Finding Balance in your Body

Okay. Today's really exciting cause my friend Sarah, show your face. Sarah is here to play. Okay. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to put our hands on our needs. Um, am my springs. I'm loaded for footwork, but we're gonna do a little warming up for us. So just rest your hands on the front of your knees and then press your knees like you're trying to push your femur as backwards towards your body and lift your chest and look up and then find straight again. And then bend your elbows in, round down towards your thighs, towards your knees with the top of your head. Do that same backwards slides.

I'm keeping my arms basically doing that same energy all the time, but we're going to extend out on the diagonal over the knees, lift the sternum and come back up straight again so the arms have to bend and straighten the hand and letting my hands rotate around a little bit. Let's do that again. Push back. Lift the sternum. Look up. Yeah, look down. Round the spine. I take my elbows to my sides. Curl pulling with the arms as much as you're pulling with the spine, creating a tunnel through your abdominals. Press back with your arms, elongate through the spine like you're trying to place, or lay the spine down over the legs and then lift the sternum and sit up.

I think one more. That is plenty. Lift the spine. Look. Huh? Round. Exhale, elongate. Inhale, using the arms, keeping that strong and lift, and then let's just do that without a push. Taking the arms forward. Reach up, look up. Inhale, open the arms round forward, reaching out in front of you and roll back up. So I change it a little. We're not extending were around him, but that's okay. Reach the spine, Huh? Lift Luca. Open the arms out to the side. Draw back through the center of the body. Create a tunnel through your spine, through your waist, and roll back up. Just one more time. Lift the spine.

Lift the arms. Look on open round. Now here's why. We're going to create a little movement. We're going to inhale here. Exhale. Start curling yourself down onto the box parts in here and Xcel. Corolla. We're going to stay round. They just hinges in here, XR around feeling the lower spine. Come to the box, pause in here and Kirra and we'll do that two more times in here. And exhale, roll back. Press the legs together, squeeze your bottom.

Inhale and exhale and last time in here and exhale back. Okay. And India and exhale round forward. Find that round shape. Then lift the body up, interlock your fingers, bring your hands behind your head, press the head into the hands and inhale here. Exhale, rotating towards me. Inhale, find center. Exhale, rotate. The other direction in Hill Center field that you're lifting, like you're suspended from the ceiling reaching. So the pelvis is heavy on the box, but the spine is light traveling upwards and center and twist and center. Last time both sides. Exhale to rotate.

Center and exhale to rotate and center. Bring the arms forward. Again, we're going to roll back onto the box. So tip the pelvis under, rounding backwards. And then once you get down to the bottom, we're going to stay down there for awhile. So bring your hands behind your head. And what I want us to do is keep the lower spine on the Bach, but let the upper spine go over the top and then without leading with the head lead with the breastbone.

Keep the head in the hands and lift as though you're just hovering into a straight line. Pause. Inhale and exhale as you work your way back. Inhale again. Excellent. As you lift ribs sliding down the front of the body, head pressing into the hands so you're actually can use your head like a weight that you're having to lift. Inhale to pause and exhale to go back.

We're going to do three more. Inhale, shouldn't feel easy. It's simple, but it shouldn't feel easy and lift. If it feels easy, check how much you're moving your head forward. That makes a huge difference. Float the body up one extra inch and XLC go down last too. Notice that or be sure that as you're going over the back, you're not totally relaxing. Your lower back is still connected to the box. Pause, lift [inaudible] flow one extra inch and go backwards. Last lift flow, reach forward and roll all the way up again and lift the arms and open the irons and around and roll back again. Just needed to have a little sit up break and then come back. Hands behind the head again.

We're going to do a little bit of rotation, so we're going to go back first. Just once. Find your lift. You're that same hovering feeling and then just the same as we did sitting on the box. We're going to spiral the spy and center and spiral and center and spiral and center and reaching up in a cross center. Last one, reach up and over. Find Center.

