Neutral and Balanced

Hi, I'm Kristy Ida Voi and today we're going to do a reformer class that really explores movement in the neutral zone. And we can think of neutral more as a concept, then a fixed place being that everyone's neutrals are different. So we'll think more about relationships of body parts rather than a universal blueprint for the body. Um, as far as the starting position of the exercises, we can also think of neutral as the place where you would have even movement in all directions in space. So, um, basically that's where we're exploring and um, we have Juliana and Aaron helping us with the class today. So go ahead and lie down you guys. We're gonna start with some footwork. We have three heavy springs.

Head rest is up, and we'll start with the heels on the bar. And I'm just talking a little bit about this neutral zone in footwork. Uh, we're thinking really a lot about the pelvis and a more than the pelvis, the hip, right? So the movement of the hip, of the actual head of your thighbone in your socket depends entirely on the position of your pelvis. I think of the pelvis as a series of bowls. So when you're lying down, it's two bowls for your hips, um, or for your leg bones. Like in this case when you're standing like I am, the pelvis is also a bowl for your viscera, right, for your entire torso. So when you're lying down, you want to have the back of your sacrum or that high spot on the pelvis touching the mat. And then you'll want to notice that the space between your shoulder blades is also touching the mat and the space behind your head. Uh, really if you had a nose on the back of your head, that's the spot that we're talking about. So, and again, it should feel easy, right? It should feel like you could move easily in any direction.

We're just going to set up with the inhale feeling length and space. And as we exhale, tuning into the back of the pelvis, the space between the shoulder blades and the back of the head. And on your following exhale, you're going to press all the way out to straight legs and just stay there for a moment. Really feel like you want to reach that foot bar along that you're in essence standing while lying on your back. And like you want to push that bar away so that it creates some length between the lower back and levels out the front of the pelvis.

And as you're ready, bend your knees slowly keeping your body in that position, so gliding back and forth. You can also place your hands on the front of your hips and notice that when you bend your knees, there's a deep fold at the front of your hip socket. If there's not, when you press out on the next one, really give yourself that feeling of length and growth through your torso and then keep it that way as you're bending your knees. We'll do three more this way. Okay, so so often we're trying, right?

We're aiming to create lumbopelvic stability and Polonius. We really want to strengthen the core and we think of this as creating a very solid, stable core from which our limbs have lots of freedom to move, right? So the other way of thinking about that is by creating lots of mobility in the hip. In turn, we're stabilizing the lower back. The next time you come in, stay there, bring your heels together and let your knees and toes come apart. In a small V or out first, press all the way out. Again, get that feeling of lots of length and then slowly bring the knees in.

As you're gliding back, notice at the back of your shoulder blades, you're staying heavy on the mat. Your jaw is relaxed and the back of the head is resting on the headrest. As you're going to straight legs, you can feel how the back of the thighs roll towards one another. And as you bend your knees, feel how the back of the thighs roll away from each other. Last one, come back through center.

Slide your heels wide apart now and for just a moment here, notice if you can roll your knees easily towards one another and away from each other. If any part of it doesn't feel easy or it feels like you run up against the end of your range, right when you're rolling them in. If you feel any discomfort or sound or texture in your hip socket, that means your feet are too wide apart. You want to bring them in a little bit closer to stay in that more neutral zone, right? So again, it means that you've got space to move and direct in multiple directions without getting close to the end of the range. We do this because we want to create lots of stability and help set up the body for more advanced movements where you might be getting closer to the end of a range and as you're ready now we're going to keep our hips turned out, press all the way out two straight legs again, get lots of length through the heels and then slowly bend the knees to come back in, pressing out long and slowly coming back and all the while.

Keep noticing that when you bend your knees there is a very deep fold through the front of your hip with your fingertips. You can also appreciate the quality of your tissues so that it should feel soft rather than tough and sinewy right? It should feel like you could actually maybe think your fingertips down around front of your hip bone and into that hip socket last one. And we'll press all the way out. Bring it all the way back in and now this time bring your heels in a little closer to center, not quite to each other, but somewhere in between.

