Exploring Advanced Movements

Hi everybody. We're here for a mat class with magic circle. So come on, get started. I want you to put it right between your knees and find yourself a sitting tall. And let's just take a couple breaths to center ourselves. You can put your hands on the back of your knees and I want you to open up your elbows just a little bit away from your sides and open up your shoulders and just take a few deep breaths. Imagine that you're sitting right against a wall or possibly even against someone else's back so that you get a real good sense of that axial elongation from your tailbone all the way up your spine. Take a nice deep breath, and as you exhale, just lightly squeezing your abdominals in.

And again, [inaudible] see if you can expand your ribs a little more side to side as well as to the back during the inhale. And as you exhale on these next few reps, let's just do a gentle squeeze in against the ring to the inhale as you release it with control, filling up the inside of your body, height and width. And then as we exhale, stay tall, but squeeze through the magic circle. Feel the abdominals contract. Inhale nice height and width across your back. Exhale as you can tract without losing that height. I feel like you can just isolate those inner thighs and the low belly muscles two more times. Inhale and exhale.

One more basic breath with a little squeeze. [inaudible] go ahead and release it slightly and you probably would want to keep a little bit of contraction on your inner thighs. Another breath in. So let's do four basic little curl back of your sacrum and inhale as you bring it forward. So what do you think of growing tall as you rock your weight back off your sit bones to the back of your, really back of your sit bones, kind of opening up your sacral Iliac joint in your lumbar. And then inhale as you come back forward two more times and exhale.

It's really easy to shorten your spine as you do these. Um, flections. So think about lengthening as you move the weight of your pelvis. So you've got that upward lift and allowing room for you to roll back off your sit bones. Okay, I'm going to do four with a little bit of torso rotation. The other hand is going to come through the ring and just hold onto the knee. And then again for here if you can kind of find those depo muscles.

This side is my external oblique, uh, section, my internal on the opposite as well. Excuse me, internal here, external here and contract keeping those shoulders open last too, just finding those kind of lower corners of your belly. And one more time. Exhale, focusing right in around my uh, naval to my pelvis. Other side for four and exhale and roll off [inaudible] and rural. Back up on top. Sit bones. Exhale, roll back off. Sit bones and up on top and exhale and up. And last one rock back and right up on top.

Find Center. Reach your arms for real. Let's go a little bit further back. I'm thinking half roll back. Squeeze your ring and let's go down for four and three and I'm going to move my circle a little bit. Two and one and up in four counts. One and two and three and four. Just one more like that. One thing, pelvis mainly to tell this three and four and rolling up one and two and three and four. Just two counts to come back.

One and two and up and two, three more like this. Just reaching the arms over the top of the ring. We'll add a little arm work in just a second. Ah, deep in those abs. I've got a little contraction on my, of my legs against the magic circle on lift. So I'm going to go back into counts again and down and to hold this position, open the arms up overhead. Big Circle, scoop around and come back up. Ooh, let's do three more like that.

So two counts down and to big circle and open and up and up and down and hold up positions. Circle the arms around and contract last time and down and two and big reach. Open around and center. Okay. I want you to move your pelvis forward just a little bit. Hands behind your knees and gently guide yourself down until you're on your back. Squeeze the circle, bring your heels in a little closer.

Once you are connected to the back of your thighs, way up high by your seat. Inhale here and a nice easy pelvic curl. Nothing fancy and that good sense of height than your hips and lengthen your upper spine. So I'm thinking of chess bone along the spine here, up through the crown of my head, not necessarily releasing ribs, those two different things. We want that sense of length. Okay. And then rolling down from that upper back. Ah, and one more plain one.

So today's class has a little bit of variety in it as you would imagine for me, some classic exercises, but a few little extras. Here we go. I'm like this. So come on up. And two, I want you to lift your arms, just open them and close them a couple times. Just start to get a sense of opening through your chest and one more time, open and close, and then roll down and lower your arms at the same time. Feel free to add that arm piece if you'd like to or just keep your arms down and to do it again, rolling up, lift and hold that pelvis there. Lift your arms and then just open close chest expansion and close.

