Standing Pilates

Today. Let's change our perspective and do this entire workout standing so it'll still be short and sweet and effective. And we'll explore some exercises in a different way. Stand with your feet underneath you and take a breath up, looking up as you do and as you exhale out, look forward and sort of press down through space with your arms. So in house, if you can grow a little taller, rooting through your feet and with an exhale look forward and take your arms down. Just one more like that feeling breath rooted to the earth, but also lengthening with each moment. Now here's we have, here's where we have a little bit of fun.

Start pounding your heels and then see if you can pound them a little faster. So this idea of creating a little stimulation will hopefully wake up your body so you pound as fast as you can and keep your breath going. Let your arms just kind of float and melt. It turns into a wiggle pretty quickly and maybe that wiggle starts to move up your spine. Maybe your shoulders, maybe your head, or maybe you're just focusing on your feet. Stay with one foot for a little bit and see how quickly you can pound that one foot and feel the energy, the looseness, the release, the vibration.

My legs start to get a little tired too. It's not a bad idea. Change size. So again, just kind of pounding, Tah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah. Breathing in and breathing it out. Nice and relaxed and then stand vibration hopefully flowing through your body with your feet rooted to the earth. Inhale here with an exhale we roll down. Feel free to bend your knees if you need to or keep them straight if that suits you. So this will be the option one for this exercise. Inhale here, exhale to roll at this time. Take your arms up high. The option two.

We keep the arms high and we fold forward as if we're doing an abdominal curl and create the shape of the roll up so the hands are going to stop before they touch the earth. Hollowing in with the belly. Use An exhale to round and roll yourself back up to a standing position and take the arms overhead. Inhale, use one XL here to fold round forward. Rather it's like you're diving over something, reaching over a barrel in hell here. Use the next hail to round and roll up and stand tall. Let's do it again sounding forward.

So now another option to challenge yourself here would be to bring your legs together. So if that's something you want to go ahead and try this time or next time you join and try this class. You could try with your legs together. I'm going to do one like that. So rounding forward, keeping the weight equal on both feet, keeping your inner thighs engaged. Inhale and exhale to round and roll all the way back. Take your arms wide, bend your knees a little bit with your knees. Together.

We're going to take a little pumping of the arms like we're doing the hundred inhale. Okay. And exhale with flection of the spine. So round. Inhale. Okay.

An exhale, straightening up the leg, stay bent. Inhale, heart is open and exhale and round. So flexing the spine, pumping the arms. The head is relax. [inaudible] an upright in opening your heart and exhale and in hell. [inaudible] and exhale. One more time. Inhale [inaudible] and exhale, stand tall. Clasp your fingers together. Keep your legs together, press your head into your hands. Keep your legs straight and stand tall. Twisting around one side and then back to center. Use your breath.

Use Your exhale to twist. Be sure to lead with your eyes so your eyes go, your whole upper body goes, but your pelvis is attempting to stay still, so it feels like you have to press forward just a little bit with the side of the pelvis that you're twisting to. So as you twist one direction, you press the pelvis forward to create opposition. One more time, each side, twisting the spine here. And last one, good. Reach the arms up, hold on to one arm and reach over and then the other arm and reach over. And again, reaching over, stretching through the side body. And just one more time, reaching over. Come back through to center. Separate your feet just a little bit and bend your knees.

Bend your knees more and bring your hands down to your legs, feeling that you're flexing or rounding your spine, perhaps bringing your forehead in the direction of your knees, but no need to touch. So here's a double leg stretch. We explode ourselves up and we exhale. We inhale, reach and we exhale n. So stretching the body long and tall. Exhale en. Notice how gaze changes. So I's toward legs, hollowing the belly, lifting up, eyes toward legs, hollowing the belly.

Looking up slightly. So the upper, upper back extensors are a little bit engaged as you look up with your eyes. Last one here. Stand tall. Lift one leg, or perhaps just lift one heel change. So I'm doing this with my hands for a reason. I've just got my hands out in front of me and I'm keeping the shape, my hands.

This is the option one, the option two. We're gonna lift the leg to meet the hands, keeping the body tall and we change. So the idea here is that you find where your hands need to be and you bring your leg to your hands every time. Much like the single leg stretch on relying on our backs. Make sure you are in fact breathing and moving. So find your breath. Good.

Same thing but with a little bit of flection. So flat. Whoa. Flex your spine. Look down, stay gazing down with your eyes, working on your balance. And we change. So it's a single leg stretch. I want you to now use your hands on your leg to create a little more power from your core. Totally different when you're looking forward.

And when you're looking down, hold here. Stand Tall, look down. Find your balance. Change sides. Hold here. Stand tall. Changing your perspective. Look down, feet down. Big Breath up. Same thing with rotation. So again, option one, just lift the heels, work on your balance. Option two, we lift and we rotate around with a straight spine and we lift another leg and we kind of rotate around. So I'm endeavoring to stay tall. So I like having a connection with my hands so I know where they are.