Reach up and over. I don't know. Can we get up from here? It'll be, uh, it'll be a good, it's a good question and lift all the way. If you get stuck, just kick yourself off. Hold onto, you're like, that's it. Sit. Get down off the box. Put The box away. I've set up for footwork on three reds and a blue spring. Of course, I know everyone is more than welcome to choose their own springs for footwork. I'm going to come down onto our back [inaudible] because they were going to do this. Um, little variation on footwork that I like to play with.

So arms down next to the body, finding your neutral spine. We're going to press the legs out, stray and Ben. So this doesn't seem like much of a variation and it's not, but we'll change it in just a second. So just keep, just find the, get real anchored in your body here. Feel the backsides of the ribs last two and then one more. And Bend from here.

I want us to curl the pelvis up about maybe just to the bottom of the ribs, about a just a fist with off the reformer. And now press, keep the curl and pull. Press keeps the scoop and pull and three and then really challenging the abdominals to find that scoop as you come in. One more bend in. Don't go all the way down, but instead just reach out into a neutral spine. So now we're hovering off the, but we have this, we have a straight back and we press. And then it's interesting, I feel just being in this floating position, you can really find asymmetries in your body or I can anyway, last to and in last time come in, pause, re round the spine and roll down, moving to the toes. We won't go through all foot positions like that, but that's the idea that we're working with today.

Impress out keeping the heels sta and then and reach out. So we're just going through this fairly quickly just to warm up the body. There's a lot of other things that we have planned today or I have planned. We'll surprise Sarah and then one more and pull pause here. So at the bottom we're just going to do five of each sa, roll on, press out, keep that curl, keep that curl and bend and reach and draw in an under and reach and in an under two more reach.

Focus on the end. Last one, focus on the end, pause, flatten out the spine, hover it. So maybe if your hands were stacked one on top of the other, that's how high you are away from their former. And then now just ah, and back and stretch and bend three and pull last two one more time from here. Re Round the spine and articulate the spine all the way back down. Small v shape with defeats. So you just get your first five to get nice and centered in your body. And maybe if you've noticed any asymmetries when you go into the other positions, this is a good time to work yourself back or work against those asymmetries into a more balanced place. Last time, let me pull the reformer and hold here.

Round the spine. Get into that nice deep scoop and press five and drag and four and dragon and three and in and two. And in last time one, bring it in. Pause back into a straight back just to hand stack that much space. Reach out and pull and out and pull Siri.

Okay. And to, and one coming all the way back in. Get into a deep round in the spine and then roll the spine down all the way we organize your feet so that they're back parallel to one another. We're going to stay on the reformer for our calves and our prances. So stretch out. Just do 10.

Taking the heels all the way down and connecting that movement to the backside of the body, connecting that movement perhaps all the way through the spine. So Elan gating the heels, reach down the head could reach up, lengthening, or bringing the spine in the opposite direction. We'll do four more noticing as you lift up onto your toes where your weight lands last too. Last time. Pause and begin to alternate. Taking one heel down, lift other heel down, lift and change up and Shange.

[inaudible] noticing if there's any shifting from side to side in the pelvis. [inaudible] so is there any rocking back and forth in the trunk as any loss of energy and the active reaching of the arms? Just do one more pause for a moment and allow yourself to really sink into that stretch. [inaudible] lift, switch, lift. Bend the knees and bring the carriage in. Turn to your side, help yourself up. Take your spring, uh, springs down to one. Read maximum for me. We're gonna do, um, abdominals with legs and straps. So you want to come facing the back of the reformer new and take the, make sure the straps are even first. That's a good idea.

