Strong, Flexible, Articulate

Okay, everyone, the names of the game are strong, flexible, and articulate. We're going to see what we're working with and then use this guy spine corrector to help us fill in the blanks. I've got some stickies under my barrel today to make sure it doesn't slide around too much. You might want to do the same for yours. Otherwise, let's get started. So we'll back our feet right up against the spine corrector. Just have about a hip with distance apart stance and we're just gonna begin with some shoulder rolls. Breathing in to bring the shoulder blades up and breathing out to find their way down. Nestling into the spine and again, roll them back. We'll do two more times in this direction.

Always good to just see what we're working with in the shoulders, see what support we might have or need. Let's reverse up and around and to maybe even shifting your weight a little bit to find a nice grounded stance. From here, let's lift the arms up and then just press them back behind us. Expanding the chest again, lifting and pressing, and on the next one, let's lift up. We're going to bend the knees and just reach back on the diagonal. Take your arm back and look back at your hand and then lift up, straighten your legs and reach back in the diagonal.

It's so just beginning to become acquainted with the space behind us. Maybe even checking out that barrel that we'll be working with momentarily. One more each side, right, and lift and reach. Now from here, let's lift. We're going to reach back again. Bend your knees, sweep up, fine. Just the tiniest bit of extension.

Circle your arms and find just the tiniest bit of flection with a bent knee and roll up through the spine. Lifting up, reach back on the other side, sweep back, just lifting your chest, seeing what's available, circling the arms, bending your spine, seeing what's available there, and roll up. Let's do it again. Lift and reach to gather it up. Bend the spine, sweep, bend the spine, the knees and roll up. Reach arm over head and other side reach. Sweep it up and circle the arms and round and roll up to the top.

Let's lift the arms all the way up overhead and we're going to take it in a standing roll down. Just rounding down, aiming for a few inches, maybe about a foot in front of your feet. We're going to bend the knees, reaching. If you can reach and touch, go for it and then lift your hips to the sky. Let's do that again. Just get acquainted. Hello friend. We'll be back in a moment, literally and figuratively. Bend and stretch. One more time and bend. And from here we're going to just shift our way. Walk out to our plank position three and four.

Breathe in and breathe out. Just kind of getting a little relationship between the front and the back body and then bend your knees towards the ground. Crawl your way back. See if you can do four steps. Sit up to the top. We're going to do that a couple times, so we're shifting our weight. Go one, two, three. Find your plank. Deep breath in. Exhale, bend and walk for three, two, and one. Let's lift the arms up for fun and lower down.

Let's walk out again. One, two, three, four. Deep breath. In. Exhale, bend, walk for three, two, and one. Lift and sit. I've got one more time. Let's start with the opposite hand left. That feels awkward. Three and four breathing in. Exhale, bend, walking back. Two, three, and four and sit all the way up and lower the arms down. Let's lift up to a high V. breathe in, reach down through your sits bones.

Press down, feel the side of the wood as you lift yourself up from inside of your body. Breathe in and press down. And one more time. Breathe in and press down. Bring your legs together. We're going to lift the heels up. Extend your right leg as far as you can across the room. Lower down, and lower your heels. So our goal here, let's go to the left. Extend it to keep that nice vertical spine. This is the strong part. Feeling reaching down through the sitz bones, up through the crown of the head.

And my shoulder blades are supporting my back. As in just exploring the strength of my hip flexors. One more time, reaching and extending, bending and lowering. So from here we're going to lift up. We're going to extend. Take the opposite arm, your left arm, reach it forward. Can you grab either for your foot, your ankle, whatever you can hold.

Take a little saw and just reach, pulsing it through. Three, four, five, six, seven and eight. We're going to come back to center. Squeeze as inner thighs. Reach up, lower all the way down. Lower your heels. Lots of things going on here. Let's lift up. We're going to extend and reach. Flex. Find the bottom of your foot. There it is. Reach it out.

Pulsing eight and seven. Six, five, four, three, two and one and reach up. Find it and lower all the way down. Heels. Hop them forward. Press into either the wood or you can take your hands onto the upholstery of your spine corrector going to unweight your hips. You're going to extend your hips and spine and arms all the way up to the sky and then contract to sit down to the barrel and roll your spine. Take that high V, lift again and press down.

