Full-Body Strength

Hi, thanks for taking class with me today. We're going to work with some weights. I have two pound weights in my hands. Um, feel free to go heavier. I wouldn't go much heavier if it were me, but you can make your own choices and if it gets too tiring or it doesn't feel good in your neck or your arms or whatever, anything can be done without the weights. That can be done with the weight. So feel free to put them down if you wish. Here we go. So what I'd like to start by doing is just sitting still for a moment. This is letting the weights rest.

Maybe just set an arms distance for me. You can keep them in your hands and then feel, feel close your eyes and pause listening to the silence or the background noise that that surrounds you and feel as you sit here quietly, a, a gentle lifting of the spine, a gentle dropping of the shoulders arising through the head, and then bringing your awareness to your breath, feeling that as you inhale, the rib cage expands to the sides and to the back. And as we do that, we feel as though we can keep doing deep breaths by moving the ribs in that way, and then exhale and feel the ribs start to slide down the sides of the body and they come towards each other in the front of the body and perhaps turning on the muscles in the front of the body. So let's take the eyes open and take the weights so that they just rest right on your shins. And now we continue to sit fairly quietly, but let's start to add some energy in our body. So we press them back into the shins with the arms, with the weights, and feel how that backward press of the arms, maybe a gentle drawing together of the shoulder blades enables the spine to lift even taller. And then inhaling here, as you exhale, feel DePaul this rotate and I'm an imagine rolling my weights down my shin.

They're not actually moving, they haven't moved at all, but it's that imaginary oppositional action that is giving me the work that I want and then pressing the weights back into the front of the shins. Build the spine Baca. Inhale, exhale, feel first. Again, the rotation of the pelvis. Feel how the shoulders can stay right where they are, right over the hips as we draw back and deepen and deeply curl the lower spine and then press back like you're laid. Backward. Press of the arms is pulling the spine up. Let's do that one more time in here. Xcel drawing in deeply good. So using this, these quiet moments, these small moments to tap in to your mind, using your mind to move your body. Lifting the spine in here.

Exhale, we're going to roll back. We're going to round the spine again. This time. Once you get to that lowest place, let the weights just float off the knees or off the shins. We're gonna roll the spine down. Let the low back come into the mat. Inhale, take the arms that feel that the weights can help you put pressure. Apply pressure down through the center of your body.

Open your arms out to the sides. Bring your arms forward and in here and Xcel rolling up, rolling up. Either resting the weights on the shins or reaching out in front of you. Inhale, build the spine up and exhale around the spine. So the arms reach oppositionally always we rolled down, we feel the lower back. Come into contact with the mat.

We reach the arms up using gravity and those small weights to really significantly feel depth through the center. Open the arms out to the side, reach the arms forward. Inhale and roll. I'm an arrest. My weight's on my shins in between because I know what's in store for us. So you continue to make your choices, but I'm just letting you know what I'm choosing around the spine. Lift up, roll this. Find Acts. So sometimes using the weights as opposition can help a movement that's challenging. Feel easier sometime. Arms Up, arms open, arms forward and rural.

It'll looking forward, feeling the elongation of the spine and lifting the spine up tall. Scooting a little closer to my feet. Inhale and exhale. We ran. Okay, we were roll back. Yeah. Wait a hold here.

Just turn the palms of the hands to face one another and without changing anything else in your body, just take your left arm out to the side and Xcel to bring it back. And India bringing their right arm out to the side and was noticing that just that two pound difference against gravity can really change the sensation of this exercise in our bodies excelling back in healing to the Rye. Exhaling back and what I'm struggling for is to stay totally, totally, absolutely still in center as my arms are changing. And inhale, open and exhale back and palms down in here and rolling. Setting the weights over the shins, pressing into the shins with the arms to lift the spine. Inhale here, lift the arms, open the arms out to the sides, bring them up or idea into the left hand and rotate to your left and then roll down the left side of your body. Once you arrive on your back, keep the left arm where it is. Reach open through the right arm, then bring the left arm across to meet the right arm and then roll the spine up. Rounding when the shoulders are over, the pelvis on wine waits out to the side in a t shape. Inhale, the left arm comes towards the right. Exhale, we roll the spine down in. Yeah, we open the body into the center. We cross the body, we India, we roll up trying to keep the feet center and unwind and inhale to the left and exhale down. This time we're going to lift the right weight up.

