Meditation in Motion

Hey, everybody. Welcome to "Pilates Anytime Live." I know you're looking for Mary, you showed up for Meredith, and so did I. So we'll go to her house in just a second, but I wanted to both welcome you and officially welcome her to our lineup of live classes. And the good news is you can look forward to more live classes with Meredith. And of course, any of them on PilatesAnytime as well.

In addition to that, today we call girl time 'cause it's our way of getting together and being in a workout and friendship, and practicing our teaching. This isn't going to be quite a normal girl time, but in the future we will have some where we are team teaching. Today Mary will do all the teaching. And I'm just so excited to have her here with me and have her show up for all of us again today. So let's go on over to Meredith's house and do a little girl time.

Hey Mary, it's girl time. Girl time! How you doing? I'm good, thank you. I just want to say thank you so much for having me to help support our worldwide Pilates community. I know we're coming from very, very many different parts of the world in this moment, and I'm just so grateful to have been invited and to be able to show up in this space for everyone.

Well, it's really generous of you to let us in your home. And again, you know, you always show up for me. So I guess I'm used to that, but thanks again. What are we doing today? Well, I thought that we would just move our bodies, if that's all right with everyone.

I love it, I love it. I'm gonna be right here doing it with you. Thanks again, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Let's do it. Okay.

So just one more time, guys, everyone who's here with us and Kristi when she asked me how I was doing I feel like maybe I cut that conversation a little bit short and the truth of the matter is, is I'm doing very well. And I'm very grateful to be here with you all in my home. I'm a little self-conscious of the fact that I don't have a perfect filming situation with a blank wall and a plant or two, but, my house is small. So, this is what we get. And I'm happy to welcome you into my home.

And thank you for coming and being with me here. Let's move. Thank you, Kristi. Let's bring ourself onto our mat if you're not there already into an upright position. Taking a hold of the tops of the knees, the fronts of the knees, and let's all just close our eyes.

And let's begin together to take a few breaths. So a big inhale, lifting in the spine. And a big collective worldwide stress reducing exhale. And another inhale. So one thing that's been really beautiful for me is this ability to connect in a much broader way than before.

So that's the silver lining in this situation. And I can feel us all here together. And, open your eyes if they're closed and inhale. And as you exhale round your spine. So feel that the shoulders just stay over the pelvis, but drawback deeply, deeply back into your abdominals, into your spine, creating a long round shape.

And then inhale and lift back up and make that lift light. And then as you exhale, pull up on your knees with your hands and extend through your spine. So we're arching the back, lifting our hearts. And come back to straight. And exhale, round the spine, allowing the gaze to travel slightly downwards.

And come back up. Light, and extend the spine, pointing the elbows wide and down, and drawing the inner thighs in towards one another. And back to straight. Let's do that twice more, go round. And extend.

And arch, knees pulling together, arms pulling out on the knees. There's two things happening simultaneously there, and center, and do one more round. And straighten. And arch. And straighten, take your arms out in front of you.

Now make that same round shape. You're just not using your arms anymore to help. Now we're gonna take that round shape and we're gonna lower it down towards the mat. We're gonna take the arms up. We're gonna open the arms, open through the chest, take the arms forwards, press them towards the body.

Roll up, as you sit up reach your arms up, and then open your arms out wide, lifting your heart. Do that same thoracic extension, that same upper spinal extension. And then as you reach forward, round your spine, and go back. Bringing the low back down using the arm movements to create some expansion through the chest, reaching forwards, rolling up, lifting up. Opening the heart, opening the arms, lifting the spine.

So many of us are spending so much more time, and reach forward, over our computers than we're used to, I know I am. So, it's nice to remember that movement is healing and important. And that thoracic extension, we really wanna continue to find that. So let's do that one more time. Lift up, open the chest.

Open the arms. Bring the arms forwards and roll back. So now here at the bottom we'll take the thumbs together. The knuckles of the thumbs, sending the fingers straight out in front of us, and we'll turn the hands across the right knee, and come back to center. And we'll take the hands over the left knee, and we'll come back to center.

