Melted Pilates Tower

Hi, my name is Holly Altman and I'm here with sue Heitzman, creator of the melt method. And today we are going to show you a melted Polonius apparatus class Sue's going to be demonstrating for me, which is super fun for me to get her out of her method and into our co-creator creatorship. So I highly recommend if you haven't yet to go back and watch her discussion and the melt class because I'm going to be referring to terms using the melt language and talking about the techniques and the science that she goes into full in depth description on those two videos. And then you can join us back and we're going to go ahead and start. So in our melted PyLadies classes, whether it's Matt or apparatus, we always start with the rest assess. We want to go ahead and lie down too, and I invite you to join us.

You're going to lie down long on the mat legs long if it's okay with your back and arms, extended palms facing up towards the ceiling. So we do this to figure out how close our bodies are to ideal alignment or in other words, how far our bodies have come from ideal alignment and what we know is that stuck stress or dehydrated connective tissue likes to live in the body and pull us out of that ideal alignment. But what's important about that as it comes to [inaudible] is that before we want to engage the core and do a 100 or a roll-up or even more so before we want to load the body with weighted springs, we really want to make sure that you're working in your center and in ideal alignment. So starting here, so what I want you all to do is just take a full breath into your body. Take a moment to come out of the room, out of your space and into your body a little bit more. Using this body sense, scan from head to heel and notice which parts of your body are heavy and weighted on that mat and which parts might not be touching it all. We know that stuck stress likes to live in three places in the body, the shoulder girdle, the diaphragm, and the pelvis.

And so I'm going to teach you how to figure out whether you have stuck stress in your body and then we'll add some melt moves to see if we can eradicate that stuck stress. So let's start with the shoulder girdle. The easiest way to tell is a movement. A cue is turning the head from side to side. So just take a slow turn of the head and notice for yourself whether you have a change in range or restriction or even pain as your head goes from side to side. And then once your head is back into center, we're going to go a little bit deeper into that body sense and notice the weight distribution of your upper back.

Notice where your head has met the mat and whether it's ideally located directly behind the bridge of the nose. Notice the arms and whether they feel evenly weighted from side to side or whether one might feel a little longer or heavier than the other. And then most specifically, what about the weight of the upper back? Notice whether you have most of your weight propped up on the shoulder blade area or are you able to sense that mid rib wall? Ideally, we're trying to get a shared amount of between the two, but if you have stuck stress in your shoulder girdle, you're going to notice that weight shifting further up. Do you feel that too? A little bit, yes. Right.

So note that and then let's continue down the body in order to assess stuck stress in your diaphragm. Or we're actually gonna talk about the size and scope of your lower back curve instead of touching where your low back curve is. I want you to take a finger and stick it right into your belly button. So can you sense your low back curve from the front of your body? Noticing whether that curve is located directly behind your finger or whether it's migrated further up towards those rips and when you feel that you have an answer or maybe your answer is I'm not sure that's okay, and then you can take your hand out of your belly. Then all right, moving on to the pelvis.

When you have stuck stress in your pelvis that displaces the masses of the lower body. So instead of feeling equally weighted butt cheeks, you might feel that weight kind of in a nondescript place right underneath the tailbone. You may be aware that the backs of the thighs instead of feeling heavy and weighted might not be touching the mat at all. And then as you continue down the leg, notice where your heels have met the mat. Ideally we're looking for the outer one third of the heel pad to meet the mat on each leg. So review again and notice in your body where you found stuck stress.

And if you're like most of us, cause I would be the same way, you do have stuck stress as a result of daily living in one or more of those places. And Sue's nodding her head yes, she does too. There's one more assessment that I want us to learn before we jump into the polarities. And that's an autopilot assessment. So in melt we talk about this major regulator of a larger system of the body and to figure out whether you have autopilot efficiency or inefficiency, I want you to divide your body into a right and left half and notice for yourself whether one whole side of your body or maybe it's just one leg, feels longer or heavier than the other. If that's the case, your body and brain have kind of rerouted your center of gravity to keep you upright and moving, but it's not keeping your body centered and grounded like we want before we start [inaudible]. So if that's the case, we are going to start with a rebalance sequence that will hopefully set your center of gravity, reground you and then we'll be ready to do some plenty. So let's go ahead and start that. Take a breath, roll to the side, come on up to sitting. Today we're going to use a melt half roller and Sue's just going to edge right up onto the front. Ease her way back, check and make sure that your head fits on that half roller so you still have a little space. And then bring your arms to the side.