[inaudible] v in the wide position. Press all the way out to straight legs. Stay there, keep reaching long as you turn your hips in, bend your knees, they'll find each other. Then you'll turn your knees out and press back out. So you may be used to doing these hip circles and foot work where you're at the wider end of the bar and you're going into a bigger range. We're just modifying it by making the range a little bit smaller so you can think of the joints in your body having a total amount of movement and freedom in multiple directions. And our focus today is I'm bringing that radius in and making it a little smaller, which requires a little more control, a little more intelligence, because you can't just go to where you can't go any further.

And then we'll reverse that movement, pressing out with the knees rolled in, turning them out as you come back and make sure that your legs are really straight as you're rotating in your hip. So the rotation happens and then the knee flection happens. We'll do that three more times in this direction. Let your hip be the driver rather than your ankles. So you can think about the movement staying centered on the heels.

Your hips turn out, your feet just happened to be attached, which is a very challenging concept to bring into the body. And then we'll rest when we come back in. So let's bring the balls of the feet onto the bar. We're going to press all the way out. And again, as usual, the mount of the big toe, the pinky toe are weight bearing. And you can think about creating with across the metatarsal.

Let both heels come under the bar. For a moment, rise back up and then bend the knees. So with the balls of your feet on the bar, you'll have a little more, it'll feel like you'd come down a little bit deeper, letting both heels come under and then rising up and coming back. And while you're doing this, notice when you go into the flex point, part of the movement, does the weight seem to roll a lot towards the big toe? A lot towards the pinky toe. Um, if you're not sure if you can tell, I know I have days where I can tell something is off, but not quite sure what it is. You can bring your feet together and your ankles together and think of your feet working together as a unit so it's a little easier to tune in and create that symmetry. We'll do one more time.

And if you felt like you've had to hold on with your toes, bring your feet up a little higher so that you're just getting pressure through the ball of your foot and not making the toes work. Want to keep them long. Let the heels drop down now and continue to push the heels under the bar as you go to straight legs, bend your knees, keeping your ankles flexed, and we're going to repeat that. It might feel like you're taking steps in reverse, like you're walking backwards, leading with the heel rather than towing off while you're bending your knees, keeping your ankles and flection. Notice if your knees want to move together, do they want to roll apart and can we do a better job of keeping the knee caps traveling over the second and third toes? And again, if that's hard to tell for you, you can put your hands on your legs so that you can feel if they are moving around. Be Very mindful though that the, that the ankles are staying neutral and the weight.

I'm just noticing that I'm going to bring your feet up a little higher. Yeah, so that you really can feel the pads of your feet. So it's going to give you a lot of information about what's going on. If anything through your ankles. Think about the inner aspect of your ankle, wanting to reach the long and then keep it going long as you come back in. Yeah, and let's go ahead and bring your ankles together as again.

The more I bring her into center, the less available space she's going to have to waiver around. Yup. And then notice if it feels like one foot is taking more weight than the other. Good. This is also a great idea. So you can continue to touch into center. Last one here. Excellent. And then go ahead and rest.

Let's bring those heels back up and onto the bar. You're all bring your head rest down. And so the pelvis was still while the legs were moving. Now we're going to keep the legs rather still and let the pelvis roll around the legs a little bit. So we'll inhale and send the tailbone down towards the Mat and then exhale and roll that back up towards the Mat.

Notice if you're going to the space where you can't go any further, so are you going as far as you kind of both directions? If so, start to make the movement a little smaller and you may find that making the movement smaller might require more and or just a little more mindfulness. And while you're doing this, you can tune into your sits bones and make it feel that gets the back of your thigh through the back of the sits bones that is gliding up and down. You may be doing that already versus feeling like it's your lower back shifting back and forth or your hip bones shifting back and forth. Can you bring your mind into the base of the spine, the base of the pelvis into the seat and allow the movement to come from back there. Creating a feeling of the sits bones directed towards the knees.