And over the right knee, and come back to center. And over the left knee, and come back to center. And over the right knee, and come back to center. And over the left knee. You're welcome, Kristi.

And come back to center, open your arms out to the side. Close your arms. Open your arms out to the side, close your arms, press a little forward through your chest. Open your arms out to the side, close your arms, we'll do that twice more. Expanding the breath with the arms and then contracting the breath with the arms.

And one more, open, and close, and then put your arms down on the floor, reorganize on your mat so your pelvis comes towards your feet, preparing for some bridging. So before we do that we find weight into our feet. We press down into the Earth, the ground, the floor, lift the pelvis. So roll through the spine, and as the pelvis is lifting up let the arms and the shoulder blades softly rest on the mat underneath you, the ground underneath you. And inhale.

And then start softening, softening through the back of the neck, through the throat, through the chest, through the mid back, through the low back, as we lengthen it down into the ground. And the tail finds its landing, and inhale. And the tail leaves the mat first. And then when we're using the front of the body to move the spine through space. And we're also feeling that we have to use the back of the body quite a lot here.

And you can feel as we roll down, a consistent energy. Our fingers to heels and heels to fingers, like you're reaching for your feet and your feet are reaching for your fingers. Creating that energetic activity through the whole backside of the body, and drop the tail down and inhale. And flatten the spine, step into both feet equally and lift up. And inhale.

And exhale as we come down. I'm paying right now a little bit of attention to my fingers, I have my fingers soft. Lots of places to think about. And we'll go all the way down. We'll do one more, my friends.

So inhale, and exhale, lifting up. We're gonna keep the lift in the pelvis. We're gonna lift the left leg, and we're gonna touch the left toes to the ground. And we're gonna lift the left leg, and touch the left toes down to the ground. And lift.

And notice is your weight even over your arms? This is the last one. We'll go up. We'll roll down through the spine with one leg in the air and one leg on the ground. And drop the tail.

And now roll up through the spine. One leg in the air, one leg on the ground. Can we do it symmetrically? I don't know. Roll down, I don't think I can do it completely symmetrically but I'm trying.

And down, and lifting up. And one more time, roll down. And roll up. And then stretch that leg straight and try to pull it back towards your body, and then lower it down so it comes level with the right leg. Oh, everything is still lifting, bend the knee in, and inhale.

And exhale, let's go down. Down and a little break, little breather all the way through the spine. Dropping the tail, inhale, exhale, lifting the tail and rolling up. So we know what's coming here, step into the left foot, lift the right leg up, and touch. Right leg lift up, and touch.

And up, and touch. And two, and touch. Let it float, one, now hold here. Roll the spine down all the way, keep back consistent reaching through the arms. And roll the spine up.

And roll the spine down. All the way. And roll the spine up. One more. Roll the spine down.

And roll the spine up. Now hold the pelvis up. Stretch that leg up straight, reach it for the sky. Take it down, down, down so it's level with the other thigh. Bend it, put it down, take your arms overhead.

Maybe the pelvis will lift up a little more. And then as we go down through the spine start circling the arms out to the sides, keep them just off the floor so that you feel that sense of opening through the tissue and the chest. And then as the tailbone drops they'll land at about a T shape and we'll rest them on the floor. And then we'll take one leg and then the other up into tabletop. And we'll take the knees over to the left.

Working through the spine, and back to center. And now I'll take both knees over to the other side on the inhale. And exhale, back to center. And to the first side, so drawing in, supporting that rotation of the spine from the front of the body and center. And to the other direction on the inhale.

And center. Let's do a couple more in each direction, over to one side and back to the center. And the other way. And back to the center. And let's just do one more.

Maybe you'll go a little further this time. Maybe you'll reach your arm a little further away on the opposite side of the body, that feels good to me. And center. And last one, reaching the arm, reaching the arm, reaching the arm. And center.

Placing the feet down on the floor. Let's keep them right together today, squeeze them together. The feet, the ankles, the knees, bring your hands behind your head. Keep the elbows lifted just off the floor so you can feel the width, the wildness in your shoulder blades, and then press down into the ground with your legs so you feel that your legs are active, the back sides of your legs specifically. And now lift your chest, curling up, cradling the head in the hands, so keeping the weight of the head heavy.

