Cadillac Connections

I'm Debra Cole away visiting from Boulder, Colorado. This is my friend Donna, and we're going to take you through a Cadillac lesson and hope you enjoy it and follow along. So we're going to start with several variations on the roll down because I find that when we start with the roll down, people's hips and low back are not really very open. And so we're going to do a little bit of warming up to make that feel a little bit more successful. So go ahead and take your toes over the edge of the mat and use the cupping of your feet, almost like a bird on a perch, right? So feel how when you cup your feet, you can feel that drawing back through the heel, right up into the base of your pelvis and it gives you a nice lift.

So go ahead and take your roll down bar. Take a nice inhale as you lift up, roll back just to the, just to the pelvis, just to the top of your pants, and then exhale at the bar, lift you up and curve your spine. Inhale, lift to roll just to the waistband of the pants using the connection through the feet and the back of the leg to help you open your spine. One more time as if somebody was holding that bar and picking you up. Tilt the pelvis. Exhale deeply. Begin to roll, connecting into the ankles, the inner sigh. Roll all the way forward and release your spine. Another variation.

Go ahead and place the ball of your foot up against the chrome pole. Make sure you're using the pole to align so that you're balanced between your ankle joints. You're not twisting one way or the other and let your knees be bent. A Nice thing to think about is that you have another one of these roll down bars right up under your knees, so a little series tilt back. As you inhale this time, go all the way to the base tips of your shoulder blades, keeping the head curved forward. Exhale, push through the toes like you're on the reformers. Stretch the legs. Inhale, draw the heels forward, bringing them as close to the chrome pole as you can, and then float up with that spring support.

And as you exhale your spine forward, bending the knees, pulling the heels away from them. Paul's to do it again. So light behind the knee. That's the hardest part, is not pushing down on the knees, right. Press through the ball of the foot. Find the lift of the front of your spine all the way to the base tips of your shoulder blades. Stay there, push out through the ball, the foot. Stretch the front, reach through the heels, stretching out through the back of the hip and come back up all the way. And as your head comes forward, bend your knees, pull your heels away from the pole and we'll just do that one more time.

Inhale, lift, tilt, exhale. Press through the ball of the foot to lengthen and hail. Stretching the ribs away from the lower back and roll yourself back up. And now on a, make sure your heels are aligned, that you don't hyper extend the knee and that they don't leave the mat. That's kind of a good cue for you. With your legs straight, go ahead and straighten your legs. You now can utilize the push off the ball of the foot and the reach through the heel to give you more openness through your pelvis. So the full roll down.

Now inhaling, lift, tilt, roll all the way. Now exhale, place the head down and then let your head float up. The bar lifts your chest and exhale, roll all the way forward. You can even come past where there's any spring tension and release. One more time in hale lift to tilt. Try to keep the push through the toes and the reach through the heel.

Exhaling all the way down at the bottom. Lift the head, let the air come into your chest and float you. Beautiful and exhale as you release forward. Let's go back one more time and add the arms in with the breath. Suspend the ribs away from the lower back. Exhale. Now let's say your feet did come away from the Poles.

You could just take a second and wiggle yourself back in because that's going to give you the release in the front of the hip that you want. Bending the elbows first, breathe in, bring the bar just to the bottom ribs. Exhaling, release out, keeping the back of the shoulders as much as possible on the mat. So as you breathe in the collarbones lift and widen, which helps you reach into the back of the shoulder. Exhaling, feel the release of this spring. Hold well with your hand. Nice open throat, easy head, exhale as you release.

And then three with the arms straight. Think of this is a breathing exercise almost more than you're thinking of it as an arm exercise. So as the breath lifts and stretches and opens your lungs, yeah, it makes a lot of nice room around your shoulders. The arms are strong, but they're not overly tense. Exhale. Now let the head float and then feel as if somebody actually was just picking you up. All that strength that you just created in the back of your body is like a partner pushing you right up and forward. Okay. Very nice. So now we're gonna go into the hundred.

There's a lot of different ways you can do the a hundred on the Cadillac. This is one we're going to stay facing the same direction actually. So go ahead and take the roll down bar and you're going to put your legs over it. There you go. Okay. And what's Nice about this one? Do you feel like you're a little too far away? You don't mind? Yeah, let's start over or just pull you in. That's fine. Okay.

This one is, is neat because it helps pick you, your upper body up. Okay. What's tricky is getting enough of the suspension in your tail so the general feel like your legs are heavy. So we're going to bring the legs up any amount and we're going to start the hundred inhaling for five and x and keep thinking of picking the back of your leg up and over that bar. That's it. And with the breath and out. Very good. And if you start to get tense in your neck, really consider that the spring is pulling you forward into a deeper contraction of your abdominals.

Let the jaw be easy falling back into your skull. And one more big inhale. And then exhale. Go ahead and slide that bar right up off your legs and then roll yourself up. Okay, turn around. And now we're going to place the bar over the knees the other way.

So go ahead and take the legs over the bar. Hold the chrome poles. Thumbs on the same side as your fingers until your arms are straight. Very good. Okay. Make a good strong connection through the heel of your hand. And then this is tricky, actually placed the feet on the mat. The spring is there trying to pick you back up again.

And your job is to again and again, wake up the back of your pelvis in the back of your legs to hold your feet down. So given that the spring is here to help you, let's capitalize on that to get some more freedom through the hips. We're going to basically just almost like you'd call it a knee fold. Okay, so hip flection without letting the pelvis rock. So on your exhalation, feel the weight of your abdominals. Just gently holding your sacrum down. And then on the inhalation you want to replace your feet to the floor.