I'm gonna follow with the eyes as it comes around. We're going to keep the eyes there as we bring the left. Wait to reach the lightweight and then roll up. Oh, up, up and on. What last time we reach across, we roll down. That left arm lifts up in over. We follow it with the eyes.

We bring the right arm across to meet the left and we rural through this. Bye. Lifting and open and then round the spine. Bring the weights forward, palms down, roll down so that the arms are just resting on the floor. Just resting, but we're not resting. We're sitting just off the shoulder blades. We're going to lift the right knee in the left arm and exhale to press.

Inhale, right arm, left leg, exhale to press. Inhale, left arm, right leg. Exhale to press in Harambe. Leslie, exhale to press in her left arm, right like last time like this and then I'm going to make a change and left arm rightly and and now we go right leg up, left way arm reaches across and we come center left leg up, right arm reaches across and center and again rotating all opposite arm crosses that moving leg and center and exhale as you use your breath to deepen into that position. One more to the other side, reaching across, coming back through center, saying in center, staying in center and then lying the body down, scooting the body forward so that the knees are right above the feet in space. We inhale for a pelvic curl, exhale or still have the weights in my hands are going to roll the spine up in it. At the moment I'm just concentrating on pressing the weights down into the floor, pausing to inhale and exhale as the spine rolls down. Feel as though you could roll the weights.

Maybe we take the thumbs out and we actually just push the weights for a little bit with the very bottom most knuckles of the hand and inhale and exhale pressing down on the weights as we lift and inhale and exhale, rolling the spine down and feeling as though we could roll the weights away from us. Okay. Just letting the spine mobilize. Inhale and exhale. You roll. Ah, okay.

And inhale and exhale we roll down. I'm going to hold us at the top on this next repetition. So in Haley, oh, I just caught my shoulders curling away from the floor. Check in with your own body's exhaling to lift. Now we're going to lift the left leg and the right arm. Here we go. Exhale. One arm can come all the way back to the ear. Both tap, exhale two and back and three and back and four or five and back and five and back. And we place that foot down.

Minimal shifting in the pelvis and now here we go. Opposite side, right leg, left arm, and and reach. Using that supporting like to keep the height of the body reaching and down and reaching and down. Last one reaching and down. Pause was both legs down, picking up the pelvis, checking in with your position in Ham and XLE. [inaudible] roll, spine down, slow control and soft and the pelvis drops and we inhale gathering energy. We roll back up. We're going to do a kind of a similar thing that we did on our backs.

We're going to lift the left leg. The right arm's going to let us actually lift the right arm up just to the ceiling and then the arm is going to cross. The leg is the leg lifts and then just comes back to straight up and crosses. So feel, can you feel the relationship here between the movement, the crossing of the arm and the lifting of that leg. Last two, last one, and then back. Let's bring that way down. Lifting the left arm up. Inhale and exhale, crossing the Li and so I'm lowering my arm as it comes down towards that moving right leg. I'm keeping my pelvis nice and high. My torso, still my focus in the center of the body. And last one here, reaching and then down right arm comes up to meet the left arm.

Both arms travel out to the side. Let them just off the floor. As you now roll down, down, down, down, all the way through the spine. Once the pelvis comes down, then we can just let the weights [inaudible] rest down on the mat, bringing up the right lane, gluing the left leg to the right leg. Let's inhale and take the knees to the left, reaching the right weight further away and have to come back in UL as we take the legs across to the other direction of reaching that right arm out and exhale to come back. And in here we reach across and exhale to come back and inhale to reach across and exhale to come back. So let's be a little playful. So as we go to the left, let's take the left arm past the knees, and then everything opens back out more nice and stable. And in house we go to the right.

The right arm leaves the floor and just reaches across the body. I still have both shoulder blades still stable on the floor. Let's do it again. Inhale, left arm goes as the legs go to the left and open and right arm comes across the body as the knees go to the right and center and one reaching of [inaudible]. Try to go a little further that time. Reaching both weights in the same direction and open and the other direction.

