Spine Corrector Flow

Hi everyone, here for Spine Corrector Class or session, or workout, or movements for yourself today - thanks for joining me - and I would like you to have a set of hand-weights nearby. I've got two pounds, you can use one, two, three, no more than three; don't really need it. Just have those at the ready. I also have a little non, non-slip pad here just at the top of the corrector. Feel free to use any corrector you have.

This is a Gratz. We can use this at balance-body, you can also just use a half-arc if that's what you have or the foam arcs, they're all good, it's all about moving your spine and moving your body more efficiently. So I wanna have us begin just sitting as close to the edge as you can up on those sit-bones. Take your hands just right behind the back of the thighs, get yourself oriented nice and tall, open your elbows away from your body slightly and just for a moment, sense your back and the width of your back, and that includes the sacrum, that includes the lumbar spine, definitely through the shoulder blades and across the collarbone portion of your back, and just take a few deep breaths. And start to tap into the sense of how your feet are on your floor, little more connection of your heels down on the surface, and a little slight feeling of pulling your heels back toward you so you might feel the engagement of your hamstrings here.

Let's take a breath and begin moving the sit-bones and the whole pelvis, dialing it back into a posterior tilt. I'm trying to not move my upper spine into flection but really work on the lumbar flection right from the bat, and then moving forward and sitting tall. Take in an inhale. So the pelvis rotates back off the femur bones, trying to keep the thoracic spine, the thoracic spine without any extra flection yet. Let's do about five and exhale.

So there's an inwardness, there's an up, there's a wide connection and forward. So the feet on the floors you press the heels in and slightly pull the heels back, accessing your hamstrings possibly helping you traction your leg as you try to move spine more. One more basic one, exhale, and forward. The same thing with your arms reaching here and play with that sense of opposition so even though part of us is moving backward, we still have energy forward at the same time. Inhaling tall, the feet are still doing their press down and hamstring connection, your head is right over your shoulders, inhaling, pulling a little more to roll forward (inhales), and (exhales).

So we're not going very far yet, as you can see I'm keeping us in a pretty mild range of movement. We'll get there. And forward. Last one. So what we can try next before we get the hand-weights is carrying our spine all the way back, and by all the way back I'm gonna let myself go literally all the way back, and stretch the arms over.

Just take the inventory, open up through your shoulders, bring your chin towards your chest, let's do a full roll back up to sitting. Yeah and again. So slow, tracking yourself down the center of your spine, arms overhead, feel free to open the arms and let your legs go down a little, your head can go down, let's just open things up. Inhaling and again (exhales). Going for length, space between the thoracic vertebra, space between the lumbar vertebra, it's harder to get there because they're bigger.

Two more. All the way. One more and it's important to use your eyes on this exercise quite, kinda detailed, so looking right up to the ceiling, looking at the ceiling, looking back, seeing what's behind, and then conversely when we come forward my eyes see the ceiling, the ceiling, the ceiling in front of me, and then the wall in front of me right there. Now, just take your palms face up, open your arms to a pretty wide, generous T position, and then just pulse the arms back, and back. I want you to open your chest yes, but also engage between your scapula so it's muscular.

Your muscularly moving your arms, you're not just (chuckles) damaging tendons or ligaments. You're using those muscles between your scapula to move the arms. Alright I've already lost count, let's say four more; one and two, and three, and four. Okay reaching down and grabbing your hand-weights now. Similar that we just did you're gonna now take your knees and feet together, and let's do a full roll back.

So by having the hand-weights you're about to low your shoulders more again, but I want you to just be mindful; what does it feel like? You don't have to take your arms as far as I'm taking mine, certainly not as wide, bring it right back up, pull that string, feel the work in your abdominals now a little bit deeper, and rolling back. So by having the weights also you have to manage your shoulder position more so which is important, and your thoracic spine. Two more like this and rolling down, and lengthen, open, around and up, one more time, and then we'll take this roll back into some oblique roll back once we get up. So if you have a favorite side you like to go to, let the other side have a turn (laughs).

So I, you typically like going right side so today I'm gonna go left back and all the way to the center. So I'm keeping my legs centered, I am taking my upper body weight just slightly off, heavier to one side on that extension. So pelvis is relatively evenly weighted than my left side of my back, gets tiny bit more weight, and coming up, and now it'll be the right sides turn. So four more total so each side gets four, and just find that little breathing here flow, experience the movement. One more each side.