And then take the straps and hook them over the tops of your knees. [inaudible] as your role down. You want your placement to be so that when your body's inflection, you're just should be able to reach for your shoulder blocks and just barely touch. And then just lift, float the Nisa and hold onto your knees for just a moment. Let's change that and do the double leg stretch arms today instead of holding the hands behind the head. So as the legs reach out, the arms reach overhead, they press through spaces. We pull the knees in, in your reach, opening, pull and Hillary stabilizing the spine against serif form or inhale open. Reach around pool. Inhale, open to reach around Paul. Just gonna do two more small amounts.

Enough, in my opinion, small repetitions. Well executed movement path. Take the hands behind the head, both legs out in here. Rotate to your left. Exhale. Inhale, center. Rotate to your right. Inhale, center, keeping the legs moving in and out with a nice rhythmic pace. Exhale. Inhale, exhale.

Inhale. Exhale. Two more bolts, directions center coming up and across center. Coming up in, across last one in here, and Roti and in. Yeah, and Roti. Come back through center. Lift the length straight legs up and lower. Five and lift and lower. Four and lift and three and lift.

And two. One more lift. We bend. Take the hands on the knees. Curl that chest up in a rock yourself up to sitting. Once you get up to the top, take the straps off of your size. We're gonna keep that red spring. Let's take the foot bar down. Oh, I'll just lie on our sides.

I'm coming all the way down. MMM. Positioning your body so that it's at the back edge of the reformer. So we're going to take this strap, this friend's strap, and put it on our foot. Yeah. Bottom. You can say bend. In fact, start with both knees bent and make sure you're far enough back so that the strap is out of the way of your knees.

And then lift that top leg gonna just stretch the leg straight out. It's going to trace the edge of the reformer and bend and trace the edge of the reformer and Ben and Marie and Ben. Two more reach [inaudible] Ben, just again, I think small rep sometimes is just enough. So plenty, uh, keep the leg straight when you get there next and then press the leg behind you or let the Presta like so that the straps comes up against the body and then push the strap into the body by bringing the leg further back and then go forward. So I'm just challenging the hip extension there and then come back. Stop comes up against the body. We pushed back into it and in here and back and last to so work that you're not r p conscious that you're not pushing from the front of your leg, but instead pulling actively from behind. You're like one more time, bring it back, lifted up, bring it around to the front of you down and pull back again.

You have to just refine the range of motion that allows you to keep your pelvis still. And three more back around and lift and back around in lift last time, back around and lift. And then Sarah, we're going to reverse that. So take the leg to the ceiling, press back. As the leg goes behind you, press forward with your pelvis and then swing the leg forward. Lifted up, press around behind you and down three more forward. Oh, around in, down, two more forward, uh, around and down. Last time. All around. And so that was awesome.

Turn onto your back. Let's take the foot out of the strap first and then turn onto your back. And then we're going to put the foot back in the same foot into the same strap. So when you put your foot back in you, it will be the opposite leg. Two strap. I want us to take the leg that's free of the strap and stand on the floor with it and then just start to bring that straight, like back towards our bodies.

So for some of us, we might get a little bit of a hip flexor stretch in the leg with the foot on the floor. Maybe not for everyone, but for some. Well then we're going to take the leg that's in the strap and bring it across the body, keeping the pelvis anchor down on the reformer and just stretching through that hip and then bend the leg in the strap, bring the foot off the floor and put the knee against the ankle and Culligans the knee and let the springs sis you as you just go a little deeper into that stretch. Take your foot out. Change Science. Okay, so you could use a pillow if it's not comfortable for you to lie on your arm could put your head rest up. There's all sorts of things you can do to manage that position.

I like to just lay on my arm, bring the foot into the strap legs about 90 degrees from the hip to the need of the ankle. Ready to go. Sarah, lifting the leg and repress out along their frame of the reformer and bend. Tailbone reaches back. That work, travels all the way up this spy and bend. Feel that you're not pushing from the front of the leg, but at that each time you just put a little weight into your foot, stand in your strap and push from there. Here's our last one and then we're going to take the leg back so the strap will run into the body and forward. I like to keep my other hand, my free hand on my pelvis just to monitor it and make sure it's not moving. Go full back. It's a full hip extension to the back of the body.

