Cats, Spiders, and Spirits

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for being here. Of course, I'm in the morning, so good morning to all my morning movers. And good day or evening to everyone else who might be here. Thank you again for joining me every week.

It just is so meaningful to me as I open class with every time. And of course, it's Halloween on Saturday. So I'm just in my black today. I thought I would kind of celebrate with just black clothes, and cats, and spiders, and spirits being the theme I chose. And what that means, in my mind, is kind of movement that has cat-like prowess.

So, kind of slinky and then some sharp movement how they do. Spiders that are really creepy, crawly that we're gonna get kind of oozy (laughing) and a lot of mobility that way, think spider legs. And spirit, I mean, just bring your spirit into everything you do today, and always, of course. So let's just start standing together. And let's go ahead and just stand with a wide stance.

Feet apart, fairly wide guys, and just kind of bend and straighten your legs. Nothing too particular. Just getting into kind of the larger muscles of your body, which are your quadriceps, your glutes, of course. It's getting your weight down and bring your weight up. Let's do it with our arms out and lower.

Nothing too specific, but, even here, we can start to move a little bit, kind of, I'm gonna do some spidery movements through my arms. I feel the spider. Actually its kind of spirit, I feel ghosty, almost (laughing). Get ready, could be one of those silly classes here. Stay down.

Now this is definitely spider fingers. Your fingers are like little spider legs here. And just keep shifting your weight from side to side, you're propped up on your fingertips. You can begin to make these movements side to side larger, if you'd like, add a little rotation through your shoulders and your ribs if you'd like. This could be a spider.

This could be a cat. Don't worry, I won't do an all class (laughing). I'm just kind of giving you some freedom, of course, to express and use your spirit the way you'd like through your movement. Okay, couple more. Side to side.

(exhaling deeply) Good. And then we'll go all the way over to, I'm on my left leg, whichever leg you're on. I'm gonna do a nice pivot and just do a beautiful kind of low lunge hip extension stretch, just moving back and forth. Trying to stay up on those little spider fingers. Just feel your body starting to warm up or if you've already been active all day, it's a different kind of activity, right?

And then we'll just pivot and go to the other side. It's kind of, like I said, just getting into those bigger muscles, especially those of us who were in our morning body. It's nice to get into those larger muscles sometimes, wake them up. Okay, good. And then come back to the center and then we'll go into hands on knees.

Let me just do a quick adjustment of this, good. Hands on knees. And now I'm a little more parallel alignment. And let's do a round spine flection and then extension spine. And flection round spine and extension.

You can also think head to tail on the flection. Head and tail away from each other, extension. Just really oozy, lot of mobility, moving your spirit through you. And flection. (inhaling deeply) Extension.

Two more. Flection. Extension, okay. And flection. Roll all the way up to standing.

Take your arms out. Let's lift those arms up, clasp your fingers tips together, and just extend the length of the sides of your body. And take one side a little higher than the other side. And then the other side a little higher than the first side. And just do that a few times, side to side.

Yep, one more each side. Should feel pretty good, I hope. And then open your arms. Let's do a standing roll down. Take a nice deep breath.

(inhaling deeply) And exhaling. Here we go. Head, shoulders, upper back, going all the way down. Touching the floor with your fingertips, those little spider fingers. And let's walk out like a spider, walking onto its little feet (laughing).

Take your hands down. You can lower yourself into a plank, front support position. Stand nice and strong, everybody. Breathe in. (deeply inhaling) Pull the abdominal muscles inward.

Let's walk back. You can get on fingertips, if you'd like, or stay on flat hands. Round your spine, bend your knees, roll all the way up. Once you're at the top, I want you to continue reaching your chest forward and up, trying not to lock the knees, but really lifting through your chest. See something on the ceiling.

Let your arms kind of lean back a little bit. Breathe in. (deeply inhaling) Let's go for that again. Exhale, rounding down. Good old standing roll down.

Walking out on those fingertips and then to flat hands. Just hold yourself strong. Shoulders are open, naval is up, glutes are contracted. You're on the balls of the feet. And then walking back.

Bend your knees, round your spine, roll up. We'll do that same upper back extension. The upper back Swan and just lean the arms back. Open it up. One more and we'll stay down on the mat this time.

Rounding down and you can walk out. I need to have, everyone go ahead, keep going. Walk out into plank. I'm just going to reposition this on my hip. Good old microphone pack (laughing).

Come down on your knees, please. Let's get in a nice neutral spine quadruped. Deep breath, more head to tail. We'll do three rounds. Head to tail cat.