So here you're lying directly on your spine and when you do, your body's picking up a lot of information from your sensory nervous system. The first thing we want to do, lying down on the roller is what we call gentle rockings, who literally just going to tip your body over until you run into one arm. Tip your body until you run into the other arm. And I would say to keep going for about 30 seconds just to kind of give body a chance to adjust, pick up where it is in space, get a little more information, heightened information, okay. And then come on back to center and stay perfect.

We're going to take the heels of the hands on the front hip bones. Fingertips are going to rest long on the pubis bone. And before we go into engaging the core and finding that core ne mechanism, we want to make sure that the pelvis is in the right place to support the stability that is going to be required. So I want you to go ahead and Tuck, weighting the thumbs down a little bit more towards your belly button and then pass back through center and then into a tilt. Beautiful. And we're just going to keep this rocking motion tucking, passing back through center and tilting. So this in and of itself helps the body rehydrate a little bit and again, send some messages in terms of where your body is in space.

But what I'm interested in is what's initiating this tuck until too. When you talk, do you notice that you have to push into your feet or squeeze your bottoms, you feel your bottom come a little bit off the roller. What I want you to do is try and initiate a little bit more from your core and then opposite direction as you tilt, see if you can achieve that tilted position without your rib cage coming in. Thank you for coming off the roller in an extreme arch of the spine. So we're going to kind of keep it small and then go ahead and set your pelvis back to home position or we're going to call that neutral. Now from here, we're going to use the breath to tap into the core.

It's the quickest way to turn that core system on. So one hand is going to come low belly, one hand is gonna come chest. And I want you to try and find an equal and opposite timing of front back breaths. And for PyLadies people it means letting go of holding onto your powerhouse or holding onto your belly and really let it expand. Find a natural breaths and exhale just easily deflate that hair.

Beautiful. Let's do one more time in this dimension. Okay, and exhale from here. Migrate Your hands to your side body. Much more of a [inaudible] type breath as you breathe real wide into the heels of the hands. And then exhale, letting the front patty just naturally deflate back down. One more time like that. You do that very well. Thank you.

And then the third dimension we're going to breathe into as a top bottom. So are our landmarks for the top. Bottom is going to be one hand around your collarbone, throat area, and the other one low in the pelvis. And here. I really want you to find length as you breathe, even sending a little more air down to that pelvis. Exhale, allowing that top hand to be heavy. Yes. One more time like that. Inhale down to the bottom, hand up to the top and find that length and then exhale.

Let that go. Good. We're going to use all six of those sides, but we're going to change our focus away from an inhale and now a little bit more on that exhale and it's the exhale that it's, that's going to turn on our core reflex. So hands are going to be around the belly button so you can feel the action that's going to happen in your body. Take a six sided inhale here and start with just the natural exhale. Then let's add to it. Take us excited. Inhale, and now I want you to focus the exhale with a strong shh.

Sound yes. And what you'll notice is this gathering that starts from around the backend, connects right at your belly button. Again, inhale, expand. Let it all go. Maybe change your sound to an s e sound nice. And what we're looking for is a sound that triggers a deeper connection, maybe a longer exhale. The third sound that tends to work for people as an h a or fog, a mirror breath sound. I liked that one for you.

So go ahead and take two more breaths. Sound of your choice and really see if you can feel and find that core sitting again, wrapping around the back to the front and connecting right at that belly button. One more time. Good. So we know that core reflex is working, but now we want to see if we can mindfully turn the core on as we do before every plot is exercise. So take a normal size. Inhale, take a normal exhale, and at the tail end of that exhale, feel and follow and see if you can tune right back into that belly. One more time. Normal. Inhale, a normal exhale.

Finding that core. Excellent. Now just for the fun of it, migrate those hands a little bit south. Let's Redo the Tuck and tilt and now that that core is engaged, notice the difference in the movement. Hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully a little less effort, a little more natural tuck until of the pelvis, less external muscles trying to do the work and maybe even feels a little bit deeper or more internal. I would love that change to happen. Yes. And then once again, we want to land that pelvis right back into your home position. Now an amazing overlap between Melton Pilati is this ability to move one mass the pelvis without allowing the ribs to move.

What's more challenging is moving the ribs without moving the pelvis. So we're going to add to this a rib curl, challenging the rib motion and the core. So I'd like you to hug your upper body and if you have a delicate or sensitive neck that likes to engage when you lift your head, I would choose one hand and place it behind the head safely. So for here we're going to take an inhale on your exhale with or without the sound. Find your core curl head in, shoulders forward, just like we do for the 100 and then just before anything else, I want you to reset that pelvis. Make sure you're not tucking heavy bottom light feet. Shift your focus, lift up slightly. Find that little micro quiver and then lower right back down.