Last two, last one coming back. Here's where we go into our circles. We lift the leg up. Well it comes down in front of us and push back. Rotate in the hip. Bring the leg up in, around center. Push back up in around last two, finding the upper most part of the back of the leg.

One more pause in the front and then just go in the rivers. Go up, reach behind you. Really try to explore the range that backward range. India lake comes forward. It lifts excellent presses around in back behind us. We'll do three more. Inhale to come forward. Lift, stabilize the pelvis as the leg goes around last too, and are around last one.

[inaudible] and around. Great. I'm just going to turn onto my back. I'm going to keep my leg into the strap. If you need to take your foot out to get yourself around. You should. I'm gonna place the foot on the floor. That strap is just going to come into our hand. I mean, just reach down and give that hamstring a stretch.

And then bring leg across the body and breathe and let the pelvis be heavy. And then bend the knee. Bring the knee up against [inaudible]. Let the carriage pull in or let this spring with the spring that's attached to the carriage. Bring you into that stretch. Okay. And then when you're ready to step out of that strap, hold the strap in your hand. Take your other strap in your other hand.

You can do the Jackknife so the arms come up in front of the shoulders. Okay, so we're setting up for the Jack Knife. So hands in the straps. Lift one leg, lift the other leg, stretch the legs out on the diagonal that you can maintain control of your lower spine against the carrot. Then press the arms down in the legs, up. Inhaling as you do excelling as you roll the spine over, take the legs into the well and then press the legs up towards the ceiling and then slowly roll down bone by bone through the spine. Tailbone touches. Lower the legs. Lift the arms. Two more. Inhale to lift. Press the arms down.

Reach the arms forward as the body goes over the top, and then feel that the back extensors have to work as you bring your legs up into the air, India, and exhale slowly lower the spine down. Controlling. Lower the lengths. Lift the arms. Last one. Inhale, exhale, rollover. Inhale down and then up and exhale to roll the spine down. I'm breaking. I folded back in half so I could get a nice stretch as I come down for that final time. Awesome. Then the knees lift the arms. Place the feet down to it.

Set the straps back. Turn to your side. Help yourself on set up the bar for shoulder push. So I'm going to use my high bar, not my high high bar if you have three choices, but my middle bar, if you have three choices in my high bar, if you only have to come onto your knees on the reformer, still working with one red spring here, come down onto your forearms so that the hands are pressed up against the shoulder blocks. I like to think of pressing into the shoulder blocks like trying to squeeze the shoulder blocks together a little bit. Step one foot onto the bar, straighten that leg, find your support. Don't change the spine. Bring the other leg back.

And from here we take the arms forward. Three and that too, and back one and that pause here. Lift the hips, flattening out the spine. Bring the carriage all the way into the stopper. And then as we articulate back down the shoulders, come back down underneath the elbows. Come underneath the shoulders. Here we go again. Press three, press two, press one, lift. Head comes down between the arms, the spine lengthens. We bring the carriage all the way in. We're going to do that. One more repetition.

Bring the elbows underneath the shoulders and press three strongly to one and lift up. Pause there, flex through the heels, and then bend one knee to the reformer. Then the leg that's still on the foot bar. Keep the same spring roll through your spine and just scoot yourself forward so that your knees are up against the shoulder blocks. Take the straps in your hands. I'm going to hold above the hardware just right on the tops of the Romes arms.

Straight spine long. Feed in line with the knees and we exhale and press back and forward. Reaching down towards the floor and lifting the spine up in forward and pulling back through the abdominals. Just really trying to warm them up or heat up that upper back. Thinking about the postural muscles, muscles that run up and down the spine, and I do four more here. Reaching back and reaching back and Ben to last one.