(exhaling deeply) Inhale, extension, as if you're pulling your arms back towards your legs, reach that chest forward. And cat, head to tail. You may choose to press your shins down or your feet down. Inhale, extension. I like to think of pulling my arms back toward my hips, reaching the chest forward and up, and getting a good stretch in your tummy.

One more time. Cat. We're gonna stay in cat. And start to swish your cat tail. Just swish your cat tail.

And as you're swishing your cat tail, I'm going to ask us to move from flection to neutral. Okay? Whatever you need to do with swishing your cat tail. I'm really just swishing hip to hip, getting a little bit of that mobility in my lower back. And then let it start to come into the ribs and the head.

I know it's silly looking, that's okay. Just moving energy, moving things through your body. And then find your way back into a cat. Lean your cat back so that you get your hips closer to your heels. And then get down onto your elbows, everybody.

Elbows and forearms, deep breath here. Exhale. Now take one hand and then open up toward the front of the room. I'm going right elbow up to the ceiling, trying to get thoracic rotation. And then this elbow is going to come down to meet the elbow of the other arm.

Two more times. Inhale, opening, getting thoracic rotation, make any kitty sounds you want to, and exhale, elbow to elbow. (exhaling deeply) Rotate. (inhaling deeply) Inhale. Really stretch, like you're yawning almost.

It'd be actually kind of a compliment if you did, get that nice kind of diaphragm lengthening. And elbow to elbow. Okay. Other side. So hand behind head.

You're rotating your thoracic spine, your chest. You can aim your elbow, but think about aiming your chest bone for that wall to the side of you. And then around, elbow to elbow. Inhale, open. The other arm might help by pressing down on the mat.

And exhale, return. Really focus on the mobility of your whole body, right? Even your eyes, your neck, your head, your ribs. And return. And then I'm going to actually have us come all the way down on our tummy right away.

We'll get back around for abs, don't worry. I don't think you're worried (laughing). But stretch your arms out long in front of you, legs can be slightly apart. And then also, again, here just start to move your hips from side to side, just move, get some wiggle through the spine. So I'm going side to side.

I'm going to start to ask for a little bit of rotation. So as I go right hip out, I'm looking over my right shoulder and left hip out, looking over left shoulder and just really work on some mobility, that's it. Good, four, three, two, one, and then tuck your toes. Put your hands by your shoulders here and push yourself up into quadruped. And then we're gonna turn and do some abdominal work.

Turning around, hands underneath the knees. Nice deep breath, sitting tall. Exhaling, rounding that pelvis and spine back. Let's go all the way until the arms are straight. Inhale, exhale, and curve forward.

Inhaling up. Keep going. And I wanna have us focus, as we're moving, that we don't really stop. You know what I'm saying? We're not gonna just pause and do too many stopping, holding today.

I want you to just really to keep the flow, keep the fluidity going through you. You might say that's your spirit. Mm-hmm. So I'm allowing myself to really flex and extend. And even though it might look a little different than some things.

Like here, if I come forward, instead of starting at the base of my spine to roll up, I'm actually reaching out through my head and my upper back to the lower back. And then moving through lower back to head. And coming forward, head leads the way. And then up, up, up. One more like that.

And exhale. (exhaling deeply) And round. And all the way up. Okay, now let's bring our feet together. Move your hips slightly forward.

I want everybody to come down on the elbows, okay? The elbows. And then take your knees in towards your chest, everybody. And try to bring your chest closer to your legs, as well. And you can do this with rounding your lumbar underneath there.

I'm doing the best I can. Yup, and then extend your spine. Tip your tip toes down onto the floor and look up to the ceiling. A beautiful arch in your upper back. Let's inhale and exhale, and think round, head to tail again.

Knees into the chest, flection of your lumbar. Now this is bothering your shoulders, you can just bypass this. We're only going to do two more repetitions. But also, really dig deep into your scapula, your shoulder girdle stabilizers. Press the elbows down, open through the chest, your shoulder blades pretty close together on your back.

And then as we go into flection, notice those shoulder blades go wider across the ribs cylinder, right? And you're rounding your back spine. Really getting into your little small shape and then extend into your extension. Very cat-like movement, if you think, they're gonna roll up into their little ball. We're going to stay right here.

Round yourself down, hug onto your shins, everybody. Press on those shins, lower your chest down. We may as well do the 100, okay? Let's do it, it's a Halloween one, why not. And here we go, extend out (laughing) and breathe.

Get your spirit on. (inhaling and exhaling sharply) Ah, the spirit of Pilates. The 100. Create some heat in your body. (exhaling sharply) Open that chest up.

