Day 10: Play

Welcome back. Guess what? We did it. We're about to do it. It's Day 10 of this challenge that you took on. I am appreciative for being here with you. Thank you for being here with me. I've got my Joseph [inaudible] pants on. That's the face you see here in some places bigger than others.

And the point of today is to have fun. We, we've spent so much time talking about grounding, control, breath discovery, creating more space. We know how to do that. We will continue to look for that. But one of the guiding principles or concepts of Joseph [inaudible] work truly was finding a balance between work, rest and play. And I think most of us are really good on the work side so far. This challenge, if you will, has been more skill oriented to kind of help you carry on. But as you carry on, remember to play, you have to play, always remember to rest in between and, and listen to your body.

What you can do on one day you won't be able to do the next day. Today we're gonna play. Um, if you know that you like the theraband for certain exercises, pull it out. Now, I chose not to bring anything up. I'm not going to do anything specific to any of those exercises that require props. So just, um, bring what you need. Bring a good attitude, feel good about what you've already done, and know that the hardest part is over and now we play. So let's find out where we are today.

How much can you let go while keeping control? How much can you ground yourself and be free and other places? Stand with your feet apart. Find the ground first and then just inhale. Fill up. Decide how you're going to spend the next 30 minutes. Fill up, expand everything matters that we do for ourselves. Exhale, just inhale and exhale. I'm going to try not to overthink. That's not always easy, although lately, one more time. Inhale and then exhale.

Just imagine the spine. We're growing taller, that there were balloons in between the vertebra or in and around the bones to help support you so that all the planning you do is easy. Like a bouncy house. Hi, I don't know. I'm spinning cause it feels good. I'm gonna step wider and spend a little more and I'm doing it kind of easy cause I'm not sure how I feel yet, but it feels good and it's kind of fun. Couple more. Bend the knees a little. Let your arms be free. So much a play requires loosening up, doesn't it?

To that point, we'll do something that Joseph used to do. Wind yourself down. Come back to a stop and I'll turn sideways again for you. But it's basically you fill up and you're like, oh, can you do it? And we'll do it three times. It's going to look like basically this. I'm going to reach up, I'm going to inhale everything I can.

I'll exhale Ben and I'll just throw myself, but because of our skills now be fine with it. Just inhale, exhale, bend the knees and just blow it. Come back up. Inhale, stretch and exhale bend. There's no right or wrong. It's supposed to feel good. Find the space that's already there and let's get one more all the way up and all the way down. Come back to the top, hold it up and from there with the feet a little bit of part, stretch it all over to yours. One side, push into that opposite foot and then lift. Press over to the left and push into the right and come up. And so let's go to the mat. Have a seat but don't lie down yet.

Lying down. Just a little seriousness. So I'm going to start with a bit of rolling and if this is something that you're trying to conquer or you don't get the point of, at least have a little fun with that. I'm holding under the knees again, if you want to challenge still you can pull the knees and close from here. We just roll back. We come back up. We're going to hold it there. Pause again. Roll back up. Hold. Yeah, no fun. Was it? See what you can do. Don't let your head touch.

Try Not to let your feet touch. How fast can you go? How slow can you go? If it feels like too much, you can do a pelvic curl. I'll get there in one second. I'm moving down the Mat. I don't know why, but it feels good to me. Feet are down, back yourself, up enough that your feet are comfortably on the mat, that when you lie down your head rests. We're going to stretch ourselves down. Bring the feet in. We have to warm up a little more so we roll through the spine.

Yeah, and we check in and fun and play does not include pain, so yes, you have to check in always. We don't play at the expense of things we played because we can because we know where we can. Inhaling at the bottom, start that exhale. Remember how we played with breath last time? You don't need a ring, but you can connect enough to know that the initiation comes from breath from the center, stretch through the neck. Inhale, exhale down. [inaudible] and inhale as we played through this few minutes together, these last few minutes together, at least for now or remind you of things we've talked about this. 10 let the arms come up as your tailbone goes down.

