So today, um, I just feel like moving maybe a little unilateral focus. Don't really know what's coming, but let's go together. So I have my springs set up on the reformer for footwork. So I have three reds in a blue spring and I just want us to lie down on our backs. Just for a moment, heals on the foot bar, stretching the arms down along the sides of your body and squaring yourself through the center of the carriage. And then pause here for a moment and look inwards. Um, maybe that means you close your eyes.
Maybe that means you softly focus on something. But just taking a moment to allow the bones of your body to drop into the reformer. Taking a moment to feel a axial elongation and elongation from the tailbone pressing down through the top of the head, which reaches long and in opposition to that, can we create some down and forward reach through the arms? So we have multi-directional energy happening in our bodies without doing any movement at all. And breathing. As you breathe out, feel the spine flattened into the reformer there, just a pretty deep posterior tilt. And then inhale, release to tailbone all the way back down. Let the table and go a little bit beyond neutral.
So you go into an arch and feel the head slide along the headrest. And then in Hilton neutral, just do that one more time. Exhale. First, flatten the spine. So feel that that movement of the spine can be done purely from the front of the body. You don't need any leg work to do that. And then inhale as you come through neutral. Exhale as you reach into extension. So just allowing the spine, a little bit of gentle moving right away. Find neutral. Inhale, press down into your feet. Now exhale, flatten the spine. Begin pelvic curl.
So we now are lifting the spine out of the reformer, off the roof. Former sending the knees forward, pressing the pelvis up, her reaching the arms down. So again, multi-directional energy. Inhale, start from the throat. Soften the throat, soften the breast bone. So instead of thinking of working our way down, can we soften our spine down and feel the tailbone drop heavy India and neutral? I come from neutral through flat rolling up. So we have a some muscular work here, lifting the spine out of its place, pressing up with the hips, pressing down through the arms in hand and then softly moving the spine down.
It's not to say that there's not muscular involvement here, but just the practice of moving from a place of softness or a place of ease again in here and exhale and then maybe adding to the practice or what I'm adding to my practice today is just a sense of appreciation for what we have for our bodies and how they move and exhale to come down. And maybe just for life in general, what are you grateful for last time? Excelling to lift up,
Lift and down and lift.
See if you can press the pelvis up a little higher and then exhale. Keep that wide open position through the chest,
Excellent to come back.
Find neutral and go over the top.
Inhale, exhale a little harder here. Find neutral.
Go beyond neutral. Pause there. Inhale, exhale, lift. The right leg
So hands back behind the head. We're going to do a smaller version of that. So take the right knee away from the left knee just a little bit. Keep the feet towards the hips. Left knee away for me. This is almost harder for some reason and I don't know why. Just maybe that real deep focus, that rural small movement.
We're going to do one more.
Lift the Shin as you twist center. Drop the feet. Crow last time. So pull. Think of the Shin as it comes up into a tabletop position. Lifting the body higher. Now keep that 90 degree angle at the hip to the knee and just twist one lift higher to one more. And then both legs up, knees into the chest. Curl up a little higher.
Arms forward, feet down, arms up. Inhale, press legs up, arms down. Inhale, feet down, arms away, back. Exhale, pull feet and arms reach in opposition. And then we gather herself and bring everything back. Just two more times. Reach out, pull back, reach out, pull back. Take a hold of your size. Corolla, swivel. Lay Down, feet on the foot bar. Head rest can be up or down.
Here I'm gonna put mine up.
And so your [inaudible] visual would be to pull the heels towards the backs of the legs, creating a rhythm with this work and reach a rhythm and reach. We'll do three more taking care that as the leg straight and they don't go beyond the ankles behind the Incas. They go just in front of the ankle last time and out and then bend pumping out in push drag. So there's no riding of the springs. It's a push in Nepal. I push in a pole last for three to reach out, bend in, move to your toes, press, ah, feel the quality of weight on the feet again, lifting the heels up high and then as the knees bend in, the heels stay here and we reach out. So try, what I've been playing with is to not push or feel the energy coming right from the feet, but instead to feel the energy coming from the hips almost as though the feet are light on the bar. Now that's um, an idea.
I don't know if it can be our reality. I know that I can feel like a reality. What is beings who are real actually is that the feet have to put pressure onto the bar. But can we work higher up? Can we work higher up towards the trunk, towards the hips last to keeping the alignment through all of the toes. One more coming in and we go out, ah, to resisting the springs pushing the springs. So it's a push, pull energy all the time. Check in with your pieces.