So if at any time the arm-weight work bothers you, you don't have to use them. Okay? You don't have to use them at all. Alright, last time. Now, putting them just down, open up those knees again, and I want us to take a breath as you reach your arms forward. The movement is going to be open and close arms when we're back in the flex-spine position, so let's go ahead and take ourself back, and hold yourself.

You're not gonna get comfortable and go all the way into kinda unsupported this way, so round yourself and hold. Now arms open on the inhale, exhale they close right in front of your shoulders. Eight times, inhale, great opportunity to keep that back nice and wide. You may have to monitor how wide your arms go and keeping my eyes in my peripheral vision; four more to go. Deep exhale as stomach presses down.

I can never talk (chuckles) very well doing these. Oh my gosh and now little pulses in, inhale, inhale, exhale, and exhale, and four, three, we're about to sit all the tall, go up through the top of your head, go up, top of your head, and down, okay. Relax your arms down meaning let go of the weights, turn your legs into diamond position and flex yourself back again. I'm gonna move my feet into the mat space. Now it's the same movement relatively but let's add some torso twists.

So I'll take my left hand and rotate toward my right, this hand touching that forearm, wipe all the way across and center. Now the right side's turn. Reaching to the left and open. So it's a big inhale sweep. So I'm trying to get thoracic motion, my shoulder blade movement, abdominal work.

Four more and width, and open, and breathe. And one more to the other side, really good oblique work, center, close the legs, take a breath in, let's go back over again, hands behind your head, walk your feet towards you slightly and then just take a breath, a slight exhale, and a slight lift of the body weight off the barrel. Now you're ready for basically chest-lift so just feeling the upper-body flex, the upper-spine flex. Just four times, articulate to basically flat over the top, and exhaling, and mobilizing. Last two here and curl, and over, last one and curl, and over, and then let's reach the arms toward the leg and roll yourself all the way up okay?

So grab the hand-weights again. I want you to go back over and we'll do some more arms movement, arm movements, but sit your sacrum now at the very front of the lip, your shoulder-blades on, and your head on alright? I don't want your head and neck up in this position here so use the barrel, let it support you, reach your arms up. Four times - this is the chest expansion. This feels really nice for those front arms and shoulder-chest muscles that might get tight during the day; really nice.

So right now we've got, it's fairly low level challenge on the abdominal connection because our legs are bent, so you can keep it there everybody or if you want a little more challenge, extend your legs. So with the legs extended, you do have to put more focus on the connection stomach to back so you're not just hanging here in the lumbar arch. So for my body I've got to really pull this up and lengthen this down my body to help make sure I'm doing it safely. So four or five more. So for my body type that has a pretty big lordosis back there, I have to almost think of being tucked.

It's just the thought (chuckles). No, there's some action to it actually and two, and up, and last one, okay. Now arms will go back overhead just framing the ears out to a T, up to the sky. Five total. These arm circles, really nice for controlling, training your ribcage to stay relative centered, not arching, to lengthen the lumbar, posture, range of motion, and shoulders.

You might notice this slight bend in my knees, that's also to help my hamstrings stay active, help my lumbar stay long, and now time to reverse. Open wide, arms around, and center, and open, around, center, open, around, and center, last two. And up, open, around, and up. Bend your elbows, put the weights down, pick your chin to your chest, use yourself and bring yourself all the way up. Okay, sit in the seat or the crevice, you don't the sticky mat anymore - just set it off to the side - and with your feet in a diamond position take a moment and actually press the feet together, and feel how the muscles are gonna turn on and wake up in your hips, and then take your arms out the side.

Let's do a seated side bend so I'll take one arm up toward the ear, the other side just going out to the side. I am trying to keep this hip down on the barrel and some of you are gonna feel that this is relatively easy. If you're tall and you're really flexible, for me this is a lot of work to keep this hip down but it's a nice stretch through this part of my body. Now from there let's take a rotation and hollow your stomach out, look right over this thigh, lower this arm a little bit, and make sure that this hip is still down. Come back out to your side bend, open that up, and then come to center, we'll reverse the sides.

So over we go, it's important to check in on that hip. Hollow the stomach, round that spine, you can let the weight of this arm hang down, let the weight of your head hang, return back to your side bend, and then up. So let's make a little flow. Over and over, round and round, over and over, here's the work, pick it up, pick it up, and to the side, over, and over, and round and round. I'm gonna change my shirt so that it doesn't show all that white skin, that's fine.

