can tie it and then put it over your ankles. So this is going to simulate our strap. And the Nice thing about it is you're going to push out a little bit so that your hips can help you anchor yourself. Okay? So when we were in Romana studio, there would be everybody on the reformers doing the work in the apprentices. She would have us do the reformer on the mat. Of course we didn't have bands, so it was try it like that. Sometime bands are not a requirement by the way.

Okay, so now it's time for the stomach massage round. You're going to have your feet flexed, make it so that you can push out on your, on your strap a little bit there so you can feel it in your hips. Choices. You can have your hands around your waist or you can do it like a roll back. So you really get good articulation and it's important to get good articulation. So do what's right for you.

I'm going to do my first one here because I was on the plane yesterday and my back is stiff. So here we go. Start by curling your hips under. Use the [inaudible] to kind of press open to help you feel that roll yourself back without missing a spot on your back. Stretch your arms back. You can keep your elbows bent or straight. Then take your arms up first your head up. Next. If you need your hands or you'd like your hands, go ahead and use them.

The idea is to keep your abdominals working into the back as long as possible. So we go back and we go back and we go back. Keep the spine long into the mat. Stretch arms up, head up. Now Curl yourself up and over and forward. Go back against the round little pressure out on your heels so your heels and the feet stay straight. Stretch back. If we were on the reformer, we'd be arching back into the well. Right now, bring your chin to your chest.

Throw all the abdominals in. That's where your hands are there for. They're there to hug. They're not there to sort of say, don't have any light pull. Hug your middle Huggett. Hug It. Hug the abdominal wall into the back and stretch. Arms Up. Let's keep moving. Head next curl and we're going to flow right into the flat back.

Stretch the arms up, lift hinge back and come up. Relax. Lift first and hinge back. No careful that you don't just lift from your arms and your ribs. Make sure as you lift, you're opposing it with your tail going down. The spine is nice and straight and relaxed.

Pinch off your seat lifting. Go back. I let you rest in between each one so we get a fresh lift each time and release. We're doing five. This is five lift. Reach out of your back and come up and relax. Hands behind your neck. A lift. Bend over to your right.

Anchor your left hip. Back to center. Relax. Lift Ben to your left. Anchor your right hip. Back to center. Relax getting harder. Arms up, lift and reach. Anchor your left hip. Reach through your left fingertips back to center. Get even taller so you grab the space, get the space and go.

And now how about getting more space on the way up and relax and lift. Stay forward collarbones in front of your hip bones and relax and lift up. Deep breath in as you go out into space, back to center and sit. Keep your feet flexed and pressing out. Hands behind the neck. Palm over, palm without interlacing. Your fingers twist to the right. Reach back, back to center.

Relax and lift. Twist. Look with your eyes. Elbows are open. Look at your left elbow point. Come up and relax. That's okay. We do both sides. It's no big deal. Twisting. Go back and come up and relax. Keep it moving.

Stay with me. Deep breath in. Go to the back and come up. Do you want to go around the world? I do. Let's go up over to the right through center. Roll to your left. Hey guys, let's get some rotation. Go and through the middle.

Rotate back to center and relaxed. Stretch your legs. Give him a little shake. Okay. We go next to the tree. If you'd like it dangling on your ankle, you can just keep it there. I kinda like it too. All right. Just take your right leg in. Alright. Square your hips. You always want to keep your box square, and as we go to touchdown, really makes sure that you touch the back of your pelvis down simultaneously.

Okay, let's draw the thigh into the body and then the work starts by scooping, lifting, and holding yourself tall. All right, just limber up the leg. This is really more about kind of lifting out of your back at. Don't worry about the hamstring stretch, Aaron. Pull your thigh into your body. Yeah, everybody does that. Why do they do that? It's not for your hamstrings to warm up your lift. Now walk up your leg.

Okay. Both legs are in the center line. First, stop. Bring your head forward to your knees. Stretch your spine. That's it. Breathe. Lean back a little bit. Now looking at your hips, square them off. Chances are that left hip has to pull up in the right hip. The sit bone reaches to your left heel and then walk down the leg all the way down. Stretch your arms back, take your arms forward. Bring your chin to your chest.

