Day 7: Expansion

Day seven today is all about expansion and I couldn't think of a better way or a more beautiful day to practice expansion. Pacific Ocean is right behind me, kind of all around me, and if that's not true for you, maybe you can imagine it. At the very least, open yourself up to changing the pace, changing the tone of moving they seven. Like I said last time we were grounded in our, we're going to move on. Let's go stand with your feet apart. Balance Your weight, find the ground we spent so much time with last time. Maybe rock forward, maybe rock back, soften the knees a little and then engage.

Almost push into the ground to lift yourself up. Feel that reaction. Arms are down. Take an inhale. I do like to turn my palms up. I like to stretch. I want to find more room in the bond. Inhale as deeply as expansively as you want, no matter what happens and then exhale and don't worry about the arms coming down, but let it be easy. Let's do it again in Phil. How high can you show this? Go? How deep can your lungs breathe. Exhale down. We'll change it ever so slightly. We inhale, take it off. We exhale.

Let's go down about half or with expansion comes contraction, so if we're going to round forward, just take the arms forwards. Not a big deal, right? But here's the fun part. As you turn the arm bones out again, flex the hands. Keep the arm straight, expand and open. You don't have to thrust your Royce. You could, but it might feel better if you don't. Let's do it again. Rounding forward in here. You can bend your knees all you want. I'm just going to kind of play with what feels good for me. I hope you will to turn the palms out. Fingers are pointing away.

This is so good for you if you're sitting a lot, even more so if you're on the computer, let's do three more faster. I'm inhaling forward on the contraction and I'm exhaling back right now. I'm going to change that in a moment. Email forward, sort of opposite to it. We might sometimes want to do hail, but so is expansions. That's the theme. Inhale and exhale.

Stay open, stay open. If you've noticed that you've stuck your rear end out, bring it back underneath. You reach the arms further back first. Inhale to where there, directly to the side, right directly to the side. And now without, I'm going to turn just so we can maybe see this without tightening to straighten your arms. Spread the back. Less is more. Sometimes if you want to expand from here, take your right arm down, left arm up, reach the right arm down the left arm up.

Let the ribs of the left side flare. Even wait on your feet. Oh, that feels kind of good. If it doesn't adjust so that it does, make sure you're not rolling forward or back right alongside. Come up, change to the other side. Even though I'll be doing the same. One less time down, right arm. Awesome. And overall. Yeah, that's right. And easy. Lift, expand.

Take a breath into that and then come back up. Let's do one more. All together, both arms up. Exhale. Let them come down all the way. Easy, easy, easy, nothing too much to do here. Take the arms up the front, flex the hands. That's what I was doing before when I was sideways and open to the side. I'm trying not to arch my back yet till about right alongside. And then as I continue to reach sideways, lift the chest, lift the heart, lift your face a little and let it go.

Let's do one route. Roll down and then we'll go to the mat. Inhale, nothing to do with the arms except for maybe expand the distance between each vertebra. Exhale down, bend your knees when you need to, right? If you find yourself moving in a class that is themed around expansion and you contract and try too hard, it's just not going to work. So find your feet. Allow the ground to support you. Allow your abdominals to support you. Roll yourself back up. And finally, one more. Inhale up and exhale. Let's go to the mat. Have a seat. [inaudible] from here, we're going to roll ourselves all the way down.

Separate the feet so there sits bones, distance. The arms are down in flat. Take an inhale. You feel the feet. We did all that work. If you don't know what I mean by grounding, go back to class six. Exhale. If feel the spine curl, you stepped into yourself. You roll a bit here. Somewhere around here starts a few of the old thing of your body.

So much of this work is truly about what you choose to focus on. So I could work super hard or I can allow, allow the expansion of the front of your body. It means back. Your body is going to work, but we don't have to focus on that. Exhale, roll. Rolling. We'll go tiny bit quicker today. Inhale. Exhale. One thing I've learned lately is if I think too much, nothing but contraction happens, so let's just feel it. Open it, expand, whatever is so [inaudible] using the rules we have of course that it should feel good.

You know, we're just warming up. We're finding that Selphyl spine. I'm closing my eyes because while I have to, you can too, but use that as a position, a way of finding what's going on inside. Inhale and exhale down. Just doing that pelvic cruelty. One more. I'll do a slight change at the top. Next. I'm at the bottom. Inhale. Exhale. We'll talk about breadth later, but exhale, rule up.

Feel how that breath helps you in your expansion and contraction. When you get to the top, check it out. Hands on the front of your hips. Do your best to straighten out that line. Oh, I had a long way to go. Turned out. Check out your feet there. Level meaning you're not rolling in or out. Your inner thighs are engaged.