And then with that idea, keep reaching the knees over the toes as you continue to peel your spine up in off of the mat just to the point where your lower ribs are a little heavier on the mat and then slowly come back down. We're going to do that again. Small Bridge. We're going to break the bridge down into three parts. So at first it's the back of your pelvis, reaching out through your knees to lift to the point where you feel your floating ribs resting on the back, on the mat rather, and then slowly coming down. We'll do that one more time and if you find that your carriage presses out or moves, it all increased the feeling of drawing your heels towards your seat or pulling the bar towards the back of your body. Very gently. On the next one we'll continue with the same idea.

This time curling up to the place where you feel more of the base of the breastbone on the mat and then slowly gliding down from that point on the way up. Think about keeping the rib cage and the breastbone down on the way down. Think about keeping the pelvis up, so curling down from above or underneath your pelvis. Depends on how you think about it. Every time you come down, let everything release before you start the next one. This will be the last one this way. So coming up, trying to get that feeling of the xiphoid process or right where the breastbone ends into the mat on the following one. Now you're going to again, back of the pelvis, starts to peel up, reaching through the knees, lower back, lower ribs, and now continue to come all the way up to the top of the bridge where you feel like your collarbones are rooting down and then gently curling down while you're still your pelvis at the top. Let the breastbone relax down through the shoulders.

Then the ribs, the lower back, and finally the pelvis releases, and again, we're curling back up. So because of all the flection hip flection that we're in, that is as we come up, hold it here for a second. You want to feel like your shoulder and your knee are pretty much in a straight line when you've come up to the top of it. You don't want to go past that point. And then again, let your breastbone glide down to melt. Then the lower back and then the pelvis and we'll do one more.

Really noticing how we lengthen the front of the spine as we move through flection into this bridge, keeping that feeling of length as you glide back down. Excellent. And once you've come down, let your feet relaxed that your knees sway from side to side just a little bit. This should just feel good. And then we'll find that place in center. And as you exhale, go ahead and bring your right leg up into tabletop and then bring your left leg up into tabletop. Find a position to hold your legs where it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of work involved.

Usually that means that the knees come in a little closer to the body and the feet come up a little higher, but not always right. It might. So find the place where you've got to hold your legs up in the air and it doesn't feel like a whole lot of work. Pretend that there's a dowel now balanced over the tops of your knees and as you exhale, you'll take both knees, still touching that stick to the left side. So the back of the right hip has to come down just about there. And then go ahead and come back to center and then we'll go the other way.

So what you want to feel is that you're moving through the pelvis and the lower aspect of your back, reaching that top knee over. So keep reaching that. There we go. And then coming back to center, it might be helpful to feel like the back of your hip lifts up and rolls to the side. And that's what starts your movement. So for example, rather than thinking of rolling towards the window, think about lifting off the mat there and then going to the side. Oftentimes that helps kick in the obliques and the muscles that are involved with that rotation. You might feel it a little bit more when you do it that way and you might also do it a little bit smaller so you don't that feeling and fall into the, I'm just trying to keep my legs from pulling me off the reformer kind of feeling last one in each direction. And then we'll come back to center. Go ahead and draw the knees into the chest, give them a squeeze. And now this time, place your right heel on the bar. Left leg is in tabletop, and as you exhale, you're going to press all the way out to a straight leg.

Hold it there for a moment. Bring your hands to the front of your hips. Really stand tall in the foot that's on the bar. Keep feeling like you want to push the bar away so that you've maintained that space between your lower back and the mat. As you're ready, slowly bend your right knee, exhale and press back out. So the exercise that we did before helped to kick in the tissues and the system that needs to be in place to provide the stability for that lower pelvic area. When one leg is now in the air and you've only got one leg for support on the bar, we didn't change the spring, so it's kind of heavy for this leg, which is nice. You get some good feedback and the next time that you press all the way out, go ahead and stay there.

Exhale, slide your left leg next to your right leg. Have that moment where you route down evenly through both feet and then bring your other leg up into tabletop hands can continue to monitor the pelvis if you'd like. Slowly bend the left leg to bring that carriage home. Exhale and press back out with every exhalation. Let it feel like you're creating a fog. [inaudible] it should be gentle, but deliberate [inaudible] right? The quality of that exhalation that may kind of tickle your throat is going to help involve your diaphragms, the one in your throat, the one that is only job is to help you breathe or keep you breathing and also your pelvic floor [inaudible].