Your neck is soft, your arms are long. Last time, press out, swivel the heels together externally, rotating the hips. Keep the heels there and bend and rack and pull and reach in here and exhale so we can create rhythm with our breath rhythm, with our movement. Working in the outer hips, the glutes working the insides of the legs. Feel the heels connecting together last for and stretch.
Pull in, press out. Last to reach long last time. Stretch out, bend the knees and we go out in Ah, Eh, ah, eh, and feeling the equality of the weight on the feet last for three peaceful two one stretch all the way out. Swivel the feedback to parallel. Take the heel under the bar and under the bar and Ah, feel the work that's happening in the feet.
Travel all the way up the backside of the leg. Resist from the top of the leg as the heels drop and pull from the top of the leg as the heels lift last five. Not really keeping a perfect count. I will try to be better at keeping a perfect count when we start going from doing our bilateral work. Here's last time and up and then prancing.
So heel down center, the bar dam. And so do it just a moment, like maybe an imperceptible moment, but a moment of pause as the legs are reaching together, like they're trying to squeeze together and then one drops in, one lifts together, one drops in, one lifts and we'll go five more. Get the full range out of the bottom. Lang. Keep the pelvis really still. Last three, three, two, two, one. Pause, stretch, lift, pause, stretch, lift up, bend in, head in, chest up. Take a hold of the size. Curl up. I'm just resting my, nope. I'm not going to rest my shins over the foot bar.
I'm going to take it down to two springs, two red springs. Take the headdress down. It's not comfortable for you to lice on a straight arm. You could always get yourself a pillow, so we're going to come all the way down onto that side. One side. We need to put your head on your arm and you're free. Hand right on the shoulder block. Push out, stand on the inside of the carriage and organize your pushing leg so that it's right underneath you so that find the work in the center of your body so that when I lift that standing, supporting leg up, it says though I'm standing on the floor and then we bend.
It's a small Ben. Push through the heel, Ben. Feel the heel connect and stretch as we press out through that working leg. Feel the lift. That's three. I'm trying for 10. So if you know me and you know my skills and counting, you maybe should keep track of your own repetitions. Here's five by my account for I'm flexing my bottom foot, standing energetically so that, sorry, I lost it. One, we'll call that one flexi.
My bottom puts the ending energetically. So when I have both feet here, I'm standing up on the floor, lift the heel of your um, Barfoot bend. Go deeper now and press then keep the heels still and reach all the time. Bringing awareness to the front of the body all the time. Keeping that heel on. Ah, that's just lifted off off the bar. Nice and still feel that connection into the hip.
Last five repetitions of 10 and four, chances are I won't get it perfect. Doesn't mean I'm not trying. Three
Another variation with the arm that you could do is just to bend your elbow to lay down on your arm. So we press out with both legs standing on the inside of the frame, looking down the line at the body, make sure it's straight. So what I'm curious about in my own experiences, how do my sides feel different? Ben and I've gotten a little more range on this psi and press anchoring, reaching all the time with that bottom line in here
Let me just do that small range. Keep the lift through the bottom waist last too. That being said, you don't need to over-exaggerate the lift to the bottom lace. Just stay active. Here we go. We lift the heel, bend deeper now
Fill the shoulder of the arm that's on the shoulder. Black sliding down the back says five by my count.
Last time. Step into the frame. Bend both knees. Help yourself up. I'm going to keep that same red spring. We're going to come up onto our knees. So situate the knees so that they're not quite right up against the shoulder blocks and reach your hands down into the frame of the reformer. Send the shoulders forward of the hands forward of the hand.
So we're going to do this exercise in a couple of different pieces. I want us first to create a posterior rotation or a tuck in the pelvis around spine. Then we're going to bring the reformer underneath us. Oh, I forgot I had two springs. That's too heavy for me.
Start to pull the kerogen. Keep the spine stable, stable, stable. Now as the carriage starts to pass, the hands started to allow the hips to lower towards the feet. Come back with the carriage until you're in your round, stable spine and then extend the spine. Notice that my shoulders are still under in front of my hands. Exhale to curl the spine. So now from there, keep the shape of the spine consistent and let the hips change or this shape of the knees change in heel to come back and exhale to elongation again.
Exhale, curl. Continue through. Come back into your round spine. Release in tears. Flat Spine. Remember to breathe last time. Curl. Continue through
Roll the spine up a great. I bring your straps with you so I'm going to hold just above the hardware, hands on the straps, long arms, pressing the pelvis forward. Now I haven't. Yeah, I am against the shoulder blocks here so we're going to press the arms back and forward. It's Nice and control shoulder blades. Draw down the back as we reach and forward reached and forward. Two more to make five reach and forward and reach and forward. Now, just the arm closest to me. Pull and rotate and center.