Let's take up the right leg. Inhale, I'm standing on the arms now to stretch that like up. Flex it. Oh, everything's expanding. Their reach the leg nice and slow. Maybe you'll touch the ground, maybe not put it back in place. Other side. Pick the knee up. Stretch the leg. Oh eight take a look. Did you drop the hip? Don't it should be level with the other. Flex the foot. Reach it. Long reach at long reach at long.

When you need to bend it and pull it back, there's no point in hurting yourself. So the back tension you just retook or lower down, right? Like again, lift up. Flex then reached down almost like a gigantic walk. Left leg up, reach and down. Once more each side, right? Like up, reach and down. Remember, we're expanding, so when you reach that leg, reach it, not from taking the leg. Reach it from the head, from the middle somewhere else. Put it down. Hold. Inhale, exhale. Roll your body down. When your hips touched, let your hands come up. Reach them to the side.

We did some opening there already, so I'm going to move on right away. Either pick up the knees or leave the feet on the ground. You know what you need at this point towards the ocean. Inhale, rotate that opposite shoulder stays down. Stay here. Top leg extends, knees are glued together in here. Hold that stretch further. Somewhere around the waist. Bring both legs as if they're a one back to center and refold the top leg toward the back. Rotate. Inhale, check your knees out. Just like always there.

Lined up, right. Extend that tough one. You can imagine reaching it longer, but it's not about the leg, it's about the body. It's about you getting more open. Keep it all like it is, but bring it back to center and fold. Here's the cue. Inhale, rotate. Knees are bent to the ocean. Exhale, extend the top leg check itself. Inhale, hold or maybe stretch longer. Exhale, come back to center and fold to the Bacchae stretch long. Now remember, you don't have to do leg extension if that's too much.

Just keep it as it was and come back. And so now let's do one more without the extension and just feel what it is to roll to one side. Inhale, keep the knees bent. Start the exhale, feel of bones, press to the mat like the grounding class you did last time. Last one to the back. Inhale and exhale back to center. Your feet come down from there. Just glide the hands right overhead. They're straight, but they're hovering off the mat. From there in here, start bringing your arms up. You feel your head connected to your upper body. You bring it up to you. Curl forward.

You look somewhere mid thigh or maybe higher. Inhale, raise the arms up as high as you can without changing your body. Exhale and expand your way back down. Inhale, don't give up. There is no rest in between Reps. Exhale. That's why the better you get applauded is the less reps you have to do reaching forward. Check your neck. You can always use your hands behind your head. Inhale, arms up and exhale down.

There is something about the waves can that helps. I've gotta admit. Inhale, exhale, curl. And when you're here, if you feel tension in your back and nothing in your abs, go ahead and chuck a little. That's all right. Meaning press your low back a little. Let that part rat relax to the front can work. Inhale, arms up and take it back. One more. We're going to stay up there again to expand. You've got to contract, so let's feel the difference. Exhale, Corolla collarbones wide. You know the rules arm straight. Just inhale, two arms are up. Exhale down.

Inhale up, arms are down. You can play with this. Make it more challenging and bring the legs up if you want. You can extend them nice and high if you want, but nothing changes about your back. I'm keeping mine down. I'm going to hold the breath a little longer on the next three reps. Three counts up into three. Body doesn't change. Exhale, two, three you.

It means you have to find expansion in the lungs. Even when there's stability in the body. Just the truth. And Damn. Can we do four breaths for two sets in hell, up to three. Stay on it and down. Two, three, four and up. This is it.

You can do that and down with the arms. Raise the arms up, let your body go back, let everything go back. Reach, stretch out your legs and expand. Stretch, whatever feels good. I'm kinda climbing side to side, reaching one leg, one arm higher, flaring my ribs that I love to flare my ribs. Sometimes I'm just going to do it no matter what I tell other people, right? Moving on, we're going to bend the knees, bring them in. Hold on. So some of the moves, here's the thing, you've got to always look for the working need in Valadez. It's all there. Here's the thing, rolling. It's the better we get out of the tighter we get, but the more breasts we can take in. So the frack is kind of key on this one.

We did this before. I have my feet together today. You could keep them apart, but eventually I might pull them all the knees together too, but now they're apart. I'm going to curl up as if I was doing a chest lift or an ab curl. I'm going to concentrate a little on keeping my feet together and get the rocking going and then I'm going to know that. Okay, so far my back is smooth, right? I'm not clear clunking anywhere. So then the only thing that I can expand this, I don't mean make the position bigger is the breath. So I'm inhaling back, exhaling up, inhaling back to you see it's slower already.