And when that synergistic or those synergistic relationships are in place, we know that we're more likely to stay in that neutral zone and to keep everything connected. To keep the relationship of the head over the shoulders, over the pelvis last time, and then go ahead and bring the carriage home. Slide your foot down to the bar, balls of the feet on the bar one last time. Exhale and press all the way out and we'll just walk in place here alternating through the legs. You can take a stroll at first and let it feel really good. [inaudible] as you repeat the movement, start to tune in more to the feeling of even weightbearing through the balls of your feet. A lot of times we get so caught up in the foot that's stretching. We let all the weight shift into that heel.

So when you rise up to your tippy toes, there's that moment where both legs are straight and you can make sure that you're evenly weight-bearing. And then trying to maintain that as you go through the movement. Oh, we'll do two more and last one. Both legs are straight. Bend both knees, bring it all the way and go ahead and bring your legs one at a time. Up into tabletop. You can either hook your hands behind your thighs, exhale to curl up, or turn to your side and make your way up to sitting. Whatever's more appropriate.

So now we're going to take it down to one light spring and we'll grab our long box and place it on the reformer and we'll bring down our [inaudible]. Sorry about that. Okay, so we're going to lie down now. Face down with our hands on the edge of the machine and the shoulders are off. Yes. So while you were lying on your back, we talked about that space behind your head where you're, if you had a nose on the back of your head, that's where it would be. So you're going to bring your head up just a little bit more.

You can rest your hands on the platform in front. And then we want to notice that space between your shoulder blades and your sacrum. So go ahead and bend your elbows just a little bit. Yeah, exactly. And you know, if you don't have a mirror, it's helpful sometimes to grab a prop, a long stick or a box or something and put it on your back. Just to help you find that place in space because it is challenging to lie on your stomach on this box and find that those three points are in line with one another. I'm also applying a little bit of pressure on the crown of your head is going to help give you some feedback as to where the top of that line is coming from or moving through. So again, we're on one light spring with the heels of the hand on the edge there.

We're going to press out to straight arms and just hold it there for a moment and then continue to press and goes far out as you can go so that your shoulders roll up towards your ears. Exactly. And as you exhale, allow your shoulder blades to glide down away from your ears and your body to move forward a bit. And we're just going to glide back and forth there, gliding the carriage back, shoulders up, and then forward. Shoulders down. While you're doing this, continue to think about your shoulder blade staying wide on your back so that again, we're not going as far back as we can go where they might start to draw together and pinch. You want to stay away from that end range, so if you feel like you couldn't go any further, you're going too far. Yeah, so we make the range of movement just a little bit smaller. One last time here. Now we're going to hold it in this position where we're in a good place to start moving through the thoracic spine into like a baby swan exercise. On your following. Exhale, start to press down a little more through the arms.

Keep them straight as you reach your breastbone forward and up. And then again pressing back out with that feeling of the crown of the head, finding the horizon and the shoulders thing wide on the back, gliding forward, the lower ribs moving forward and up and then gliding back down. So from the pelvis to that lower aspect of your rib cage, there really isn't a whole lot of movement happening. We want the movement to happen above that. So that idea of coming to stand on those lower ribs really helps that feeling of lifting through the front and the top of the spine and avoiding compressing the lower back. You can keep your legs energized, reaching away from the top of the head.

And if that creates any tension in your lower back, it might be too much energy, right? You might have to rest them down a little bit. So always notice what you feel in order to determine how hard you should work. How much should you reach, how far should your movement go last time, and then coming back down. So we're gonna park the carriage, bring it into the end. And now bring your hands just to the front of the, of the mat here of the carriage. And again, find that place in space where you know you'd be lined up just the same if you were standing. So if we think about the plum line, we'd go from the crown of the head through the ear lobe, through the shoulders, out through the arm pit, through the sides of the ribs, through the side of the pelvis, through the knee cap and the ankles, and out through the arch of the foot. Okay, so having that image, maybe your, your body's on the horizon and you've got the horizon giving you that feedback. You're looking straight down at the floor and on your following exhale, start reaching the arms back towards your feet. So you look like you might just fly off of the box, but resist that urge to come up into like a or a swan.