Lengthenings the back of the leg, pulling from the hamstrings, right? Exhale as you come back up. Consider that because you have this bar and it's swiveling, there's that natural lift and roll. And so it's less about the thighs coming towards you, which of course they are, and more about finding these delicate turning of the femur bone in the hip socket so that the weight isn't being thrown back onto the spine, but it's really holding its own in the hip. That's really beautiful. So go ahead and place your feet back down.

Take them hip with the part if you can actually. And then again from the beginning, that cupping of the feet, the heels reaching back into the sit bone. Do a small bridge. So the heels to the sit bones, the sit bones to the heel, the same connection of the strength of your arm, suspending your chest, beautiful. And then exhale, lower yourself back down, reaching the pelvis closer and closer and closer to the heels. Two more times. Inhale, float up. Feel almost like you could connect the base tips of your shoulder blades to your heels. And then exhale as you lay yourself back down.

And then last time, inhale, lovely. And then keeping the suspension of the chest segment by segment the spine without pushing weight through the lumbar spine. Reach your pelvis closer and closer to your heels. And now you feel like you could do the whole colitis exercise, right? So in with the breath bend at the hip, then begin to bend your spine, rolling all the way up to your shoulders. Roll up, and then reverse at the hip. So there's that femoral joint. Turn it the hip, lift the back, take the toes down to the floor. There you go. Toe Ball, heel if you can. And then lay the spine back down bit by bit, reaching your pelvis closer and closer to your feet. One more time.

Flex at the hip. Begin to flex at the spine. Use the strength of your arms to lift that chest up and over as the hips. Turn the feet, reach the pelvis, stays suspended. Gorgeous. And Lay yourself back down. Now we're gonna reverse it. So you start with the bridge.

Feel the connection from the back of the pelvic girdle all the way up into your shoulder girdle. Let the spring help you lift up. Keep the legs really strong around the bar as you bend the knees and roll back down. Some people think they have to roll their pants up. It's really not so much skin versus pants, but it's that connection of the foot to the hip. So the more you can keep the strength, which is what you really want to be cultivating, right? Go down one more time. I mean, if you're worried, you can always pull your, pull your pants up, but it's really not about pants, but you keep that contraction. It's different.

If you can hold this on a, if you tuck your pelvis, that's when the legs, that's when the bar wants to slide up the pants. Sorry, the back of your legs. So you want to feel that the sacrum is lifting. That's awesome that you're not just shoving through your lumbar spine. That was really, really great. And use the strength of your arms to keep your chest up in the beginning.

It takes quite a lot of arm. Eventually you feel more whole body. Okay. And then we're going to go ahead and bend the knees. Go ahead, hold the bar, slide your legs off. Very good. And then come to Neely. Beautiful. So be it about an arms length from your roll down bar. Okay? Okay. So line yourself up as best you can with your feet and your shins in line with your sit bones if possible.

Really spread out those toes and get the whole of the metatarsal onto the mat. So the first thing is kind of like a cat. All right? It's a little bit of a warmup. You're going to pull that bar straight down to the mat, kind of like a knuckle stand. So you're pressing down, the head is relaxed. And then any amount that you can press down through the shins and the feet to lift your knees up. So lift your knees right up off the mat, curling the tail. Almost.

Imagine you could pull your knees closer to the bar as you place your shins down and then pull the bar a little closer to your knees and roll up, sitting back as little as possible. So go ahead and keep the wrist straight as you reach the knuckles and the bar right down onto the mat. Push it down and put the release the weight of your shoulder girdle right onto your, onto your hands. Okay. Then using the press through the shins and the feet, lift your knees any amount. Think of curling the tail through to bring your knees a little closer.

As you put them down. They don't really move it just feels like it and then pull the bar toward you and roll back up. Avoid falling into your back. That was really, really great. One more time. Okay, nice. Inhale, suspended ribs knuckles to the mat. Feel a beautiful opening all across this, the thorax, lift the knees, lower the knees, pull the bar a little bit towards you and then exhale, suspend up. And from here we'll go ahead and do our chest expansion, right. So you feel that tone in the front of your body, right? Look to the side, look to the other side. Look, center and release.

So feel how the press of your shins and feet tones the back of you that supports you and all that nice deep flex or support from the cat really helps you do this. Just expansion. Well, looking side to side look center. One more time. Connecting the fist, wrist, arm, shoulder girdle, beautiful side to side. It's almost like a annealing bridge, right? That's great. Now go ahead and we'll do the, we're going to do the high stretch next. So if you like move back several inches so that you have a little bit more of the spring support set up is the same ear, shoulder, hip, knee. Think of lifting the back of your leg just like you did earlier, right? And take the pelvis backwards towards your heels. The arms are straight.

Exhaling. Let the spring help you press down through your shins and feet to come back up. So just as simple thigh stretch, breathing in, suspending the ribs. There you go. And then exhale, lift and float. You want to try and take it into a backbend with your thigh stretch so you thigh stretch back. Keep pulling on the spring, continue to release through the chest, neck and head. Beautiful.

Bring the Chin forward. Feel the support from underneath. Exhale as you come back up one more time. Very, very great. Instead of talking right, go back to that memory of the yes, exactly Ana. So you have to lift the back of your leg up into your pelvis. Release the top of the head to the Mat, roll the chin forward, take a breath and then exhale. Press through the shins to come back up. That's really good. Okay, relax.

I'm going to take this down maybe and now we're going to go into some simple legs. Springs. Okay. I need to lower this for you just a little. So depending on the strength of your springs and the height of you, the lower down the springs, the less pull, the higher up the springs, the harder of the pole. These are purple balanced body strings. So we're just going to start with both legs in the strap, holding onto the chrome Paul fingers on the same side as your hand. Press yourself out until your arms are straight. So when you press out, you want to give yourself the force from the hand through the arms of the shoulder girdle. Once again, all the way into the pelvis.