So I'm just touching my fingertips together and keeping this softness through my hands. One more time like this, find your breath. Find your balance. Use Your eyes to look around. Now changing it here. So once again, we're going to lift up. We're going to flex the spine. Now we're going to stay inflection here and rotate around. So use your opposite hand on the outside of the knee to create a little bit more feeling. So the opposite hand on the outside of the knee.

The hands basically stay the same though, so you can keep them touching, but just feel the hand change. So here I'm using my abdominals to hollow upward and create a little stretch, a little feeling. One more time like this. Stand tall, big breath up and big breath down. Separate your feet about hip width, distance and bend your legs. Keep Your Body upright straight in your legs. So when you first bend your legs, you're bending your ankles, you are bending your knees and you're bending at your hips.

So I want you to avoid moving your spine since all three of those joints moving as you bend. And as you straighten also sends just a little bit your inner thighs pulling the earth together, pulling the mat together, especially when you press up to help generate this idea of lifting just a little taller. Now let's go a little deeper. So bend, we allow the arms to stay by our side. Keep your gaze essentially forward. See how low you can go. Your gaze will change when you need to. If you're able to potentially touch the floor, change your gaze and stand tall. And again, we bend. So keep your gaze, keep your heart lifted, see how far you can go. And then if you feel like okay, can't go any further, let your gaze change just a bit so you can maybe touch the floor using your legs. Look forward and come up. Just a couple more like that.

So feel this idea of your inner thighs working to support your belly is hollowing inward a bit. So your abdominals are engaged. But I'm not thinking too much about my abdominals right now. It's my legs certainly that are working. Just one more like that. Bending in, finding that connection maybe to the earth or as low as you can and stand tall. Now, press to the balls of your feet. Can you lift your heels? If you're unable to lift your heels and comfortably stay here, you certainly could put your feet up against a wall or stand on something, a curb or something like that, but if you're able to stay here, I encourage you to try reaching up.

Let's say palms together here facing one another here. We're going to bend the knees. We're going to keep the body up right. We're going to see how low we can go. Good. Your teacher is challenging her balance here too while talking and then you're going to press up. Now, don't go to the point where you're sitting or you're sinking on your heels. Even if you have the range to go all the way down.

Do me a favor and see if you can keep yourself from thinking from sitting. How low can you go? Really feel those legs and press back. Remembering that. The goal here too is to avoid leaning forward with your body. You know you often are when you're queuing somebody to balance my friends. The best idea is to focus on a point that's not moving.

So at the moment I'm focusing directly on you through the eye of the camera. We're going to go down just one more time and to stay here. Can you go a little deeper, a little deeper? Well, press back up, puts your heels down, make them go together. So it's a small v like in [inaudible] here. Option one, keep the heels down. Option two. Yeah, you knew we were going to work on balanced, didn't you?

Inner thighs are working. Let's just take the arms straight out to the side. Palms up and we bend again. The heart stays lifted, the body stays open and the and the upper body and we press up this a little speedier here. Inhale, squeeze the heels together. Press up. Good. Don't be shy. You can even use your glutes here. Squeeze them if you want. Press up and again, changing the perspective here. Keep your eyes going up a little more. Look at something different.

Notice that when you move your eyes somewhere else, your balance has challenged. Perhaps perhaps to the right or the left. Just look somewhere different and see if you can stay balanced. Stay in control. Last one here, lower your heels. Come to an open position so don't go too wide, but go wide enough to feel like you're you're wide and then bend your knees. I want you to sit here for a moment and see how low you can squat down without folding forward.

So really almost energetically think of scooping your pelvis underneath you, but really it's this neutral position we're endeavoring to be in. Take your arms wide to the side. Unless they're too tired, go just an inch deeper and we press up and we press down and we press up and we're using both legs equally. In an ideal world, see if you can tap into those glutes, those outer glutes or the rotators. Perhaps one more time. Here we hold ourselves in this low position and we shift over to one side. How does that feel? Shift to the other side.

Don't think I used that one as much. Try again. Notice which one feels a little different to you. Notice which one you might need to work on a little more. For Fun. We change our hands. Put your hands together however you'd like. Preposition is fine. Some other way is fine too. We go a little deeper.

We lift our heels up and we pulse down and we pulse down. We pulse down and we pull us down. Stay. We shift to the one leg. Could you stand on that leg completely if you wanted to and to the other side. Could you stand on that leg completely if you wanted to. Back to center. Arms release. Hard as open. Stand tall.

Keep the heels lifted and come down. Stand tall. Keep the heels lifted. Come down. Think of lengthening through your spine and just one more time please. Feet down. Walk them in, shake it out. Go back to that pounding of the heels if you want.