Going as far as you can without losing your stability. And I think the weights help actually a little bit in my experience. Anyway, please. One foot down plus the second foot down. Bend your elbows and interlock your hands so that the weights rest in your hands. And then the weights are going to create a little, the weights are going to be like a pillow behind the head. It's not a super comfortable pillow for going to be honest, but inhale anyway. Keep on. What I'm doing is I'm hooking the way, it's just right at the base of my skull. So we're going to inhale.

I'm gonna let my head rest on my waits as I curl my head and chest forward. Pause, tailbone heavy, an inhale, and then exhale, lowering the body back down and in here and hurry. Ching Aksia. The legs are down, they're connected together. We inhale and take it down and again in the air and [inaudible]. Exhale, keeping the elbows. Why but not so.

Why that the scapula squeeze together and press the head forward. The head is always just calm, resting on the way and x here and two more in here and exhale and inhale and exhale. Last time we're going to have some rotations, so here we go. Exhale into lift. Let's inhale, let the weights come forward, rest them on the size for just a second. I've got the edges of the weights touching each other and then lift them just off the size. We're going to take the arms over to the left, keeping the pelvis still, and we're going to exhale and bring them back in heels.

They go to the right and exhale to bring them back. And inhale, reach up as you go over and exhale and reach. As you go over. Let's try something else. As we go to the left, the left arm drops in the right arm reaches, oh, that's nice. And then find center. And then the right arm drops. As we shift to the righteous, I'm not dropping it all the way down to the floor, I'm just lowering it and lifting it and like doing an oppositional energy push bottom arm pushes down, top arm pushes across. One more time, exhale and inhale and exhale and inhale. Pause here.

Separate the arms just so that they're resting right near the hipbone. Lift one leg, stabilize your body, lift the other leg, lift the arms up and then bring the head back. So with the weights in the hands, we find that even more of a challenge to keep the bottom of the ribs on the floor. But we'll take it and now we curl the head and chest and now we lift the arms. Belly pulls down and we take it all the way back and we inhale. And exhale, reaching the harms, the head, the chest forward. We press down in here, lifting the arms, then taking the body back. We're going to do this one more time through.

Don't let those weights pull the ribs off the mat and we reach up and pause and lift up and back. And now here we go. We reach up, we hold, we stretched the legs and in two, three, four, five. Nice and calm to two, three, four, five and out reaching the weights so far away. Oh two three, four, five in, in and five, two, three, four, five and now we're going to lower the left leg, lift the right light and out. Two, three, four, five. Switch and out. Two, three, four, five.

Switch an hour, two, three, four, five. Switch out. Two, three, four, pause, place. Just the way it's on the floor. Keep the body lifted. Circle the like day in, around an app. What in? Around, in up to and around and up. Three. Keep rolling the weights forward to keep the body lifted. This is our last one. We go the other way out around and pull in.

Reach out around and pull in, crossing the body. Here's three, holding the body still two and one. Pause. Pick up the weights, switch the length, find it, lift a little weight, go down. And we end here for a circle and x and swing, letting the leg drop and then catch two more in this direction. And last one, pause.

Reverse down around pool like you're dropping. And then catching like a pendulum swinging freely in the air. Last too. And last one, pausing here, said, and the leg forward. Lift the weights and we roll up through the spine and then open the arms out to the side and then take the arms forward. Rounding the spine and rolling back as the upper back touches, we start reaching the waits around up overhead. Inhale, pick the head, chest in, arms up, exhale, crural through the spy.

Find your rounded shake and then open in here and exhale. Feel the contraction. So after so much flection, it's so nice to just a little bit of extension. Let's do two more. Inhale, head, chest and body. Exhale, curl in. Yeah, reach out. Okay. And around her roll back.

This is where my arms are starting to feel a little tired. So again, if the weight's isn't a good idea for you to hold the whole time, simply put them down and we roll that and we open the arms out to the side. Turn the palms to face up, flex the feet in. Yeah, and it's a double twist towards me. One, two and center and twist, twist and center, and exhale. Exhale. So feel that the spine is not just rotating, but getting longer and taller. [inaudible] and leaner. [inaudible] one more. So we twist, twist and center and twist, twist and hold. Bend your knees, reach around for your inkwells so they always are going to bend.