You don't want to push so much that you collapse into your chest. You want to push into the strength of the lift of the shoulder girdle that you found in your collitus exercise and some of the other ones begin with your knees bent. Okay. And bring yourself out to a position where your thighs are perpendicular to the mat. Keeping. This is to train the true turnout from the hip. A lot of us tend to just pull our feet out in the strap. So what I'd like you to do is keep the straps together at your, at your end step.

And here we are again in that same position like you had the roll down bar into your knees, right? So just let your knees open out to the side a little bit and then close them back. Feel again and again, the depth of that femur going down into your socket, right? Keeping the weight through the hip joint, beautiful on and not letting it fall back onto your spine and really getting the truth of that turnout as opposed to just letting your feet roll and twist in the strap. Right? So here you are. This is your last one. Open it up and from there go ahead and extend out. And then as you come up, we're going to do legs circles, but there'll be now much better informed. Circle out to the side, pull around and come back up.

And you can start to feel the difference when you practice that turnout exercise of really feeling how the leg moves in the hip and in space. And there's a moment where, go ahead a little bit faster now. Ow. Okay, we'll reverse it where you have the tendency maybe to press into the thigh and just push your legs away. But instead, here's your hip extension from the Colitis, right? You feel that beamer turning, keeping you in the pelvis, you could almost lift yourself up as if the only thing that you had were hands and feet. Right? Last time. And with the breath. We're going to do this series a little faster now. So now we'll go ahead and do the bicycle. You're in the turnout, you begin to bicycle your legs away and keep going out, out, out, out.

Keep pressing through the arms to drive the force through your body, into your hips and legs. Now reverse set. Here's where it gets a little dicey because you don't want the side to just fall onto your chest, right? You want to feel how the strap is pressing back through the sole of your foot again and again, strengthening through the hips a couple more times. Beautiful. And then bring the legs right back up to the top. Take a moment to feel the truth of the turnout, and then lift up inside. Lift those ties.

Almost like you're going to lift your pelvis right up off the mat as you take your legs. About 45 degree to the hip. And we'll do claps and beets. Keep reaching through the arms. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. And imagine how deep inside the pelvis those legs can be. So you're not just hitting your heels. Same with the crisscross. Find the underside of your leg. There you go.

Feel the feet in the strap versus the press through the knee. One more set. So really ask yourself, am I just pushing into my knee and pushing down with my leg or do I feel that I'm an extension of this spring? Very beautiful. Float yourself right back up to the top. And we'll do what we call the big frog. I'm not standing, I'm just kneeling. So take it out to the side. And here's where a lot of people tend to just drop their legs.

So we're going to circle around. Feel the depth of that turnout as you bend and draw your heels. And then as you extend your legs, don't let them flop on you. But slide those heels like up an imaginary wall. So, and with the breath as you circle out, down, around, turn out to pull your feet into your pelvis. One more that direction. Inhale, big open breath, circle low in a way.

Turn at the hip to draw the feet and beautiful. And now here's another one that's interesting as you reverse direction, instead of just dropping the shin down, corkscrew into your bend, that is beautiful. And then slide those heels as load on the mat as you can. Not Losing the connection up into your pelvis two more times. Inhale, turn out to bend. You got it on a, and then press o and c all the way from your arms into your feet. Hands two feet and then circle around and come back up. Last time, inhale as you been. Press out. Gorgeous. See you're getting longer.

I have to get out of the way. And then ups come back up to the top. Okay. And now a little less. Turn the feet. Just feel it a little less in the foot and the shin. Right? More that corkscrewing if you corkscrew your hips into your pelvis without turning out at the Shin and the feet, you actually feel your butts start to get lighter. Can you feel that? Yes. And that's where you're gonna do your walks from.

So a little less turnout in the feet now. So we're going to go walk two, three, four, five, six and up. Two, three, four, five, six. Tricky, right? You want to pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. Not Bouncing the legs, not hitting the mat. Each leg goes past the next one. More. One, two. There you go. Hold it out. Hold it out. And then up. Hold it out. Hold it out. Hold it out. Hold it out, hold it out. And then just do a couple of big sweeping walks. Stretch it up, reach it away.

The one that comes up to the top feel you could almost lift your pelvis right there you go. Reach it up to the ceiling. Gorgeous on A. Okay. And let's take those off. Beautiful. Bend your knees and I think we're going to switch now and go to the other end of the Cadillac and do a series with the roll down bar with the spring from above. All right, so go ahead and land onto your back on a take hold of the bar and let's just check that you are in a good position. So when you take the behind you, you really don't want it to pass much at all behind those chrome poles.

Very good. Okay, so you can have your legs bent or your leg straight. At this point you're pretty warmed up. Your low back and your hip should be fine. Okay. All right, so we're going to do just a little bit of prep here. Bend the elbows as you inhale and exhale, take the bar up toward the ceiling. We'll go back and forth a couple of times. Just really opening up the chest.

Bend your elbows, turn at the shoulder. Feel how you can turn the shoulder if need be. Swiveled the hand on the bar at the last moment in with the breath. Feel the back of the shoulders from all that good work you've done so far. Draw the arms. Exhale. Good.