Pull an ro. Tay, I'm curious in my experience about where my rotation feels stronger. This can also be done on a lighter spring. Am I feel better on a lighter spray? I'm enjoying the challenge of the heavy spring, but obviously it's important to make sound decisions for each individual. Last time. Rotate Center, rotate center. So next idea, take the arms about halfway back. Now start not arching from the lower back, but pressing the arms down and from right in the center of the shoulder blades.
I want us to arc arc arc, lifting the chest, come back up to straight and take the arms forward again. That's a little tiny stall. Here we go. Arms Back, press down with you. I'm now the arms. Don't go further back. The spine goes up, up, up.
Lists and lists and lists and lists and lists and center and arms for it. So now let's to that with a little rotation. Again about halfway back, rotate. Take the arm that you're rotating toward down the side of that side. So the other, I'm just comes along for the ride.
We're doing a backbend with rotation. Come back up and rotate. Let's inhale to twist. Exhale to dive backwards. This arms just let actually feels nice to reach.
Come back through center and you rotate. So I'm going to keep that idea of reaching with the other. I'm here. We got twist as the arm that has tension reaches down the other arm can reach out like you're gonna pull a bow and arrow. I Dunno if that's the right posture for bow and Arrow working, but I don't know. That's what it feels like to me.
Twist again and reach down. Lift to the arm in opposition. Come back through center and home. One more time. Twist and reach and center and back. One more.
Twist and reach and center and bring it home. Set the straps down. Take the foot bar down and do some unilateral hip work. Today, I'm going to keep the red spring coming back down onto the first side of the body. This time I'm going to bend my elbow and I'm going to move my pelvis. Instead of being in the center, we're going to go backwards almost so that the hips come off the edge of the reformer.
Take this rep that's closest to you on your foot and stand in that strap and then bring the bottom leg up so that the knees are at a 90 degree angle. Lift that top leg, press oh away and bent. Keeping the spine long. Press away keeping maybe a little bit of lift through the lower waist. Press away an n [inaudible], press away and still have a red spring. If I didn't mission mention, so I think aid is appropriate here. We'll do for coming back, standing in the structure resist, and three, I'm letting the strap go just underneath my knee last two times and just underneath the knee last one time. Take it out, take the leg back.
The strap will run into the body, let it and forward. I had my hand on my pelvis so I can feel if there's any shifting at all, any rotation, any forward and back movement. When a pull from the hamstring, press the strap into the body by taking the leg further back. This is four by my account. I'm looking for eight an inhale. [inaudible] yeah, for more press out is you go back and forward and three and four and two.
Yeah, forward and now one. But keep it back. We're gonna lift the leg up. Circle the like around all my hip just cracked. That's pretty fun. And back. Rotate. Lift up. Come around to the front for repetitions of these.
Here's number three up. [inaudible] around to the front. I really like working my sides one at a time. I can really feel, I mean, I would literally feel like I live in two different bodies. Press back and then bend.
So it stays like this. I'm so happy that I only have two sides. Okay, so hang up the strap. Help yourself on turn sides. So now you can see the placement of my body from this angle. So I get way back. So my shoulders, I was kind of in a squat position. My shoulders are in front of my hips, foot comes into the strap, press out and match the legs, and then lift the leg strap is just underneath my knee.
Here we go out and, and, and press and, and press. So one thing that you could think about as you're pressing your leg out is reaching your spine in the opposite direction. Three more here. So really working those lateral movers to,
I'm thinking about pulling from the place where my hamstrings and my glutes meet and they formed that gluteal crease for by my account. It was number one, not number one. Now we have number one in my brain counting down for four. And then I'm not also just going back, I'm going back and out
So now we go back, we rotate. Bring the leg all the way around the front, keep that spine totally stable and push out. Reach. Ah, bring it around to the front. And we just did four
You may want to heavy it up just to stay. Keep the carriage still, but I feel safe with my one spring going into the control balance. So I'm going to situate myself on my back, holding onto the handles. So lifting one leg, lifting the other leg. Just be careful with the lights. Spring on the carriage should be okay. Stretch the legs out on the inhale. Lift them up and then take them over backwards towards parallel. Stabilizing them
Now with the legs floating there towards the, well, I want you to feel as though you're trying to eat. Elongate your back. So if you have neck, something, neck troubles, neck, anything, this maybe isn't the right choice for you. So now we're going to take the right leg into the frame. We're going to take the left leg, oh the way up into the air, lengthening out through the back and we're going to change. And then we're going to add a little [inaudible]
So Paul Paul stabilize Paul Paul.