Arms aren't changing. Fill up the back with the inhale. I know it's a weird cue, but you can do it. Just think my back is full, my abs blowout or something. I don't know what she think. I really don't even know what I think that's what I'm doing. Two more. Inhale back. Exhale up. Next one will stay up, huh? Just for fun because we're expanding our horizons.

Make it as tight as you possibly can and know it might be ugly or it might be perfect. We shall see. Bring it in as close as you can. Ultimately, we are pulling our ears into our insides of our knees. Let's go just to, don't worry about landing it. Inhale back. It's held up. Do it again. Whatever happened. Do it again. Fold your spine. Uh, stay up. Now. Back yourself up. If you DT, you probably do because you've been so connected, grounded, all that other stuff. We're going to extend the left leg. You can hold on behind the right or you can hold on on top of the right, which is how I'm going to do today. But here's the thing.

Press the foot into the thigh and feel yourself reaching not just from the leg but from the whole roundedness of the spine. And if you do, you'll probably start rolling back and upsets almost the same exercise. Back up, back up. Remember we talked about the collarbones being my, there's so much to think about. The real thing to think about is does it feel smooth today? Does it feel like I'm getting somewhere just by opening up or expanding with the breath? How about one more time? If not look for it.

These classes aren't really meant to be done. Once I put that left foot down or the straight leg down, then the other pickup, the opposite. Choose which you need. If you're holding on underneath and it's not a bad idea at all, push into it helps yourself. That's all I got to say, but I'm going to try on top. I feel good today and as I roll back just about the tip back, extend the other leg.

I'm using both legs into each other to roll back of hold, not I'm controlling it a little bit, right? Or trying to, anyway, I could just wing myself, but I'm using the inhale, the exhale expand my lungs, my back. It's more thought than what you would see. Two more. One. It's not working. Hold on underneath. Use what you got. Nothing more. Hold it. Bring both knees in, hands behind your thighs, slowly lower yourself down. When you know your back, your low back is down. Extend everything forward. Your arms and your legs pretty high. Keep it there. Squeeze the inner thighs, squeeze the back, the legs. Reach the arms, expand your limbs, but keep the body in position. Exhale, bring everything back. Sink the belly.

Let's go quicker now. Same thing. First forward. Inhale, long in. Inhale, exhale, bring it back. Oh, I didn't tell you about that long. Inhale, did I? Here we go. We're inhaling. We're still inhaling. It's as if we're pushing her feet down on something else to keep us in position. Exhale, everything. Let's go. Inhale forward, reach back. Exhale, pull in. If the breath messes you up, don't worry about it. Extend your body and keep it as in shape, meaning the shape that we're making with the spine as similar to the one before it as possible. Hold it there. Rest your head.

Rock again. Pick your head up as you do rock just like you did before. Find that place where you feel as a smooth ride. You know what I mean? It doesn't feel good to clunk around. It might mean you have to spread it out. That's okay. Find where you are now. So you can make those really important, easy adjustments layers all the way up when you're ready for life, where they're backing up yet again, if it's available to you, straight your legs. And so I'm thinking of a lot of expansion here is my favorite exercise forever cause I couldn't do it for years. So I'm going to try to fit in my legs.

If you can't know that you'll benefit. Even if you don't, you have two options at the very least you can roll up the mat you're sitting on so you're elevated and you can bend the knees. It's up to you. Start with the straight spine. We've done it with our hands behind our backs before today we're gonna act like we're holding something. We're not grounded, we're holding something strong and we're going to stretch our spine. We're going to find expansion. Exhale round, forward, round forward. It's like you want to put your head on the Mat.

Try not to adjust the legs from where you started. So you've got to pick where you start and then just come right back up. And here's the beauty and this is a huge lesson in [inaudible]. It's not going to be achieved today. Most likely when you exhale everything she used to say, I don't know, some version of exhale, the bad air to get the good air in a German accent.

People always do get get it out and you don't have to think about the end. You have to come about the expansion. Let's do that just just as an idea. Take whatever air and you can your upright. Exhale it. Don't force it. Just exhale. Keep that ceiling as you move. Keep that telling. As you move, keep excelling. As you move. When you're done, you are going to know it and you'll just be forced to inhale back up and kind of easy from there. Let's go. Exhale down. Try not to just lean forward.