Reach all the way back down. Sit Down, put the straps back, reach back. I'm going to add another blue spring. For this moment. Um, have been working my arms this way for lately and I really like it. I don't know if I've showed you yet, Sarah, but here we go. So you can take your shop's again. You want to be a backwards so that you can use your feet to hook.

Yeah, straps in the hands and then we're going to lean back into the side stretch until we have tension. And then it's just a bicep curl. So pull and stretch holding that size, stretch position and reach and pull. You can make it a little more challenging by keeping the elbows a little. That's a choice that you could decide to make. I'm going to choose not to. Well, I'll do for holding the body nice and still in that backward position.

Last two, one more. Reach forward. Take both straps in one hand, sit down again and at another spring I'm going read. So now I have two reds in a blue. It's a pretty heavy spring, but we're going into the back of the body. We can handle it. Come up once again, create that knee, hinge, that side stretch. And then it's a row. So we bend the elbows and pull back and push and pull back. I think this is like one of my new favorite things to do.

What's nice about it too is that because the spring is so heavy and because you're in that lean back position, you really have to manage around stabilizing your trunk. Springs can very easily pull you around. So that's another thing I like about it. We'll do four more. Pull and reach. Pull an re last too.

Yeah, one more. Take the arms forward, reach down, set the straps back, turn yourself around and go down, back down to one spring. Once run red spring will come from the down. Stretch into the Combo, the the combination. So we're going to go feed up against the shoulder blocks, bringing the pelvis forward over the knees, lifting the chest, three down stretches. We reach out and bring the chest up and forward, pulling up against that bar, trying to keep the foot nice and flexed against the shoulder blocks. Here's number two and number one, so for into combination. So from there, this pelvis talks, we reach back into our knees. Stretch position, flatten out the back, press the legs out from underneath you. Drop the pelvis down and lift and around the spine. Keep the carriage in. Flatten out the spine. Press out with the hips, the hip extensors.

Drop the pelvis into place. Think of tucking the pelvis slightly just to support the lower spine. Last one round. Sit Back, tailbone lifts, legs, press, pull through. Should we do the Cobra round s? Flatten the spine. Now this time we press out with the arms.

Careful with your shoulders here. Press all the way out. Drop the hips under and through. Pull through just one step more round the spine. Straight in the spine. Press out through your shoulder flexors.

Press out through your hip extensors. Lift the eyes, lift the spine. Come all the way back in. One more round. Extend. Press with the arms. Press with the lane, drop the hips through. Come all the way in. Sit back. Untuck your toes and just sit back towards your feet.

Letting your forms rest on top of the bar, giving yourself just that slight shoulder stretch and then coming all the way up. Stand on your feet. Heels up against the shoulder blocks, reaching down into the elephant, finding a nice flat spine from their weight in the heels. Inhale, take the legs back. Xcel. If this is too light of a spring for you, feel free to add. Say a blue spring. Inhale. I enjoy this spring for me. Last time. Inhale back. Exhale. Shift the right hand over towards the left side of the bar.

Lift the right leg out to the side and then bring it around behind you. So you're in your elephant arabesque. Let me take the left leg out and we pull back in and as that lead comes underneath, we lift the back leg even higher in heel to stretch out. Exhale, pull in, lifting up through that back leg. Last one, pull in, put more weight on your left hand.

Rotate the pelvis so the hip is lifting up and turning and then bend the right knee so we find a nice opening hip stretch there. Stretch the leg back out. Step back down into the reformer. Let's separate the hands and just do two more regular elephants in the center. Just setting back up again, getting into alignment. One more.

Bring the left hand across towards the right. Stand on the right leg. Take the left leg out around in a, I mean they'll nice line long line from the hands to that tippy toes and then we press in and pulling the leg in. Taking the leg out in here and sliding the shoulders down the back as the leg comes underneath this one more time in you and exhale, pause there. Keep the carriage in. Rotate the pelvis, lift that up and then bend that knee. Reach it around behind you. Turning, letting that pelvis open. Stretch the leg back out straight. Set it down onto the reformer.