Just um, fun fact about me. And then we're going to go reach both legs, both legs and then with control. Take the lengths down,
So a little bit of arm work coming up. I like my head rest up. I'm going to stand in it. One hand on the foot bar. Both hands on the foot bar. Take a straight leg into the shoulder, a head rest. Get ready on your arms. Take another straight leg into the shoulder. Rest, head rest holding here we're going to press out and pull in cold. Press out.
How far can you go?
I just got myself pushing onto my strong arm, so watch for that. Push out. Bend the elbows. Pull forward with bent arms all the way and Pusha. Reach out. Bend the arms, abdominals in. Pull forward with bent arms all the way and press up one more bend all the way and off.
We're going to reverse it. Go in bend, push out two straight arms come forward with straight arms. Touch Bend, press lifts the body over the top of the bar. Strong abs, strong legs. Last Time Ben, push down, lift up. Step one leg in except the opposite foot against the shoulder block and take that leg you used to stabilize back against the shoulder block. I still have one red spring. Be perfectly fine to adjust to a say a red and a blue, maybe a little heavier springs. I'm coming down really trying to get my spine flat for the elephant so the heels stay down, the toes lift up. We push out.
Drag back. Long Spine. You're taking, taking the legs out.
Try not to shift the spine. Take the right leg around to the back. End Up, keeping the spine low, taking the left leg out, lift the right leg as we bring the carriage back. Take the right left leg out. Both arms, straight, abdominals in spine. Long back leg, reaching so much. One more and back. Going to swing that leg back around. Square the shoulders. Get into your long, get into your stable spine position. Shift the left hand across to the right.
Stand on the right leg. Try not to shift the pelvis around a great deal as you take the leg around and over the back. Strong Armstrong body. Inhale, the leg goes back. Exhale, pull and lift the leg and inhale back and exhale. Pull it. Lift. Lay. One more. Reach back, pull in and lift.
Take the leg around. Step in, square the shoulders. Elongate through the spine. Take the both legs back, both legs and round your spine. Take your arms, shoulders, your hands. Bend your knees to the Mat. Slide the feedback against the shoulder blocks. Press the pelvis forward into the down stretch so we take the arms back or the carriage back.
Keeping that nice arc through the spy and the long spinal position. Come all the way in. Press out,
Press out with the lengths pelvis comes through. Who left up, up, up like you're going to lift all the way off the bar,
Now think about stabilizing the shoulder as you cruel around that shoulder joint to bring the carriage in. So I'm working my underneath my, underneath the obliques we're going to press out. This is like a kneeling star
Yeah. And all the way back. And again, and again, inhale out. So it's the same shoulder stabilization work that we just did have it from a much more challenging perspective and back. So perhaps if you're not choosing to practice this right now, but you're just watching, this might be a good move to do first as a suggestion, not a, not an ultimate rule. Both hands on the foot bar, square the shoulders, lift the spine through the arms. So in the back extension with rotation in an app and then press out and in an up
Lift all the way in. Lift up
Noticing the difference between both sides of the body. Here comes our extension, so we square the shoulders and we pull the spine up. Ah, this is a great movement. This one right here to get yourself ready for the snake, which we're not going to do today, but it just is really similar. Feeling that rotation and extension and trying to lift up out of the arms.
Last time out, last time in. And then Allen and then center the arm, pivot around the shoulder, bring the carriage in, lift the arm up and side stretch. I use my arm, my bottom arm to pull also feels good to do a little forward rotation. So always feel free to move your body within the prescribed movements or the suggested movements. So we're going to finish just sitting towards the foot bar. I'm going to take the spring away and get up nice and close so that carriage is floating. Now carriage is floaty.
So what we're going to do is inhale, we're gonna tip the pelvis under and cruel the carriage towards the stopper. And then in here find neutral and then exhale, press down on the bar and also slide the carriage. And so we pull up and back up and back. Now I have on my reformer that I'm using one of those bars that locks in. So if your bar doesn't lock in, be careful with that cause I pulling back on it slightly. And then tuck under, move the carriage forward and it might touch the stop or, and you, you know, if it touches the stopper before you want to stop moving there, just continue to move.
And then let it float underneath the pelvis and then press into the bar, lift the chest, use that extension of the spine to bring the carriage back
Bring the body up. Take the arms out in front of you two more times in heel to reach up. Take the spine up and back.
One last moment to feel moving energy in your body. Notice pay attention. I'm coming all the way back to let the hands rest on the knees.
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