It's not just a hamstring stretch. There's some there, but it's more about the spine. Literally someday we want to touch our top of our head on the mat. I'm done breathing cause I talked so much backup. If it helps, you can turn your palm down and imagine you're pushing something [inaudible]. This is more traditional anyway, get it there and get it there. Go ahead. Inhale. You know what I mean? If you're really trying for, it can almost make you sick. You're going really get all that air out.

Not that we're trying for that, but might as well get it out. If you can put your feet together. If it's getting to be too much to sit here and boy, I get it. Turn your feet out so I'm just sitting in a diamond position. In fact, I'm going to do it that way. Eventually they go straight from here. Palms are up, body straight. Press your heels together and twist to the front twice. Blow out your air. One, two, inhale, center. Get tall to two. If you thought about it more as a, I'm getting tolerance or size, then I'm twisting further exercise. It'll stay with the theme and you'll probably feel better too and do what?

Which was further actually cause you won't be bearing down on yourself. Right? Let's go. Remember if you blow out the air, it's easy to be tall coming through. Let's do four more. One, one. That's how I count. Here's two, two, two. Don't lean back. If you see me leaning back to say, so here's four and center. Take the arms out to the side without thrusting your lower rib cage forward. Try to do what we did in the beginning. Flex your hands, reach them back if you will, just period.

Start to lift your chest. It doesn't feel like much does it when you've gone as far as you can't put your hands down somewhere behind you and assist the upward action of that lift of the chest, not the forward action upward. So it shouldn't be. It should be less on your legs, Huh? And then around forward, sitting back up fingers. If you can, are going to face your heels. This is one of those places you might want to roll your mat again and put the heel of your hand as modification. Video on polite is anytime that would help you with wrist.

But if you don't put your fingers forward, you can turn them sideways to, let's try to avoid going all the way back. Straighten your legs or not. You could keep them bent, but here we go. Lifting. Just inhale, feel the breath goes far down into your body as possible. Then you just sit down, hinge at the hips, pick your hands up, open 'em out to the side, put them back down, lift up, sit down, arms forward. I'm just sitting up as tall as I can. Again, bend your knees if you want. It's not a big deal, especially if it hurts the back of your knee. Don't do it. Just leave and bent up and down.

Opening the shoulders, opening the back one more time. That's all it's go up and sitting tall. Take it forward. Roll yourself down and turn onto the side face and forward to the screen. Upon the elbow. The knee is bent, top leg is lifted. Bring that hip up. The really kind of feel that contraction of the waist and then as if someone pulled your leg away, can you the whole, the whole ease of your body can almost sit up. It's just an idea, but that's the general tendency. We want to go that way right now.

Top Pan is there for help. Kick forward one, two, sweet. Back to back. Somewhere along the way I started thinking about the leg bone in the hip joint. You're not an anatomy person. Just make it feel good without moving your spine. For me, I think of the mortar and pestle kind of action.

If I have to stop here on some days I do, but I want to make sure I go as far forward as I can far back as I can to get the full expansion, the hip extension. That's really what we need. We need that to keep walking to stay up. Right. Let's do two more. No matter how many. That was one more. When you get to the back, stay back there, stay right back there and I can feel what I did and I don't know if you did it. Probably not who would do that, but me, I dropped, right? So I'm going to again, think of that like I'm going to roll that hip forward and I'm going to feel the stretch that I'm so not used to. That means my butt's working. Now again from there, lift, just straight up, tiny lift, nothing. Moving.

Lift, lift, lift, lift. Hold it at your high point without dropping the ribs. That doesn't count. It just makes you feel like your leg is higher. Frustrate back. This one, super unsatisfying, but sometimes expansion is three more. One, two, three, bring that leg and hug it close. If it's available to you, take it into a quad stretch. If you can lie down to do it or you can simply put it on the floor and thrust the hip forward switch.

And if you're up on the hip, you're lined up as much as you can be so that your hips are straight on top of each other. Top leg is lifted, you've reached it. Kick forward, reach back, kick forward. Sides are different, right? And like you always hear about the bad side. And when people say that my good side, I like saving the good for the last kick, kick and back doesn't mean it's easy. It means I have more freedom there naturally. And so I'm looking for it and I'm expanding on that.

Next one's going to stay to the back. I encourage you and me to look at it back there so it's not in your back, right? Your glutes shouldn't be working. Uh, we listed, we lifted just the leg. It's like muscle. We need two more. Keep it at your high point without dropping your ribs. Did you check? You got to check. I know you don't think he did. I didn't either. One.

Straight back to straight back the rear. Keep it high for a six by and six bring the knee in. You can round your back to whatever you want. Get Cozy. Just be gentle with your shoulder and then the quad stretch if it's available again, your foot could be on the floor now. Then real close you can not do in a class on expansion without really thinking about the chest opening or the back extensors working.