We're going to just pick the feet up off the floor. I've got my weights resting against my shins and we're going to rock back. Just checking here. We go right back and find your balance. Oh, the little harder to go back. A little easier to come up, back and balance. So we just manage that right. Manage the differences in, in each movement movements that we practice and know it's nice to give them just a little bit of a challenge with to chew more readily.

Jean back lifting up last time, reaching back, lifting up, take the weight to the top of the legs. Curl. I'm going to turn mine so that they're parallel to my shin. I'm going just going to use them almost like hooks to hook my knees into as I reached down onto my back for my double leg stretch. So now palms down again. Here we go. Devil like in here and circle at the weights. Rest on the shins.

Pull up and reach and circle weights on the Shins Pole. So what I'm suggesting is that each time we come into that initial position, we let that arms rest or we use the arms to pull the chest up to maintain that positioning of the body and reach and back and two and back and one and back. And now we're just going to take the arms forward just at any level and we're gonna switch sides reach. So feel that the opposite arm is the knees coming into the chest is just reaching. Let's do one more and then you make a little change. So now I have my right knee into my chest. I'm in a lift, my right arm, and then my left arm comes up as my left knee comes in and switch and sweat and sweat.

Last two to one, one. And now we're gonna take the right knees. Gonna bend. We're gonna take the left arm across and we're going to come center both knees bent, right arm Lacrosse, right leg, straight and center and over and center and over and center and three more like this. Press three, press two and two and one and one. I know both. Knees in weights across the chest. Five more with the weights here. No softens. Center five, four, four, three, three, two, two, one, one both. Knees in, feet down on the mat. Arms overhead, resting just off the floor in here.

Press the arms down towards the floor as you roll through your spine. Lifting your hips up in here, getting that nice high bridge. And then exhale. We peel the body down, the arms in the spine, move oppositionally. In this moment I'm just letting the weights rest in my hands and then we press the body up by lowering the arms down and we inhale and we lower the body down by reaching the arms over head. One more time, staying at the top. Exhale to the left. Here we go. We reach up when a pause, wait, stay on the floor. We'd pick up the left leg, stretch it to the ceiling, kick it down towards the Mat and flex back one dad back to strong, straight arms down and three down and four down and five.

Bend that knee. Place the foot and pick up the other leg. Stretch up and now he go down and flex reaching away and Paul lifting the hips and back. Here's two. Here's one. We lift up. We bend the knee, we pick up the pelvis, we reach the arms up, take the arms overhead, roll the spine down, taking the arms and just reaching, reaching, reaching. The arms are going to press through space are going to come back to the mat. We're going to lift the right leg, lift the left leg, stretch the legs on a low diagonal. Inhale for the rollover.

So we tip the body over. Their arms are reaching, we flex, we separate, and we slowly, slowly bring the body down. Bone after bone. As the pelvis touches, the shoulders are still in place. Down and around to touch. Inhale at a roll over. Pause. Flex, separate and peel down.

Paula, this touches feet point. Legs come together and lift. We'll do two more. All over. Flex. Open and down. Point. Circle to Taj. Last time. Left rollover holding here.

I'm going to take one leg down in, one leg up, not into the foam control balance here, just not just keeping the weight over the shoulders. One leg down, one leg. So I'm a little thinking less about my back extensors more today. Less about being all the way up on my neck and more just about balancing on my shoulders so the position won't be as high. And then we're going to bring both legs down to the floor. Gonna roll the spine down.

We're going down as the pelvis, it comes down. I want you to bend your knees, curl your head in Sta, reach your arms for it. And I want you to bicycle, bicycling the legs. You're going to bicycle your spine up, up and down, down, down dad. So we were all on, hey, the bike up here, and then we push the bike down here and one more by sickly, up, up and bicycling back down. Pause, reverse. That can feel a little mentally tricky sometimes. And down, down, down, down. I'm counting us on for three to the top and down to the mat.

One more to go down to three for both knees in both legs up and rule up, up, reaching the weights for the feet, the feats for the weight and feeds for the weight now, but you get it. And then just diving for taking a stretch. So separating the feats, hitting up nice and tall, taking the arms and just resting them down on the legs for a second. And again, just like when we started, you can use that down press of the arms to find a taller spot and then take the arms out in front of you. And inhale. As we exhale, we're going to roll the spine forward and let the waist go just outside the feet. Then bend the arms. You've got weights in your hands, but at imagine they're very heavy cables. Going to bend them next to your body. You're going to stretch them out behind you. Lifting your back up.