No need to have the shoulders rolled forward. (exhaling sharply) Let the floor support your lumbar spine. (exhaling sharply) Energy through your legs, energy through your arms, down into the stomach as it meets the floor. What meets the floor is your spine. Two more reps.

(exhaling sharply) One more. (inhaling) Exhale, three, four, five. Hug those knees. And then lower your head and your shoulders back. Keep yourself hugging your shins, everybody.

Your knees are open this morning. And then this is going to be an interesting thing. Take one leg and just stretch it out. Kind of a little straddle stretch here. And then close that leg in.

Other side, just getting some stretch in your adductors and hamstrings. And close it in. And then both legs open and in. First leg, out, in, out, and in. Both legs, stretch, keep going, okay.

So why would this be spidery? Think of a spider legs. A lot of spiders have really long, kind of graceful little legs (laughing). Here it is, that's my image. We're getting nice little spider legs.

And open, one more. And reach to the side and close. Reach to the side and close. Last one, hold the legs open. Bring the legs up in external rotation.

Hold them here. Roll them to parallel now. Bend the knees to tabletop position. Hold, inhale. Bring your head, neck, and chest up.

Bring your hands on top of your shins, let's go to double leg stretch. Inhale and open. Five repetitions. Stretch. Suddenly I see the cat again, when it's laying on its back and it stretches itself out (laughing).

Waiting for a little tummy scratch. Lean, arms back. One more guys. Stretch. Hold onto your shins.

Let your chest come down. Roll up to sitting tall. Reach your legs forward, keep flowing. Remember, I told you we're not going to really stop and start so much, and I just want you to keep moving your body. Rounding down, arms back overhead.

For the roll up you may choose to open your arms out to the side today. Rounding up and reaching forward, holding your stomach back. Breathe. Again, if you need to take care of your back, you can bend your knees a little bit. Remember, this is your body, right?

And you're going to see me in bend my knees. I need that today, again. It's okay, rounding forward. Inhale, exhale, roll back. (exhaling deeply) It's about the mobility.

Make adaptations if you need to discover and feel and connect to more mobility. We're trying to take strain and struggle out of Pilates technique. There's work, but there's no strain and struggle usually is the whole idea, right? One more time (laughing). The whole different thing.

Work is work. Strain and struggle is not the same, anyway. Okay, I'll be quiet with that. Come all the way down. Bring your knees in.

Okay, this is another spidery one, in my mind. We're going to do scissor, okay? Bring your knees tight to your chest. Close your chest to your legs. Take a leg up.

Hold onto your calf. Now extend the line of energy strongly through this bottom leg. The leg that's up in the air, what I want to do before just pulling it to us, reach it up to the ceiling and then pull it toward us twice. One, two. Change.

Reach it up to the ceiling and pull it toward us. One, two, and just keep that going. Pull, pull. Pull, pull. Very long, luscious legs.

I'm only 5'3", but I imagine my legs being a lot longer than this. (exhaling deeply) Good. Okay, keep going with your leg movement. I want us all to put our hands behind our head. Now, slow it down.

We're gonna do bicycle legs, bicycle legs. And make these very like spiders crawling on walls. (laughing) Yeah, reach. Keep it going, extend the line of energy through your legs. Let's take four, three.

Sit up high in your upper body. Two and one. And then, keep one leg up. I've got left leg up, my right leg down. Turn your torso toward the top leg.

And let's pulse eight, seven, six, five. You could even reach your arm. Four, three, two, and one. Change sides. Really, here we go.

And rotate. The bottom leg as long. You're rotating, feeling those obliques. Reach the arm. Three, two, and one.

Now change legs just one time. Rotate. Change and rotate. Twist and twist. Four more.

(exhaling deeply) Use those legs. Two and one. Tuck your knees to your chest. Let your head come down. You can mobilize around your lower back.

Circle, circle, circle the legs. Okay, bring both legs back up to the ceiling, everybody, in external rotation. Take your arms to the sky and then open them wide out to the floor. Palms face up. Keep your feet pointed and let's do some crisscross legs.

Change, change, change. So I'm taking the leg beats, one leg over the other. Emphasizing your adductors. Strong, yeah, really strong connection. Take that and walk down a few inches toward the floor.

Hold them there. You're going to feel a lot in your tummy and a lot in your legs. Eight, seven, hold. Six, five, four, three, two, one. Bring your legs together and then fold again.

Bring your head, neck, and chest up. Roll up to sitting tall. Put your fingers behind you in those little spider finger, propped up position. Open the chest. I have my knees apart and I'm on the tips of my toes, okay?