Now here's what helps me on this one. Without having foot attached to a strap down there. Bring your leg out a little now climb and it helps you and lift up and go again. Chin to chest. Curl down. So we're crawling down. So we lead from the tailbone head. His last big stretch of the arms.

Our arms come forward, head comes up. Don't stop moving. Now you've got all the tricks involved here. Little lift. Is that our second or third? And we have one more hole into the belly and rule arms reach back. The belly stays lifted. Both legs are stretching. Arms that ped up.

Curl up, up, up, up. Grab your toes, bend your knee a little bit. Pull back on your toes. Now reach your heel to the ceiling and lift out of your low back. Let's do that again. Bend your knee. Now don't think you're pulling your toes down. Think of reaching your heel out and lifting your back up.

One more time. Band and little push it up. Naval the thigh, chest, knee. Now bring your head to your shinbone. [inaudible] and relax. Other side. Okay, so now we have the other side. Draw your left knee into your chest, getting in there, not even the light of day. You've got light through this window. You can see right if I'm here. No good. Hug It. Okay, square off the hips, and then just limber the leg up. Just nice and easy like a ragdoll.

And then walk up your leg, square off your hips. First step head comes forward so you round your spine. Keep the knees soft. Okay. You don't need to jam into the knee. Go back a little bit. Walk Down, let your pelvis touch equally into the mat as you lower yourself, stretch your arms back and now bring your arms forward. Keep breathing, chin to chest. Walk Up. You can push out on the leg a little. It helps you. Navel to thigh, chest to knee. Head lifts up towards the Shin and you go again.

Just keep breathing, stretch back and come up. Chin to chest. Take a breath and walk up the leg all the way to the top. That's it. All right, lift up now. Flex your foot, grab your toes, bend your knee a little. Now think heel to ceiling. Reach. Lift the navel to the thigh. And again, pull back on that.

So you get your soleus to stretch in there and then push up through the heel. Yikes. One more time. And push up. Take a breath. Now List your navel to your thigh. Lift your chest to the knee height. Now bring your head towards your Shin Bone. That is the piece de resistance.

And then release it. Good. We're ready for the long stretch series. So now we need our socks. Okay, so grab your socks. I'm going to use my booties and you ladies are going to go on to slide on the floor. So if you're at home and you're on a yoga mat, you might not be able to slide as well. So if you have a carpet or the floor, you'll slide better. You can also use paper plates if you don't have socks handy and experiment with those or that wonderful little purple dot that Mindy Milrae, uh, championed. Okay, so come around. We are now, you can't see my feet, but my heels are together. I'm on the balls of my feet and my toes are tucked under.

So you guys can look at the ladies here to see where you are. Okay? You Ready? All right. Bring your body forward. Your shoulders are over, your wrists, heels together, so your legs or your feet are together. You're inside the head. Rest now. Now draw your belly up, tail under ribs up. So you're really holding yourself from your core. Slide back. Hold, slide forward. Ooh, make it small out.

Pull in, out. Hint for you. Squeeze your inner thighs. Pull in from your belly. One more out. Pull in now lift your hips. We're doing a combo down. Stretch up. Stretch here. Separate your feet. Okay.

Draw the abdominals up and then press back. Curl your tail under. Keep your head forward. Slide in. Lift up. First the up stretch. Go Out, slide. Curl the tail under Billy lifts. Ribs lift. Pull in, keep your chin to your chest. Come up. Now we'll do the Combo. I don't know if you guys know this, so you press out, you cruel down.

Lift your chest so you're in an arch and slide in, and then push it out in an arch. Bring your chin to your chest, lift up and pull under. That's terrible, isn't it? Now lower to your heels for the elephant only. This is the fun one. We're not gonna slide back and forth in your elephant butt. Lift your toes up and your feet are still apart and just walk in on your heels so your toes are in the air and you walk in between your hands. There you go. And then walk your hands back.

Bring your head in tight. Now walk back on your heels. Keep your toes in the air and do it again. Walk in on your heels. Keep your hips high. Okay. It was kind of a funny one. And then walk back on your heels.