Now this is our last one. Breathe in. I want you to imprint the feeling of where your arms are relative to your shoulder girdle on your body. Try not to hybrid. Extend the elbows, right or get yanked off the mat. Feel that, feel, that connection. Hand, arm, shoulder, shoulder girdle, rib cage. Now we're going to lift the head and come into the teaser. So take a breath, float up, keep the arms exactly the way they were three times. Bend the elbows in with the breath. Exhale, lift up to meet the spring. Keep your elbows in line with your ears. Don't let them get behind you. Exhale and now float back down.

Lifting up through the front just like you did with that roll down bar, not pulling into your back, laying it down. That's beautiful. When the blades touch, bend the elbows and push the bar. So let's do that one more time and we'll lift and lower the legs, but really work to connect your arms into your shoulder girdle, which is wrapping. And holding your ribs. So right here you see you can't continue to let your arms come out of the socket. You have to find more spine, fabulous, lower and lift the legs. Good. Now reach through those hips. Exhale, find the back of the leg, reach through the hips, find the back of the leg. Beautiful. Now hold both ends up and then lengthen yourself down.

Stretch the body long. You can always bend your knees and put your feet down if you need to. Bend the elbows and push that bar over your head. Let's do the whole thing one more time. Inhale, connect the hand to the arm, to the shoulder girdle, to the ribs. Use Your abdominals to bend your spine and draw those legs up three times the elbows. Inhale. Exhale, reach up. Float your gaze just a little.

There you go. Lift up to meet the height of the spring. That is beautiful. One more time. Inhale, exhale. And now three times the legs. Strong hands, strong upper body. That's it. That's the lift of support you need. Softer in the knees. One more time. Tail Curl, tail curl, tail, curl, tail curl. And rule yourself back down. Bend the elbows and push the bar through.

Hold that bar with one hand. You know the transition onto your belly. There you go. Okay, so take your right cheek onto the mat and we're going to do a little warm up for your Swan. Okay, baby bird. All right, so inhale, bend the elbows. Now I want you to find this position for just a second. Decide for yourself really what is the height of your elbows that gives you three dimensional support around your shoulder.

Many of us have been taught to bring the elbows really high up to the ceiling in an effort to stretch the chest. And some of us have the capacity to really take our elbows high and just collapse into our shoulder girdle, which doesn't build the strength that you're going to need for the full swan. So if you're trying this on your own, just check it out. Really ask yourself, am I just collapsing into my shoulder girdle and lifting my elbows up to get my chest to stretch or am I strengthening that whole component? Right? And honestly, what I've found is if you find that position, uh, it really belies the tightness in the shoulder, which we're avoiding by just kind of collapsing into the shoulder girdle. So let's go back and forth a couple of times. All right. Press the bar through.

Inhale, take your time. Feel the drawing out of the elbows like a bow and arrow. Pull the bar behind your head. That's really great. Now come up onto the top of your head as if you were going to do a headstand. How light can you be? We're not going all the way. We're just coming to here.

Turn the head. Try to reach the ear for the Mat. Exhale, push the bar forward again, inhaling, keeping the whole of your torso full of air lift. Lift the spring, lift you but curl way into yourself. Just like that cat earlier, right? Turn the cheek. Beautiful. Exhale as you press the bar through, reach your hands onto that bar all the way from the strength of your shoulder girdle. One more small like this. Take a breath. Feel the cross bar of power. There it is. Gorgeous Cro.

Way In, turn the cheek and exhale. Now when you go into the full swan, you realize that you can make that change of direction from the strength of your shoulder girdle, not just crashing into your low back. So here we go. Inhale, start to bend, curl and Curlin. Keep coming. Keep coming. Keep coming. Now push that bar up overhead from the strength of your shoulder girdle. Stretch your legs behind you. Curl the head in.

Lift the belly as you bend the elbows. Turn the cheek and push the bar forward. One more time. Inhale, bend. Keep those blades on your back. Curl into yourself. Get as high as you can, and then turn, push from the shoulder girdle. Reach through the thighs, curl the head, take a breath, exhaling.

And that is great. Okay, now transitioning into sitting. Hold the bar. Don't let it hit you, okay. And now you're going to have a seat. Place the feet against the chrome pulse. So this should remind you of your roll down where you're reaching the ball of your foot, pushing with the ball of the foot and reaching with the hill. Start up. Okay.

And here we again want to make sure that we're not just collapsing into the shoulder girdle, but that we're actually lifting up off the pelvis. Start by tilting the pelvis. Inhale, push through the ball of the foot to find the front. Reach to the heel to find the back. Curl forward. Reverse it. Now tilt the pelvis. Inhale, push so much through your feet. You almost feel like you can lift your pelvis up, right? Like in your leg.

Springs in with the breath. Tilt the pelvis, go way back. Way Back. Yeah, almost like your pelvis off the mat. Now you feel that lightness so that you have room to push down and you get that beautiful thoracic release. Last time in with the breath. Rib Cage stays suspended. Feet, legs, hips are so strong that you don't get yanked about by that spring. Okay, let's turnaround. We'll do the reverse push through, so pull the bar down. You could start with your wrists facing in or out, whichever is more comfortable for you and then watch out for hyperextension in the elbows. All right, so pointed, feet cupped so that you feel this, this power back up into your pelvis.

You're not just hanging down onto your shins. Shins up, femurs down. Okay, start again by rolling the pelvis back. Don't lean on the spring. Feel almost like you're going to go into leg pull. Exhale, come forward. Make sure the elbows aren't hyper extended. Let the spring bar lift you. You're not only just your arms, but your entire rib cage is suspended so that you have the power to pull that bar down and roll yourself back again.

So literally feel your legs coming up into and making your pelvis like that is beautiful. And now exhale, curl forward. Aim the top of the head for the shins. Allow the bar. Try not to hyper extend and fall into your shoulder girdle. We'll use this to lift your whole rib cage up off your lower back and then pull down and roll back. Okay, that's enough of that one, right? I'll take that bar. You're going to come up onto your knees now.