We're going to do that same thing three more times, so inhale and prepare. Exhale, finding that core contact, curling head and shoulders forward, resetting the pelvis, challenging up instead of forward and then lower back down. Re Cross your arms the other way or choose the other hand behind the back of the head. Take an inhale to prepare on your exhale with or without your sound. Find that core curl, reset the pelvis.

Shift up slightly lower back down and release and one last time taken. Inhale, exhale, curl forward. Reset your pelvis. Shift up, look up, lower down, and relax. Beautiful. Now before we continue on with our 100 we want to make sure the shoulder blades are appropriately on the back so that we have some efficient movement in the shoulder girdle. You're going to extend your arms forward for me. Pumps face each other and your arms are going to take the same forward angle as your thighs. It's like you're holding something right above your belly button from here.

It's a tiny movement, but it feels good. You're going to reach forward and then just glide those blades right back down the roller reach and glide back. Okay, and again, she's just moving those shoulder blades slightly. There we go. And settling them back on the back. And you can even use this one as an assessment to both shoulder lane blades below. Land in equal timing. One more.

Good. Now from here we're going to challenge sue to do her favorite exercise, the 100 so turn your palms to face forward. Take an inhale on your exhale, the same setup as your rib curl. Find that core first curl head and shoulders forward. Reset the pelvis, stopping right at the tips of the blades, and then begin pumping. And I'm even going to have you come back slightly. Gorge ass good. So vigorous pumps.

The whole purpose of this exercise is breathing and trying to get the blood flow through your body. She's going to inhale for five counts and then exhale for five counts. Finding that core each time. Inhale wide collarbones and exhale beautiful in with the air and exhale. And then as you get halfway through, finding those cues again is she's still curled up right at the shoulder.

Tips of the blades is the pelvis. Has the pelvis made its way into a tuck. We want to think heavy tail light feet. Let's do one more in, call it a hundred okay. And exhale, two, three, four, five, lower back down and relax. All right, you only want to stay lengthwise on the roller for a maximum of 10 minutes. So before we slide off, we're going to add some arm springs. Okay.

To Suze workout here. So I'm going to have her just gently fold her hands over and then because you now have springs, just take moment before you load those springs, turn your pumps to face each other, take one little shoulder blade glide, make sure those shoulders are settled and then turn the pumps to face forward. Now from here, the thing that happens in our arms springs is we tend to let the ribs come up, so we're gonna Watch her ribs, stay heavy, her pelvis, stay heavy and then add effort and press down to a halfway point where you feel yourself working and then lengthen right back up. We're going to do that four more times. Lengthening down, finding a way to use your upper abdominals to help support the work of your arms and lengthen back up to more. Inhaling, pressing down. Exhale, reaching without sacrificing those blades around the roller.

Last one and it becomes a full body exercise and length and back up from here we're going to add on to our triceps, lower the elbows down. Good. Hug your elbows in a little bit. We have a more challenging position because now her elbows are below the height of her body and let's go for five good ones. Lengthen and then bend. Excellent. Lengthening down and she is working not only to stay stable but then also to add movement. Good. Keep those long risks.

Send those knuckles forward two more times. Lengthen and bend. Last one. Lengthen. Stay long, reach a little bit longer, and then return your springs all the way home. I'll take those from you. You can take your arms down by your side and then let's reassess. So go ahead and straighten one leg, drip yourself off the half roller lie flat on your back, extend your legs, rotate, take your pumps to face up towards the ceiling.

So all we did essentially was add our 100 and arm springs to our rebalance sequence. If you got through your rebalance really fast and wanted to add arm circles or other variations, absolutely add those on. If you want to come off the roller and then get back on the roller to do arms springs. Also an option. Just be aware of how long you're on your spine on top of the roller. So back to Sue's reassessment, noticing the changes that she made in her body.

We're going to start with the stuck stress that she acknowledged having in her shoulder girdle. Go ahead and turn your head from side to side. Notice if you have any more range or less restriction. See what you notice and your neck turn reassess. And then once your head is back on straight and centered, check in with the weight distribution of your upper back. Notice whether you still have most of the weight propped up on your shoulder blades or whether it's actually dropped down and now you're sharing it with that mid rib wall. Much better. Ribs have definitely come down.