You might cramp in your feet, hopefully not. Stay right here. Open, open. Roll the chest open, roll the shoulders back. From here, take your hands across your shins, pull your feet in close, try to get into the smallest little ball you can.

And let's try the rolling back for six repetitions. Inhale, exhaling up. Inhale, try to stay in that little ball shape. Rolling through the back. Three more.

Heels closer in. Two more. Last time. We're going to balance at the top. Hold, hold, hold.

Let's place those toes down, fingertips back. And once again, you're opening through the chest. And release. I want us to stay up, sitting, move your hips back. Open the legs to the width of the mat or wider.

Arms lift up. Two spine stretch forward, that's all. Breathe in tall. (inhaling deeply) Now, if you were the cat, reach your spine backward. Cats kind of like to have their spine touched, did you know that?

Some of you know, like if you're just going to do xylophone all the way up their back (laughing). And then roll up to sitting. Really articulate. Do that again, and exhale. You could think headfirst, show your spine behind you.

What if someone were behind you, you reach your backbone toward them, especially the lower back part of your backbone. Reach it even further back. Reach it even further back. Stay there. Lower your little cat paws to your feet.

Hold onto your toes. Keep thinking of your lower back spine reaching back. And yes, this is prep for our open leg rocker. Stay there. Hold that integrity.

And then roll up with a nice ooey-gooey mobile spine, okay. Prop upon fingertips. Move your hips forward. Grab ahold of your ankles, extend your legs. Hold your legs here.

Externally rotate just by a little bit. Now, rocking yourself back, roll back, roll up. Inhale, roll back, roll up. You can do this with straight arms. You can do it with soft bend of the elbows.

Keep going. Inhale. Exhale. It's kind of fun to do a little bit of both. You can do a few reps with your elbows slightly bent, see what that container through your lats and your core feels like.

You could do it with straight arms. As long as you're feeling mobile in your spine, I think you're winning, right? That's the idea. One more round. Here we go.

Roll. Up. We're going to balance, everybody. Bring your legs together. Hold.

Hold, hold, hold. Let's let go. Reach your hands right to your toes and just hold. Beautiful. We're gonna roll back, everybody, and just tuck your knees into your chest.

Now, place your feet down on the mat. And I want you to take your feet wide (laughing), to kind of the side edges of your mat, okay? Let one knee drop out to the side, let the other knee drop in. So I've taken my left leg and lowered it out to the left. And my right leg is into the center.

Go to the other side. So my right knee and leg falls out to the right, left leg falls in toward the midline. Let's do even, juicy movements, side to side. Try not to maybe overthink what this is and just feel what this is. And remember continuous movement, right?

We're not going to just stop and start. Just flow from leg to leg. And we're going to do this leg movement up and sitting in just a minute and it usually feels a little bit different. So just kind of feel here and we'll do the last one. And then just bring your feet closer together.

Let's go first and pelvic curl bridge real quick. You can take your arms out to the side, roll yourself up to a bridge position. Nice and high. Inhale and exhale. Roll it down.

Again, you're still in your cat-like movement. Inhale. Swish your tail underneath you. Roll. Feel those hips lift, breathe and exhale, coming down.

(exhaling deeply) Two more. Try it up on your tippy-toes. It's a little different feeling in the legs. (exhaling deeply) Keep up on your tippy-toes. Inhale.

One more time. We're going to roll up and stay up there, okay? Keep your toes, balancing on your toes, your heels lifted. And then now we'll do heels down and up. So just heels down, heels up, heels down, heels up, down and up.

So what that does, a lot of you know I like this version. It gets those glutes going. Hamstrings and glutes. Three more. Arms are reaching up above my head.

That's where I'm at today. Last two and last one. And then keep up on your tippy-toes and roll down slowly, mobilized, really all the way down. Okay, wonderful. Let's come up for a little bit of saw, everybody.

Inhale again, open up the legs. Arms are pretty wide. Let's rotate toward left leg, breathing in. Exhale, reach both arms in opposition, as if someone's behind you, reaching back with you, and they pull you back with that back hand. Kind of help pull you up.

And you rotate to the other side. I love that feeling of connecting to the back arm, right? It helps me stay on my pelvis a little bit better, but I also like to feel like, hey if someone had my hand back there and they're helping me up. Twist to the other side, exhale. (exhaling deeply) Use the back arm, reach it back and bring yourself up.

To the other side, exhale. And reach the arm back and up. We have one more, each direction, moving that spine. Now, would a cat do this? I don't know.