Now we're gonna lift pelvis. But don't let the chest go down. Now we're gonna lower the pelvis. And as the pelvis goes down I want you to feel that you're lifting even more, even more, even more, even more, even more. So your sternum follows your pelvis like they're connected, because they are, and then go down.

And inhale. And lift up. And roll the hips up. And roll the pelvis down, but keep lifting the chest. Go, go, go, go higher, higher.

And down. And again, inhale. And lift up. And tuck under. And roll down, lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting.

And yes, I'm stalling at the top. And you wanna know why? I'm stalling to give us a little bit of time to find connection. So if you're wondering, "Why is she stalling?" That's your cue. "Why is she stalling?" That's your cue to look for more in your experience.

Take your hands behind your thighs, lift a little higher. Or, just deepen, or, just support the shape. Let go, take your hands back, and as you exhale we'll rotate in one direction. And then center, and rotate. And center, exhale, think of lifting as you're going into rotation, and center.

And lifting as you're going into a rotation, and center, and up and across. And center, and up and across. "When will she let us stop?" You say, I'll tell you when. So go again to the first side and reach that arm, the opposite arm past, and then bring the hand behind the head. And go over to the other side, and reach the arm across, and then come back to center.

And one more like that, go over. And center, and go over, and center. Take your arms forwards, take one leg out straight, take the other leg out straight. Keep pressing your lower spine into the mat. Raise your arms up to the ceiling and then take your body down and reach your arms back.

And then lift your arms, your head, your chest, and roll through the spine. Finding our rounded spine. And then bring the arms out to the side and lift the chest up. And then round again, and roll back, articulating through, stretching your legs out in front of you. Find that chest lift position, then go back.

And lift up. And roll up. Once the shoulders come over the pelvis we open out. Even lifting the eyes might feel nice. And letting the eyes travel down again, and go down.

So, I like to think about a combination of challenge and ease in my movement practice. I'm just sharing that with you. Here I'm trying to find ease. Here I'm trying to find a little more challenge. I'm pushing my arms towards one another, reaching my arms and my legs out in front.

I find that just lift shape. We all do, together, and we go back. Let's do two more, lift up, roll up. Open the arms. Close the arms, and go back.

And back, I got a little distracted thinking about what was next, and I took my arms out too soon. So that's what just happened in my world. So guys, we're gonna open the arms and lift the chest. We're gonna turn the palms and the hands face up. We're gonna flex our feet.

We're gonna rotate towards me. So we see each other or you see me. And I imagine that you're there, 'cause I know you are, and pull, pull center. And pull, pull center, and pull, pull center, and pull, pull center. And rotate and center, and rotate, and center, and rotate, and center, and rotate, and center.

And now towards me, reach your arms up and take your body with you. Now take the arm, this arm, take it down, sorry that was a bad queuing, but I couldn't figure out, put your arm down. Bend your elbow and reach over your arm and then press back back up so you float back up in space, and return. And go the other way, so it's the arm that's at the back. We put it down, reach up and over.

And then we press up and return. And inhale and exhale. Inhale light in the air, and exhale. And inhale, and exhale, you're welcome. And lift, and one more time, inhale, and exhale.

And float, and center, and inhale. And exhale. And float, and return, arms down, bend your knees. If you need to pull up your pants do that now, I do. Life is real, pants fall down, things happen.

Picking the feet up, pressing into the shins. Here's another place where I like to try to pull my thighs apart and squeeze them together at the same time. And we're gonna rock. And we're gonna balance. Oh, you're gonna balance, I'm gonna not make it, but I'll make it on the next one.

And back. And balance. And back. So, imperfection is a part of life. I try to embrace that on the daily.

And back. I'm certainly demonstrating it in this moment. Let's do two more. Back. And balance.

And back. So now what we're gonna do, so we're gonna take our hands to our knees, gonna press our knees into our hands and our hands into our knees, and we're gonna go slow on the down. Go slow, control. And then once you arrive down, your hands on your knees, and you're in your chest lift shape. Them we do double leg stretch.