Pounding at word doesn't sound good sometimes, but truly a little bit of stimulation for the bone is good. So a little bit of a pounding through the heel and maybe even a little bit of a fake jumping. So I'm not even really taking my feet away from the floor, but I'm bouncing. Doing a little bit of jumping. Change your feet breathing. So this should feel almost like easy done with ease and bringing your heart rate up a little bit. But just giving you this release feeling. Stand your ground. Take your feet a little wider. So about shoulder width.

When I say shoulder width, I want to think of my toes being right at the edge of my shoulders. About good. Take your arms first to the side and then out in front of you. Slightly softer, neat. Soften the knees if you need to and we roll forward. So if you're able to roll forward and your fingertips touch the ground, allow your elbows to bend. Heap the flection of your spine and reach a little deeper. Okay.

And then roll yourself back up. Bend your knees. If this doesn't feel right on your low back, it's not for everyone. Take your arms forward. We're doing a spine stretch. Inhale, exhale to peel forward. So if when you get to this point where your fingertips start to touch the ground, just hug your elbows and go a little deeper. Allow your head to hang energetically toward the floor, but your belly is pulling in an app and then round and roll yourself up.

The arms release and we come to standing in the arms left a couple more like that. We roll forward, breathing and moving. The arms will hug each other if needed. The head is relaxed. Take a breath and rout and roll up. And one more time before we make a change. [inaudible] and round and roll up and you'll find yourself standing tall.

Now take your arms out to the side. Let's go. Palms up. Feeling that openness. We're going to rotate. We're going to saw pinky finger toward pinky toe. You're going to use your hand against your leg in some way to rotate around a little bit more. Let's go into internal rotation. Just like in the mat work, we're going to extend the spine and come all the way up and around. Rotate. We're gonna reach pinky finger in the direction of Pinky toe.

Take that arm up energetically to the ceiling and push inward. Extend your spine, reaching your arm around and unwind. Give it a go twist. We saw we reach, we reach around a bit more, we extend and we come around and we twist. That feels really good to me, but it doesn't feel good. Bend your knees, change it up. Pleasure principle. The movements I suggest should feel like a good idea for you with your feet together. We're going to change directions here. Nice. Wide Split here.

Not Too wide actually. So I have to bend knees and I'm quite comfortable here and I want you to feel yourself bending as deep as you're able to. Maybe the need hovers. Maybe it doesn't press two legs, just straight. So I've got my body straight up and down. Here we go. Now we're going to find that low position, right? Maybe not super low, but kind of low. You could stay here. Yeah, I hope so.

Take your arms open and behind you. Press your back leg to straight. Hollow your belly in and find a back extension. Look forward. So the hands go back. The heart is open, the gaze goes up. You can stop with the arms wherever it suits you. Maybe it's here, maybe it's here. Maybe you can take them all the way up and we'll do that just one more time please. Big Breath.

Now press to your front leg, take your hands to your thigh, stretch that back leg even straighter, even deeper. And see how low you can go. Hands can be on your thigh. You can even rest your body on your thigh and just feel yourself. How low can you go with that front leg. But try not to actually rest down. Yeah, just see what you can do. Press yourself up, back, leg in, give it a shimmy shake. And we change sides. So we have one leg back, one leg forward. My legs feel that that felt good.

So I don't want to be too wide, but I want to be wide enough so that I can bend in. This leg is about in alignment with my pelvis, right. And we stand and we'll do that a couple more times. We've been hand, we stand and we bend and we stand and now we stay. We hold that low position, we push that back leg in the direction of straight. You feel that beautiful stretch through your sowers. Open your heart, look up, circle around.

It's like a nice back extension and come out of it again. You can stop anywhere. You don't have to go all the way up, but maybe you're able to and big stretch, breathing and moving and one more time. Then we just kind of Shimmy deeper, wider, straighter, lower. Just for fun. See where you can go. Maybe you can get all the way down. The idea here though is that you know you can use your legs, your muscles, your joints in a way that could get you to the earth without it being too troublesome.

And then we bring ourselves back up with your feet together. Take a breath, inhale up and exhale down. Inhale up. Okay. Excel, Dow. So we're going to go up.

We're going to see if we can bring our hands to touch. Hold if you need to clasp, if you need to. Try not to, if you're able to and how far over can you bend? Feel that stretch. Try looking a little bit down. Try looking a little bit up. Again, pleasure principle. If it doesn't feel good in your back, hold back. Should feel like a good idea and we bring ourselves up.

Try to hold your own hands together. If you're able to push over, does it feel different to me? It does. Enjoy that role and role. Maybe one more time and we're all lift up. Whoa. I was in a moment there. Hold for a moment with your feet underneath your hips. Take your palms up, prides, close your eyes if you'd like. Feel yourself tall.

Find external rotation with your arms here. Heart is open, your belly is kind of in, but not with a lot of effort. Your head is back where it belongs. Open your eyes if you want. Keep them closed. If you'd rather allow your arms to relax by your side, allow your hands to find their natural state. But keep that openness across your heart. Take just a moment to feel your body grounded, moved, invigorated, and perhaps you've changed your perspective for the positive.

Thank you for playing.