Awareness

Hi, I'm back. And today we're going to take it to the wall. The great thing about this workout is that you can do it anywhere. If you happen to be in a hotel room and you don't want to get down on the Yucky floor, I got you covered. We're gonna focus a lot on awareness and mindfulness and how we feel in the moves. So play with me. Put your feet in a comfortable position so you feel that you can rest against the wall and be mindful of your balance where you are. Yeah.

Try to feel that you're standing equally on your two legs. Try to feel that your pelvis is grounded. Try to feel that your rib cage, the backs of your ribs are resting to the best of your ability and most importantly, your head. So fill your head resting against the wall and maybe be a bobble head for a moment and wiggle around. A little. Be Silly. You know me, I like to be silly. And then see if you can make your arms find a connection to the wall. So those of you a little tighter, you might not be able to connect close to your body. A little looser.

You might be able to, but just sort of feel where you feel your arm bones grounded. And then here, bend your legs a little. So growing tall, up and down. That's funny, right lengthening down through your tailbone and up through the crown of the head. Just explore your pelvis, Tuck your pelvis, low back, flat, tailbone down, breeze. Maybe we tuck the pelvis and then we drop the tailbone down. And then maybe you find neutral and maybe it's a little easier. Maybe you sway a little side to side. Just feel your pelvis against the wall. Notice where you're sticky and notice where you might want to change it up a little bit. Notice where you need more awareness.

Settle on what feels like a neutral pelvis. Lengthen your legs for me. Allow your arms to relax and do a mini roll down. So a head comes forward and we roll through our back. Feeling the connection, but not going so far that your pelvis has to shift. Just angle your head, neck and shoulders. And then roll yourself back up. Make sure you're breathing. That is really important. An exhale. Chin in, lengthening through the back of the neck and roll yourself down again. Feel the pelvis grounded, the top of the low or the bottom of the low backgrounded arms dangling, and then roll yourself back up.

And let's just do one more of those. Roll yourself down. You can go slower at any point if you want. If you feel comfortable with your movement a little faster as okay, taste the move though. Feel the stretch. Be aware of what's going on and stand tall. Now Bend your legs just a little bit more.

Ground your arms to the wall and we do a pelvic curl. So curl your pelvis up, press your pelvis away from the wall and feel open through the heart length through the back of the neck. Lower your spine down, trying to create more length and articulation through the spine. Do that again. Exhale, lift the pelvis away from the wall. Press forward your legs. Feel your ibes. I found myself gripping in my shoulders. I'm going to soften and then lower down.

Be Aware of how you feel and what you're doing. This is your day. Exhale to peel forward. This is your class and just one more of those and then curling yourself down. And then straight in your legs here. So take your arms out in front of you and make a connection with your hands.

However it suits you. Bend your legs just a little, just feel a softening and we're just gonna roll over to one side, keeping the head firmly against the wall and then you'll roll to the other side. So just do this a couple times. Quite passively and easy, like literally just rolling on the wall and try to feel, if you feel all of the bones making a connection, the spine, the shoulder blade, the back of the upper arm, and then maybe the elbow back of the upper arm, shoulder blade, spine, rib cage. So you're really rolling around on all the bones. If you happen to feel a hiccup, a bump in the road, if you will, or an area with no connection, perhaps that's a good indication where you might want to linger for a little while and iron it out if you will or try to figure out how you can ground it down. I know on one side I do feel it's a little harder to get there. Let's land on whatever side you're on and stay for a moment.

Notice if your pelvis pulled away from the wall minded, pull your pelvis back down and try to keep that connection. You may feel stretch, you may feel work and then unwind and then let's go to the other side, rolling over and then feel the connection of the arm, upper upper arm, shoulder blade. Notice where the pelvis is, pull it back and then pull back through. Let's just do that one more time. So rolling over, somewhat relaxed. Pull the pelvis back to pull your body back. Very simple movement, but really waking up a lot of things on the back body. There we go. Let the arms settle by your side. Shake your legs out.

If necessary, reach your arms up. Inhale, use an exhale to roll forward. So here we're doing a roll-up, but really we're rolling down. So feel that you are now moving to a deeper fold here in how you use the exhale to articulate through your back one vertebra at a time and then reach the arms all the way up. Keep the head grounded and then round forward. So I'm moving my head and my arms and everything has one piece cause that feels good. It gives me more stretch through my back body and exhale to round up.