We reach and come back. And reach, and come back. And feel the hands, press into the knees and feel the arms trying to pull the knees apart. So that's just a cue that I like for finding my upper back. And all around, and squeezing the legs together all the time.

Out, and around. And out, and around, one more. Out, around, hands on the knees, push your knees into your hands. Come back up. Control, control, control, control.

Stretch your left leg straight, hold your right knee. Go down until your feet are on the same plane. Then we're gonna change. And you can do that same thing, you can push down with your arms onto your knee and you can use that connection into your hands to pull yourself up a little more. This is the last one.

Everyone, hands on the right knee, left leg straight. Push your knee into your hand. Keep your round shape, roll back up. You're balancing here, and we change. We go back from there.

And we switched, and switch. So the stretch of that straight leg. We'll do two more on each side. One more on each side. So everyone's back to the left knee.

Press that knee into the hand, and we start rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. If you're like me, that might feel difficult. And if it feels difficult you could rest your foot on your sofa like I was just tempted to do. Or you can let it be difficult, it's okay. You can use momentum.

So here you can, I just switched again. You can hold your knee, you can reach for it. We're gonna go back, back, back, hands behind the head. We're gonna go into rotation there. And rotation.

And rotation. And rotation, feel the legs squeeze past one another. Squeeze past one another, two more. Last one. So we come back into the center with the left leg straight in the right leg bent.

We reach forwards, hold on if you need, roll up if you can, balance. Change legs. And go down. Down, down, hands behind the head, and rotate. And left, and rotate, feel the rotation in the ribs.

We'll do three and three. Two, and two. One and one. We come to center with a left knee in and the right leg straight, we take the arms forwards. We go up.

Oh, yes we do. We bend our knees, put the feet down, open the knees right where they are. So you make like a butterfly shape with your knees, now lift your back. So that's a lotta time inflection. I'm pulling on my shins to feel that I can get a little bit more back extension.

Let's all try to press the knees down towards the floor a little. And then let's come left hand to right shin, right hand to the ground and go into rotation. And do that to the other side, going into rotation, come back to center. Bring the knees in. Lean back, lift your feet.

Let go, roll down. As your head comes down your legs can straighten. Now lift and go over. Flex the feet, separate the feet. Take the legs down if you can or desire to.

And go down. So again, the head, the arms, active but soft. Is that possible? Active and soft at the same time? I believe so.

Come down. We point the feet, legs come down together, and up, and go over. And flex the feet. And open the legs, and take the legs down, and go down. Spine stretching in both directions which means we have an activity through the head, through the tail point, your feet, come down, come together, lift up.

And over. And flex, and open. And perhaps we could feel as our feet are going down that we're lifting the spine up. Not that it's flattening, but just that it has a lotta support there. And go down.

Down, down, down, down. And point the feet and go down together. And back, one more, over. Open. And down, now soften the feet and start bringing the body down.

So we're gonna see if this person can do this today, but, if she can't we'll all try together. So we're gonna go down with the pelvis. We're gonna lift the head, we're gonna lift the body. We're gonna take the legs, I made it, did you? I hope so.

Let's bend the knees for a second so I can recover. That was purely selfish, but I hope you enjoyed that little respite. Now we're gonna rock back and lift up. Ooh, and up. And rock back.

And lift up. There's nothing like being on a video to highlight your imperfections, and go back. But good thing is, is I embrace them. Let's do three more, go back. And we all try and make each one a little better.

And last two, go back. And lift, and one more back. And lift, and let's take the legs down, and stretch the legs out. And if you're happier with your knees bent, I believe the small things in life that make ourselves happy are important, so, you can choose. Inhale tall, exhale, bring the down.

Bring the body forwards, forwards, forwards, as your body's going forwards feel that you're pulling back through the center of your body creating a sense of support, and then come back up. Lifting the spine tall, letting the head come up. And inhale, and exhale, bringing the body down. Drawing in and up into the center of the body, into the abdominals, into the spine. I'm just using this as a practice of noticing, noticing the weight over the pelvis.