They do some really cool things with their spine though, and their whole little bodies, right (laughing)? And all the way around. Okay, I'm gonna face you now. I've done this before in some of these classes and this is pretty interesting stretching for hips and some of the muscles around here. So, as I said, we're gonna be doing that one knee in, one knee out.

So we're here, but come up onto your fingertips, your spider fingers, behind you, okay? Choose one side, doesn't matter to me, lean one knee in. So that's internal rotation and this one's going to external. Just feel what you feel. And let's go to the other side.

And notice, you may not notice much. You may feel like, "What's the big deal here?" But often we have a hip joint that has a little more stickiness in it, maybe. We're trying to feel really balanced, aren't we, from side to side. So maybe go to, kind of stay on the side that feels a little more sticky. For me, this is my stickier side.

I'm just gonna stay there. What I would like to do next is just change the way I'm sitting. So now my body's forward and I'm going to take those little spider fingers, you can see my shape. I've got one leg in front of me, one leg is behind me. And I wanna take those spider fingers, get on my mat and walk out on that corner, kind of following the line of this knee and walk out as far as you can.

And get your body down nice and low to that leg. Remember, don't stop moving, okay? So now I've channeled the cat again (laughing). How they're getting ready to kind of pounce on something. So you really have to, I want you to keep movement going.

For me that's also my rib cage and my spine kind of shifting side to side. And I'm gonna use that also to come back up, pushing with my fingertips and my little spider fingers, up into more of an extension of that spine again. And forward again. So here it goes those creeping spider fingers, or cat, just go all the way out as far as you can. I want you to get your chest pretty low.

Keep that moving. You're going to go backward. Yep, all the way up. And we'll do that round one more time. See if you can extend the length of your spine going forward, even more, go a little forward, a little more forward.

It's okay even if you come up on the haunch of that, you know almost like a pigeon in yoga. I'm not really teaching that, of course, but I'm now not really sitting down on this side anymore. I'm coming up. I'm just getting a little more movement through this part of my hip. And then that's plenty.

Come all the way, all the way up, all the way up. Now, swing this leg around and let's do the other side. I need to move myself on my mat. I have my right leg forward. My left leg is behind me.

I take my little spider fingers and crawl out, following the diagonal line of this front knee, getting that chest low. Remember, you're continuing to move. I'm promoting that. I don't want you to just to sit still here in your body. Moving through, walking your fingers back.

Yeah, your ribs might really enjoy that kind of mobility. Go ahead and look up, extend. And again, walking out, walking out, go a little farther, or further, little bit more, stretch yourself, your a kitty reaching its legs forward. Okay, walking back. That's right.

And come up into that upper back extension. And one more, and walking out, and walking out, and out, and out. And then I'm going to just keep going. I'm kind of, like I said, I'm kind of rocking up, up off the back, this hip. I'm moving it up off the ground, really.

Trying to get me a little bit more forward in my reaching arm here. One more. Not so great on the knees, if you're a knee person. Yeah, this is a lot of flection with load. So, now I tell you, okay (laughing)?

And then, guys, just go ahead and sit into a straddle stretch just for a moment. You know, I've been doing a lot of this in the past couple months. Just getting this kind of good old-fashioned stretch. Remember, you're not stopping, leaning forward. You can do your spider fingers.

I'm going to come forward a few and back a few. Let's go to the one leg. How about the right leg? Over, a couple of times on that side. And this is a nice little preparatory stretch for your legs, for side legs series, which is coming up next, okay?

Yeah, and I really think of spider legs (laughing) when I do some of my side series. So find your way onto your side. I'm going on my left side, hips back, in line with the mat, toes forward. Let's come on down. You can come down all the way, kind of traditional, on your elbow.

This hand can come behind your head if you're going for it. You can also keep your spider fingers down here. Let's take the legs into turnout and we're doing up and down, up, and spider legs. Nice and long. (exhaling deeply) I wonder why I have so many spidery things.

One time somebody said that spider images are good luck. Who knows. Keep your foot flex and kick up, point down. I dream. Spiders are in my dreams a lot too.

Someone told me that's about prosperity. I'd take it. Yep (laughing). And last one. And now here, guys, let's take your leg up, in line with your hip crest, right?

Your greater trochanter. So it's not too high, you're not higher than that. Flex your foot and let's take it forward and back. And forward and back, three more. Forward.

Can you feel like you're getting your legs longer from your hips with each kick series? Five, now hold your leg behind you. We're gonna do bicycle today. So bicycle, for me, is slower, because I want to try to extend the length of my legs. The image of extending the leg.