I'm laughing inside because I did a little bouncing there. It felt really good to me. So I'm aware of what I need right now. So if you happened to see my ballistic bouncing, it's feels good. So certainly if you want to sit in a position in just like let go of something, don't hesitate to do so. Again, this is your class. This is your opportunity to work in your body and feel what it is that you need to get out of the workout or the work in. Rather, take your down, bring your legs together.

Bend your knees so you find a pretty deep bend. We're going to work a little bit our abdominals and our legs here. So allow your spine to flex a little bit and roll forward until you can touch your legs. Keep your legs as they are and we reach up and we pull. So keep that pressure of your pelvis against the wall and feel flection of the spine and reaching back. So those back muscles are working. Each time you push into the wall. That's what we're trying to create here.

Nice postural awareness. One last time here and we reach up and we stand. Tall arms can come down, shake your body out a little bit and let's do some leg and posture work. So kind of, I'm dancing sort of fun, right? Bring your feet all the way up against the wall.

Maybe there's a floorboard back there, so perhaps you're an inch away from the wall, but try to make it so that you are as close to the wall as you can be. Paying attention to the tissue that you have back there. I do want you to feel like you're connected with the head and the pelvis and hopefully the upper ribs as well, or the middle back. And then here you're just going to bend your legs, but try to grow taller as you first bend and then continue to grow taller as you bend only as deep as you can with your body staying connected to the wall and then press up. So option one just to let your arms dangle as you practice this. Beautiful. Uh, basically it's a leg bend, right?

But it's really about posture at this moment. Awareness. What do you feel? Yeah. Do you feel that one leg works more than the other? Do you feel that you kind of slumped down or your head wants to go forward and how can you create more length? Yeah, one more like that. Try pressing your arms into the wall behind you. I was going to say Matt, but Matt the wall, same thing. And then press tall. So see if you can keep that connection as you move your feet back a little more and lift your heels.

So I'm wedging my heels up against the wall and staying grounded. If you can keep a connection with your arms, do both legs work equally, perhaps you'll bend a little deeper and you'll press up again. I'm just grazing the wall. I'm not really pressing into the wall. I'm using it as an opportunity to really keep my spa spine on the plum line, if you will. Oftentimes, my head finds its way forward. I think it has a lot to do with me looking down at people all the time while I'm teaching. So I've really started to notice that, um, I need to put more focus on keeping my head back. Stay here, put your heels together and make a small v position. Keep the rotation.

Try taking your arms out, palms forward, bend your legs, squeezing those heels tightly together and we press up. Of course the abdominals are engaged, but I'm thinking more about lengthening with my abdominals than am I thinking about engaging too much? It's just growing taller with each moment and that provokes a beautiful engagement for me that I'm feeling quite powerfully. Just one more time like this. Presa take your arms all the way up, feel yourself growing taller, even taller, and then put your feet down. Allow your arms to dangle with the wall. Hold you up, take your feet a little bit wider.

So a little bit of a wide v position turned out, but not as wide as you think because it's going to be difficult to keep the rules here. So see if you can keep your heels all the way up against the wall like they have been and then find that rotation in your hips as you bend. So nice rotation and press up. So still keeping the pelvis grounded equally. I feel quite a lot of rotation work, especially on my weaker side.

Again, if you can get your arms to get an outcome a little closer to your body resting against the wall, that would be wonderful. Provoking some work in the back body, upper arms, upper back. We'll just do two more here. Good. And one more time. Pressing up [inaudible] beautiful. Walk your feet together and let's practice some balance and some single leg work. So again, grow tall, fill your head grounded, press your arms into the mat or then the mat into the wall and lift one leg up. How about your right leg up? If you need to put your toe down, put it down.

Otherwise it's lifted. And here let's just bend three times and see how we're doing here. How low can you go and how tall can you grow and feel what your body feels like here. Whether this is challenging or not too challenging for you. Again, for me, keeping my body up against the wall makes it a whole new challenge. Change legs. So shifting and I feel the difference between the two sides when I'm grounded against the wall three times.