You're going to take the arms overhead, feel the length of this spy, and then the arms dropped down in front of us. Inhale, exhale, rolling the body forward into spine stretch, and then bend the arms, pulling heavy cables. Use this extension of the triceps, extension of the elbows to flatten out the back on the diagonal. Then keep the back there and reach around, reaching out in, up through the weights, and then lifting the body up, bringing the arms out in front. And again, exhale, we're rolling. Yeah. Yeah, so the weight's carious maybe further forward. And then we pull, we press the back, Wong, and then we have to hold the body here. This is the hard part. So you reach overhead and then up last two in here and I hang down.

Yeah. And the elbows come in and the arms press out and the back is now a long and we reach you around. We reach around, we let the arms come down to the shins, we do a little help and then just the arms up and reach. As the arms are lifted, we reached through the arms. As the arms are coming down, we bring the body longer and reach and reach and down. Last time we reach and sit up opening the OAM. So we go into the site, inhale to rotate to the left XL.

One week goes back one week, goes forward. Inhale, pull the weights apart from one another, lift and exhale to center in here. Rotate to the right. Exhale to dive down in her. One week goes back one week, goes forward, we lift, lift, lift, lift back, arm comes up and center and rotate and stretch and pull the weights. Maybe even anchor the bottom way down and use it to help you left and then unwind and inhale to rotate and exhale. That's it. And we reach out. Maybe the back arm anchors, we lift up and we find center.

And in last time we were reaching out, reaching up and center and in, yeah. And reaching and lifting up and center. Nice. Lower the weights down. Let's come up onto our knees facing me. So from here, when they take the arms up and I bring the arms open, we're not press the body, reaching the weights into the sides of the body. Inhale, arms up, open and squeeze.

Growing Taller and open. Ah, and down and okay. Ah, and now this time we're going to pivot over onto the left knee. I just have my knuckles wrapped around the bottom edge of the weight. We're going to reach the leg out, the other arm is going to stay in the air. We're gonna flex and Paul trying to keep the upper arm still and Paul and flex and pull, trying to keep the body still flex and flex. And Paul. And now we're gonna go down, lift, touch, lift. Again, just noticing where that upper weight is, letting it be like your guiding light up and forward. Ah, and back up and forward.

Up and back last time, up and forward up and reach the weight and the leg away from one another. And lift. I bring the arm to the thigh and three circles, no, five to one another direction. One using that way to increase that hip work to one. And now you reach that arm up. That leg comes to the mat. We're gonna lift the bottom arm up and we're gonna bend over to this side.

And then reaching up, sliding the leg back in. We take the arms out forward and press ah, forward and press. So there are small weights, right? But they've been in our hands a long time, but you can still create a lot of energy here, gathering energy in the body. So here we go. We're going to go out to the side, we're going to dip over, coming onto the right side of the body, let that love like stretch out. And then it kicks forward and back reaching that left arm out still all the time and forward and back and forward and back.

One more forward and back. I know we go down, up front, up, back, up front. I've tried to get higher and maybe even feeling that the leg just suspends in space and lift and back. This is our last one. We've got to go both directions and here we go. The leg goes to the back when the arm reaches and reaches, then the bottom arm presses away and then that top arm comes up.

It comes down to the leg and we do five, four, three, two, one and reverse. Five, four, three, two or, and then the leg comes down, the arm reaches up, we lift the bottom arm off the floor. That like comes down, meets the other one. We reach up first and then stretching over over. Oh, and then bringing the body back on, bringing that knee in, taking the arms on. So again, out to the side and I just, the trunk moves in here and exhale so the arm stays straight across. We in here and gathering work on. I'm going to go one more time. We in here and XL. Yeah, in, yeah, and exhale. Now this time, inhale, go there first direction.

Put the weight up against your thighs and take that opposite arm in. Reach up, then do a quarter turn and reach forward. Then come back to that first alignment and then windmill, the arms to come back. And inhale, you reach over the opposite arm, lifts, bottom arm presses into the thigh, we curl up. Exhale. Inhale, unwind, spiraling the arms to come. Let's see that one more time. And now over arm goes up. Exhale, rotate and back and Lyft and uh, last one over and rotate back and lift.