Keep the belly high. Now reach your right leg out right to the height of your hip. Let's hit the square off your hips. Lift out of your, lift your heel of your standing leg, and then stretch this leg a little higher and then come down. Keep the weight on your right heel. Now take your left leg out to hip height. Stay Square. Just lift up. Hold your balance.

Lift out of your standing heel. Stretch higher to the ceiling and then lower that leg down and come down onto your knees. All right, now turn around. Okay, we're going to keep facing the same direction we started so your feet will be facing in. We have the long back stretch. Are you ready for some fun? You guys ready for some fun? I'm right. Here we go. So your heels are in these imaginary shoulder blocks and your hands are on the foot bar. Okay. All right. Picture this right. Lift your hips. Your feet are apart.

So their hip distance apart cause they're on the shoulder blocks, right? Or on them where the shoulder block meets the Mat. So you're not lifting high, you just boosting yourself up. So I'm Mandy, slide your hips back a little bit more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. Yeah. So you're just boosting off. You don't want to be totally under yet. Push out a little lift up. Come in, lower the hips, but you're just skimming out, up. Keep your chin to your chest. And one more time out. It's deceptively challenging, isn't it? Now we reverse it.

You push out, lifted hips and come in and push out, listen to the hips and pull in and last time lift and come in and down. That's something. All right, you can take your socks off and you can bring your bottom back onto the mat cause we have next to stomach massage. So you get to use your, you get to use your strap again. Now the challenge here, doing the reform on the mat is being able to keep the buttock and the inner thighs engaged. So even though we're reaching out, we're still trying to maintain the work from the back of the body. So do your best to find that. That's where the magic is in [inaudible]. If you're a quad person, just know there's a whole other world for you to discover, which is what it's all about. So here we go. Undo your strap.

Okay. And um, I'm gonna just have you wrap up in a little bit of different way. Just take the strap up, heels together, right? You're on the balls of your feet and you're going to just wrap it into itself. So it stays put. All right, so you just going to double wrap it. Oops. Did you call them in the middle? Uh, yeah, I went from the outside and then I brought them both through the middle and back around. So each of my feet are being hugged now by this tubing.

Okay. And you want to make it so that you have to kind of work a little bit to press the toes apart. There we go. Nope, it's going to come to the outside like that. Okay. Everybody with me. So your strap winds up being on the outside. That's it. And just try to make it as neat as you can.

Main things that you're not cutting circulation off. Okay. Now you're ready and you take, make sure your hands are the same distance apart and you have a fairly equal amount of um, tension. Yeah. And then take these in. All right. Stomach massage round. We take the knees to the chest, your fingers tips. Stay forward on the mat, on the mat. Your knees come in. Okay. Push out.

Point Flex, come in, push out. Point flex. Come in, see how it's anchored down by my ankles and you're pushing with your hands out, down, up. Come into your hands are in front of you and see what I do with like I'm pushing it gets my way backward belongs. If I'm here, I'm dead. So you've got to push with the hands. So you're under yourself. So go ahead. And by the way, when you do the boomerangs, you do the same sort of action with your hands point flex and in.

Now take your hands back. You can undo some of the tension. Hands Back, get your feet up, get your feet up and push out a little higher point. Flex in, out, point. Flex in. Remember what I said about finding your seat. It's really challenging in these positions.

So we're going to decrease our reps point flex and in ditch the strap we have more to go. Okay, so hold the backs of your thighs. Now by the way, you can do this whole thing without the bands you build up to it. Now you're going to be shooting up to your teaser for the reach. Reach out, come in thigh. Suggest, don't let the feet drop out and then don't let the feet job out and in. Now we twist, twist towards me. [inaudible] twist away from me and twist towards me in twist away from me in and relax. There's a tiny little bird there. Do you see that? Okay, just shake it out.

All right, now the beauty after some make massage is we get to do the semicircle. So we get to stretch all this out. Okay? We're not going to use the straps for this. So is this lie on your back? And as long as your knees are okay, you're going to grab your ankles. Bring 'em into you, okay? With your heels down. Okay.