Then we go down to the diaphragm. Yup. Noticing again the size and scope of the lower back curves. So is it now a little bit smaller and more nestled towards the belly button. A definite change here. And then continue down the body. Check in with the pelvis.

Now remember any change sue gets or you get in the lower body is an indirect change. We haven't done any connective tissue rehydration techniques for the low body, but just being on the roller may have elicited a change. So notice whether you have equally weighted butt cheeks. Notice if the backs of the thighs are a little bit closer to the Mat. And then the biggest change that we're looking for in this rest reassess is an autopilot change. So go back and divide yourself into a right and left half.

And remember how you started when you first started class and now look at the change that you made. A much more balanced from right to left, much more appropriate to add Pele's and add springs, which we're going to do more of. So for me, your sue, I want you to bend your knees. I'm going to take the half roller and slide it underneath her bottom. And we're looking for placement here where the roller is below her natural waist, below the psis. And one of the ways that I love to check to make sure my roller is in the right spot has been both knees deep into your chest and as long as that's okay for your hips and knees, enjoy that position so the back ribs are weighted to the mat, which feels so good. Low back is floating and you've got your pelvis propped up in a really nice way.

Love it. I'm going to ask sue to take her hands and just kind of Tuck them snugly on either side to prevent her from going too far to the side. And our next melt move, which is called [inaudible] joint shear. So take an inhale and then on your exhale with or without your sound, take a moment to engage that core, find that core contact slowly move your knees away, but keep them just shy of perpendicular so her knees are actually still pointed back to the top of her tower. Then from here we're just going to angle slightly off until she runs into her left hand. Pause. Notice what you feel, come back through the center and then come over to the right side and notice if there's any change here, any more sensation, any lessons station.

Certainly people do this and don't feel anything which is totally fine or not looking for a hue rural. We're certainly not looking for pain, but we're not looking for a huge signal. We're just looking for a little pressure, a little sensation. Let's keep her angled off to the right. Keep your legs where they are and then we're just going to begin a little shearing by circling those knees, keeping her knees still angled towards her head. It doesn't become a place exercise here and it's actually quite passive.

You have permission to to relax a little bit and do less. See if you can really weight your pelvis on the roller, stay angled off to the right and then change into front back walking steps or marches. And then the third way to share here is we're going to keep the left thigh still and start making some concentric circles with the right. So she's going to start small and then slowly get larger. And for those of you that really wanted to go finding that sensation, this is a little more satisfying in terms of range of motion.

But with left eye still you're keeping your back safe. Okay. And then Potts and after this year, just pause for a minute, let that tissue adapt and then transition your knees back through center and back over to the left where we started and begin sharing here. Good. Remember, knees still angled towards you. It's almost like you're circling that bullseye in the back of the left hip and then changing your shear to front back marches. Excellent.

And then finally keeping that right thigh still and starting with small circles and then adding some range as she independently circles the left and it doesn't matter which way your leg circles and then join those both legs together. Take an inhale, exhale and just pause for a moment. Transition your knees back to center and then we're going to add a more challenging melt move called the pelvic tuck and tilt challenge and low back decompress. And that's going to set up us. Set us up nicely to add leg springs, so go ahead and take the pumps of your hands, slide them up to the tops of your thighs like sue is doing, and then depending on how long your arms are, you can even fold your fingertips over your knees. It's really the heel of the hand connection that I'm most interested in. Take an inhale and then on your exhale, remember your wide collarbones at a little bit of effort into the heel of the hand and exhale using your sound. Find your core in this new position. Excellent.

Take another inhale. First set up on this exhale. Not only do I want you to use your sound to find that core contact, but I actually want you to add a little resistance so she's now pressing her thighs into her active hands and a lot is happening down in that low belly. We're going to do one more time. Inhale, exhale, a little push, pull resistance between the arms and the legs. And then I'm going to ask her to add a tuck and a tilt just like she did when she was lengthwise on the roller. So really finding yes, that deep initiation of curling your pubic bone towards your belly button and then untucking your pelvis or just landing your pelvis right on top of that roller and then keep it going. Keep breathing and untuck. And you can see in Sue's body she is working hard and the movement is so small and specific.

It doesn't have to be big to really be working on talk. Good. One more time. Curling. Okay. And uncurling and then she's going to stay in this uncurl. Take an inhale on your exhale. Keep the pelvis where it is.

Keep the push power. Is this sense in your arms? Find that core and then can you deflate your ribs a little bit closer to that Mat. We're going to cycle through those cues. One more time. Inhale, ease up. Exhale, find the core, find the connection to the legs. Let those ribs soften behind you. You got one more in you. Ease up a little bit. Take an inhale on your exhale, connect to the belly, find your push pull.