Is it heavy on one side or the other? Noticing that with each repetition there is potential for more, less. Inhale. And lift. That idea, let's do two more like that, of the potential for more or less I feel is particularly relevant.

Now, in life. Guys, we're gonna go down. We're gonna reach out into a nice flat back. We're gonna go back down and we're gonna lift up. And here we have the opportunity to explore our potential physically, and go down.

And out, and mentally as well, if you wish. And go down, and lift. And inhale, and exhale. And sometimes it's nice to just make the shapes and not think too hard about anything. And reach out, so, many choices.

And lift, and go down. And out. Now everybody just lower your hands, and they'll land wherever they do. We're gonna reach out through the back, get a little flatter, get a little lower. Now take the arms out to the sides, palms up.

Now we're gonna take the arms back. Like you're flying away, back, and back, and back, and now lift the arms overhead and lean into them. And open. And lift the arms overhead and lean into that shape. And open, lean into the shape, and open, and lean into the shape, and open, and lift up.

Oh, sitting up never felt so easy, right? Turn, saw. Front arm goes forward, back arm goes down and back. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift the body up, open the arms and come to the center and rotate. And go into the saw.

And lift the body. Open the arms, return to center and inhale, rotate. And reach, back arm is reaching away as the front arm reaches forward. We come up, open and center, and lift and rotate. And reach, and come up, open and center, last one.

And Kristi. You know that when I say the last one, it means there's actually two because we have two sides. So I think of that, sometimes one is one. Sometimes one is two. Sometimes two is four.

Lift your arms over your head, hold onto your hands. Use their arms, even lift your shoulders into your ears, but just use your arms to pull your back up, get lighter. Bend your knees, lift your ribs off your pelvis. Stretch to one side, come back to center, stretch to the other side, come back to center, let go. Bring your legs together on the mat.

Arms behind you. Back support. So press them out away, lift the chest, hold the abdominals back towards the spine, stand in your heels and lift your pelvis. Now keep lifting up with the backs of your legs even as the pelvis is coming down. And inhale, and exhale.

So the shoulder shape, it really changes, or the scapula orientation, I guess, is what I'm speaking about. And so we're pushing away from the floor with the mid back muscles and we're using the legs to help us as we decelerate the down and we'll do three more. Up. And down. And two more, like a hinge, up.

Higher, feet on the floor, reaching the feet into the floor, and down, and one more, lift. And down, now lift up, take your arms around to your feet, reaching for your feet. Here's a nice time to be soft. As we use our arms to lean forward and find a stretch. Stretching the back of the body.

Just had to work kinda hard. So give it a little love. And then we'll lift up. And we're gonna turn onto our side now. I'm just gonna move my microphone a little bit up more out of the way.

And here we go. So we can come all the way down, friends, all the way down. Head down on the arm. Lining the body up in a straight line. Sometimes it's worthwhile to check, and then reach out with the legs.

And down, simplify. The simple things, movement wise anyway. Last two are my favorite. Simple things is where we can really dive in mentally, physically. We're gonna do four more.

And I want us to think all the time about not just feeling the upper waist, but feeling the whole trunk working, and three. And two, soft on the arm, both arms. And one. And then we're gonna go down with the leg. We're gonna take the top leg back and we're gonna stretch it away from our same side arm, so the leg is reaching and there's no rules here.

So just make it feel good, you can put it down on the floor. You can roll your pelvis forward or back, or whatever. We're gonna bend that knee. Hold the foot, pull the knee back. And then we're gonna bend the bottom knee.

We're gonna come up onto the forearm. So feel free guys, if you want, to have your bottom leg straight, I'm gonna go the easier route today and bend my knee, my second mat class today. So, here we go, forward, forward. Back, back. Forward, forward, reach out as you go back, and pull.

And reach away, and pull. And as you're leg goes back, maybe you feel your head press into your hand too and use that as a way to get a little bit of upper back extension, oh yeah, it's a good feeling, in my opinion. We'll do two more, reaching up a little as you go back. One more. So let's take this hand, the one that's behind the head, bring it around to the mat.