Try and stay a little bit lower. Come even a little bit lower Juliana. Yeah, right there. And then start to turn the palm so that the thumbs are facing the floor and slightly bend at the elbows. Hold it here and breathe. Create space between the armpits space through the width of the shoulders so that we're building endurance of the extensor muscles, the entire extensor chain in the body to hold ourselves up. This is really important when you're prepping to do more advanced exercises in extension, right? Even though they're not going into an extended position, their extensors are really working hard to sustain this neutral position against gravity on the box. So they're doing a good job of that.

Hold it for two more breaths. Make sure that your breath is always moving even when your body is not. Exhale all the air out, and then gently bring the hands out in front of you for support and take a moment to rest. Yeah, find a uneasy position. So how did that feel? Was that some work? Yeah, that's work. All right. Now as you're ready, very carefully, make your way up onto hands and knees into a quadruped head position on the box.

Be Very mindful that you're on a light spring, so your carriage will shift around as you do that. And when you're doing quadrat pad on the box, really use the length of the box a is. It's not all that much. Yeah, so exactly. We want to make sure that when we're starting, our knees are underneath our hips and there is wide apart as the sits bones are and that our shoulders are pretty much over our wrist, maybe just slightly behind. It's really helpful for you to test this by gliding forward and then gliding back a little bit. That shouldn't require a whole lot of effort and then finding center and see if you can glide from side to side a little bit. It also shouldn't require a whole lot of effort if you feel like it's about to fall apart. When you start moving around, you're probably not set up in the most neutral position.

Go ahead and find the center now and as you're lengthening out through the top of the head, you're going to exhale, put a little more weight into your right hand and reach your left arm out to the side and then go ahead and bring that hand underneath. Exhale and reach that other arm out to the other side. Continue to alternate this way and notice what you feel in your trunk. When one arm reaches out to the side, do you feel like one side of your body really switches on? If you don't, you're probably not in the most you long gated, neutral position in your body. So tune in to what you're feeling to figure out where you are in space.

And again, it's not about how far the movement goes, it's about how steady can you maintain your trunk as your arm is moving and you're losing one of your bases of support. Now go ahead and find center. Stay here and as you exhale, do the same thing with your legs just sliding back though, not out to the side, sliding your leg right behind you and then slowly bring it down alternating legs. The most common thing that happens when we do this exercise or I want to say the most, but one of the most, is that when we take that leg out, we really start to shift and almost open the top hip or let it drop. If you think about your inner thigh reaching up towards the ceiling, it's going to encourage a little more in there we go. Internal rotation of that leg and then go ahead and bring it down, which is going to help create more of a stability strategy through the lower back and the lower abdominal area.

Just make sure that the weight under your hands isn't shifting a whole lot, right, so the weight under the hands doesn't change too much as the legs are moving last time. Now on this next one, find center rest for a moment. If you want to sit back into child's pose or come onto your elbows, get the weight off your wrist for a moment. That being said, if you're your risk to get Achy, make sure that you're really pushing away and on the box you can even use your fingertips to grip a little bit. If your fingertips squeeze, it'll create more tone in your arms in general, making it less likely to get that kind of sag and discomfort in your, in your wrist. When you're ready. Now on the next exhale, the left arm is going to reach out to the side. As the right leg reaches back and we're going to hold it there and breathe. As you exhale, press the box away and lift the right inner thigh up towards the ceiling so that again, it encourages a little bit of internal rotation without losing that feeling of reach through your foot. Two more breaths. Really push the box away.

Yeah, that was great. That was a great change, right? So you probably felt a little more, something happened through your core. So really listening to the body to know where we are. Last breath looking good. As you're ready. Bring your leg in first, then bring your arm in and they made that look really easy. That's not so easy. Okay, other side. Exhale.

Take the other leg back and the opposite arm. Okay. Top of the head reaches away from the arch of the foot. The left arm pushes the box away. Shine the back of your heart up towards the sky. Keep exhaling.