Let those ribs sink hole there and then gently relax out of it. All right, we're going to add a lengthening technique here. There's two ways in melt that we effect connective tissue compression techniques and lengthening techniques. So we did compress her the back of her pelvis and our essay joint shear. Now we're going to add a little length to the front of her thigh, and this is one of my favorites to pair with Pilati, so keep your right knee hugged a little gently into your chest and let's set your left foot up on the mat. Take an inhale here.

Your hands can either go on the top of the Shin or underneath the thigh, depending on your comfort. On Your exhale, it starts with the Tuck of the pelvis, so she's going to draw that naval and tuck her pelvis. She already has a line of pull on her thigh and then she's going to add to it by drawing the Shin into her shoulder. And what we're really looking for is this lengthening sensation across the top of her left. Inhale, ease up. Exhale again. Start with the belly. Start with the Tuck of the pelvis. Find that oppositional length. Yeah, and then let it go. And it's that fast. The change happens that fast.

Lower the right plant the foot down, making sure the knee is in line with the hip. Interlace your hands appropriately on your left. Take an inhale on your exhale, starting with the Tuck. Good. I'll give you a little cyst here after years of assisting me [inaudible] and then ease off a little bit and exhale, pull back. There we go. And then relax. Good. All right. From here.

We're going to set Sue's feet up in her hipbone distance apart and then I'm actually going to ask her to make her transition and exercise. So what I'd like you to do, I'm going to give you a little bit yup. Is Press your feet a little bit down and forward into the mat to turn on the connection of the back of the thigh into the bottom. Then as you press down, I want you to lift your pelvis and that keeping it in that neutral shape. She's not tucking and leading with her pubic bone. She's kind of leading from the theme of her pants. Hold onto that for a moment.

Take the hands onto the melt roller and then I want her to flip it over [inaudible] and then lower her pelvis back down. So a little, a little effort in our transition. All right, from here, now her half ruler is her pelvis is on the flat side of the half roller. She's got a little more surface area there. Go ahead and bend your knees into your chest. Yup. And here we're going to set the half roller position before we add on to anything else. So because you're now on a rolling surface, you have the ability to angle the roller towards your head. You can see that line here.

Now what that's gonna do is allow sue to keep her pelvis neutral on top of that roller so she can really tap into her low belly instead of just using the hip flexors in a Tuck, but it also keeps her ribs anchored and she doesn't even need to lift her head. Once we get to those stomach series exercises before that, we're going to add like springs. I know. Okay. Alright, so our leg spring series is going to be as usual. Do I have you the right distance?

Can you reach back to the vertical pulse too far? Hold on, let's make an adjustment back. You Go, what do I lose? Just connect the heel of your hand a little bit lower. Can you push in and still get me? Give me a little more scoot. Perfect. Okay. Bending your knees in. Good. We've got our angled roller and now our leg springs are on.

So I actually want her to start with no arms. Her arms are just going to drape over the roller and we're going to use our frog just as kind of a warmup. So knees are going to be as wide as shoulders. Heels are going to stay connected. Your breathing is normal. You're going to send your heels out towards me.

Yep. And then resist those springs on the way in trying to keep your tail heavy on the half roller. And again, press it out and resisted in. Yes. So she's not only working the springs on the way out.

I actually want her to resist the springs on the way in so there's no arresting moment and press good and connected in two more times. Heavy bottom, finding that opposition in your core and bend in. Okay, one more time. Press it out. Now here's the hard one. Keep pressing me as you bend in. Yes, more belly. Let's do one more. Push me away and then keep pushing me as you bend in. You got it. All right. Let's have a little more fun. Take your hands back against those vertical poles and yet you just want to give a little connection. Again, it's going to allow those ribs to anchor a little bit more.

Press the legs out to your high frog and if you're used to working in any kind of external rotation here. I like doing this one parallel just to get into the backs of the thighs a little bit more. And we're just going to do large circles or ovals. So the springs are going to carry you up and then the back of the thigh is going to take you down. Yup. Inhale, float up and exhale. Anchor that belly on the way down. Trying to stay parallel even as the legs open, which is the hard part. Yes, and up and around.

Excellent. So again, we have that sense of not only what's moving, but what's not moving. She's staying totally stable and actually working quite hard just to control the movement of her legs. Beautiful. One more and then we'll change direction. You also want to remember not, you don't want to feel it in the joint. You don't want to feel it in the back of the knee or the calf. You really want to get closer to the core.