Reach and just right up to the ceiling for now. Inhale, remember those shoulders are on the back. You start to step into feet. You roll up and press not from the hands, but from the upper arms. As you peel up, find the ground your feet to your upper arms. You're not thrusting the ribs. If anything, you're thrusting to the hips. Feel the back side of your your body. Inhale, exhale.

As the throat starts to melt down, as the neck gets longer, as your body rounds down, let the arms come up. We'll just do one more. Inhale. Exhale, press down. Peel up in here. Stay here. Stay here on the exhale. Bring your right knee up. Hopefully nothing changed. Inhale, stretch the leg up. Flex the foot lower down as far as you can. Put it back in place. Other side, pick the knee up. It's like a giant bicycle wheel that you're pedaling. Right leg again, our first leg and down. Only one more.

Finish off the sides and down. Readjust. So if you've dropped your pelvis, recheck it. It just feels better and roll yourself down. From there, we curl back into that ball. We hug the knees in tight, tight, tight. Do a little rocking, little rocking. We're not coming up. Don't worry. Just keep the shape. Keep the shape.

Keep the shape. Head goes down. Knees to about 90 arms to the side. Rotate the knees to the front. Extend one or both legs. I'm extending the top leg. Inhale, hold, stretch it further. Bring everything back to center and refold it to the back. Inhale, stir. Hatch it out. Nice and long. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the leg straight.

Push from the bottom leg to come to center one more each way. Inhale, warming up the areas of the body. Exhale to bring it back to center that we're going to use. That's it. This is more fun that way. Inhale over. Extend the top leg. They're still lined up. I'm going to Josef's are kissing and back to center and the legs go to 90 bring your hands to your knees. Curl yourself up. Put some resistance away.

Get the resistance away from you. Play resistance that way, but hold onto it a little so that you can know when you let go. Reach the arms back. Exhale, bring it back in. That was a big task, wasn't it? You know rich. Now, if you feel your back moves, you just take it more shallow. You reach up, right? Here's what you care about. You care that you're back in middle body doesn't move that you know you're holding yourself there. You play with it. You can do one leg at a time.

There's so much you can do with this work. Keep doing it. You've made it this far. One more. Hold the knees, head down, correct. Back Up. Resistance is away. I'm holding on just for the sheer fact of knowing where it is. Extend the front leg leg closest to me. Pull the other one way in and use the side. Push your air out. Switch out, out, out. Inhaling, as I change, if we go quicker, we go. Exhale, exhale, and I am doing a little quick inhale, so this is one of those moons where I don't get all the air out or all the air in the pumping action alone is strengthening me in a different way.

A couple more pull. Pull both knees in. Head goes down. Curl, Becca. Long neck, hands. Go your head, extend the leg furthest, rotate toward the front and pull that knee in far enough that you can touch it all. That's not fun at all. So switch but gotta do one like that. Try for it and I'll go. It's rotation. Rotate. Same breath, tenent. Remember you can go higher if it's too hard on your neck cause you've been doing so much. Pilatos you can.

You can actually push into one elbow and slightly rotate, keeping your head lower. So many different ways to make this work for you. [inaudible] one more. Each side. Come back to the center. Both knees in. Hug the man, hug yourself. Let your head go down. You know it's coming. You don't. I'll tell you rock. Pick your head up. Rock again. Rock again. I want you to hold on behind your legs if you're not already separate your feet. I'm not going to give you the teaser, but there's few more really fun exercises that come after this so you'll keep going. Fun. Yeah, fun and up. You come and hold.

Okay, let's go back. We're going into this spine twist, but we've been practicing it with our feet together. You can, we've started it with the knees bent. You might want to elevate yourself. Remember those tools that you found along the way and if you need more right in the forum, and I'll tell you more, there's more, always more I'm going to do. I'm going to start it with the sole of the feet together and sort of a diamond position. The hands behind the head, rotate towards the front. Get to this time, extend the arms, press down, look taller, be taller. You are taller. Refold the arms and come back to center. Other way we rotate towards the back.