Reach down with your arms towards your feet. Pause there. Soften your knees and articulate your spine all the way back. Be careful as you step down, take the bar down. Three more exercises. Sarah, I'm going to surprise you. I'm not going to tell you what they are. Step to the front of the reformer.

One foot on the frame of the reformer. Place your hands down. Hold the carriage still with your hands. Lift your other foot and step is far out towards the shoulder block as you can. If you can find that shoulder block. Awesome. Hold the carriage still. Now as we roll through this spine, lifting ourselves up, arms out to the sides. We're going to open the legs.

Inhale, pause, lean back. Just a little stair. Two, three and in, hold on. Two, three an open. Huh? Two, three and lift through the top of the head. Hold on to, sorry. Let's just do two more. So I have knowing that there's only two more explore of your range perhaps or not. The first rule of thumb is look after yourself, but as an idea, if you're wanting a challenge last time and pull in whole two, three Ben, the leg that's on the um, frame, slide the other leg in and step down. We'll take the long way around Sarah and have a little rest.

Okay. Same thing again, step up onto the frame first. Gotten back to that shoulder block or not. Hey, you just decide where you can manage from there. Keeping the reformer still, we roll the spine up, bring the arms out to the sides and inhale the legs open. Hold two, three. Exhale. We pull the legs at the same time. Back to the other hole. Working the legs evenly and reachout.

Pause two, three and pull back. Pause two, three ad reach Ya. Okay, pullback holding two, three last time. We're going as far as you can knowing that you still have to come in and control your dismount. Holding three, two, one bend, slide and step down onto the floor. We're going to do snake, Sarah Snake, no twist. Twist, snake, snake.

So alternating sides. Okay, so step up onto the foot bar. One hand goes onto the shoulder block. One hand goes just opposite on the opposite side. Step up with the other leg so that the ankles cross and find your long flats by in your press out. Exsalt. Rotate the pelvis under. Look over your back shoulder. Inhale, come back and exhale to come in three times in your reach out.

Push your foot into the foot bar. Try to hold the carrots steady as you go through that rotation and in last time in here, rotate, rotate and stepping down to the floor. Eh, take the long way around. Just that little moment of keeping your hands off a break. Sometimes it's all you need. Foot, hand, hand, foot. Long back.

Press the reformer away. Rotate. Looking over your back shoulder. Come back and draw in. Inhale Allen and Rowe Tay lifting up out of the shoulders. Back and in. Last one, reaching around, back and, and stepping down to the floor both feet down, back around the other side. For the snake. I'm just doing a little room. Little wrist.

What's that Cha Cha Cha. I don't know. Fleming go. That's what I wanted. Just moving my wrist. Ready for the snake. Here we go. Foot, hand, hand, so that we cross the ankles. Just like before coming up into that rotated pike position. Pressing into the foot. Press the carriage away. Inhale. Exhale.

Extend the spine. Look up. Inhale back. Exhale n three times. Inhale, extend, lift back and in. One more reaching up and coming back. Stepping down to the floor. I got a little heart raise on that one. Coming around to the other side is that we agree on finale. Here we go. One Hand, one hand, one foot, stepping up, finding your rotation, finding your long bat. Press the carriage away.

Extend through the spine, lift and look. Uh, make sure that as you're going through that extension, that you're really managing the shoulder that's in the front. Try not to sink into that at all. Come up and in last time and back, stepped down onto the floor. [inaudible] come all the way out and let's just face each other, Sarah. So He'd take the arms out, reaching out.

In a way. I want us to lean back just a little bit, and then take the arms out to the sides and dive forward with your chest. Drawing the abdominals back towards the spine. It was going to reach down. Rounding the spine, my arms feel tired and Rola. Just sharing that all the way I want to do one more. Is he near him? That, so just gathering energy, pressing out, diving forward, releasing any tension in the body here and lifting it. [inaudible].