Deepen with a Theraband

Hi, everyone. Welcome into my living room and welcome to class. It's what I'm calling TheraBand Thursday. No matter what day it is for you, that's what it is today. So hopefully you have a TheraBand with you.

I have mine laid out in front of me. Mine is really long. I just kind of measured it. It's like six feet, and it's not real heavy. So for a lot of it, I just folded it in half.

So it'll be a little more taut. And as we go through class, just adjust as you need to. When it's too tight, you let it go. When your hands are overdoing it, you'll lighten them up. You just kind of work through it.

The point of it all is to find more connection to the work that we're doing. So let's just get started. Stand up if you're not already. Your feet are parallel, finding your ground. I'm just gonna face you for now. We're gonna do a roll down and after the third one, we'll pick up our bands.

So we inhale. (inhales) And as you exhale, just get heavy in the bones, heavy in the skin, heavy everywhere, and just feel your connection to earth. And maybe you'll notice like, Oh right, I'm hanging out on one side or the other. Maybe you won't, but just inhale again (inhales deeply) and exhale, and let's start to find our pillar of strength that comes straight up through the body and my mind anyway. So shift your weight forward a little. Shift your weight back a little.

Few times, 'cause then you start to notice where tension's held if you really pay attention. And that's part of what we're doing here so that when we go out in the world we don't have to as much. (laughing) Okay, here we are. Find the, I'm gonna say middle, but really it's a slight bit more forward of middle for me. It's close to the ball of the foot. My heels are still down.

Take an inhale. Arms go up. I'm gonna work the shoulders a little bit today. Exhale, let the arms come down. Let your head go forward. Roll yourself down bone by bone or just to get there. Hands to the ground if you can.

Feel free to bend your knees 'cause if you've been in my class recently, you know we almost always do right now bend the knees. Take your spine with you. Exhale, straighten. Get a little closer to your thighs maybe. Bend your knees again. Exhale towards straight. Whether you get there or not is not the point.

It's just trying to loosen up the back of the body and remind ourselves that we need to use it as we go. Once you get as close to straight as you can, remind yourself to drop the top of your head, take a second to let go of tension here. Inhale (inhales) and exhale. Again, if you need to bend your knees more, do, but that tailbone suddenly becomes heavier. It pulls the belly up to help support you.

As you roll back up all the way to the top. Again, inhale. (inhales deeply) Exhale down. (exhales deeply) Just leaving my arms down this time. You could take them up if you need more room. Hands to the ground. Inhale, bend your knees, round your spine.

Exhale, try to stay close to those thighs. And it's early, right? So don't judge yourself for not being able to, she says. And straighten. And bend to straighten.

Maybe a soft bend, or how far back are you? Are we still over the feet like we started? Take your exhale to roll up. And I say that mostly 'cause it's natural for the abdominals to then support you. Can we do it one more time, knowing that you're gonna pick up your band when you get there?

So inhale. It's super exciting. I know. Exhale, roll down. Off we go. Down.

And just for a second here, yeah, you can let your arms just hang off your body, but you could also let them hang off your body keeping the collarbones wide. That just becomes a cue I end up using. So keep the collarbone pointing to the sides of your room, and the arm bones can hang from there. Why are we still down there? Let's do the three knee bends. Inhale, bend.

Exhale, straighten. Be nice to yourself here. Inhale, bend. Be nice to yourself in general. (laughs) Come on, right? And one more time. Head towards straight. I am grabbing the end near the end of my band, and I'm just gonna lightly put tension on it. Thinking of those collarbones again, to roll back up.

Here we go. So just consider this warmup, but also open yourself up. Let's see what happens. Take the arms just up, inhale. Your weight is distributed hopefully.

As we start to exhale, press it down. And you can even go into your legs a little. Give yourself the sense of the upper back. Inhale, arms just right overhead if you can. Not everyone could do that, and bring the band down.

Press into your legs. Inhale, up. (inhales) Just warm up the shoulders there. Press back down. Inhale, arms up. See if you get a little further each time. You might have to go wider with your hands if you have tight shoulders. Theoretically, the rest of the body doesn't change.

One more, we're gonna stay up there. And then shrug the shoulders. Let them come down. Shrug the shoulders. Pay attention to your spine. We're not overworking. Why would we do that? We're just like, right. Okay, there they are.

Up and down, just a couple more. And to make it really either fun or annoying, we'll see, you'll tell me, all right. We allow the shoulders to come down if you can. The band is right over your head. If not, do the best you can.

From there we're gonna draw the elbows to a goalpost position. Maybe the top of the band, or the band will hit the top of your head, hopefully right in the middle, and then just push back up. Simple. So the only thing I'm asking for is a little bit of tension on the band, so you don't just let it, you know. You know, be lazy. Okay, arms are straight. We shrug.