Can you grab a good hold of them? Yep. There you go. All right. Curl your hips up and lift way up onto your shoulders. Now lift your heels, curl down, and lower your heels each time. Trying to get a little bit more stretch. Keep connected to your heels though. Um, Haley, just bring your feet in a little closer. Yeah, a little closer. Little closer.

Nice. The same. Okay. So like the, your ankles and your knees. Have the same distance. Curl yourself up, lift your heels, lengthen your tail to the back of the knees. Then roll yourself down. Heels down again. Curl up, lift up high. Here's your booty. Lift your heels, curl yourself down.

Lower the heels. Three in the reverse. So we lift the heels, curl up. You can walk your shoulders back a little. If you're sticky and really push high, lower your heels. Yeah. Elza and curl down. You're getting a good vice stretch. Guys, lift your heels. Curl up, high up, high up, high up. Make a half-moon there. Lower your heels. Wow. While your hips are up, and then curl down. One more.

Makes three heels up. Hips up. Really boost them up. Lower your heels, keeping your hips right where they are, and then cro right down the center of your back and bring yourself up. Fabulous. Now we take all that nice opening and we go to chest expansion. Do you ever notice when we do chest expansion, kneeling that if you're tight here, it's so easy to get your bottom behind you. That's why semicircle is so nice right before this exercise.

So take this, I give this as a homework exercise to my students. I love it because it's one of our few neck exercises, but such a great opener here. So you can bring your knees together if you have the opening in your hips or if you're stiffing your hips, you can have your knees apart, your choice. Okay, you're ready. Take your arms out and you're going to hold your strap about, I don't know if shoulder distance apart, not too wide, cause you're gonna need it to stretch. All right, lift in the belly length in the tail of the back of your news knees and do your best not to hang back. Keep yourself right over yourself.

Deep breath and pull the strap into you. Open your chest, hold your breath. Now look towards me and then look away from me. Knuckles to the floor, crown to the ceiling, back to center. And then exhale. There is a breath hold. But you're really growing your breath. Deep breath in. More and more and more and more. Now look away from me and then over to the other side center. Exhale. So we'll alternate the side that we turn our head to. Deep breath in.

Look towards me. Knuckles to the floor. That's it. He Sat. Nice opening. You got look away. Back to the center. Now get taller as he arms come forward and again in with the air. Hold the breath. Look away and towards and center.

Exhale, stretch your arms to the ceiling. Separate your knees for the thigh stretch. I like to do it starting with the arms up and make sure your feet and knees are all lined up. Okay, ready? Take your chin to your chest and reach forward thighs, back length, and use your booty and bring yourself up and go again. Chin to chest. Go, go, go, go, go and bring yourself up. Now pretend you have a ball between your thighs.

Gently squeeze it so your inner thighs stay part of the action. That looks great. Wow. And bring yourself up to the top and relax. Awesome. Okay, next we go to snake and twist. Oh No. Do you want a treat? Let's do the [inaudible]. Okay, I'm going to teach you the swack kitties. Yeah. That you can do them with these.

So what you do is you kneel, I'm going to face the camera so I can see you guys, but you basically Neil, you can face me so that way you can see. And so you kneel in the middle. I love this walk of teeth, but you know what, for ladies, the Swa kitties on the reformer are hard, especially on a groths reformer. They're heavy springs. So this allows us to do it. Okay. It's kind of feels like the baby chair a little bit. Let's work with this arm, which will be your left. My right. Okay. And Oh, I'm kidding.

We're going to use this arm cause we've got to reach across. Okay. So it's almost like you're putting your hand in your pocket across your body. This arm stays down. Your job is to keep yourself square. Let's have your knees together. Squeeze there. You're going to hold a little penny there and in between your ankles to your feet and you walk a t out one and come in and two.

And in La County I'm going, I go like that. Three we'll do five and four and you can also experiment with wrapping it if it's funny on your wrist. Five, the funny on your wrist, your shoulder. Okay. And then you switch hands. Go ahead. If you're going to wrap it, wrap the free side. And now we do an Oupa so your elbow stays in and you just go right up the side of your head one and again too. You see how my elbow drops and three you might have better luck if you give it a little wrap. Could you do want your wrist to stay straight?