[inaudible] the inner thigh of the back leg is lifting up. Exhale the breath and the body away from the box. [inaudible] two more breaths. We're almost there. Really energize out through the arch of your foot. Bring your leg down a little lower. There you go. Exhale.

Think about the front of your left hip going towards the box and the inner thigh going up right there. Two more breaths. I know I said that already. [inaudible] push that box away. Juliana, lift the back of the heart. [inaudible] then bring it down to rest gently. Beautiful. You guys go ahead and find your child's pose there for a moment. Oh, we're happy. That's over. That was good. All right. As we're ready, we'll come back up.

We're going to turn around now and sit on the long box facing the back of the machine. Feet are on the head rest. You're still on one light spring. Go ahead and pick up your straps and cross them. Go ahead and hold on above the hardware. Let the arms be pulled out in front of you. And just for a moment again, sit up tall. So we've talked about this position a few times now where the sacrum and the rib cage, so let it feel like the straps are pulling your arms off. There we go.

Yeah, and let them drop down a little bit. That's it. And then top of the head is reaching long. So the arms almost feel kind of lazy, like the, the straps are holding them up. Rather than feeling like we're at attention and ready to do something. Go back and remember what it felt like to do your bridging exercise where we were really thinking about the back of the thighs and the sits bones initiating the movement. Now you're sitting on your sitz bone, so it might be easier to find that sensation. And as you're ready again, let your sitz bones roll towards your knees.

As you start to roll your pelvis back away from the front of your thighs for just a bit right there and then slowly start to sit up again. Let it feel like you almost want your head to stay in the same place. Like it's being pulled up by an elastic band to the sky. And you want your pelvis to move underneath your head. Exactly. And then slowly coming up.

So we're not getting anywhere near the end of a range here. The straps are helping support that movement. And what we want to do is really feel like, again, we're moving our pelvis and this time we're moving our entire trunk on the heads of our thigh bones. And the next time that you exhale and roll back there, hold it for just a moment. It should feel pretty easy, right? It's like a a sustainable position, right? We can hold it.

We can do a lot of stuff here for a long time. And now on your following exhale, start to bring your right leg away from the foot, from the headrest, rather lifting it towards you and then slowly bringing it back down. If you feel any discomfort through the front of your hips or thighs, let your body roll back a little bit more. Let the spring give you a little more support. Exhale as you alternate through your legs. See if you can find that place for the movement where it feels very effortless.

And like you could do this for a pretty long time. One more on each leg and if you feel up to it again, feeling like the lower part of your back is rolling back even more. Yep. Hold a right there. Do you feel pretty comfortable there? Yes, pretty easy. Then as you're ready, you're going to exhale, bring one leg up, and then bring the other leg up. Go ahead and bring one foot down at a time. Hold it there and breathe, and then sit all the way up to tall.

So here's the trick with this exercise, right? As soon as your legs come up, your hip flexors, this part of your body's got to shorten to get your your leg up there, right? What also happens a lot of times that it'll pull your pelvis forward and then you'll end up getting into that position, making it look like you're there, but you're actually shortening your lower back and shortening your hip flexor. Not at all strengthening or stabilizing the core the way we want to. So in order to bring both of the legs up on this next one, we're going to allow ourselves to roll back just a little bit more. If there is any concern about osteopenia or osteoporosis, you wouldn't do this variation because you're pulled back too far into flection.

You could continue to just do the smaller one where you're kind of marching in place. So as you exhale now again, really important to feel like every exhale you're trying to float on the back of that sacrum. Go ahead and bring one leg up, then let yourself kind of roll back again cause you know already, if you don't, it's going to pull you forward and then exhale your other leg up and bring your knees in a little closer towards you. Yeah, hold that there for a couple more breaths. And you can add any variations you'd like to this where if you want to do a series of abdominal exercises here, just making sure that that lower back is rolling back and is able to keep that orientation towards the box the whole time. Holding it in place also provides a very different challenge. So we're just gonna do that today. One last breath. Exhale all the air out and then as you're ready, slowly start to bring one leg down at a time and your way back up to sitting tall. Sit Up. Nice and tall.