Inhale, open close. Two more and last one and close. This time I'm going to take my arms back as I unroll my spine down this way. Really Lush, just feeling that link. If someone had my hands and they were pulling me that way and someone had my pelvis and pulling me this way, I would get an inch longer, I bet in my spine. Let's start again. Keep your arms up. Roll Up.

Now endeavor to get every vertebra to touch the mat. That might be their tricky spot right there and lift. Inhale at the top. Reach a little further now exhale, reach your tailbone out toward the ring a little further. Reach you're not done. Reaching. Reach a little more, a little more, a little more, and come all the way down. How much length can we get? Right? Arms down. I want you to do one more bridge, but bring your feet in first.

Curl up. Now to get into the muscles in the seat, I want you to lift your heels, lower your heels. Let's do 10 of them without dropping your hips or losing this extension. So you don't want to pike the hips this way. That might work your back. I want you to focus on right here.

So let's go one and squeeze the ring and three. So could we use your arm extensors a little bit? Back of shoulders and triceps and lats. Squeeze and lift and eight and nine last one, 10 and let's unroll all the way down and bring it together. Okay, so let's take the ring behind the head. Okay, so you're gonna poke one padded part right behind your skull.

The hands go inside the circle. You can stack them, elbows are slightly out to the side. Breathe in hand as you exhale into your first, just to almost like you're going to lift your face. It's kind of an interesting. And then lift your chest. Hold this position, breathe in again. As you exhale. Now fold both legs up and lift the legs to the ceiling.

So instead of the 100 with the arms pumping, let's do five counts down with the legs. Five counts up. So we have into three, four, five. Exhale for five and exhale three, four, five and down. And do four, five and reach to four five unreached. So we're halfway there. I want to just keep working on curling up in my chest, like it renewed my chin over my chest. Holding that belly button in last two, three, four, five and lift. Last one, two, three, four, five and up and fool the knees and arrest. Feet down. Take the ring away, put it in your hands and just lightly squeeze it and take those arms again into shoulder flection.

Just feel that extension here and walk your legs a little further forward and let's try some roll up. Arms had chess. My first one is usually a little sticky. Want you to reach forward, but pull the abdominals way back and opposition. Then rolling it down all the way and again, so sequencing arms had chest spine, the crown of the head is following the inside of that circle. Head is above the shoulders, a little bit. Breathe in and exhale, focus on the pelvis. Mainly that upper back will start to come down. We know we want to get that lumbar down sequentially before the middle back.

Last two [inaudible] last one. See if you can find your lower external obliques. Squeeze the ring a little bit to tap into right here to see if you can flex that spine a little bit more effectively. Same winning on the way down. So it's like the lad external oblique right here and helping a flex that spine and all the way. Okay. Leg circles today. Arms are going to stay right here. Anchor your shoulder blades, lift your right leg. Let's just go right to our leg circles cause we know what we're doing through crossing around lift [inaudible].

So the anchoring of your shoulder blades is key here so that you don't topple side to side. Okay. And reverse for five and four. Three lift up to that ring. Two and last one and hold. Now turn the ring. Put your foot on there. Press your foot into the ring.

Lift your head in your chest. Let's go for a little tree. So I'm going to stop on my sacrum. I'm going to bend my elbows and try to flex my spine forward toward that leg. Square your hips. Lower your shoulder blades. Now as you rolled down, straighten your arms first. Let yourself tip, let yourself tip, but keep pressing forward into the magic circle. And then bring your leg up to 92 more times. Leg Out, flex and curl. Reach out to connect to the back of your thigh.

Lift and pull yourself up over and then leaning back all the way. One more time. Press in sudden again, thinking about pulling with my arms, but using the connection right there. Last external obliques. Lengthen and lower all the way back. All right, time for the second leg circle. So the lower that leg, hold it in your hands, lift your left, organize things. Here we go. Cross around lift and four and five even shoulder blades on the mat, even pelvis and three and four and five.