That was one of Clara polities big things was the wrists. Okay. I think believe that's five. And then grab it again. I made a little loop for myself. So now I go out and across. You see how my wrist stay straight and it's perfectly fine to do it without any strap. Just three. And then switch and press up one.

Now if you, we were on the reformer, the reformer would be sliding right now it would be moving and the trick is to keep the spring moving on it. So we do the same thing with the strap. Okay, next, grab your end. Now what I did was I, I went like this and then see how this is free. That's what I made my loop with so it didn't squeeze my hand. Now imagine you have a shoulder block there. We're not gonna reach to the floor, but we're going to keep that hand still as though it's resting on the shoulder block. You might want to do this without a strap. Okay?

Fist facing in and reach away one. And then in overhead and two, and in overhead, that's it. Haley. The rate palm faces your head and then make a circle out across your body. Elbow comes over your head. You see how I do that? And then push it away and you're in a sideband and push it away.

Come lower Aaron. So you're in a real side bend. Yeah, and three. And then we reverse it. Now we go out and then see how the elbow bends here. And then I take that whole shape and bring it down. So it extends then.

And that whole shape passes in front reach and it comes in front. Now you take that in one hand again, and this is the, the lotus flower. Extend the arm up, squeeze your knees together and you reach, lift your back, touch your fingers and reach out in a way. That's it. That looks beautiful. And lift. Try not to lean back and stay right on top of yourself in with the air of the carriage. Just went out out with the air. The carriage is returning in with the air lift from the base of your spine. Yeah, one more time and up and away.

Take the other one. Isn't that Kinda cool? Okay. Now if this hurts your knees, you can do the whole thing standing. You would just stand on the strap. You say, so make it work for your body. All right, so now we start with the Swa Kitty. So you're going to hold it about this with, I'm circling it like that.

So I don't wreck my hands and I get a feeling like I'm holding a handle. You see? And I'll do it the other way. So hold it here. Right? And then just wrap up the free side and then you're good. And then you're not all, there you go. Glue this hand to your side. Let's use your inner thighs. It's a gateway to your powerhouse. Okay?

So you really keep that with you and stretch away on and elbow leads. Everything follows. The risks stays straight. So you're kind of reaching into your opposite pocket and you're going out on an angle. Do your best to keep your wrist straight, wrist straight. And he'd suddenly feel things work in a different way cause it doesn't leak energy, right? Energy leakages. We've gotta go get away from energy and switch hands. And now we have our Uber.

I don't even know what is an Oba, but this is what Ramana call that. She said, Walka t ooh. Now try not to lean into the side that you're lifting from. Keep yourself tall and it's up and it's up. And now we go three each way. Let's make our transition a little quicker. One, and then and out Chu and in keep yourself square three.

Switch hands. Make it a swift change one. And elbows come in to elbow comes inside, and that's actually better for your shoulder, elbow inside. And then switch hands. Okay, here is an imaginary shoulder box that you lift up and over. So you get a nice stretch on this outside your overhead palm facing down. Now keep reaching into that knee that you're stretching away from and reach out.

One, keep reaching down with that hand because you're resting your hand on this shoulder block, imaginary and there's three. And now we make the circle. We go out coming in front. Now watch what I do here. I just take that whole shape up and then read. And uh, then reach, keep reaching that bottom hand as well. Reverse it. We go out and it comes in front. Stretch away.

Look down at the hand in profile. Last one. Stretch and come in. Now we switch hands. Okay, Lotus. Well, I lost my center line. Oh, zip it up and in with the air out with the air. And this is the lotus up and out with the air and reaching the arms up from the back. The tail is reaching to the back of the knees.

So your spine is working in that two way action and last one up and come down. Nice job. Great. Let's go to long spine massage. How bout it? Let's see what this looks like with the straps. Okay, so what do you want to have you do is we're not going to really take the legs apart very far. Um, but let's give it a go.