So turning on the backs of the thighs like we did in our transition is going to help her remember to keep the backs of the thighs working in your leg. Circles. Yes. Two more times, and inhale. Circle up and exhale down and circle up. Good. This time, legs together. You're going to come halfway down. We're going to find your inner thighs with some beats.

So let's start with parallel legs and we're going to do eight beats. Open and close. One little faster. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Hold externally, rotate your legs. And now eight reps, one on top of the other, two, three, four, five, six. Back, two beats, parallel legs and open. Close to three, four, five, six, seven. And wrap. Rotate. Yes. Again, still keeping that pelvis still.

Last set beats two, three, four, five, six, seven and rap one on top of the other. Five, six, seven, eight. Now hold one on top of the other. Yes. We're going to keep those upper inner thighs working. You're going to give me just a little up and a little down. Buckle those knees a little bit. A little up, a little down. One more time. We're still friends. Good. A big open.

Recross three up and down. Two and down. One and down. Join your heels together and resist those springs in and pause. Bring your arms down and just take a moment. Yeah. Not Easy work. All right.

Adding on to the bigger leg. Spring work. Let's keep your hands down for a minute. And a, I want you to make a diamond shape with your legs. [inaudible] Yup. Perfect. Yes. So instead of just working in the back of the thigh, we're going to get a little bit closer to underneath the bottom. This is one of the favorites that Bob taught me. So from here you're just gonna lower your diamond working a different part of the leg. Yeah. And come back up. Good. And again, you know the placement of the half roller pretty much ensures that you're working in that low belly to find stability. Yeah.

But this is a really nice one to make sure that pelvis stays stable. Yes. And sometimes I do this one instead of bicycle cause it's just easier to control, especially in a group class. Yup. One more time. Excellent. All right. Our final big leg spring exercise, we're going to do a giant scissors. Now the fun part about this is if you have the control, you can actually find your leg in hip extension because your pelvis is propped up on the ruler.

So go ahead and take the heels of the hands back against those vertical poles. Give a little effort to again, wide collarbones and ribs heavy. And then we're going to use the back of the thigh and we're going to create a giant scissor. And now I want you to keep that top spring active, right? So there's no clunky springs and then scissor and switch. Yes. And you can see sue is quite strong, but it is efforts to get that heel below the hip.

You can obviously stop short and make a smaller range, but I think it feels good. It's so much work to more lengthen and change. Last one, lengthen and change. Join those legs together at 45 degrees. And then just as we did before, resist me. Yes, as you come back. And so each transition is a little exercise and relax.

Take your leg springs off, but stay on top of that roller. Excellent. All right. No tower classes without a series of five. So a an easy way to kind of meet a common ground in your tower class, especially those who have any restrictions in their neck is to keep the pelvis on the half roller. Your upper abdominals are going to have the job of controlling this rollback bar. So you're going to hold it on the outside. Yep. Gently fold the hands over.

You do thumbs around. Yup. Perfect. Good. So then I'm going to ask sue to just keep the springs active. They're going to aide as we get into the more challenging exercises, but for now she's just using those upper abdominals. Yes. To keep her ribs stable. Bend your knees into your chest. Half roller is going to stay angled towards her head.

So pelvis can stay neutral. Right knee is going to stay exactly as is. You're going to imagine a rubber band on your heel on one end and the other end, it's going to be on your belly button and you're going to lay [inaudible] in away and change. Yep. And we're just going to keep breathing. So you're gonna inhale right and exhale left. Good inhale, right and exhale left. And the risks are long. That's a thing that tends to happen. Exactly. Shoulder Blazer on your back and we've got, again, the upper abdominal is working with effort here and the lower abdominals controlling the legs and we have a full body exercise. One more time, right?

One more time left. Bend both knees into your chest. Keep holding onto the spring, but you can let the tension go. Double leg stretches bigger. It's both legs way out in space so you can press the bar more as you need. Knees are going to open a snitch. Heels are going to stay together.

Take an inhale on your exhale, scoop that navel and stretch your legs away. Add tension to the bar. And then Ben back in. We're going to do too with this breathing pattern, and then we're going to change the breathing pattern. Exhale. Inhale, resistance. One more like this. Exhale out. Inhale, resist in, and then the more challenging. Take a breath. Yep. Exhale, scoop the belly. Inhale, send your legs away. You might want to press on this a little bit more. In an exhale, bring the legs. Then you can let it go. A little inhale, press a little exhale.