We extend the arms, we feel our wingspan. We inhale getting just a little taller. Go ahead and put your hands back behind your head, fully laced them together. Come back to center, rotate to the front. Extend the arms. Oh, don't you want to pull like we did in the beginning? You could do that too, but make a gentle hands go behind your head and center in how rotate extending the arms and as you do, imagine you're pressing down on a surface. Assist yourself with just your mind and then refold the arms. Come back.

Keep your arms here for now. It's a double XL to the front. You know this one. Exhale. Exhale. If you want more challenge, flex your feet, but keep your back straight. This is the same exercise. Yep. [inaudible] and for more fun, straighten your arms, but keep them exactly opposite each other. It's the same exercise. Exhale, exhale up. You're tall, you're tall. You're not trying so hard that you're getting down on yourself.

It's just not worth it. I just saw dolphin. We're doing two more pool, full pool pool. Very good. From here, hands go back. This is part of our expansion series. Feet. We went straight. I'm going to keep it bent. You can go straight legs if you'd like. Fingers face your heels or to the side.

Lift up. Find that table top position. Open the chest, use the back of your leg. Definitely open the shoulders and sit back down, make any adjustments you need to. I kind of over-exaggerated my ability so I adjust and oh now I feel good and I feel like I'm playing again and down. I'm only doing two more and, and if I only relied on my hands and arms, that would just not be fun. So I'm letting my whole body help me in this. Okay, Dan, we got giving you a new one here on this last day. It's not that new, it's just an extension of what you've already done. You know the rolling.

So just behind the tailbone, pick up the right calf or the back calf, whichever, whatever. Let's you see, hold it without wobbling in your body. Pick up the other. Then I am behind my tailbone so my low back is round, but I'm also going to lengthen it. There's so many rolling exercises that come through Palase that allow us to feel subtle that we've got to play with this one or I just won't feel good about it. You're going to roll back to your shoulders and come right back here. That's it.

Ready? Figured out. Roll back, roll up and did you land it? Try again and roll back. Most people don't initially. If you're flexible and you're re rediscovering [inaudible] you straighten your legs, that's where the exercise goes. It's the same thing isn't it? You allow the spine to round and be subtle and you know where you want to anchor and then you grow out of it. That's the practice. You get to feel better cause you choose it and you modify where you need to.

And by that I mean are you going to work hard? You're going to play. Are you going to ground you then expand? You always have the choice. The work doesn't change that much. Stay up. Bend the knees if they're not already, put them down. And while we're here, one more. The newer one, we call it the mermaid and it just seems appropriate. Plus it's fun. Um, traditionally it's going to be like on top of leg.

Yeah. Just say no. But I like it this way better today. So I have myself in what some people call a figure four. I just have the heel tucked in and my foot touching my knee, sitting tall. Think level, hips, but then probably not fully down. We reach out, we put the hand down wherever it lands. Then we mindfully leave the shoulder down and bend and Stuart over for this first one. Just feel that stretch. Help yourself up.

Not by pushing so much on the hand, but by energetically lifting it. This do one more like that. We reach out, we control the landing. We let the elbow come down, keeping the shoulder down, finding the stretch. We come back up off to the straight arm and lift it changes. Now you're going to go out to the straight arm and leave it straight this time, right? Then instead of bending, you're gonna rotate, rotate, rotate. It's coming really from the ribs. Maybe your handle. Get down.

Come on. That feels good. Can you reach into the hips or the foot and the back, the Shin in the back. Keep that anchored. Then you reopen into that nice long line. You got to get up the same way. Try not to bend the elbow to do it. While, ah, let's have some fun here. Hold the f Shin that's there next to you and the one you can grab easily and a few coming over. Huh? Back to the T. Reach it out. Hand goes down. Go, go kind of far.

And then rotate the ribs. Find that rotation fully. Hold the hips back a little re open. Come back up to the tee, grab this shin and up and over. One more time and over. Oh, and I mean there's something to be said for moving. Um, mostly that you're alive. So keep doing it and do it in ways that feel good. Switch legs. So you're on the other side. [inaudible] no, it'll be different. It's okay.