All right, so we'll do a kneeling Kat. Again, line up your knees with your hip joints. Try to get the entire top of your foot onto the mat, pressing through the metatarsal. All right, so curling forward. Take a breath. You just were there, right? Suspend, suspend, suspend, release it into extension. Look forward. Feel those femurs pulling back. Try not to collapse. You can say to yourself, if I let go of that bar right now and I fall, you know, where am I holding myself up? And then drop the tail, released the head, roll yourself up, and then at the top gently press down into that spring again to find the support of the shoulder girdle lifting your chest. So then your next one, it comes from this higher place arc forward. Inhaling, releasing out. Stretch at the top of the head into the tip of the tail, and then curl back into yourself. Drop the tail, feel the belly rolling up the front of your spine, and then gently pressing down to live. Let's just do one more.

Float that skull low, the skull curl forward, pressing down through the Shins and feet to maintain the hamstrings. Beautiful Pearl, head to tail. Rule yourself back up and at the top, one more, a little press down. It's not like you're getting out of the pool. All right, so now go ahead and Neil, but face sideways so you could put your left hand right in the center of the, of the bar. Make sure your thumb is wrapped on the opposite side, okay. And really reach your arm directly out from your shoulder. Okay. If you're tighter, then you can bring your arm a little bit more forward.

But try and really feel that connection out from the, it's like your collarbones out to your thumb and your scapula out to your little finger. Beautiful. Okay. Reach your right arm up by your year. Side Bend over, lift and lift and lift. And as you get into the spring, push down side bend over and then hover there for a second and feel how the spring supports you, not only in your arm but in your opposite hip. Take this opportunity to let go of any tension in the top shoulder and feel that connection. Now that that arm is coming off of your shoulder girdle, it's a beautiful thing. Like a dial right there at your sternum. And then take another inhalation. Let this spring start to push you off. This is where the control comes in and exhaling.

Take your right arm back down by your side and we'll do two more big inhale, reach. Feel the whole side. Bend, lifting the right side over the left, feeling the spring support. Good. And then in with the breath, suspend the chest. Let that spring push you up. Exhale your arm back down. One more time. Inhale, reach out through the left arm. Beautiful over you. Go. Exhale, releasing the top of the shoulder. Try not to hyper extend the elbow and then in with the breath as you come back up, feeling the inner thigh, the midline. Beautiful. Let's turn around and do the other side. So now the right hand is on the bar, some separate from fingers. That's it. Just think of your arm as a, as an extension of your shoulder girdle. Okay.

And then take the left arm up here. Take a moment to press down through the shins. Breathe in as you side. Bend over. Feel the connection now of the spring support into the hip to which you're going. So you don't sit in that hip, right? It's almost like the hip shifts you into more release in your side, relaxing the top of the right shoulder and then in with the breath, come back up, control it. Exhale, bring your hand down and we'll go a little faster. Spin the arm, don't hyperextend the elbow, the handed the ribs.

Beautiful connection down through that lower body. Inhale, suspend and exhale, release. Last time. Turn the hand lift. Feel the power and the connection through the hips. Drawing you to your midline. Bending sideways. Beautiful. Inhale, exhale and come back up. Okay. How do you feel about, um, shoulder bridge here? Pretty good. All right, we're going to bring the bar down. This one's very nicely padded.

If you don't have, um, padded bar at home, you might want to put some kind of a sticky thing on it. Um, and just, if you tend to cramp in your feet or calves, just be beware. If you're doing this by yourself. Again, I'm wiggling her. You can see I'm wiggling her because I don't want her to push down into those shins. Right? So the Shin has to stay lifted and then the femur is what's trying to reach back. Okay. So you can kind of see that you don't want to pop those shins back down. Yeah, exactly. Good demonstration. Okay, so all the connections have been made. Now. Hand, arm, shoulder girdle, right.

Start to bend the hip to bend the knee. Inhale, how many times has she's, have we been in this position of a right angle at the knee and a pretend bar under your knees. So release up before your bat knee pushes forward. Connect the sole of the foot to the back of the leg. Curl the tail roll up. Beautiful. Good. And now lengthen the spine down in with the breath.

Keep the pelvis high longer, so less pulling down through your back, right more reaching the pelvis toward the feet. Beautiful. And then using the hamstrings, start to bend the knees, everything fine. And then exhaling. Stay that controls so that you don't claps into your knees. Inhale, if possible, really work to align your feet. So that you're not twisting them out. Here we have what we learned in our legs. Springs, right?

You really got to keep that in step connection up through the inner thigh. And it's tricky if your quads are tight, right? Cause they want to pull you out. So begin to bend. Here's what we're looking at is keeping the femurs deepen the socket and not straightening the legs by pushing the knee forward. But by lengthening the whole back of the legacy. So you start to realize, oh, there I am. I don't need to have bricks in my knees.

I just need to lift the back of my leg up to live my pelvis. You want to take a kick, good in with the breath and exhale and use the kick to lift you up over the back of your upper back more. Keep reaching the opposite leg onto that foot bar. And then here we are again, lift the chest, lengthen the spine. Try not to roll so much and put pressure in your spine. Don't roll. But linkedin segment by segment.

So the head is reaching out away from the pelvis, skull to sacrum. There you go. Bend the knees. Good Job Ana. And then release. And then to come out of it, bend your knees again. I or you want me to take it? What if I wasn't here? Bend your knees. Okay. And then if you have to lift your hips, a little control the spring. It depends how high your your, your bar is. Okay.