Four more times (laughs) then over, over, and round. No need to see that today anyway and up, and stretch, round over that thigh, and side bend we'll do once more each side everybody. Check your foot connection is still connected firmly, anchoring your hips, and side bend, and center, your last time, and over, and around, and over, I got foiled again, and all the way up. Okay let's take ourselves over the barrel so just place yourself. Alright so we've just rolled back, pause when you get your feet on your step, take a glance at your pelvis just for a moment or so here so that you can really recognize this open line hopefully from your hip to your thigh, okay and that's what you wanna maintain most of the time here.

Course we're going to be doing some movements that you move from that hip joint but for right now, let's just keep that line open. If you wanna do more to keep it open, go right around the back of the leg and contract your hamstrings to keep that lifted okay? Now change your gaze so you're looking right up to the ceiling and see what it feels like. If you can maintain that, bring your leg all the way together. Okay take in an inhale, now pull both legs up, in, both legs down.

So I want you to anchor your ribs on the mat, exhale right from the hip joints, and lower them down. Start your exhale, then pull the thighs in, and lower down, three more. And two more, exhale first. So you get that contraction, the stabilizing muscle group to keep your hips and ribs back, one more, holding here with your legs. Now, bring your thighs closer to you, your knees closer to your nose.

Let your tailbone and your sits bone be up in the air there. It's a really nice stretch for your lumbar spine. Now without moving where your legs are let's just see if you can reach your lumbar spine, then your pelvis, and then maybe that sacrum okay? Try again. Flexing at the hips, bring in your knees pretty close to your face, then it's the spine in there, my lumbar especially in this stretch, reach it out, sacrum reaching for that side of the corrector.

One more time of this and curl, and extend. Now once you're in place, extend both legs up, let's do a little turn out and some scissors. I'm gonna take us kinda slow with scissors here so again you can steady your pelvis, and steady this nice open line, use the back of the leg, and use the muscles back there to pull your leg down; you see how I did that. Change, it's the back of the leg, hamstrings and glutes, pull it down, down, and down and down, and down and down, and down and down. Gives you a muscle work, moving those legs, opening those hips.

Okay, one more each leg. Now bring both legs to the ceiling, still in turnout see how low you can reach your legs, find a challenge point. Your ribs are still anchored, your sacrum is still anchored, you've still got this really nice open hip line, and then let's just flex and extend the ankles. Inhale, exhale. Articulating your toes and your foot bones.

Four more, three, two, hopefully you're feeling the work in your legs, last time. Now staying low like that let's just go into the heel beats. In two, three, four, exhale three, four. Inhale, exhale three, four. Inhale, exhale three, four.

Keep going with this rhythm, flex the ankles and in, three more sets. Two, last one and exhale three, four, point, parallel, fold the legs. Okay, take your legs into a slight hamstring stretch now or maybe a big hamstring stretch for you. I am going to peel myself off of the barrel, and touch my toes on the mat back there if we can, there we go. Open, and roll down.

Taking it pretty slow, place the ooo, place the pelvis and around. So same thing, same exact thing, taking the body over, toes touching down, open, the barrel is there for you, open up the hips. One more leg circle and big one overhead, here we go. So once your legs hit down we bend the knees, open the feet, and just hold for a moment. Last thing we'll do when we're over in this position is our shoulder bridge - you're basically in it.

I want you to take one leg, a lot of flex to the ankle, push this heel to the ceiling and this foot into the barrel, both evenly. It's my thinking is as if I could get my butt off the barrel. I wanna be sensing that I could somewhat lift like that and then down with the leg. Down and over, down and over, three and over, two and over, last one and over, changing legs. This one up, this one down, feel the push, ready, go.

And down, and lift, down, and lift, and down, and lift, and last one and lift, and bend it in. Okay, wiggle backward to get yourself off the barrel. I want you to lie flat for a moment, let your legs rest on top. We're about to come into some back extensions so once you come out of this position, we'll put our tummy up on top of the barrel. Here we go.

Okay. Okay let's go on our front now and I want us to size this up, put your chest right at the edge of the barrel, extend your legs back, and let your forehead rest over okay? And for a moment just kind of relax your tummy, it's okay we're gonna get pulling it in and all that stuff in a moment, just let yourself rest, okay? So as we come into some of the swan, you can play with two different things. You can take the toes and keep'em down like I have here.

You can open with the toes down, you can flex. Let yourself start to discover what's gonna be the best and most efficient way for you to feel the work in the upper back. On different apparatus you may need different foot position and leg position, so today I'm gonna choose this one. I want to again see, watch what my pelvis here. This is my normal lordosis, that big lower back bend.