Hold, turn the ring. Set your foot in there. Okay, so press your foot, but I'm thinking about the press in the back of my thigh forward as I pick up my head and chest, mainly abdominals at right about here. I'm going to think less external oblique right in here to flex my spine, lift my stomach up and try to bend forward toward the leg. Now leaning back, extend the arms, articulate through your spine, control your descent down to the mat and lengthen. Stretch those hamstrings says go again. Help yourself up. Use little bit of arm work. Your mainly your center.

Lift up and over that thigh. Extend your arms and articulate. So we have one more to stay at the top after this one pool and just relax. Okay, put both feet in without too many movements. If you can help it there. How much movement do I have a space? Do I have behind me enough? Okay, so today I'm going to fall. No, I'm not. Okay. I want you to do four balls like this.

So two or three things that are happening here. I am using my arms to pull myself in. I do want to push my feet into the the pad, but I also want to keep my knees right where they are for now. Let's try about four. Ready? Roll, roll. That's where it really counts at the top. Lift your hips. Try not to over. Push through the legs. Lift the hips.

Try not to over push. And next one. Whoops. Okay, now extend your knees. Flex your knees. Try that a couple times. We're going to add that extension of the knees while we're overhead. Okay? But we're not going to roll onto our head. We stay on the shoulder blades.

I think we all know that. So here we go. Look in, ready, roll back to your shoulder blades and extend and extend a little bit more. Work in balance and control. Uh, as you can see two more times. [inaudible] it's easier if I don't talk and extent. That was it and extent. Okay. Flex in, whoa. And roll back. Some days are better than others. Okay. Putting it behind your head. I didn't again, hands at the the pad and that's where it's gonna stay for the ABS series of five. Okay, so just start extending a leg. Let's just do 10 and nine.

Curl a little higher. Ah, feel how nice and supported your head and neck are. Seven and eight and nine. Easy, breezy. Double leg stretch. Just the legs. We go out, we come in, we go out, go low, come in and linkedin pool last to my lats and obliques are like a big happy family hugging one another. Now the scissors. Let's do flex feet today and flex and flex. When I'm in a little external rotation.

Ah, go for eight more and press the thigh down. Press the thigh. Three five. Keep lifting up off those shoulder blades and seven and eight double leg. Lower lift. [inaudible] I'm going to go Chris, Cross, left knee in and twist and twist and twist.

Look at the back elbow a little bit. Look, just four more. One, two, three and four and a little rest. Okay. Up we come. Move yourself back on your mat and I'm going to turn around this way for just a little while. Give my neck a little different appearance and direction. So as you're sitting up on top of your sit bone for spine stretch forward, just start with it right in near your chest. Elbows are out, shoulder blades aren't too protracted nor to retract it.

Just find that happy place there. Take a deep breath and as we exhale, send the ring forward, squeeze it a little bit and reach your rib cage behind you. Front ribs to back rib. Squeeze all that air out. Inhale, pull it in and sitting. Tall. Exhale again. [inaudible] [inaudible]. I'm actually thinking quite a bit. The Lat, external oblique edge right here. Trying to help me flex through the top of my lumbar.

I'm going to do this two more times today. That shape is really important for me and this shape is definitely the open like rock or shape, which is coming up on a minute. Find that connection. Inhale, bring in and last time. Exhale, slight variation. Inhale, bring it in. Just exhale, stay. I'm going to turn toward you all an inhaled toward my right leg. Same thing. Kind of a little variation of saw right over to the other side.

[inaudible] find the connection to opposition. So as you reached the arms and ring away, bring in front ribs to back ribs to really open up the back of your spine. One more of this and then we'll add a little extra and inhale and just pause for a second. Okay, so turning into your right leg breathing. Same thing. Exhale, reach at towards your leg. Now what I want to do, inhale, rotate toward my left. So the spiral has occurred in my spine. I'm gonna lift my left side up so I'm neutral, vertical and lowered down. This is the breath hen. Turn to the leg and reach.

Say Oh. Now the next inhale, there is a spiral. Now I'm turning toward my right. Stretching my left's up, my right side. Lift up tall and bring it down. Read them. Let's just do one more. Each side. [inaudible] open your left ribs. Taken the air. Stretch that left rib. Sight up. Lift. Bring yourself home.