Don't hurt yourself if you need to. This can also be done with the leg straight. Okay. If that doesn't work for the knee, there's, so you start to know what you need. We first went over, we found the ground, we drew the elbow to the hip and allow the shoulder to come down to take the stretch up. I'm literally pushing my forearm into the ground so that I can lift and stretch the ribs a bit and nowhere. It feels good. Come up, take it out and elbow. Bence ribs bend, really flare those ribs. Almost almost like an accordion and up. And now we'll add in the rotation and take out the arm band and we go over, we softly land, we re anchor and we rotate. You feel the ribs.

The arm really just follows a, you can keep rotating and then reopen as if someone told you by the arm the hand they helped you up. But instead you're doing it for yourself. We grabbed the Shin, we lifted up and still flared the opposite rent and to the T. Two more. Reach out touch. Keep the arm straight, rotate [inaudible] be okay. Lift and stretch. It's not so much over as it is up and over. See if that means anything to you in your body.

It's a little easier on the knees and hips. Last one, take it out. Rotate. We open, lift up and take that final stretch here for this exercise and we come down to straight away. To this album, stretch the legs out. We've been doing this sidekick with the knees bent and we've been all controlled about it, right? We try to move the leg but not the rest of the body. But today we're going to straighten out the leg. It's definitely gotta be in front of you.

So you want to be more near the back edge of your mat and your legs a little more toward the front edge of your mat. So you definite sort of check mark position, top leg lifts and I just see for the moment, see if keep it, keep your body still meaning not what your leg is doing and just swing the leg, trying not to overthink it. Try to keep it on the same level maybe, but keep the body still so you're not dropping back and you're not dropping forward. See what you got there now kind of go for it. Just swing, swing and let your spine move a little. Minimize it, but do it. So there's almost a lubrication effect that starts to happen when you let the leg do its action when you let it be. I just touched the window. That's a new one for me. That's very exciting. Okay. Bring it in, bring it home and then set it down to switch sides back up so you can kind of measure where you are.

Your feet are towards the front, your hips are stack. You can kind of stick your bomb out. So if you could see your spine, it's pretty straight to start. You lift up and just see where you're at. I do. I will not touch the window on the side and I kind of know that I'm not gonna limit myself. Who knows? It's possible. I'm just seeing what's normal, what can I do, and then I know now that I can toss it a little, kick the ball. Sometimes just task it a little knowing that yes, you're going to move a little bit. You're under control. To the extent that it's kind of fun. When do I ever get to do this?

I don't walk that fast and I'll walk that big, but it feels kinda good, but two more [inaudible] and bring it back from there. Turn it on over. We've become like a Spinks. Right. Although I think we should come down a little bit. We can be nice and high. That's the original position. Or come down a little bit so we can play more. Reach the leg so far as the kneecaps hover, but their legs are still straight.

Pull yourself almost forward so you have a sense of openness. Regalness you did it. 10 10 classes. Pick a leg. I'm gone. Right? Like first we go kick, kick straight and switch. Kick, kick straight. And I'll do two more like that. Here's the last one. Now we're going to pass them. So it's alternating your kick, kick, kick, kick.

And here's the fun part. Will you don't get to move your hips? Nothing. Ah, how should we breathe? I'm inhaling. Two, three, four. I'm exhaling. Two, three, four. If he breathe consistently that would be good. I'm sweating. Are you last one? I don't know how to get out of it. So I'll just straighten them both and we'll come down, let everything go. Kind of Shimmy it out. Come back up, stretch yourself back.

And who doesn't like to swim? So you come on back down. [inaudible] stretch your arms. And legs down or out. Maybe a little wider on your hands so they're not directly. If you can do directly above you, that's great. If your shoulders are tight, that's going to be tough. We're looking at the floor for the moment. We draw the abdominals in by how? By exhaling we hover the legs.

We might have the look back or find a mirror. Ask someone, am I bending my knees cause that's not going to be anywhere near as fun as it could be if they were straight. We lift the arms and legs from there we're swimming in liver, right arm, left leg. If it's troubling for you to figure out which is which, and sometimes it can be you put the other ones, you keep them on the ground as to the left and and then we switch. So find the ground with the two that stayed down and that can help you switch. You switch, you switch. I'm not going to keep the breath cause some you're going to want to keep your arms off the ground, which doesn't really change things but you might want to go faster too.