I have to effort, reaching long, right? So you're bicycling. One more this direction. Keep your leg in front of you. Now we're going to reverse it.

In, reach it behind, try to go farther behind you. Stomach has to really stay in to support you. And reach, last one. And reach and bring both legs together, and lift them and put them in line with your hip. And I do want you to come on fingers here, take this top leg up and we're doing our adductors now, up and down.

And up and down. And up, that leg down there is parallel. Up. You're up on your spider fingers in the front hand. (exhaling sharply) Hold it up there, flex your foot, little pulses.

Eight, seven, six, strong legs, strong core. And four, three, two, hold the leg up, thread both legs to join each other. Point your toes and let's just do a little walk in place. And long legs from the hips. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one.

Legs together and down. Onto your tummy today. Transition, stack your hands, put your forehead down on your hands. And guys, take your feet and your legs close, close together. If you can, with your legs together, without any pinch in your lower back, if you're feeling a pinch, you'll probably feel better with opening your legs just a little bit.

Imprint your pelvis. Engage your bottom muscles, let's flutter the legs. See if you can get your thighs almost up off of the mat. So your hip creases are what are really pressing into the floor. Your forehead is lightly down.

Keep paddling, firm up the buns, keep those legs reaching long. We're gonna go four more, and three more, two more, and rest. Not quite done here. Lift your thighs up, externally rotate the legs, now flex the feet. Heel beats.

Inhale three, four, exhale three, four. In, two, three, four. Exhale. Beat those heels together pretty firmly. Inhale three, four, exhale, keep going.

(inhaling deeply) And now, two more sets of in, two, three, four. Exhale, three, four. Last set, exhale, three, four, and rest. Okay, second side. So round to the side.

Bring your knees in. Use your hands to help you and we're going to creep our way (laughing) over to the other side, okay? Now, place yourself down. Get yourself, hips back on the back edge. Legs forward, hand down.

I've got to move my little mic pack so I don't smush it. Hold on guys. Keep going, keep breathing. I've gotta move my mic pack (laughing). Oh no, hold on.

There, okay, I know. All right, hand behind head. We did turn out up and down, right? Long legs up and down. You can point and flex.

It does feel kind of nice to change the feet. And up, and up, now reverse the feet. So we're flexing it, pointing, flexing it, pointing. Three and down. Okay, next is front and back, right?

So you take your leg up, you're in a little turnout. Not as firm of a turnout or big, but not truly parallel. It should feel organic in your hip joint, natural, okay? Front, back, front-front and back-back. Yes, you can flex your foot when you come forward.

You can point it to go back. I really want you to focus on continuous movement, explore the energy, reaching more through you. Reach farther, anchoring with your stomach. Here we go, last time, and then we start our bicycles from here. Slowing it down so that you can really explore reaching.

(exhaling deeply) We did four and then we reversed it for four. Keep your leg in front, now backwards, so heel to butt. Reach behind, swing it forward. Good. (exhaling deeply) One more time.

(inhaling deeply) And reaching up behind and leg together. Lift those legs and going into inner thigh time. Up onto your fingertips, bring this leg here. And up and down, up and down. Three.

We did eight of these, pull it high, strong legs. And six and seven, up. Hold it up, eight, flex the heel, little pulse. Two, try to go a little higher, feel the work. Six, seven, and eight.

Bring your legs together, point your toes, little flutters on the side. Good, and eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one legs together, guys, all the way down. Roll into your tummy again, right there. We're going to move and keep going. Stay right there.

I'm going to move this mic pack on my hip again. My pants are slippery, so it's kind of sliding today. Swan. So get your hands ready right here by the sides of your chest. Keep yourself moving.

Open up through the collarbone. I'm gonna have you take your feet apart, if you can. If you can all the way together, great. I'm opening mine. Looking forward, looking at the wall, reaching up, pressing those arms, strong, lift your chest.

Look up. Maybe the spider has crawled up onto the ceiling. It's not a bad spider (laughing). And now it's coming down the wall, reaching, looking, looking, looking. And again, following it through.

Eyes, nose, chin, chest. Feel the stretch in the front of the hips and stomach, open through the shoulders and rolling down. Get a good stretch through your body. Two more Swans. So if you're out there and you're thinking you want to do some Swan dive, be my guest.

I'm not doing that. And rolling down one more time. (inhaling deeply) Rounding through. (exhaling deeply) Look up, up, up, and all the way down. We are gonna move into our single leg kick and double-leg kick team.