Nice. Remember we are having fun here even though I'm asking you to be aware of all of the details and pay attention to what you feel. This is about self care. So take care of you. Put your foot down and let's turn around. So we're going to make a lunge position here. One foot forward, the other foot back. So the leg closest to the wall is back.

I'm going to set myself up so my shoulder is up against the wall and my fist basically is about how much space there is between my leg and the wall. And then I'm going to bend. Okay. Then I don't want to touch the wall anymore. So feel that you can move in this position. That's your pelvis moves that it's not that hard to be here yet. Okay. If it's too hard to be here, you've gone too far. Now grow tall, lengthening through your low back a little bit.

Try pressing back with your legs. So the back leg, the hamstring essentially is trying to lift up and stay there. Now we're going to just take this arm kind of up the wall somewhere and sort of rest on your head. It's a good place to start. And then you're going to use your outside leg and push your pelvis into the wall and feel a beautiful stretch in your, so as you're pinning your pelvis against the wall. Yeah. Now if you want to go a little deeper, you bend a little deeper, you push a little harder into the wall and door. You can look up and or you can bend over a little bit.

So if I'm looking up, my hand is just connected to my head so it has somewhere to be right now and I'm getting a wonderful stretch through my whole side body. And again, just pay attention to where you feel it on this side. Do that again. Whatever it is you're doing, breathe and do it again. Let's change sides. So again, the outside leg, the inside leg is near the wall. There's enough space so you can push, right? But a comfortable stance. So you'll find a lunge and you're there. Lengthen through your low back. Grow Taller, feel yourself. Yeah.

Okay. Now here it gets your arm out of the way per. Press your pelvis into the wall and see if you can really make an anchor to the wall with your pelvis, the outside of your pelvis. And then you'll press the leg back here. You can put your arm, your hand on your head. You can even put your arm up the wall if you wanted to. Um, you can just kind of rest here and you can look up. Yeah.

And then you can also bend over a little bit no matter what. This is about pleasure though. The movements should feel like good stretching, pleasure, pain. Some people consider stretching to be pleasurable and some consider it to be uncomfortable. I consider it pleasurable. Go ahead and rest there. And let's change relationships again. So we're going to take our hands on the wall and just step back with one leg and enjoy a calf stretch.

So find a place where you feel that you can really push into that back heel and enjoy a little bit of a stretch. Now notice that your front foot is not holding you up. Your arms are assisting you and your back foot. Yeah. So be here for a moment and arrange your hands in a position where you feel that you can bend your elbows and put your arms, your forearms in the direction of down. Right. I'm a little too far back, so I'm going to make an adjustment and then you can press out. So as I bend my elbows and put them down, I'll get a bigger stretch. Then I'm gonna use my arms and press myself out.

So here stretching the calf. Yes, that's one of the things we're doing, but we're also working a little bit the shoulder stabilizers and the triceps, which is great. And press up. Just do that one more time and we bend. Nice little stretch and press. I'm a big fan of doing more than one thing while I'm stretching change legs. And part of that is I think it kinda tricks the nervous system into allowing you to do more perhaps. So find a place where you feel like you can stretch a bit and then you're going to work on bending the elbows, placing them down maybe and feeling a stretch.

So maybe you can't get all the way down, but that can be your goal. I'm quite flexible so I can get all the way down, but it doesn't need to look exactly like it looks on me. What you want to do is be aware of what you feel and pay attention to what you need and go deeper there. And we'll do just one more here. Woof. Just that little bit of work is making my triceps speak to me a little. Hmm.

So just step back so you have two feet behind you. Two hands on the wall and take a nice little stretch here, a little forward fold. And perhaps you'll bend your legs one at a time, perhaps both at the same time. I'm getting a wonderful stretch in my shoulders as well as in the backs of my legs. Now round yourself up and let's come to our sides. So here you're going to just kind of rest on your side. Rest on the wall.

I don't actually really care where your arm is. I just want you to rest and relax. Yeah, hang out. Not really. The inside leg is going to come across the body. Yeah. Okay. And then make sure you're not too far away. Okay. Because what I want you to be able to do here is bend your pelvis in the direction of the wall. I'm pretty far away, aren't I? That's okay.