Let's do it one more time. Reach, curl under. Opening up the front of the body and contract. Feel everything coming back a little quivers. Okay. And then roll up, lift and lower. This time. Walk your feet a little farther forward. We're going to lift our hips up, extend them to the sky, and this time break at the hips. Feel the lower part of your body really wrapping itself around the barrel, up the bottom and extend your legs all the way out.

So arms are reaching forward and we're going to attempt to just roll back, but you've got to stay in control of your spine because as you take this nice easy bend over the barrel, you might want to press or shift it. So you're doing a little rollback now at this moment, draw the belly back, lift up through the crown of the head and think of lifting your spine off of the barrel so you get up to the top rather than pushing the barrel to move forward. Let's do that again. So reach forward, pulling back, finding the barrel, working with it, creating the shape of it as we go up and over if you will. So good. Rounding forward and then at this moment something inside some impetus, some force beyond us reaches and helps us lift up.

And by slowing it down we can really feel how the pressing down through the base of support the legs and the hips can help us and lifting up internally can help us to, let's do one more reaching back, curling forward. And as we come through we begin to press down to lift up, down to lift up, down to lift up and we're going to sweep that front arm forward and just take ourselves in front of the barrel. So from here, if you can bring your shoulder blade and your elbow right up against the barrel, slide your legs forward a bit. We'll take the top hand behind the head, lift the top leg, we're going to kick kick and we're going to just keep that upper back honest about how much shift is actually going on in the body. Kick, kick and press. Let's do four more and three. Every now and again you hear a little, you feel a little bop back there. Last one, kick, kick and press and stay. Let's touch it down, lift it up and make sure that we're not shrinking as we go, but lifting from the underneath side for good. One more time and lift. Kick it forward.

Lower down and up. Lower down and up. Lower down. One more to lower to lift. Let's bring the legs back together and can you stretch out through your top arm. Bring your legs back, side by side and use that internal power to lift yourself up.

Reach for the barrel. Where is it? There it is. And then circle the arms all the way back, curling around. Find that lift from inside and then we're sweeping the arm over to the other side. Bring that hand behind the head. Legs come slightly forward if you need them to hip height, kick, kick and press kick, kick and press. There it is, and press kick, kick. We've got four more on this side, reaching through the heel, reaching through the hip, three and two and one leaving it back there. Touching down to lift two, reminding ourselves of that lift from underneath and one lift up.

Kicking forward to lower and up. Three lift to lift. One, and lift will point. Bring it back on top. Extend the arm nice and long. We'll reach back to center, roll back and the little far away.

But I've still got that connection and circle around and lift to the top. From here, we're going to come onto our knees. Take our hands to the front of the arch beyond the top and just round the spine for a moment. Draw your shoulders down, come onto your forearms. You can turn your palms up, look up to the sky. Find that extension. Curl your tailbone under reach and try to feel that pull through the center of your spine as you go through. One more time.

Rotate your palms up, find your shoulders on your back. Reach your heart through. Look up, eyes up and chest up. Curl and feel the opposition all the way there. And then from here, let's tuck the toes. Let's come back into a standing position. Rural, all the way up to stand. We're going to come on top of the arch.

So match the arch of your foot to the very apex of the top of the arch and enjoy it. So you can kind of massage your feet out a moment if it feels a little too unstable to have your legs close together, move them apart. By all means, we're just going to bend your knees and reach forward and again round. So find that groundedness in your legs. Press down through your feet and let's change the focus. So we're reaching on the back diagonal just like we did in standing before. And then again round forward. Feel your arms reaching forward, your belly pulling back.

Hang on with your arches and then reach we in the other direction. Let's do it a couple more times rounding. So transitions and focus are really important for balance and be sure that you are making choices about where you're looking as opposed to just being kind of led by whatever seems interesting in that moment. Stay with your directions. Good. One more time, each side reaching and then rounding. And then last time reaching and then rounding forward.

Now we're going to come all the way down. Can you take a nice low band even if your heels have to lift and just let your heels reach towards the top of the arch and make a ball shape. See if you can breathe into your back for a moment. Hang onto the front of the wood, feel good about that opening across your ribs, reach through your heels and slowly start to make your way back all the way to vertical and then either looking or not or sensing. I think I'm going to look where I'll step down onto the step.

Now I try to gather and connect my metal tarsals right onto the wood edge of the front of the lip and there's definitely a sweet spot for this. What we're going to do just to start is to lift one heel and let the other one reach down into that beautiful stretch and then we'll lower the opposite side and we'll reach there and you can start to almost consider what needs to happen. In order for me to maybe lift both heels, I'm just going to throw that out there for a moment. So lifting, this is your stretch portion. This is where we get the range of motion all the way off and then all the way down. So from here, we're not lifting our heels. To begin this, we're going to reach through the crown of the head. So feel those shoulder blades reaching down.