You might want to go bigger. Just keep breathing. Maybe like an extended inhale and an exhale and inhale. If you're going fastener, even if you're not nice and stable in the middle, letting there be freedom in the arms and legs. Do One more breath cycle and then just straighten out and come on down before you get up. Let things go. So now we help ourselves up. Press back, take that little tiny bit of arrest just to remind her again with the knees.

If this isn't good and you just need a moment of rest, sometimes tucking your toes and her grounding. The point is it gives your back that little bit of stretch. Okay, next one. If, if we're going in, we did this on the ball. This is just a plank. You're so close, we can do this and I mean that sincerely or we're all gonna make it from there. Extend one leg back. Everybody thinks to extend the other. Both legs are very, very strong. Pretend that ball is underneath you. Let it support you. We don't have to do anything with it, but we can lift one leg, the leg by law.

We could lift one leg, hold it. We could point both feet like a flexible feet, put it down and call that leg pull front. We could pick up the other leg point, both flex balls and put it down. That's just a philosophy. His idea of fun. We'll do two more in his honor. Lift point, flex and down, lift point, flex and down and that's enough fun for me except bend your knees that your arms be free of weight and I've saved the most fun for last in the series, the seal. It's the seal. I was sort of expecting one to show up this seal. If you're struggling with rolling, stick with rolling but slow your rolling down. This one, well you'll see. I'll just talk you through it. We have the knees apart. You're going to take one arm, left arm, left leg, do your best to grab under far enough that you can really support it and rest your hand on your foot. I'll do the same with the others.

I turn around and you'll know as soon as you try it that if you try it from down here and your head's up, you're never going to get up. So you decide to roll back. I know the rolling like a ball. I'm going to have some fun. I bring the other one up and if you have trouble holding this, but you can, this might be where you want to stay. We're going to roll back, clap our feet three times. I will not make sounds, but you can and we roll back. Clap. One, two, three, clap. One, two, three, roll back. One, two, three. If you don't make it, throw your legs around. It's okay.

This has done a lot of different ways. You can actually let go and bring them back. Get that action, but be gentle and have fun. Room one, two, three, and then on those days you want to control it more. You hold one, two, three in. The truth is is coming from the inner thighs, inner thigh, inner thigh, inner thigh. It's not just the feet. Give yourself two more. Really go back, have some fun with it. I forgot my claps. I'm going to do one more here. One, two, three and stay up on your next one that you get there with your legs crossed. Actually stand up.

Stand up how you however you can get there and take inventory. 10 classes. Maybe you've done one or two more than once. That's cool too. That's great actually. Um, but the point is, is that you committed to yourself. Hopefully you discovered new things about what you are already capable of and things that you are now have in your toolbox to allow you to connect your mind and body more deeply or in the times that you need it most. I'm hoping that you, you found some of the skills that bring rejuvenation back to life. In any case, let's take inventory here and you'll decide, thank you for being with me.

They all say that now keep your breath, keep your energy. Keep remembering that the balance between work, rest and play is kind of the point of this work. And hopefully the point that you focus on that keeps your life in a, in a state of wellness. So let the arms hang. Inhale, let your energy rise and know that you always have that choice just with the breath and as you exhale, keep your energy up or maybe you bring it down if you need to. These are choices you get to make. Again, inhale, rise up. If it feels better to shake off tension in any class you do do that.

I'm going to do one more. We'll do a roll down and up and that'll be that for this series and I hope you'll continue with your philosophies and practice from here. Just no arms. Just inhale. Exhale. Allow your head to fall forward. Yes. Feel the front of your body pulling in and up so that the back of your body can release. The tension, can flow right out your head. Inhale, you're grounded to the floor. You've got space between the bones. You allow that reaction to both of those things. Lift you back up.

And with that I thank you very much for being here. I think you should be proud of yourself. I'm proud of myself. I've never done a 10 day challenge or a five day challenge. Challenging things happen all the time, but now I feel a little more practiced, so thanks for being here.