I wasn't really thinking I was going to get there yet and then pull away. So I'm going to bend in the direction of the wall to get a little bit of a stretch. Just kind of supporting here, feeling comfortable hopefully, and then pull away and do that again. Bend and stretch and pull away. Okay, so now let's step in and notice about how far we could bend and make sure that you can place your pelvis on the wall. Yeah. Okay. And then this arm just out of the way for now, press your pelvis into the wall. Reach this leg that's across outward in your mind, and then look up and then take your arm up the wall and then walk your hand up the wall. And you should feel a luxurious stretch. It's like I'm hanging from the wall like Spiderman here. I mean, not really, but kind of. Right? So you can feel free to walk your hand back a little.

You can walk it forward a little. My head, this stuff is hanging. I'm relaxed, but I'm getting a really lovely stretch through my whole side body. Yeah, make sure you're breathing. I'm not always queuing it, but at this point I'm expecting you to remember that breath is our very first principle and you should always breathe and pay attention to it. Good. Use your bottom hand, kind of help you out of there. You might feel a little sticky coming out of that. So shake things out, be playful, be relaxed. And let's go to the other side. So I did this first, hang out and relax. So I purposely did this because I wanted you to kind of get a sense of how much range you and so that you'll know a little bit more where to put yourself for the the biggest stretch. So here I've got my inside leg across, it's just relaxed and, and I kind of weighed it down somewhere and push my pelvis toward the wall.

Big stretch there and pull it away. Now you've got to be mindful here of your body and make sure you're not pushing so far that it feels cranky in your low back or anything. This is my tighter side, so I feel quite a lot of stretch just doing this simple move. And guess what? You're actually working the stabilizers of your shoulder as well to do this. So that's a good thing.

Yeah. And then release that and come in a bit. So I kind of now have a better idea of where I need to stand. My leg is across and I want to be able to wedge my pelvis against the wall. Yeah. So once I've done that, I get my arm out of the way so you can see my hand, it's behind me and I'm going to press my pelvis into the wall or press the side of my pelvis or my thighbone, whatever it is. But something that doesn't hurt.

That's the most important thing. And then I feel a stretch right here, right now. And then I'm going to take the arm, maybe up the wall, and I'm going to crawl with my fingers like Spiderman up the wall. And there is a big stretch for me. Now if your shoulder doesn't like going straight up, go forward or go back or whatever or go here, it doesn't matter. I want you to feel something that feels good to you or don't put your arm up. You might just feel a stretch without the arm being lifted here. So again, I'm using my fingertips to crawl up the wall. I'm getting a lovely stretch.

My head is hanging, my body is hanging. It's like I'm literally hanging around here. Oh, beautiful. Breathe my friends. 10 how many come out of that. And so now let's take our backs back to the wall and kind of check in with our shoulders a little bit. Yeah.

So find this place again where you're leaning against the wall and quite relaxed in that way and your hands are going to go behind your back. Okay. So here I want you to press a little bit, your body into your hands to create a little bit of a compression on your hands and press your arms also into the wall. And for me, I'm thinking about energetically here, trying to push myself forward and my heart forward and that's where we're, we're headed here. And then take your elbows forward. Now you could open your hands if you need to, but if you can keep them compressed against your pelvis, that's better. Um, take your hands, your elbows forward. Allow your head to roll forward and allow your spine to round a little bit here and that should feel really nice. It's kind of like a butterfly flapping its wings here and you'll see and then we're going to come up, right.

Press the arms into the wall again and feel this idea of like opening your heart, like you're pushing your heart forward. And then arms come forward and head rolls forward. Let your head really dangle and perhaps feel some release in your neck here and then stack your spine again and then press your arms here into the wall. Now use that press to push your pelvis forward. So maybe you get your knuckles behind your pelvis and you push your pelvis forward. Try to make a connection of your upper arms.

We will revisit this later and then curl down one vertebra at a time and then roll forward. We'll just do that one more time. This should feel like a nice stretch. Stack herself up and then you're going to press your hands into your pelvis. Push yourself into what feels like a little back extension. Do try to get your shoulder blades down and your upper arms down here, opening through your front body, opening through your so as, and then slip out of that [inaudible] and gently bring yourself to an upright position and just feel where you are for a moment here. Feet underneath your hips. Your heart is open. Okay.

Your head is perhaps stacking perfectly on your spine. Thank you.