Let it go a little harder, right? Inhale, press. Exhale. Let it go. One more time and press and let it go and relax. All right, halfway there. All right. Take your legs up to the sky. Yep. Again, having that moment of making sure the tail is heavy, but the roller is still angled. Activate your spring, single, straight leg or scissors, so she's going to take the left leg lower at about halfway, but using her belly, using that power house, you're going to give me a little pulse.

Pulse towards the rollback bar and scissor. The legs, pulse, pulse left. This one's big. It's hard. Pulse, pulse, keep breathing, pulse, pulse, and when you need oxygen, breathe. That's your breathing cue on this one. Pulse, pulse and change. Pulse, pulse. Two more times. Really working through those arms, activating those upper abs. It's beautiful. You're a natural. And then have you even yourself out. There we go.

Bend both knees back into your chest. Release the tension on your spring. One more big one at double straight legs. Both legs go up to the sky. You can do a little plenty stance or a little v if that is what you typically do. If you want to stay parallel, that's an option too. But I really want you to think outer hip squeezes towards inner thighs. So it's one unit. You're gonna press that bar and activate the spring, allowing the ribs to sink.

Heavy tail gets heavy and then it doesn't have to be big cause it's a lot. You're going to lower the legs. Three, two, one and exhale. Return home. Yes. And if you feel like you're tipping the roller, make a smaller range of motion. If you want to add more work, you can press that bar as your legs go. That's fun. And come back home and press. Yes. Beautiful. Lengthen out and up. One more time.

Press and you don't have to do a lot because you are doing a lot and bend and relax. All right, let's let go. Those springs. Push your half roller out from underneath you. Now this is our first rest. Reassess. Since we did any of the lower body work, now we added quite a bit of PyLadies to that. Let's see if we were able to maintain or add more to our ideal alignment I'm getting. Yes, so extend your legs long. Rotate your palms to face up towards the ceiling.

Remember the stuck stress that you started with, whether it was in your shoulder girdle, your diaphragm, or your pelvis. Now we've quite a bit of Melton to get you a little bit closer to ideal alignment. Go ahead and turn the head slowly from left to right and noticing if you are able to free up some range and space in your neck. Looks like them. Bring the head back to the center. Notice the weight distribution across your whole back. Again, remember where it started?

Most of us have it propped up towards the shoulder girdle, but here Sue's shoulders almost look like they're floating the way is at her ribs and then she's got this nice small low back curve just nestled opposite the belly button exactly where we want it to. Blank Butt cheeks as we want them equally weighted and then continue traveling down the leg. Notice that wave like motion in terms of the weight and then go back to your autopilot reassessment. Divide the body into a right and left half. Notice if you are able to maintain that sense of weightedness and even less from left to right. All right. Unfortunately we're still going. There's more Polonius so we had four of our series of five.

This next one will hopefully be a breeze because of all the work we did to lead up to it. So just hug your knees into your chest for me. Good. You're going to take one hand on top of the other and place both hands behind the back of the head. Yup. And without overthinking this one too much, we will just want to keep that rotation and movement of the spine. So take an inhale on your exhale. Draw that naval in, curl head in, shoulders up, and then as you twist to the right, extend your left leg. Good lifting and spiraling. Yeah, look how much she's curled up and changed. And again, twist and twist. Keep breathing, right.

Change left two more times, right? Change left. Last one. I think you could do this for days. No, I won't make you do this for days. Even yourself out. Twist left and then relax. Okay, send those legs long. Good. The role of exercise comes early in our classical plays in that sequence, but it's one of the hardest ones to do. So extend your arms up. We're going to use it as a transition.

I like teaching this one with a little inner thigh engagement to help arms are going to come up and when you're ready, inhale and articulate yourself up. Beautiful. Exhale, enjoy that stretch forward. And then just come on up to sitting. Spin around and we're going to add some work with the rollback barn so you can measure your feet up against the vertical poles. Yep. A little bit of bend in your knee.

And then I'm going to place the melt roller instead of underneath her pelvis. I'm actually gonna approximate about the width of the hand from her bottom to the roller. We're going to make sure the rollers in line with her spine. Now we might need an adjustment when she gets down there, but let's start with this and see. So hands are going to go on the outside of the rollback bar sitting nice and tall on your inhale. And then on your exhale, draw the navel in, curl the tail underneath you with a little bit of pressure in the arms. I want you to find your spine on the ruler and then continue all the way down.