And if it's too much for you at this point, just watch it and then make a decision whether you're ready to try it. All right, so you're going to take this, this strap over your ankles again, only this time we're going to cross it like this. Give yourself a little distance here and then roll onto your back. Knees into your chest. I'm going to show it to you once you get the feel of it, and then you can join in on the next one. How's that? So we're going to reach out, lift, press open a little bit, and then roll.

Okay. Take the legs away and together. Here we go. Ready? Start with your knees bent. Anchor your back down. Now your arms, stay in the mat. Ready, push out, lift up to your strap, press it away a little bit, and then roll down. Push your hands along the mat, press open your legs, articulate your spine, stretch the legs out. Close and lift open. Draw your belly into your back and then let your back stretch. Stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, close, reverse. We open now, press up, keep it open. Now close and roll. Roll, roll, roll. This is more like the overhead, the way we're doing it together. And reach into your straps as you roll and we're going to finish right there and come in. So this more like the overhead.

I just wanted to give you a nice rolling exercise. Okay. Bring yourself up and put on your booties again because we have the knee stretches you sweating a little bit. Okay, so the knee stretches. We're only gonna do the one with the knees off, but we're going to do it with some fun variations on it. Okay, so I got my booties on. You got your socks on and just come up onto your hands and knees. Let's just begin by, you know your toes are tucked under as though your feet are back into the shoulder blocks.

Just sit back on your heels and then round your spine and then extend your spine so you're sitting back and then round your spine. Draw the belly and there's barely any weight on your hands. And then extend your spine. Lift your knees up. You stay back on your heels back on your heels. Tail under you. Let me see your tail under you. Lift your knees a little higher. Erin, tail on.

Sit on your heels. Walk your hands back a little bit. That's it. You see where I have you like you're in a tuck. Ready. Push out. Come into your tuck. Go out. Come into your tuck. Go Out, come into your tuck. Go out. Come into your tuck. Go out. Come into your tuck now. Right?

Like back. [inaudible]. It's a, yeah, right, like Mac switch. Switch. Now how about that? Back leg. Tighten your butt back there. Switch. Tighten your button. Switch, pushing your button. Switch, push, switch, push, switch, push, switch, push, push, push, push and finish.

Okay. Ah, a nice little effort and then we get to relax. Okay, we're up to running, running the beginning of the end. The cooldown the beginning of the end. I said, right. Okay. I'm just gonna leave those there. Now the trick with running is that essentially the big toe stay together. You see, so one is gonna.

You're gonna be doing this and this. That's the trick in it, but your legs are in the air, so it's kind of folky. Let's try it without the strap roll onto your back. You're going to support your head in your hands like you have a head rest, and then bring your legs out. Bend one the toes. Stay together.

Push through the foot, change, push through the foot, change through the foot, change up. It takes a little coordination up. Change up, change. Keep your toes spread open like you're on the foot bar. That was a weird one for me. Change, change. Come in and down. Pelvic lift turnout.

[inaudible] all right, curl your hips up. Now we can't slide out and then, so let's work on our technique here. Let your chest be heavy. Your ribs. Be Heavy, your tail long to the back of the niece who were taking the arch out of the back. We're focusing on the hips. Little lift up, up, up, up, up, up, hold. Come down a little bit more in your upper back. Glue that down and push up, up, up, up, up, up, up.

Come down a little lower. Your belly is pressing into your back. Your hips are pressing up again. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, and roll yourself all the way down. Hug your knees into your chest and bring yourself up to standing. Good. We have some splits. Okay, so take your booties. We're gonna stick them back on and we'll be doing the side splits.

So we'll use basically the resistance of the floor and we'll start with the feet together. And let's have the toes just slightly apart. Okay? Take your arms up. Pretend you have a ball there, and then open your arms to the side. But I want you to feel this ball. It has width and it's taking up space in your arms and it's helping you to broaden your back. Slide out on your right leg. Slide out. All right, now use your inner thigh and slide it in. Careful how wide you go, right? Go out again.