And then we're just going to come forward onto our hands and knees. I'm not sure how to organize this with weights, so I'm going to forgive myself for not holding the weights for the whole class, but we'll set them down and come back. So from here, finding a strong center, we're going to take the body into a plank position and I'll take the left leg up and down, up and down, up and down, pushing the weights away from me, pushing the mat away from you last time. And now we kicked back. We find our line, we reach all the way back and calm down, touch and reach back. So we're teeter tottering around the pelvis and reach back and down too and back. Getting a little back extension, little hip extension and back. Placing the foot down. Round the spine. Draw the knees into the mat. Untuck the toes.

Just sit back for a moment. I'm not sitting all the way down on my feet. I'm just pulling with my abdominals away from my hands. But continuing to keep a little forward energy in my hands so I've got opposition. And then we come forward again and the legs come back into the plane position. Now the right leg reaches out and Ah, and Ah, holding the trunk stable and down, out and down.

Last and now here's our teeter-totter or up stretch here, basketball. You reach up and down. Icing call, reach up and down and extend hip extensors, back extensors, light use of the abdominals just for support. Last, right. Reaching up and down and reaching up and stepping in and curliness by letting the knees come to the mat. And then just stretching knack again. This time I'm going to allow myself to yes. Sit all the way down. Perhaps letting the forehead rest on the mat and then we'll roll out and we'll come all the way down.

So let's move on here. Bye. Taking our ways back in our hands and then bringing the width just in front of you, but instead of holding them with your hands, just rest the heels of your hands on top of the wait. So setting up, we've got some engaged. The legs are reaching. So what I want us to do is feel that the left arm presses down, the right shoulder starts to slide back. So one way it's being pushed away, left legs lifting as the right way gets drawn towards me and then down. And now the left weight slides back. We reach the right leg up in opposition.

And so instead of lifting the way through, just doing a gliding action in the Scapula and down and gliding action in the Scapula. And let's do two more. Yeah, and down and down. Down. One more time. On each side. We're rolling the weight but reaching the other way to where and down and earlier. And then I want us to bring the Wayne, I've got some empty space here, so just resting the weights on the floor and the inhale here, we're going to reach up with the half. So lifting up off the floor, arms are hovering, we take the arms back to the legs, you're bringing them back to our side and we'll lower and we lift up on the arms, come back to our side and back to the tee and down and just the arms in there.

And then maybe we'll lift a little higher as the arms come back and then lower as we go back and down. And last two arms had chest lifting a little higher as you bring the arms around and open. And last one, lift up, reach, thrill, reach out and lower. And then just we'll put the weights away where I, where they'll just not be a bother to you. Place your forums on the Mat. Press up onto your hands and knees or your forums and your knees, I guess is a better way to say that.

Take the nope hands and knees have changed my mind. Again. Take the left arm, slide it under the right arm in the right arm will bend and you just want to put your weight down on that left shoulder. And now the arm is on the floor. The righto can be used to help create [inaudible] more rotation. The head can rest on the mat. Let's do a gentle stretch there and then pressing up with the right arm, left hand comes down, left-turn bans as the right arm comes through. And then we can use that to help create rotation.

And then coming back and then reaching back into your rest position and giving the spine, giving the back a chance to be still just gently rolling up. I'm just gonna end resting on my knees and feet. But if this isn't comfortable for you, you could come up onto your knees. In fact, I'll just stay here. So let's take the arms reaching. So now I don't know about you, but my arms feel a lot lighter. I said, open the arms and then press the arms forward and just curl the spine back, sitting backwards, and then letting the rooms come down towards the thighs as he come back up.

Right. The arms reach Ya. He'll lifter, he reach for the spine around round, round, yams come down. We'll do that one more time. Reach out. So just calming, calming the body around. And then just pausing here on your knees, going the opposite way with yarns, we lift them. Let me just let them soften out worth and downward. Slowly feeling the energetic work that you've created in your body.

Running out through arms, up and down the spine, out through the fingertips, wide reach, reaching to touch the outside of the room, and then as the arms rest down. Thank you. We're done.