Feel your energy expanding to the size, transfer the weight down into the balls of the feet. Feel your spine lifting as one unit and can you rise up? And then can you get wider as you lower down. And we're not going to fear the shifts and the little nuances. We're going to embrace them because they are what?

Help us navigate our balance. Also, a little focal point on the wall. Never hurt anybody. So lifting and lowering. And maybe it happens like that in the next one, finding that sweet spot rising up and lowering down. We're going to do one more. We'll get it wa uh, and lower all the way down. So lower your arms, take a step forward, and then we're going to take our back foot onto the top of the arch and we're just going to bend and reach. And if you could touch the front of the lip with your knee, that's what you'd be after here coming back up and bend and reach and two more reach. One more time. We're going to bend. We're taking the arms open and you're reaching out on those diagonals.

Just extend your leg and see if you can lift it up and touch it down and it's always a challenge to work from your hip and not your knee. Speaking to myself as much as anybody else. One more time, lift and lower. Then let's do a lift to hover. We're going to see if we can stand back up, bringing that knee up lower all the way down other side, bringing it up to take it back. There's the arch bending and stretching. We'll do four times.

Just let the arms do what they need to do at this moment and feeling that nice long opposition. I think of a weight pulling my pubic bone down than my head reaching up away. Let's do one more little hinge forward at the hips. Reach the arms out to the side, straighten your back leg, lift it up, touch it down again, and touch two. You've got one more to lift in lower and then on the last lunch, shaky supporting, like pull it all together. Come up and bring it back together.

So let's bend our knees and you're going to go ahead and take a seat all the way up the lip edge of the spine corrector. The image that works best for me throughout this entire series is to picture two little mouths, kind of latching on the mouths or on my sits bones. My sits bones are grabbing onto the lip and hopefully nobody slides or gets hurt. So from here we're going to take our hands on the front of the wood. We're going to take that deep contraction just like we were working to find the arc from the opposite side. This time we're working to find the arc and it's a lot farther away.

So we're just going to see if we can go down, if we can kiss it. And then if we can use that same lifting from inside, pressing down to lift up to come back up. Don't worry if it's not happening again. Lots of practice hours and hours are helpful to really feel where that control is needed to get you back up, but just give it a shot and you can always use your hands to help you back up along the way. Breath is also really helpful. Kissing and then lifting back up. Sticking the tongue out can help you too.

One more time reaching back. And this time we're going to stay. So you would get to stay, but you don't get to rest. I want you to think event any moment you could sit right back up to vertical. And from here we're going to take our hands reaching forward, beginning with your front arm. I'll go towards you. We're just gonna wrap our spine back over.

You're creating a diagonal line with your two arms here and then you're gathering up the space and lifting above your comfort zone. So not to rest, but to feel that internal lift. And then we'll go to the other side. Reaching and stretching back and then circling to come all the way in. Let's do that again and one of the things I like to find is a connection between the flat part of my shoulder blade and the top and back of the arc and that's a really unique kind of bony landmark that I can use to recognize what else is available to me back there. Let's do it again to the front.

This time we're going to extend the opposite leg, so find the diagonal not only between the hands and feet, but also are the hands themselves, but also between the opposite foot and then pull everything back together from the center other side, reaching out and pull it back to the center. See if you can resist with your limbs. Feel a little more of that tug from right in the center of your belly, pulling down to connect everything back into this contraction last time and reaching forward from here. Now we're going to add on a little bit more, so we're reaching back, stretching this time. Lift that long leg up and see if you can hang on to your foot, your ankle, your thigh, and really reach across. Then you're going to stretch it back and pull it all the way.

And let's do it again. Reaching all the way out on the diagonal lift. Find that stretch and reach. Press it out and pull it all together. Let's give that one more shot on each side. Stretch it up, find the diagonal, flex it and reach it.

Almost reaching for something with the opposite hand to stretching it back, pulling everything to center last time, reaching it out and lifting it up and stretching, pulling into you, reaching long and all the way to center from here. Take your arms about shoulder with distance apart. I'm going to nudge myself forward a little bit. You can too. If you need to for a little more support on your back. We're just going to take the back up and back as if your head is resting on a shelf coming out of the spine corrector and then we're going to come forward.