But before we do, shake your hips out a little bit. Bring your knee legs so close together, so close, like, really, really close. Up onto the elbows. Now, as your here, before we do kick, kick, whatever's in front of you, really look forward and reach your chest in that direction. For me, I'm kind of pulling my elbows back a little bit, but I'm not over-pinching my scapula.

I'm certainly not pushing my ribs back. I'm thinking in the heighth of my upper back, maintaining that. Now, engage your legs so much that your toes come up off the ground, that your thighs come up. Here we go. Kick, kick one, two, switch.

One, two, switch, one, two, switch one, two, and kick, kick. Try keep your thighs up, keep your thighs up. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one and lower. Now double-leg kick. Lower down, hold for a minute, hold, hold.

Just stay here, listen to the floor. Really let your head rotate so that you're hearing. There, see what your neck muscles do? Feel what they do, they should kind of relax a little bit. Sometimes we get going into double-leg kick and we're already in our neck muscles.

So give them a moment. Hands behind your hips, here we go. Elbows are dropped, but the shoulder blades are up and your collarbone is up. Three kicks, one, two, three. And again, take your time on this.

I want you to reach your chest forward. Little more. Look to the other side, lower the head. Let the elbows stay forward, collarbone up, and lift. One more each side and a kick, kick, kick.

Take your time, reach your chest. Reach your chest. Other side, guys. Collarbone stays up. Two, three, inhale and stretch.

Release your hands. And come all the way up into more of a resting position. Open up your knees. Reach your hips really far behind, back against your heels. Things are moving around, maybe there's some spirits in here (laughing).

And as we're here, I want you to kind of sway your rib cage, side to side. There you go. Reaching those ribs side to side. And then we're going to come and up onto our knees for thigh stretch, okay? So find your way all the way up, standing high on your knees.

Today, tuck your toes down, bring your heels to touch. So kind of Pilates stance back there with your feet. And then take your hands for the first couple of rounds, hands onto your thighs, and I want you for a moment just to feel the strength in the back of you. Your hips, your hamstrings your back muscles, the whole back line, so solid and strong. Chest open, right, very proud through here.

And then as you're leaning back, you're bending at the knees and you're taking that shape back only as far as your knees feel like they can handle, right? This is a pretty deep exercise for your quads and your knees, and go farther if you can, okay? We're going to do a few more. It may feel different and better, or easier with your arms here. Check it out.

Reach and up. I like it better here today for myself. So I'm gonna keep my arms in front of me, pressing the balls of my feet into the floor. (exhaling deeply) A couple more times. Hmm.

And lift. We've got one more time leaning back. Want everybody does stay leaning back. Rotate and take that front hand, and try to touch your heels behind you. And then reach back up.

Other side, rotate. And return to the front. And rotate, and to the front. Really looking at the fingertips to go back. We're gonna do one more each side.

Keep those abdominals in. And center. Last time, rotate, center. Everybody come up. We're coming into front support.

Crawl yourself out onto your hands. Stay tucked down with your toes. I want everybody to stay here in a neutral spine for a moment, okay? And we're going into some scapula glide. So scapula together, scapula apart.

Scapula together, scapula apart. Two more, scapula together, apart. And together and apart, and then feel the neutral position of your shoulder blades. Extend your feet behind you. Solid legs together.

Holding here, lift one leg up and pulse. Two, three, four more. Four, three, two, and one. Foot down, other side. And one, two integrity in your core and your stomach is in (laughing).

And four, get those glutes going. Three, two, and one. Set your foot down, bring your knees down, just come off your hands. We're gonna do a little more with that, okay? Here we go.

Back onto your hands. Back into your plank. Brush your left foot back, lifted up, come up into kind of your upside down, up stretch. Your leg is up, it's a pretty nice, high, kind of arabesque line with your leg. I want you to do to eight more pulses.

Think leg very high. One, two, use those glutes, you guys. Four, press with the arms. And six, and seven, and eight. Now, lower the leg, lower yourself down into front support.

We've got the other side. Here we go. Brush the right leg, reach with your toes. Energy up through the toes, that leg is high. You can open your hip a little bit.

Stretch your knee and pulse. Two, strong arms pushing you up, four. Four more, three more, two more. Stay there. Lower yourself down.

Come all the way down to your knees. Come off of your hands. Shake your little paws out. (exhaling deeply) Sit on down. Coming around into the front, reach your arms forward.

(exhaling deeply) I want us to roll ourself backward. All the way down to the floor. Bring your knees into your chest, tightly. Bring your head up to meet your legs, you're getting that round, hugged position. Reach your legs up (laughing).