Shoulders are relaxed and on the following exhale, pulling the arms alongside of your body and then slowly floating them forward as you're moving through your arms. Continued to encourage the width across the front and the back of the shoulders to grow. Last one. Now on this next one, we're going to keep the strap that's in the right hand and drop off the strap that's in the left hand so you can just go and put that left the strap in your left hand on the floor. Just put it down somewhere. Bring your left hand onto the small of your back now and then allow yourself to turn towards your left knee. Straighten out your right arm. So let it feel like the, the spring is pulling you into that rotation to the left side.

And again, does your chin stay in line with your chest so we're not going all the way. You should have space to continue turning to the left side. As you exhale, start thinking about the right side of your ribs. Moving back to turn to center. Bend your right elbow and turn towards your right knee.

Allow the spring to pull you back to turn across towards your left knee. So think of the markers for the range of the movement or the frame of the movement to be the width of your knees. Your hand is keeping your lower back in check so your lower back and your pelvis aren't really moving much at all. The movement is happening at the rib cage and through this top shoulder. We'll do one more that way. Exhale as you turn, inhale to come back around and rest. Good.

We'll drop that strap off and do the other side to even things out. So as you come up again, keep reminding yourself to just kind of hang off of the spring, let the spring assist holding your body in the position rather than pulling against it. And when you're ready, you're going to exhale and it's the movement in your torso that moves the carriage until your arm starts to pull, rather than just pulling from the arm. So the movement initiates at the lower ribs, it spirals up. Once you're at center, your elbow bends and you continue to turn to the other side. All the while, the crown of the head is like pulled up on that elastic band to the sky because your rib cage is moving around in space.

Your head is also scanning the room. If you find that your head's turning cause your neck is moving, just make a note of that. Maybe close your eyes if you feel like there's so much to look at, right? If that helps you. Um, if it makes you dizzy, then maybe not. So just kind of figure out what gives you more information about moving from your ribs and quieting down your neck last time ladies.

And then when you've come back to your center, go ahead and place that spring down. You can shake your arms out, roll your shoulders around a little bit and we'll go ahead and come up to standing for one last exercise. We're going to come now and stand behind the reformer and we'll bring the foot bar, um, to a setting where it's pretty much over the, um, the base of support here so that it's not in our way and you're just going to stand facing your reformer. You're still on a light spring. If you feel like you want to add more spring tension, you can absolutely do that. Again, it should feel like it assists you and not like you're struggling with the machine. We're going to bend our knees and reach forward to place the hands on the edge of the box. So think about when you were lying on the box, sitting on the box. That feeling again of those three spots of your sacrum, the back of your heart, push away even a little more. Yup.

So you get your shoulder blades wider and the back of your head all in that same line, right? So if there was a broomstick, a Dowel, a foam roller, look down just a little more. There we go. Those three points are going to be stacked up in that same position as you exhale, start to press the carriage away and let your body tip down so it comes in line with the horizon. As long as it feels good, you can push out as far as you want to go and stick out your butt just a little bit. You might get some nice stretching there in the back of the legs. As you exhale, broaden through the collarbones at the box. Start to come back. As you bring those three points up together. So the back of your head, your heart, and your pelvis moving up. So the trunk is moving as one unit while the arms are moving, the box away sits bones wide apart. Stick out your butt.

Exhale that the box come back and under you and let that have your body come up as if your arm stays straight. Your trunk is going to have to glide up and down. Last one, reaching long, creating lots of length through the sides of the body, the back of the ears, the top of the head. Exhale coming up. Hold it here for a moment. Once your carriage is parked, we're gonna hold it there. You can keep the knees bent slightly so that it's easier to keep that body position. Bring your hands onto your hips, press through the legs and come all the way up to straight legs going head and let your arms release. Close your eyes for a moment. And with your closed, noticing where the back of your head is, that space between your shoulder blades and your pelvis, and then noticing each one of the legs coming out and even distance away from your pubic bone or belly button away from that center line of the body down and into the souls of your feet.

And I hope you feel neutral and balanced and you carry that awareness out with you for the rest of the day.