Now use your inner thighs. Try not to lean back. Stay right. That's it. That's what your ball is helping you do. Slide out and that inner thighs. Ooh, you together. Now we have the other side. Excuse me. Get rid of that. Okay, so don't let yourself lean back here. Hold your ball and with your shoulder, hold your arms a little lower. That might be better for you. Go ahead, slide out. Now inner thighs, they're the gateway to your powerhouse. So zip it up, press out, and then pull [inaudible] together and go out. And here we go. Pull, pull, pull together.

Now come over a street and then round forward and then roll yourself up. Romani is to say, pick the flowers up off the floor. Now reach your arms in front and throw the flowers away as you arch back. Okay, and press open. Slide out. Now keep your inner thighs charged up like, like you're holding together the reformer.

And let's do that again over straight around, forward. Pick up the flowers from the floor and roll up. Now give the flowers away. As you arched back, you're still holding that carriage in with your legs and come up open and pull it together. Fabulous. Now we're going to go to a standing version without the reformer of the front splits. So when do you guys face each other? Stand on your mat. You don't need to slide on this one. I'm going to take my booties off actually, but you can keep your socks on. Okay, so you're basically in that slight turned out position.

Just slightly open. And then step forward, pick a leg, any like, let's pick our right leg and go forward. Okay. And then take your hands down by your foot. You can bring your back leg back a little further if you wish. Okay. Just anchor the back heel down. Now Square your hips and straighten your front leg and then turn your head so your cheek of your left cheek comes to your knee and come forward again.

Anchor through the back leg. Stay Square. Okay. And then push back. Turn your head, put your cheek as close to your leg as you can. You're pulling your right hip up to the ceiling, by the way. And then come forward again. Breathe, stretch.

And then from here, bring yourself up. So this is more like the Russian split. So we'll hold our hands in front of our chest, like the Russian dancer. Now charge up that back leg. Put your heel down and back. So I think you're a little wide, sandy. I think you are too, Candace. Don't be too wide.

And then straighten your front leg and then bend your front leg. Now you're anchoring through your front heel, right. Push back, keep yourself square. Come forward, push back, reach up, reach to the front wall, reach to the floor, square your hips and put your head, your left cheek on your leg somewhere. If you can reach it. Yeah, step in with your back leg. Take your hands on the backs of your legs and now pull your head into your knees. Ooh.

And then rule yourself up like you're doing the wall. Now step back with your right leg. And we do the other side. So you don't want to get too wide. You really want to anchor that back leg. So Square your hips. The more further back you are, the more turned out actually your back foot has to go. All right, so now we take our hands and we bring them right down by the front foot technique. Is it? It's not about getting real low. You can go wider here and I think, there you go. You got more.

Don't hold out on me, honey. All right, straighten your front leg now. Your right cheek comes towards your left leg. Pull your left hip to the ceiling, Haley. A little bit more. There you go. Good girl. He feel that now how about your inner thighs? Throw them to the center. Line a little. Woo Hoo and come forward. Pull your right hip forward. Your left hip back. That's it. Good adjustment, Mandy. Good. And then stretch back. That's it.

Pull the left hip up. That's it. You need the opposition. You're pushing with your left foot and pulling back with the left hip. Now come forward one more time. I'm still anchoring my heel. Even wants to leave the floor, I guess some stiff, a better keep practicing. You know, PyLadies is a practice. It's not a perfect, he just meet your body in the moment, you know is be with it and come forward again.

And then you bring yourself up. So you're folding your arms across. I'm a little tight today, so we're going to pull the left hip back and pull the right hip forward. Straighten your front leg just like the Russian splits and bend. Keep the weight in your heel now push away again Aaron. Zip it up. Thank you.

Push back. Now reach up. Let me see. I'll get taller. Get Taller. All right and forward and down. Now turn your head and you're now got your cheek right cheek down, Woo and breathe. And then step in with your back foot and roll yourself up to a standing position all the way up to the top and I'm going to hop down. You stay where you are to stretch your arms up to the ceiling.

That's it. Legs together. Lift up an arch back. We back up and back. Up and back. Up and back and come up and finish. Thank you ladies. I appreciate it.