So that's, it's kind of an ambiguous space, but see if you can feel both sides of your back as well as the tips of your shoulder blades. And then just a little more to find that connection and remember that you're working from your spine more so than from your neck right now. We're going to do that again, reaching back [inaudible]. Feel your shoulders on your back. Lift up and reach forward. Now this time as you reached back, let's extend the legs long.

So getting that long yawning feeling from here. Open your arms out to the side. Can you touch the ground with your fingertips? Reach them back up to the sky, and then everything comes back to center to pull in. It's slow to give us time to think and manage. So here we go. Reaching [inaudible], open to touch, bring it back up to the sky, and then curl all the way in. Let's do it just one more time, reaching back. Let's open and stretch and then bring it all the way up and curl back in.

And I promise you we will indeed go all the way back in. Just a sec. So reach your legs over. Let's see. Can you lift it? Can you get it all the way back up to the top? Excellent. Take your hands back around. Bend your knees, extend out. Just give yourself a little back bend, a little shoulder stretch.

We're going to come in and sit to the crevice and then turn over to the side. So you have choices here in terms of what your spine is willing to accomplish. In this next move, I'm going to show you a variation that's challenging, especially in the lower half of the body. You can attempt to do it with one leg out. And the variation that I'm going to show you today is with two legs.

And so it's just just a new way of working with love, lesser base of support. So from here we're going to reach up and over, find your side mermaid stretch, reach on the diagonal, and I want you to initiate by shifting your hip to kiss the barrel. So this is like passion, kiss. You really want to get in there, you really want to feel your connection. Then we're going to reach all the way over the barrel. And if you drop, that's okay. You just manage your way down. Now from here, that same lift reached down through your sitz bone, up through your body and all the way past your outside hip. Let's do it slow again, pressing your hip in, pressing the side of the spine as much as possible. The ribcage, reaching over, really matching the shape of the barrel and then lifting up, growing through the spine and reaching all the way past your hip. Let's do it with a little more flow. So we're going over [inaudible] and lifted to come in good and over and reach and sometimes you're on a wing and a prayer and again, one more time over to and lift and all the way in and come up and it does feel good, but it is really challenging. So let's match it on the other side.

Here we go. Reaching up and over. Find that long stretch. Let your spine dance its way over and then let your groundedness of your lower body help you on the way up. Let's go a little slower. On the next one, press the hip and feel the articulation over and then press down and lift to come all the way up and maybe if you feel a little more ripple is possible, that will feel good to you. Let's go two more times over. Oftentimes I think of the my body massaging the spine corrector as opposed to the spine corrector massaging my body so I can feel a little more active in the pressure. Last one coming up and over and Oh, I to the top and beautiful. Let's come around to the front. Now we're in the crevice nestled in.

Let's take our legs in a diamond and we're just going to explore with the hands behind the head a bit of extension here. So reach up long, feel your sacrum, reach back to connect to the front of the arch, reaching over and then just enjoy as you come back again to that space where your head is on the shelf. If it feels reasonable, you can always start to extend backwards almost there and then from here, drop the weight in through your center of your body, reaching your head up. If you can think of lifting your head up higher to come all the way back to vertical. So we're always working that reach up. Let's go again. Pelvis reaches back to the arc, wrapping the body over, stretching all the way back. Is it going to happen maybe, and then curl forward, pressing down through the rib cage, reaching up through the elbows. Really all the way to the top. Last one. All the way down.

Reaching back, curling forward. [inaudible] lifting to the top. Beautiful. Let's bring the legs back together. We're going to work into a semicircle variation and then bring our hips on top. So the semi-circle variation is gonna.

Just be insistent that we know where we are when we're on top of the barrel and that we not shift around too, too much. So our legs are together. We're going to begin with them right underneath our knees, heels underneath, knees. We're going to reach the arms forward. So from here we're reaching back to the barrel just as we did before, and then we're going to reach to the chest on top. This might be a good point to take your hands behind your head if you're next. Getting tired from here, just like we've been doing, you're going to extend the hips up to find those hamstrings and then let your back bend over the barrel.

Now you're going to break it your hips and let your pelvis bend over the front of the arch. So we're trying as best we can to create full extension. And then from here, arms reach up, head curls in, we lift up to the top and we round over and let's just pulse it out to get our bearings. Three, four, five, six, seven. Let's do it one more time. So we're reaching back, finding that tabletop or shelf position with the head. Hands behind the head. If you need them to, you can reach the hips up and out. Try not to shift back. Bend as far over as you can. Where are you barrel and then reach and flex your hips.