We de-shrug, if that's a word. We bend the elbows to 90. We tap the top of the head, and we just let the arm straighten, but we don't shrug the shoulders yet. Now we do. Up, one. Shoulders down, two. Bend elbow, three.

Touch the top of your head. Exhale, straighten the elbows, four. Just warming up the shoulders. Up. With the shoulders down, bend, you could pull a little more there, but it's not about the arms really. It's just about loosening up the shoulders.

One more time. Up. Lower, elbows bend, and stretch. Okay. Same idea. Let your arms come down. Shake it out. And you always, you can always drop the band or take a break or do more while I chitchat.

Next one is almost the same thing. I grab in a little closer because I want my hands just a little bit not much wider than my shoulders at all. And this one's a little easier to manage. So what we're doing here is we just reach forward. So the shoulders slid forward.

The shoulders come back so those collarbones are wide. From there, we do the same thing we did a minute ago. We bend. It's like a goalpost, but face down 90, 90 at the elbows if that helps, and then elbows back to straight. Reach your shoulders forward, your shoulder blades forward maybe.

Pull the shoulder blades back into place. Bend the elbows. Look for that right angle at the elbow so you're not holding too tight there and then back to straight elbows. Reach forward with the shoulder blades, back with the shoulder blades. Bend the elbows and straighten. Two more.

Reach forward, back bend. Elbows straightened. Last one, ? Forward, back ? hm, lala. Musical. Let the arms come down.

Let's step wide. The next one we're gonna do is trying to open up the chest and the shoulders at the same time. It's a little early in the game, but let's go for it. I did go wider with my hands again. Take the arms up. Check yourself.

So you're not arching your back. You're connected from the ground to the crown. Wow. Never said that before. Ground your feet, and then stand up tall through the crown of your head. From here, I just have my feet wide.

All we're doing is taking the arms back a little from wherever you started. Back a little, trying not to change the rest of your spine. Back a little. Back a little. Of course, I'm letting go in between. I'm starting to think this might be one of those moments where I want to un-double my band.

You'll decide. We're gonna go further. So we're gonna go back to the back of the head. You can pull on the band as much as you want. Be nice to yourself. Remember, we said that.

And release. You can just release. Pull it back again. Your body is still up right in the same thing just to the back of the head. One more, and of course we are gonna go further so you can make your adjustment now if you need to. All right, here we go.

I'm heading for, let's say shoulder height if I can, and I will have to pull. Pull (grunts) and then come back and just relax the top. Pull back. Watch your ribs. You're not thrusting forward. That would be wasted energy, and back again.

(grunts lightly) Aim for shoulder blades or slightly lower if you're have it in you. And again, pull as much as you want. Try not to take your hair out on the way down, assuming, you know. So we're going maybe shoulder blades, way back. The more stretch you want, the closer your hands are together.

Come back up, and on this one, since it's so stressful, come down and release it. Take it back up overhead. Pull and open the chest. You might even look up a little and go, "Right, okay. I'm gonna expand myself." Bring it down. Only one more of this version, or you'll stay here.

Pull back. Can your hands be any closer together? Don't move them on the band. You can just put them closer together, and down. Let's go, if you're up for it, and not everyone is, so be nice. (chuckles) We're going all the way. We lift up.

We reach back to that place we just were. And if it is available, you go all the way with straight arms. Here's the real fun part. You gotta go back up. So you reach back. Keep your arms straight.

That's the key, or just don't do it yet. It's a little scary at first. Oh, I made it up to the top, and I'm coming down in front. Only one more, reach up. Take it back, take it back. Squeeze those shoulder blades.

It will help you. Open up your chest. Open up your chest, open up your chest. (grunts) I just hit my bum, and I'm going back up. I'm gonna take a little break, bringing it all the way to the top, and we're off again. Bring it right back up.

We're gonna do some side work. So we're going side to side. As far as the arms are concerned, try to get the band overhead. That's pretty key. So go wide if you need to.

There's no reason to go super narrow, but at least the distance of your own shoulders. All right, find all 10 toes. We're going to the left. Inhale, up and over. Stay here. Step into that right foot.

Reach further out to your waist. Exhale, lift yourself up. Other way, take a minute 'cause you have to find it, I think. If you rotate, if you do weird things, if your arms are way in front of you, you're gonna miss that side seam stretched, so step into the left foot. Reach to that right foot.

Reach that arm, and come back up. We'll go quicker now. Take breaks when you need it. It's inhale up and over. I start the exhale to lift me back up. It helps. That's the only reason I say it. (breathes deeply) Over.

And it's not just, it's not down. It's over there, up over there and up, keep going. (sighs) I feel taller already, which is saying a lot. I'm not so tall. (laughs) Keep going. It's over and up. And over and up.

I don't know. Over and up. And over and up. Last one here. Okie dokie. Just let the arms come down.