So we're creating a little bit of spinal rotation here and extension, the leg, guys, is still lifted in the air. Now we're gonna press up back, up and back, up and back. And as we're doing that we feel that deep twist through the spine, and we'll do four, and three, and two, and one. And now we'll bend the knee, and then we're gonna sit up. And we're gonna take that knee across the body, hug it in towards your body.

So like many of you I've had a fair amount of experience on Zoom now, this is my first experience not being able to see who's here with me. I know that you are here. I just can't see any of you. But I know for a fact there's some people here who I know and love, and I am grateful for you. I'm grateful for you all, actually.

So from there, let's take that leg and bring it out to the side. So here in the mermaid position, we're gonna try and drop into the pelvis as equally as we can. So operative word being as we can. Arms lift up, spine lifts up, we're gonna take the body out like a hinge. So the back stays long and the hand is gonna softly come to the mat.

We're gonna exhale and wring out the spine as we round the body, round the spine, and take the hand down to the mat the other, that hand down. Now, we're gonna push them out away like you're trying to stretch your mat longer and round your spine. Come back, lift your spine. Come back, open back out to the side, lift up, other arm raises up and we can take it over, over, over, over, over and then back, up, out to the side. Arm down, other arm comes around, press the mat away, round the spine.

Pull the mat towards you, or think upper arms and shoulder blades back as we lift up. Unwind, sit up, reach over, you can pull, take this arm and push, whatever. As long as it feels good, it's all movement. Let's go one more time, out, and down, and around, and round, extend, and back and open, and up. Lift up first, and then go.

Take the arm a little closer to the head, if you can't bring your shoulder blade forward and then you'll be able to, usually. And then come up and take the legs around to the other side of the mat and lay back down. So, the head is down. I like to rest my arm down on the ground, but that's not critical. You could do whatever you want with that hand.

Here we go, we're raising the legs up, and down. And out and up, and out and down. And out and up, it's a lot of opportunity here to get some nice deep work. And out and up, and out and down. We'll do four more here.

Notice any tension you might be holding in places that don't need tension in this moment and maybe they can go away, that can go away, last two. And one more. And we're gonna take our legs down. We're gonna take the leg back and take the arm forward. Reaching out, finding a stretch.

I can't tell you where the best place is for your stretch. So you'll just have to play around until you find it. I like to roll my pelvis forward and reach my leg away. And then come back to center, and let's come up onto the elbow, the forearm, the forearm and the elbow, in fact. You can keep your bottom knee bent, that's what I did or you can keep it straight.

Let's find a lot nice straight line in the spine. Stretching the top leg out straight, head is pressing into the hands, foot is flexing. And now we go pull, pull, and back, back. And pull, pull, and back, back. So as the leg moves through space we stay as centered and still through the torso as we can.

About halfway there, guys, lifting the leg up. Pressing the head back, lifting the undercarriage waist. Last two, one more, reaching back, take the arm, come around. Oh, rotating, this is where I discover how sore I am, and lifting that leg up. And I can tell you on a scale of one to 10, it's about seven.

So up and back, up and back, the kinda sore where you're still moving around, and mobile, and perfectly healthy. But you know that you've been moving your body. Up and back. Let's do four, keep lifting up through the chest, keep sending us forward and up through the sternum, the ribs. Two, and one, and then we'll bend that knee and bring it in.

And then we'll bring that leg across just like we did on the other side. So we can have a stretch. I have to do a little more shifting on this side, bear with me and the right position where my body will let me find that stretch. Okay, there we go. So we're sitting on the sitting bones, using the arms to lift.

Using the mind to lift. We can lift our spines and use our muscles and we can also use our movement to create a little bit of uplift in our life, in our situation, if we choose. So, here's where we get to notice that no two sides are the same. So we get up into our mermaid shape and we reach out in space, the arm comes down. We take the arm around.

We're gonna round the spine. We're gonna extend the spine. We're gonna return just to the middle, open, lift up with arm and side bend this way. And back. And reach out, and down, and around.

And round, extend. Find center. Unwind. Lift up, and over. And I think we have one more to do, so let's do that.