Wrap your pelvis, Nessel it right in there. Reach the arms up to the sky, curling forward, lifting up just like we did from the beginning and rounding all the way forward. One last time. Rolling back. If you need your hands behind your head, take them there. I'm going to keep my arms right up here. You're going to curl your hips up. We're gonna reach the chest. We're going to fold in the hips to bring it down.

Arms return head comes through the frame. We lift all the way up and round forward and roll up. Nice work. We're going to move our pelvis on top of the arch. From here, I want to make sure that you keep your head forward and that you're aiming to land your shoulders on the mat or the floor if you're uncertain of how this happens. Watch first before doing okay, so I'm going to keep my re my spine rounded forward and just pick my hips up over the arch. I keep my chin into my chest and then slowly lower myself down. If you're working on a Clara barrel, it's really nice to hang onto the wood as opposed to the handles right here. And then at the, with the pelvis on top of the arch, I really want to Nessel the weight of my hips down into the top.

And then from here we're going to extend our legs up. And so we're going to just flex in the right hip without moving the left leg and without curling the tailbone off. So see if you can keep your sitz bones reaching across the room as your right leg moves towards you and then bring it back together in one. Let's do the other side flex. You should be able to hold a little conversation here so there's not not shutting down my throat or closing off my throat.

And let's do again reaching and then we're going to extend the hips. So keep the left leg straight, but reach the right leg as long as it will go and then zip them back together. Same thing on the other side. Reach [inaudible] and reach [inaudible] and one more. 90 degrees is really hard to figure out at this angle, but do the best you can. So from here, right leg comes back to you, left leg goes away and we're trying to make basically a triangle and upside down triangle. And once you have this triangle, you feel where your pelvis is so you're not tipping the triangle and spilling anything out of it. But instead it's balanced and then you come back up. And then let's do the other side. So we're building up to a couple of different pieces that we're going to do in a moment.

But right now just establishing the shapes is an important part of the process. Let's go one more good. And now we're going to take it into a circle. So right leg comes back to you. Left leg goes away, keep your pelvis still on the arc and let your hips rotate your thigh bones. Rotate in the socket, opening it up as much as you can. Bring it back to center, reach it in opposition. Let those bones just swirl around as you find the reach in both directions, bring it back to center, reach, find it.

And bring it back to center in one more reach and swirl it around and bring it back to center. Okay. Bend your knees in. Let your knees come into your eyes. Sockets. If that feels good for a moment. And now we're going to go into our finisher with the pelvis on top. So legs are up. We're going to begin in a rollover, so let your legs peel backwards. See if you can keep your upper back in contact with the arch itself. From here, we're going to circle those legs around. Feel the pelvis, reach back down and transfer your weight into your hips.

As your legs lower, they magically pull you up into extension of your hips and your back, and then your belly pulls in. As you nod your chin in setting your hips back on top. I will try to talk you through that again. So you roll over through the spine, feeling the connection to your upper back, reaching. Circle the legs around and let the weight of your legs and hips pull you into that upper extension. Feel like you were wrapped around, and then pull the belly down, heavy hips as you lift back up one more time. Then we're coming off reaching back and then let that weight transfer.

Press down to lift up, find the big long length, and then deepen the belly to come all the way down. We're going to flex and bend our knees. We're going to just Nessel ourself away from the barrel and let our legs reach on top for a moment. Breathe in and reach up to the sky. Breathe out, find your shoulder blades, breathe in, reach your arms out to the sides and breathe out and come back on top. Just one more. Breathing in, reaching up, letting your shoulder blades reconnect, and then opening your chest nice and wide and coming back up to the top.

Then let's roll over to the side. Nice and easy. Make your way up to seated and then just simply bring yourself up on top and we'll open the legs wide here. So we've talked about strong, flexible, and articulate. Let's just do a little motion to see what's happened. We're going to just side bend over and then reach down, making a circle with your hands side bend over to the side, and then as you come up, let your chest open and see what's available for you there. Now, then go to the other side, side bend over. Rounding forward, hopefully it feels a little more possible to move in these directions. Let's do one more each side, reaching over and rounding to the side. Coming back up. Last one, rounding over to the side and re cover great work and just remember to come back and try again and continually send those invitations.

Spine corrector work can be daunting, but it is so beautiful when it starts to click.