Let's go first and teaser. Reach your legs forward. Roll yourself up. Reach your hands towards your toes. Hold here.

Hold here. Just one time, lower your legs, lower it down. Arms have energy, they don't move. Get your legs pretty low, exhale, legs up. Now, arms and legs, we're gonna go all the way down to the floor.

Legs don't fall, though. They're still hovered. We're gonna roll all the way up. (exhaling deeply) Reaching, reaching. Come down to your elbows, bring your legs straight up.

(laughing) Legs to the left, legs center. Legs to the right, legs center. Again, legs to the left. Your body doesn't move, your upper body doesn't move. You're moving your legs side to side.

Keep them close to your torso, four more. And open. Press your elbows down. Legs to the left, and center. Legs to the right, and center, and all the way up to the top.

Round forward, stretch your spine. Turn to face me. Let's do a little bit of our mermaid stretching. Feet to the left. Left hand holding the left ankle.

Take that right arm and reach it nice and high. Making sure that the front of the ribs is still kind of cuddled in here. And reach this whole right side as high as you can. Lean to the left, be very cat-like in this, meaning stretchy. Take your hand over your head.

Spend some time here, allowing this right side of you to be very open, right? As if to say come someone, "Come someone pet my ribs, pet my tummy." Reach, yeah. So kind of like a cat-mermaid. Oh, dear God (laughing). Open, and then here, last one.

Brush those fingertips way out, way out, bring yourself up. We're going to come down on this elbow and lean over here, stretching this top side. And then reversing it all the way up. We're just going to swivel the legs. Only one each leg here or each side.

So right hand on ankles. Take that left arm nice and high. Leaning to the right, inviting some opening on this left side of your ribs and your spine, draping at elbow and forearm. And you can kind of rotate that head and look a little to the diagonal. It may feel different in your stretch down your lower back.

Linger here. No static movements, still breathe, fill up the ribs. Let those articulated movements continue to happen. And then your fingertips go brushing out and you lift. You come all the way down on your elbow, reaching the arm overhead.

All the way up to center. Now I want you to cross your legs, sit comfortably. We're going to kind of just do a little bit of neck release. We've done this before. Take your hands to your sternum.

Cross your hands so they're stacked. One and then the other. Slightly pull your hands down your sternum and your chest skin. Pull down a little bit. Lean your head.

Oh, feel that in your neck. Start to just rotate that head a little bit. Up, look around, explore some cervical movement. (laughing) Good. Letting this move through you.

You can take your chin down towards your chest. You can take your chin up a little bit, ah. This is particularly nice at the end of the day, because you've had all day long of lifting and carrying and doing things that your neck and shoulders might really happy with this. But those of us in the beginning of the day, it's setting us up beautifully for, also, those activities. Okay?

Take your hands off your sternum. Let your head look down to your legs. And then also roll your head up. Of course, we have the other side, meaning cross your legs the other way. The other hand goes first, other on top.

Same drill, hands are kind of dragging down, and just leaning your head to the side, feeling it in the side of the neck. Some of us might feel behind the head. Just explore some of that head and neck movement. (exhaling deeply) Yep, just kind of a noticing, feeling, turning the head, reaching through the jaw, good. One more deep inhale and exhale.

Hope that feels really good. I think I hear some of you saying, "Oh my gosh, I needed that in my neck today" (laughing). How did I hear that from way out there? It's the spirit of Pilates (laughing). It's the spirit of the world.

We're all together, it's so fabulous. One last exercise, let's do the Seal, okay? Seal, the Seal, guys. So turn to the side, take your hands underneath the feet. Remember, Seal, we cannot take ourselves too seriously.

And I hope no one takes me too seriously with all these silly little things, cats and spiders and stuff, but it might help, right? And the visualization of certain things could help your connection to movement, certainly make it more playful sometimes. So you're in your round shape. Let's do the open-close of the legs here today. So we have one, two, three, roll back, roll up, and repeat.

One, two, three, roll. Yeah, roll, two, three. And toes over head, three more. One, two, three, roll back, and (exhaling deeply) And back, last one, have fun. And over and up.

And viola! We made it, we had one more class together. You guys, thank you, thank you so much for being with me through this whole series of classes, through the pandemic. My gosh, every Tuesday I've been here and it's been so wonderful for me. I love all your comments. Thank you for those that are here now and that watch it again later.

That's amazing. Keep in touch. It's just been a wonderful ride. We're in this together. We're still in this together and gratitude.

Happy Halloween (laughing). Bye, everybody.