Turns out really the whole back of the body's got to work here. So we're going to start with the single leg kick lower in the beginning. So I have one hand over the other and I'm going to switch hands cause I always put right over left. So I'm going to go to leftover, right just to freak myself out, pulling the abdominals in. I'm stretching the front of my hips like we did in the very beginning of class. Then it's as if you're pulling yourself forward. So if we did nothing else, I'm literally almost giving myself that sensation of pulling forward with my hands and my forearms. If he did nothing else, your back extensors are working now. Get heavy on the rib cage.

The bones. Imagine reaching the legs so far down your mat that they start to hover from right where the back of the legs and the gluten meat. Lift the right leg a little higher and keep it straight. It's only the highlight working and slightly lower. Same. Like to same like three out of five who's four.

Upper Baxter working here is five. Keep the leg lifted but not so high. Other side, you're not wobbling. Five for three. Don't overtighten the foot to one. You can lower the feet down. You can turn, you can either leave your hands there or turn them forward and bring them underneath. You add a little bit more from there.

We reached the same legs again till they lift a little harder there. You can go back down. Don't let it be in your back kick, right? Like kick, kick, straightened, switch, kick, kick, straighten. It doesn't look like my legs up, but my knee slightly as I'm reaching so far that my knee is up, it makes it actually easier for me not to wobble, but it does mean I have to work a heck of a lot harder. I'm just pulled pool and pool pool. Last one, pull, pull and down and then stretch yourself. Oh, hands by your side. Press up, round, back. Right. And, and as much as this feels or maybe looks like a contraction, the fact is we're trying for the extension or expansion of the spine. So if you're one of those flexible people, I'd say I'm somewhere in the middle.

You might just be here like nothing. If that's you, you're going to need to tuck round the low back a little more and push into it a little bit. If not, if your knees or anything else bothers you, you can stay on your toes. You can put a towel behind your knees and you can do it from a higher position. The point of it is really to get the back extension. So go for that because we aren't done with the back extension. Let's go back down and as you do before you are done, come right back. Yup. I know psych.

It's not cause I forgot it's cause I meant to walk your hands more forward. Everybody puts your shins into the ground, round your spine. Start to roll yourself over to the weight is more over your hands, blood still in the shins a little and then come into an arch position. Looking forward, not just from your neck. That's just not fun, right? But rather feel where your tailbone is. Feel where your back is.

Feel where the knees are helping you feel the stretch to the front of your hips. Expand your arms, your chest, your heart, and certainly your eyes and vision. I got to take another inhale cause I said all that. Exhale, we pull it back and now find a rhythm for yourself. We'll just do three more. Inhaling as you roll into it, find connection at all those points. Exhale and know that none of it is supposed to be any certain way.

It's supposed to be continuous. It's supposed to feel like an evolution and expansion of a movement. We're doing one more forward. We'll get there and we'll hold it. There should be comfy. She'd be kind of comfy.

So comfy that you can start to bend your arms and imagine pulling yourself forward. So you lay the sh a, what are they? Hips down, ribs. Everything down. Expansion in the shoulders, forehead down. Come back up to round, back. Take that rest position or cap position or lie on your back. If you'd like. We are officially done with the expansive expansion exercises with one example.

Find a place to be comfortable seated, preferably standing works to really, so don't overdo the anything. Stand up if you want. [inaudible] I'm going to do two deep breaths here and I'm going to stand up with you. So whatever you chose, I'll be with you and to all together. Let's just inhale and feel what we have. I feel the distance between the Vertebra or whatever, feel the differences.

Feel hopefully some openness. Exhale when without just sinking. Keep it and notice the support you give yourself. One more like that. Again, feel free to stay here. I'm going to stand cause I do like to feel the difference from where I started so I'll just stay facing you. Exhale round forward, Bend your knees or whatever you need to plan so much about the legs. Let your head hang heavy.

Are you able to do that more than you were at the beginning? Take some inhale. I'm going to soften my knees a little. I feel the ground. I feel that grounding because that's where I get that oppositional force to roll back up, standing over myself, turning the arm bones out, lifting up, inhale, excellent. All the way down, kind of easy, but maybe feel some distance between your neck and shoulders. Let the arms come up in front Flex's hand or open them wide. Push them further, and if you have it available now, extend the spine.

Unless just leave it open like that. Come back to upright. Day seven is done. Thank you for joining me. I really appreciate you being here. Stay expanded.