And then take one foot down and then the other, beautiful. Okay Ana, go ahead and come to sitting. We'll get rid of this. Can you take the spring now? We'll just let it hang for now. Okay. So now we're going to go into an exercise where you've got the roll down bar but it's quite a bit lower than the attachment to the top. And we um, we call this, we affectionately call this the archival setting because there are several exercises that we, we can teach that we got off of older footage and we saw that this, uh, the springs or the roll down borrower attached quite a bit lower. And so this is essentially head height when somebody is sitting. Okay.

And it's about six to eight inches off of the, um, top of your Cadillac. So you can play around with that if you have a slider bar or if you have different hooks that your springs connect into and um, it's definitely lighter than the roll down bar from the top. And um, it's called the touching goal. Okay. So on is going to help. Go ahead. Land to your back, push out until your arms are straight again, take hold of the bar. I have it padded just for the safety of her feet. Okay.

So that she doesn't slip. Go ahead and put the arches of your feet and then reach around and grab hold of your, your chrome poles again, begin to straighten your legs. So this is the touch and go exercise. We named it. Breathe in, lift up the tail and immediately press out into a plank and then come up to a candlestick and then roll, roll, roll down through your spine. So you're cupping your feet around that bar, which connects you back into the back of your legs, right?

Like at the beginning of the lesson. So you lift just enough to get the tail up and then you press out. You have to keep pressing down through the feet to get the lift of the sacrum. Then come back up and lengthen your spine down, down, down, down, down, down, down. I'm going to bring your feet a little bit more centered, so less on the metatarsal and more using your center of your arch. Okay? So let's just do a couple more.

And as soon you get any lift off of the tail, you have to think of pressing out into the spring with your entire body. Okay? You Ready? So up and press out. Beautiful. And then up and lengthen yourself down. You got one more. Inhale up and press out. Fabulous. And then come up and pressed down. That's very good. And it, it's difficult, but it's very nice. And for people who, um, have trouble with the long spine stretch, they find this very helpful.

I'm going to take these off now. We're gonna leave this same settings, same height. Go back to our legs, springs, and we're going to do the single leg circle. But with the spring on the opposite leg. Okay, so if you were going to do your right leg first, we'd take the spring that's on your left shoulder, put it on your foot again, take the hands to the chrome pulls, thumbs with fingers, press out until your arms are straight and you feel nice and opening your shoulder girdle. The standing leg, unlike our typical mat leg springs, instead of being directly under the hip is slightly abducted and you'll find that that gives you a lot of tone in the outer hip muscles and really helps keep that foot down. If you have a strap on your Cadillac that runs along the edge of the Cadillac, it feels nice sometimes if you want to put it across your ankle. All right, so that lift that she just found. Same thing here. You want to be able to reach up into your spring crossover. There's a little bit more twist in the spine.

Pull down the whole flank of your leg, exhaling back up to the top. Inhale, lift. Allow the spine to twist. Shift the weight, press from the whole flank of the leg reverse and come back up two more times. Inhale, feel the push from the opposite arm helping to con connect you all the way down through your old obliques. Exhale, back up, lift up, cross the whole hip over. Twist the spine, push with your left arm all the way down into your right belly. You feel that? And then come back up to the top and now reverse it.

This is really nice because the spring holds the weight of your leg. You can really get a stretch. Reach it around, cross the whole leg over. Allow the spine to twist. Reach this foot all the way up towards your shoulder. And then again, let's go a little faster and let the breath cross it around. Push with the opposite arm last time.

Inhaling crossover and less hyperextension. More deep, deep, deep hip stretch. Okay, we'll do the other side. So now you're going to take this spring that's at your right shoulder. Put it on your left foot. Abduct your left hip, right hip. Excuse me, just a little. Here we go. Cut that foot right up into the strap. So lift, twist, pull down, and push to the opposite arm.

Reach around, exhale, come back up, lift, twist. It all happens at the same time. I don't want you to think that, that I'm telling you to really separate it. The Lyft gives you the room to twist. Exhale, draw the belly back. Beautiful Les. I brew extension more foot to hip. Come around, back up and we'll reverse it out. You go reach the whole half of that pelvis around on to your strap in with the breath, right arm, left leg, exhale it around. Good job.

Inhale and join the rotation. Enjoy the twist of the belly. Twisted around. Beautiful. Last time, getting those organs. There you go. Twist, twist, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. Fabulous. That's wonderful. And the reason that I so much wanted you to get into all that twisting is because we're going to do something really great now, which is a version of the corkscrew. It's a nicer if you have a thicker strap. I'm just using what we have here, which is fine. And, uh, what you do is you attach it so that you have two legs springs, one strap. You can get rid of your other straps if that bothers you. You don't have to.

If it doesn't bother you. Okay? So this is really the peace, the resistance. This one's really marvelous, full-bodied exercise. So now you're going to place this, the arches of your feet in this strap. Okay? Again, hold onto the chrome poles. Stems with fingers. So right away as you extend up, you're going to shoot yourself out into the plank. Okay?

So you have to suspend your pelvis. And now from that position, you rotate, you twist to your right side. You lay that whole right side down pole with that right flank. Push with the left, rotate through the center, and then exhale, come up the left side and suspend yourself. And that's beautiful. Lift the hips, twist to the left. Lay that whole side of you down. Press with the top onto the bottom. Rotate through. Awesome. Exhaling back up to the top. Let's do it one more time. Not so slowly. Okay, lift. Get the twist of the torso. Press the legs down, rotate through the middle, push with your arms to lift up.