Last one to the left. I tried to take in that link them stretch and all the way up and harassed. Okay, let's turn over onto our bellies for swan. I'm not going to use the ring for Swan for now, so just set it to this side. Put your hands by your shoulders, legs together.

Shoulders are anchored. I'm gonna Start with my elbow slightly Hubbard and begin to reach through the front of my head, my face, my chest am pressing all the way through. Taking a nice glance forward and exhale as they come down the front of the chest. Just two more today. Inhale, maybe like the elbows. Press down toward the bed to lift the front of the chest up. Strong legs underneath and then coming down broad.

One more [inaudible] and all the way down. So single leg kick. I am going to use the magic circle just between my elbows here. So pressing in against the, and then palms face flat. Look up. Here comes the right leg, kick, kick and down and kick. Kick. I'm going to flex my feet today. Kick, kick. Find a way to press the elbows.

In that ring. To find your serratus muscles and kick and kick. Kick down for more. [inaudible] AA kid coming next and kick. Kick and down. Right cheek on the mat. Put the ring in the small in your hands.

Lengthen it down over your legs and not resting on your booty. Butt Hubbard both legs. Come in for three kicks. One, two, three. Lift your chest, slide the ring down the back of your thighs and externally rotate your shoulders. Let's do the other side. Exhale, one, two, three and lift externally, rotate the shoulders, other side and kick. Two, three reach. I'm just gonna do one more today. Turn and the kick, two, three and all the way left. And take the ring away. And let's come in just for a little easy cat stretch or child's pose. Shake a little bit. Okay, we're going in for half neck pool and I want to have us do the same thing.

Put it behind the head. All right, hands inside the circle. Feed a little bit apart. Legs apart. Flex feet. Use the behind your skull to give you a lift and of your neck. So a height. Give yourself a little bit of curve in there. Okay, now half of the neck pole. What I want to do today is just control my hinge place here, flex through my spine, take that flection and move it forward and then come back up to sitting tall.

So a little bit of the neck pool is fine. Lean lot of this is control of ribs and not to hyper extend. Now Flex thing, head to tail, tail to head. There is those lower obliques again. Oh, and up to sitting tall two more times. Make sure the leg stay parallel. Lax, open up the Lumbar, keep it open as you lift up and over your legs.

Roll up to sitting toe a little taller than you started. Use that circle on the back of your skull to lift yourself up. I think I'm higher now. And then down one more time. Ah, take that flection over, over, over. And let's roll all the way up and just linger for a moment in your sense of decompression. Linger and relax. Okay, so let's go to um, choose a shoulder bridge.

We're going to go down on our mat again and I want you just to hold the magic circle in your hands solid. Bring your shoulder blades on your mat and lift your hips up. Just one nice, easy lift. Okay. That's where they stay. Extend your right leg along the mat and lift. Flex it in lower and lift. Flex it in lower. Nothing fancy today. Just slide it in other side.

Reach it along the Mat. [inaudible] keep evenness on shoulders on Mat. That's really tricky. Shh. Last time, slide it in and then just easily let yourself melt down. Bring the ring right into your chest for a moment. So a nice pause there. I think I need to just adjust myself on the mat slightly.

Everybody are going into rollover and I'm okay, but this ring between those ankles. All right, look up to your legs. Make sure that you are parallel as can be on your circle. Breathe in here. Pick yourself up when to rollover. Now let's play with this. Take a breath. Can we unroll and come up to open leg rocker? Why?

I did. Yeah. No, I'm not quite extended. In my spine that I feel like I can get a little more height. There we go. Now let's roll back into rollover. A hands are going to have to end up on the mat here. Ready?

Let's go again. Squeeze the ring. Curl the spine. Let's do three more. Have a little fun with your mat. Roll up and over, and two more. Hello up and last one.

Now holding this. Squeeze the ring. Release it with control. Four more times. Squeeze the ring. I want you to use those. Add doctors, kid those shoulders down. Three more. Squeeze and open without dropping it. Squeeze and open. One more time. And then we're going to roll back again over our shoulders into jackknife position. So go ahead and roll yourself down. Take it over.