Reaching out, going down, coming around. Lifting the body, rounding the spine, unwinding, lifting up. And, reaching over. Maybe letting the arm come closer to the face, or not, the gravitational weight of the arm, though, might help you find a deeper stretch. So let's come up.

Let's come around onto our hands and knees. Hands and knees. So, I feel that we're, let's push them out of way through the center of the body so you're nice and strong through the center of the body. We take one leg back. We take the other leg back, just holding the shape, holding the shape.

Bring the right knee underneath, round the right knee in. And back, left knee comes in, and back, one pushup. Right knee in, reaches back, left knee in, reaches back. Bend and press, and right knee, and back. For those of you who are in your nighttime, I'm sorry about this.

And two, and two, and, but it's still morning for me, so I'm peppy! One, and bend, and push. Bend your knees, lower your body down onto your mat, onto your forearms. Lifting the spine. Lifting the chest. So feel here the weight of the arms pushing down.

So now we are creating some push, and as you create push with your arms also create backward gliding energy with your elbows and your shoulder blades, and upward lifting energy with your sternum, your heart. And now once all of those things are in place and you feel that you're lifting away from the floor with your abdominals we pick up the legs and we kick the right leg. Boom, boom, stretch, left, boom, boom stretch, right. Boom, boom, stretch, boom, boom stretch. And ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

As the legs continue to change keep the body as still as we can, like really focusing our work into the back of the leg. And we'll do four, four, three, three, yes, Kristi eight, two, two, and one, one, stretch the legs out straight, turn your head to the side, lay it all the way down, hands come behind your back. And go one, two, three, and stretch everything long. And the other way, go one, two, three, and reach out. And go one, two, three, and reach out.

And go one, two, three, and reach out. And now take the legs down. Take the arms out to the side. Keep the knees lifted away from the floor, the knee caps, and now lift your arms up. And as your arms lift up, your chest lifts up like you're gonna fly away.

Three, and two, and one, and then rest your arms and rest your body down. And then press with your forearms to come back to sit into your feet, sit into your feet. Allowing the arms to slide on the mat. And then we're gonna reach across to the right. We're gonna lean into the left side of the body.

And we're gonna come back to the center. And we're gonna go the other way. And then we're gonna come back to the center. We're gonna come onto our hands and knees, so feeling the knees just underneath the pelvis and the shoulders just underneath the hands, oh, that's helpful, I an see in the video. And now we tuck under.

Rounding through the spine, push the mat away with your arms. And return to straight. And then lift your tail and let your spine fully extend. So explore the range in your body. And come back through neutral and round.

So I know sometimes we try to make this movement just in between two different segments of the spine, but I thought for today we could let the pelvis arch. We could let the whole spine arch, we could push away from the mat with our arms and really express the full extension of our possibility, spinal possibility and center. Let's do one more round. And maybe we maximize that round shape too, dropping the head all the way between the arms, letting the stretch travel down the neck. And then come back and extend.

And then come back and roll up. And come on to your knees. I'm just gonna go this way. You continue to do whatever makes you happy. So we reach out to the side, we're gonna take the left arm down, take the right arm up.

Now let that arm slide down our side so we get a nice stretch through the upper side of the body, and back. Letting the arms come back and then going over, over, over, and back. And over. And this time let the body turn, you can take that arm down as far as you want. It's kinda nice to drop it fairly low for me.

And back. And over, and turn. And back, and up, and let's take the arms overhead and let the sternum lift. And then open the arms again out to the side. And then reach forward and sit back, So maximum round, maximum round, maximum round.

And then the lift up, and open out, lifting the chest. And then take the arms forward and sit back. So you're reaching with your knees forward. You're reaching with your arms forward. You're pulling back through your waist.

And lift up, and open, and reach forwards, forwards. Could imagine here that we're reaching for each other 'cause don't we all want that now? And open. And we'll just do one more. And all the way up, taking the arms to the chest, coming to sitting or continue to kneel.

I'm gonna close my eyes, you can do what you wish. I want us to have three breaths all together. (exhaling) For gratitude. (exhaling) And ease. And patience.

Thank you for coming to my class.