Not so great if I wanna move my upper back so if need to change that, hold it there so then hopefully in order to let me move my upper spine okay? That's my strategy right now. Lower the hands, start to look forward, look forward, look forward, and that's my swan today at this time of day, and lower down, down, and down. Three total. I'll try to move my upper spine, keep my lumbar spine long and not too hyper-extended, and lumbar down all the way.

And one more time, reaching out through the top of my head, up through my upper back, and then all the way down. Okay, legs together now, flex both feet and put the balls of the feet down, prop up on your hands, single-leg kick in from the mat work, same focus, check into your lumbar spine and pelvis, and make that adjustment, and now look straight ahead and kick in one, two and down, and kick, kick, and down, and kick, kick and down. So for some of us it needs to be more about the upper back extension, some of us more about the lumbar length. For yours truly it's both of those things. I was blessed with a really long, straight spine.

Work in both directions. And and down, kick, kick and down, last one on each side, kick, kick and down. Double-leg kick so just place the face down. We'll only do the leg portion guys, the hands will just be going here so breathe in, both legs come in for the kick, kick, kick. Now let's try to keep the legs up in the air, lift, turn to the other side, and kick, two, three, and lift.

Keep those legs up, try to go for that lumbar length, there we go, and kick, two, three, and I'm trying to also to think the legs are behind me, not necessarily up but reaching for the wall that's behind me, turn, and kick, two, three, and I'll do one more each side. And kick, two, three, and lengthen. Now getting better, one, two, three, and reach. Okay now let's do a little cat back-stretch to relieve that lumbar. You're gonna want this length in your lumbar spine for teaser and hip circles okay?

So we're gonna turn around and sit this way, come on down, okay. Now I will say on the Gratz corrector, this distance here is not very much, there's not a lot of space here, and it's not very inclined, and on some of the other correctors like the Clara corrector, there's a different ledge there. I don't know if one is better or harder, they're just all different so just be ready. If you're on a small just a half-arc, this won't be as meaningful probably because you don't have this step portion, so you just do it on the mat okay? But for the rest of us here we go.

Bring your sit bones deeply, right in against the barrel, hold on to the handles for a second or the back of your knees, and just get into the place where you're on that sacrum. Okay, hold, hold, hold, extend your legs, reach your arms towards your ankles. Could you come up a little higher with your upper body because now you need to explore going back, just towards the back of your pelvis is on that ramp, no lower, no further back, and then reach up, and back and up, and back, three more, up, and back, and up, wow and back. It feels good when you really get a good, good contraction. Okay, hands behind, let's do a hip circle so legs up, a vertical line and over, down, brush this step and lift.

Over, brush, around, and lift. Try to keep the upper body nice and still, circling down in the hips, four more. And the lunging hip flexor stretch is gonna feel really good after this exercise, and hold. Okay everybody bend your knees, roll on over, and let's get ready for a hip flexor stretch. You can put your right knee down and then just balance out on your thigh.

So if this felt good you can stay here or climb up higher, let's see what I've got. Try flexing your ankle, grab a hold of your shin, and then I'm pulling my hand and shin together. Now you can still see that my pelvis is maybe still a little bit back, I'm gonna try trusting my balance a little bit. Just not happening with my foot like that so that's what I needed to learn. I'll put my foot down and just work on the posterior tilt.

What the heck though I'll add this cause that feels really nice, and just hold, okay? So let's check in on the other hip flexor stretch. You can just take your knee down, climb around. So the first one we just stay down on a low level, your knees in the crevice, and you're just down, you can hold on. Okay if you like that one stay there or try your other version; they feel different.

It's just not gonna go that way today. Okay. Do more of these. So what I'm finding here, you're seeing me kinda wiggle around, this is alright, I used to be okay with that. Today is what I needed to do is anchor this shin and what I'm doing now is pressing this shin down on top of the barrel for some support, I needed it to be able to get into my hip extensors.

That's the way that rolls out and take your arm up, okay. Let's do one more thing, one more movement, just get a little weight bearing on both of your hands right down on your mat. Climb up on your barrel with your toes, your up-stretch position, and let's just work the flection of your ankles and extension of your ankles. Couple more times. We will finish with another little cat stretch.

So bend both of your knees, crawl yourself back, hands on front of the barrel, you can kinda pull on it. Let yourself get round, take that tail underneath you, and finish with three or four breaths. Mmhmm and roll all the way up. Thanks for joining me, I will see you next time.