Now I want to use my hands for a little assistance today. I want to get myself pretty high in a vertical line or close to it. When I think about my spine going up through the circle, it's a fun image to play with. Now rotate hips. You're gonna feel your old leaks here on Sansar. Lift your hips out of your hands. Twist, twist, twist, and center one, maybe a couple more each side.

Okay, credit. Keep your hips up also toward the ring. Once again, twist center to west. Hello, obliques. Bend your knees, unroll up to sitting. This is kind of a fun one to play with. Let's do thigh stretch, so I want you to come up on two knees and let's put the ring just right behind us today. Often I've taught it with it in front of Alicia is change it. Put it behind right down the back of your legs, toward the bend of your knee.

Okay, breathe in. Open up those shoulders again. He won't take much. Lean back a little bit. Lean back a little. Press your shins into the mat. Open your chest, press your shins in more and come back up. Just five lean back. You can actually send the ring down into the crook of your knee and try to bend over that ring a little bit more.

Zip Up your belly and more times [inaudible] little goes a long way. With this exercise, you're going to feel it really nice. Stretch in your quadriceps and work in your legs back. Oh, and up and last time, leaning back. Press your shins down and left. Bring your ring around. Just make a little cat position and release. Okay, let's go into a little bit of front support work here.

We don't need the ring, so I'm going to have you to set that down. Here we go. Friends, support on your hands and just stand and kind of just get collected. So what I want to move into now is a side support. I'm going to turn and face you, so I'm gonna move my backhand forward. We're going to pivot and stack my feet and stack my hand on my leg.

All right, let's try a little star today. Hand and leg, move forward, move forward and center. Hand moves forward. Leg goes back. Opposition. Here's a little interesting. You've got to keep lifting your inside hiphop so you don't drop it. I'm going to try that again. So both hand and Lego forward. Arm forward, leg back. Now bring it together.

So I'm going to try that again. When I want to do is put my leg behind me and open. This mat is a little narrow, but that's okay. Turn and look back. Just stretch. Just stretched, stretch and turn around and come down to your knees.

Okay. If you're on a narrow mat like I am, you're kind of limited with the leg gesture that goes behind. That's okay. I planned it on a regular floor where had a lot more gesture room from my leg to just really go for that stretch, but I didn't think of that before I started filming as class. That's right. Take it over. You'll see what I mean. Find your stack. Okay. This inside hip cannot get lazy and drop this lat, this hip hop to stay lifted. Here we go. Arm and leg and center. Arm goes forward, leg goes behind, center, repeat arm, leg forward. Ah, and leg back, arm forward. Here's the transition.

I'll show you what I mean. That book could go down there if we're the floor and then really allow yourself to gesture open. In fact, it feels fine for me to be a little off center right now and then I'm going to flip back over and just rest. Okay? Just to show you what those alternatives are. Okay. We're kind of winding down guys. I'm going to go into boomerang, right? No circle, no ring. I should say.

Take a breath. Regular Boomerang. Roll yourself over. Chain. Rolling up. Hold. Now bring your arms up. There's our teaser. Take it around. Bring it up again. Bring it around now clasp. Give yourself that pull that we didn't get in. AA. Kick down and up. Over.

Big stretch again. [inaudible] same arm movements, big circle. Clasp your hands behind. Pull legs, chest, arms. Now with that, a little spur. Special surprise in there and roll over. Rolling up.

Why not take advantage of the mat? Hip circles. Circle the hips. Lift, circle, lift. Let's go again. Circle and circle. We have one more boomerang. Oh my goodness. Same thing with hip circles. Up and over. Cross arms, lift legs day, arms reach back parallel. They'll start left and right and left up and right up.

Fold your legs into crab. Hold your pose. Hold your shake. Ah, folded in a little tighter. Rock coming home. Want to exchange those legs back there?

We prepped for it earlier in the rolling like a ball. We had that little release and catch [inaudible]. There's a little hang time there. Three Oh two last one. Let's stand up. Oh, okay. Thank you guys. Let me know how you like it. Thanks.