And now twist to the left. Press that pelvis down to the side, circle across. Feel that beautiful, beautiful twist, awesome. And Xcel. Do you wanna do it one more time? Yes, I knew it. And then out you go. Really feel the whole flank press and then feel that whole corkscrew through your center and exhale back up. And here's what those arms really come in to. Lift the chest, stretch it out, circle across, and exhale. Fabulous. Bend your knees and release. Okay, that was really, really great. And because you did that so well, we're going to go ahead and do some side leg springs. Okay. For that, I'm going to go a little lower back down to a more average setting.

Just going to get rid of this strap. Okay. And I'm taking this down to where I had her do her original leg springs. So if you had clips on your pole somewhere between a two and a three, one, two, three. There you go. Okay.

Alright, so go ahead and lie on your right side, ana. So you're just like regular, like sidekicks. Your back is lined up with the back edge of the mat. Your forearm is lined up to the chrome pole, you're holding on with your hand and your head rests on your arm. If that's uncomfortable for the neck, you can place a pillow so that the neck is nicely aligned and then the legs are out at an angle. Again, if you have one of those straps that crosses the Cadillac, it's very nice.

You can use it to hold down the bottom leg. Make sure that the strap that you, the spring that you put is the one from behind you. You don't want to reach in front and try to put that spring on your leg, but the one from behind, okay? Yup. Fix yourself up. Okay, so we're going to bring your top foot into the strap and then reach the legs together so they're stacked upon one another. There's a lot of different ways that you can do this series. There's a lot of fun things that you can do, so we'll just share a few. With regard to the top arm depends again on the width of your Cadillac.

If you don't feel enough support by pressing the hand down, you can, if you can reach, you can hold the front of the Mat. Another thing, depending on your balance, is to take this top hand and actually hold the chrome poles. If you're later, when you feel stronger with this, you can push out until your arms are straight. It feels very strengthening through the upper body, which is great, but you have to understand that it makes the spring feel heavier because you're farther out so you can decide what you want to do. So let's just take this top leg about hip height up and flex through the ankle and feel as if you had like a chock, a piece of chalk or something coming out through the sole of your foot. And we're just gonna do some little circles, little circles, kind of exploring the thigh bone in the femoral joint.

And then we'll go the other way and I'm going to let go of you, ana so that you can find your own support. Soften at the back of that knee slightly. See if you can feel the reach all the way from your sit bone to your heel through the back of the knee, but without pushing the back of the knee back. And now we're going to go into our and back. So take the leg forward and then reach it to the back. Soft pointed foot in the sense that you want to cup the foot, go to the front, around the strap, you have to cup your heel forward, kind of like bird on a perch at the same time that your plant are flexing.

It's kind of some kind of mid range, you know, not all the way plants are. Flex of the strap comes down too far, not all the way one way or the other. And what I find is that if you have a little bit of external rotation, when the leg comes to the front, keeps that thigh from dropping, and then as you reach around to the back, if you internally rotate that hip slightly, you can have a little bit more length and release through that outer hip line, especially where we're tight in the thigh. So a couple more times in with the breath as you come around to the front. And then exhale, keep reaching, push with the arm, feel the strengthening of your entire backside as you pull through that spring. Now reach onto the strap, keeping the spring, uh, with you. Don't, don't go to where the spring is, is too sloppy. And then last time come around to the back.

Very nice. And then take one more long stretch. Okay, close the leg. We're going to turn out even more now at the hip. Bring the foot up toward the ceiling and then lift up into that strap like you've been doing all day and pull down. Inhale, let the spring help lift your leg. Spin that leg from the back of your thigh into your inner side down a couple more times. And with the breath up. And then exhale, press it down. And last time, inhale, stretch it up. Keeping the pelvis stacked, using the strength of the arm against the pole to keep reaching your power down through your body into your pelvis. Let's just do a devil oh pay.

So you worked a lot today already on that turnout. So feel how the external rotation of the hip begins, the bending of the knee. And here again, as you go to extend your leg, you mustn't do it by pushing the knee down, but by continuing to spin that femur and use the turnout to pick your weight up and then reach it down again. So as soon as you begin to turn out that turnout lifts the weight of the Pelvis to free up the movement in the hip. Exhale, take it down. And let's just go ahead and do two the other way.

And with the breath as you come up, and now here it is again. Turn out as you bend the knee. Be careful that you don't just push down with the knee and the Shin. Feel that foot right away in the strap, connecting to the muscularity at the base of your pelvis. Inhale up, you go. As you turn out, let's try that one time. As you turn out, it picks you up. It doesn't drop you beautiful.

Almost be like your underneath leg is doing the same thing. Yes. And then press that leg. It feels good, right? Yeah. Okay. And then go ahead and take the strap off and we'll do the other side. There's several other variations you can do here, but those are really nice. Um, okay, so now we're going to do it on the other side.

So again, it's the spring that's behind you and you bring your foot into that. Okay. So lineup hip over hip, shoulder over shoulder, rest the head. Have a pillow to decrease tension in the neck if you need it. Really use the strength of this arm into the pole to drive you all the way down through the pelvis. Okay, so reaching out into the strap, small little circles of the whole leg inside the hip. It's just a nice way to get the body oriented to being on the side.

Let's go the other way with the spring on your foot, and then here we go. Let that knee turn out just a little. As you begin to go forward, and then exhale, reach onto the strap, take it back, roll your hip forward so you don't fall into the lower back. Reach into the strap as you come forward. Stay with this spring, reaching out onto it. That's exactly that. You're making one long arc.

Use the arm that's on the pole to keep you strong in your upper back, especially as you come around to the back. Imagine that you could touch the sole of your foot to the back of your head and then last time, don't turn out yet. Make sure you wait until you get around to the front. There you go. Very good one last time to the back. Keep the foot reaching into the strap.