Good. Now the roller might be uncomfortable. It's in your lower back, and what you can do is just kind of wiggle yourself forward a little bit. I don't want it to hurt, but it might not necessarily be comfy as long as it feels okay. We're going to keep it there. So here again, we have a really hard exercise rolling back and rolling up with a roll back bar. And with the pelvis off the roller, we're helping sue and you articulate without that first tuck of the pelvis. So we're going to do a couple here before adding on anything.

Take an inhale on your exhale, draw the navel in, curl the Haddon shoulders up. Look straight ahead at that gorgeous view, and then slowly continue. You're articulating up until you sit nice and tall and bend the knees. Let's do that again. Take an inhale, exhale, activate those springs a little bit, and then curl down. Finding that roller. And now we can actually feel the one bone at a time that we cue so often.

Take an inhale, exhale, connect, curl, long neck as you follow the line of the bar all the way back up. Let's do that two more times. Inhale, how's it feel? Good curling down, settling those ribs down, and Exhale, draw your chin towards your chest. Looking straight ahead. Let those ribs sink and Tuck back as you roll all the way up. And then last time and we're going to add on. Good.

So I want you to remember back to the position that we had for our arms springs, allowing those shoulderblades to sink down around the rollers so that we know we have good form, her palms are face down here, but all she's going to do is bend her elbows and touch her elbows into the man and then extend. And here we're able to facilitate, facilitate a little bit of arm work without any compromise in the shoulder that we tend to see in our classes. And extend. Looks good. And again, you can find a little bit of help in those upper abdominals keeping the ribs heavy. Beautiful. One more. Okay, good. Keep the arms straight. Take an inhale. Exhale. Connect to that core curl head and shoulders. And sully, bring yourself up. Let's do one more variation. Take an inhale. Exhale. Curl the tail underneath you. Yup. Rolling back.

Opening up that upper back should feel good. Yeah. Excellent. Take a moment to place those shoulders around the roller and now she's going to keep straight arms but not locked elbows. You're going to give me a little tiny bend in the elbow and just press stray down with an inhale and exhale, float back up. Yes.

And finding that whole core support to help pull those springs down. Beautiful. Two more times. Last one. Yes. Extend up. Stay curl, Chin towards chest. And then up. Come and sit in nice and tall. Let go of this.

And we're going to take the half roller and end with a standing exercise. So I'm going to have meet you around and we're going to start. Why don't you measure for me about one foot's distance or one arms distance rather from great. And then Yep. What I'd like you to do is place the balls of your feet on the floor and your heels on top of the roller and then you can relax your arms. So again, before we add any springs, we're going to get her set up to create the most stable, efficient standing exercise that we can. So what I'd like you to do for a second is actually look down at your feet and soften your knees a little bit.

And then I want you to imagine that there's a little wrinkle or ripple in the floor underneath the balls of your feet. And what I want you to actively do is spread or press your feet open. Yes. Now what's not happening is the knees are opening. It's kind of like a speed skating move. As you spread your feet away, the sides of the legs and those stability systems should are you got it. It's turned on. All right, so keep that and let's just start with a little bend.

Yup. And then you're going to press open to straighten. Yep. And a little bend and from the belly lift and straighten. One more time. And that's quite a lot of effort. As you're pressing your feet open each time you extend your legs. Last time, extend and stay. And now let's add our standing chest expansion. So holding onto the outside.

Yup. Let's do fingertips long on this one. No, you were fine. Heel of the hand. Thumb on same side. Yes. Perfect. All right, so she's got her stance. The knees are a little bit buckled and then she's going to add. Inhale, press down as you lift up from the center. Feel that back body. Turn on hold as you turn left and center Breve turn right and center. Breathe and then hold onto that posture as you release the springs and pause.

Take an inhale on your exhale. Press it down, lift up. Think of drawing your navel up into your back ribs. Turning right this time. Breathe Center. Turn left. Breathe, center and release with control. Let's do that whole thing one more time. Pressing out in the feet, pressing the bar down, lifting up through that naval. Look left. Breathe Center. Look right.

Breathe Center and release. And last one, scooping into the naval. Standing Tall, pressing those feet wide and look right and center, left and center. Keep your posture. Release the springs with control. Excellent. Let go of the rollback bar. Come step onto solid ground for a minute. Good. How do you feel taller? A little more lifted, a little more stable? Yes.

And so our lying down rest assess translates to standing just like we do an apply these class start lying down and the session standing so that you are ready to get on with your day. Thank you so much for joining us for this melted Polonius apparatus class.