Roll forward onto your pelvis a little bit more and then close the leg turnout by spinning that back of the leg into the inner thigh. And then let the spring help pick up your leg. Reach out onto the strap as you come back down. Good. And with the breath up and then reach out into the strap down. Two more, up and down. Beautiful. Last time.

Up and down. And then begin with the devil. Low pace. We'll start the turnout. Feel the connection of the sole of your foot right up into your inner thigh lifting. Think of the sit bone going through the back of the knee, out into the back of the heel and pull down so you don't push into your knee. Turn it out. Draw the foot in. So you have to decide for yourself whether you're going to continue to keep pulling the knee into the shoulder.

And do you actually have that range beyond where the spring is? Maybe you do, maybe don't. And then catch yourself up into the spring or let's do one more in that direction. Do you choose to turn out and stay more conservative? Conservative and just really work the muscularity around your hip from there.

Good job. Reverse it. We'll just do two. So you reach up and then there's this wonderful moment at the top right where you know from doing all the other work that you lift up into the strap to bend. Exactly. And you feel that beautiful connection of the foot to the back of the leg up, lift into the strap, push with your arms. There it is, and release. Then we'll just take the strap off, bend the knee until you can reach it. Okay.

So let's do one more thing just to kind of round out the session. Um, let's do the, let's do the monkey just to get you kind of reconnected to yourself in a different way. Something that's both sides of your body again and um, so that requires putting on our safety strap. Thank you. And wrapping this strap around. If you have this setup, we're going to hook it onto the lowest one.

If you have chains, do you know how to do it? But it's part of this series where you take the springs from below, which is this very different from the springs from above. This has much more to do with load than it does lift. So these are blue springs. We're using two. You can use one. It's nice to do. Uh, it's a, you have to play with your springs. Okay? So on.

It's going to lie on her back for the monkey, we shoot all the way back to where the shoulders are off the edge of the Cadillac. Okay? Then she's going to take her hands onto the, onto the bar, push it up, and place the balls of her feet about hip with the part she's going to stay holding on. Now a nice thing to do here to kind of get, get your body acclimated is just to what I call point flex a few times. So our plant r and Dorsi flex, and what you can feel is this naturalness of the pelvic movement as you do. So. Okay? So as you point your feet, it lifts you up and forward. And as you flex, it deepens the posterior rotation.

So this is naturalness of this movement of the pelvis. It's always there with pointing and flexing. So with the monkey, what we're going to do is keep the feet strongly pointed. So you have to really find the, this is where that hanging Tibia doesn't work because you've got to lift that Tibia, reach it strongly into the Talis, right into the front of the ankle so that your, your feet are strong on that bar. Okay? And then as you inhale, you're going to reach up on to wait till you get there so that you're picking your whole body up, right? Flex the ankle. As you can see, there's a little bit of release in the, in the palace to open the front of the hip and then point. And as you point, it picks your torso up so that you bend your knees curlier tail and roll yourself back down. But you're not falling onto your back. You're literally allowing the role of the pelvis with the strength of the feet to lower you. Let's do that one more time. So you breathe in.

Really keep the heels back. Keep the push from the ball of the foot onto that bar. That's it. And then exhale, release the heels up, not pushing into the back of the knee, right? But feeling the entire sit bone knee, heel point to lift at the tail. Curl the tail as you bend. Only one time in between. Go ahead and curl the tail and roll back down. You've got to go. Go, go, go.

And now let's take the right leg out. We'll do the one leg in monkey. This is awesome for all of us. I was gonna say if you have tight thighs, Huh? Great. So there you go. Maybe I'll help, right? So lift your heel, push up. Here we go. Inhale. You got it. Exhale. Flex the heel. Inhale point. Keep lengthening, lengthening, lengthening. Yep, you got it.

And then bend the knee. Roll back down. Bring the right knee in to meet the left. Switch sides. Take that left foot out. Lengthen it down on the mat. Here we go. Inhale. Push through the ball, the foot. Release the heel all the way from the back of the pelvis. Inhale, lift to band to roll back down. Beautiful. Go ahead and take your foot out. Okay. Take both feet out, release for a moment and then we'll come forward for tower and that will be it. Okay, so go ahead both hands on the bar. Push the bar up, place your feet on either side of the strap. So again, we're on the balls of the feet now though, you're going to reach around to the outside of your springs and hold the chrome poles. We've done a lot of opening and closing and bending and stretching, so we don't need to do a lot of prep here. Okay. But do find your feet again.

So push into the ball, the foot and just stay for a second and can you point harder? Yes, you could. Okay. Now I'd like you to stay and practice flexing and pointing before you go up into your tower. Because what I'd like you to feel is the difference between letting your shins push forward. When you flex leaving your shins where they were and reaching your heels, stay, reach your heel without pushing into your shin.

Do you feel the back of your leg differently? When you do that, it's easier. Less compressive. Okay, great. So the next time you point your feet, let it tilt you up. Push with the arms, push from the pelvis, roll up, stay there. Bend your knees over to your forehead. Allow the pelvis to continue to roll. That's it. Push up through the feet. Push through the arms. Lift the chest, suspend. Here you are doing your touch and go. You don't want to pull your back down.

You want to lengthen it out on the mat. Lengthen it out on the mat. Hold that pelvis up through the soles of your feet. Down you go. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. Bend the knees. Take hold of the bar. Let your feet come out and just rest for a second. You can have your knees, banter, or straight and just lie there in rest. That was pretty awesome. I hope you feel good. I hope you all feel good. Okay. Thank you.