Happy enough? Hope so. We'll come back maybe to that later. Let's have a seat on the mat. Bands are still nearby. Wrap it around your feet.

And again, I didn't only speak to tension of the band. My band is pretty light, so it's also why I can double it up like this. If you have a really heavy band and you've doubled it, this will still be fine actually as long as you can hang on to it. And here's just a quick message that'll pertain to every time you use the band, and that is, sometimes the band, when it's heavy, allows you to oppose it if you will. You get to work against it.

It's like putting your feet at a couch, which also works by the way. Sometimes when it's light, it just gives you enough of a sense for some of the work to make it harder. So you can work it either way. I have my feet as flat as I can, as if I were standing on them like before, holding on relatively close again. Again, adjust. Heels are down.

Body is upright. Oh, there's a concept. And from here we just inhale. (inhales) On the exhale, start pulling those hip bones back. It's almost like you're pushing into the band itself. To roll you down, let's go right to the low back, right to the low back.

So now that you're down here or as far as you could without your feet coming up, ground your feet again. Take some sort of inhale or exhale. And sink the belly. Keep those arms straight as you curl forward. The band will get looser. That's okay.

Just keep your arms straight and sit up. Inhale. (inhales deeply) Start the exhale. For me, I even do use my heels in the ground. Exhale, roll back. Go ahead.

Go ahead. Hold. Check your collarbones. Inhale. (inhales deeply) Start the exhale. You can actually see your abs in this position. You'll see them drop just naturally as you roll back up. You don't have to really do anything sometimes.

You just have to move. (inhales deeply) We're upright. We exhale, roll back. (exhales) Touching that low back. I guess I'm going a little lower at this point. I'm going probably almost to my shoulder blades. Inhale. (inhales) What are your feet doing? Check yourself out.

Exhale. Come forward. Theoretically, they're still straight up like you were standing on them. And again, roll back. Roll back. And come forward. For those of you who want breath patterns, I'm gonna do two more, and I'm gonna go a little quicker after that.

And you'll have to pick your own. Exhale, back. (exhales deeply) Arms are straight. Collarbones are wide. I inhale here at the bottom typically. I start that exhale so I can feel almost like I'm holding my waistline backwards until the last minute I sit up. Let's just do a few more. Let's say four.

Roll back, and come up four times. Back, but try to hit all those bones that you can feel or think on. Back and up, just lifting yourself up. Back. And up. I'm doing one more.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Easy peasy. Set the band down. Go ahead and roll yourself down. I straightened out my legs along the way.

So straighten your legs out, together preferably, preferably, preferably. All right, inner thighs or glutes, do that. Press the back of your arms into the ground. What are your collarbones doing if you do that? If it forces your shoulders forward, widen your hands and try it.

Otherwise, just lighten up on the whole press the arms down thing. From here, we are just simply going to inhale. Start exhaling, pick your head up and look at your feet, or curl your head, neck, and shoulders up. Look towards your feet and slide your hands on the ground and come back down. (breathing deeply) Again.

Curling up and down. I let my feet do what they need to in this one, But I do have the inner thighs together. I hope you do too. Forward, forward, forward. And down, just one more.

Just getting used to that idea there. Voila! And down. From here, you are gonna know that you're about to pick up your right leg. So you get in your mind, start to get ready to do it and actually activate the muscles that would do it, but don't lift it. Inhale. Here we go.

We've activated the right leg. We curl the head, neck and shoulders up. We look forward in and at the very last minute, that leg floats up. We pick the arms up, and we pump them. Inhale. (inhales) And exhale. That pump is like the entire arms, coming from the shoulders we warmed up.

And inhale. (inhales deeply) Out. (exhales) One more time. Inhale, just floating that leg up, pushing the other leg down and take everything down in our thighs. Back of the arms, if it's available to you, wider, if you need to. Exhale, curl back up. You're picking up that left leg. You already knew that going into it.

Start over, if I didn't say quick enough, It floats at the end, and we pump. In, two, three. And out. (exhales deeply) In. (inhales) And out. (exhales) It's like, you wanna get up. Imagine you're gonna get up. And out, (exhales) and take it down. Everything goes down.

It's up to you if you want to do both legs. We're gonna do four more inhales and exhales. So if you wanna do both legs, that's what you're doing. If you don't wanna do both legs, do two breaths on one and two on the other. I wouldn't alternate. It gets weird. (laughs) Here we go. Inhale.

Start exhaling. Curl yourself. Decide what leg you're using or both. And four rounds of breaths. In. (inhales) And out. (exhaling) Heat up. In. It's like I'm gonna get up off this mat. Out. Three.

Out! One more time. And out. Pull your knees to your chest. Hold on behind the knees. Let your feet do whatever they want for now.

Put your hamstrings in your hands. Find your hamstrings, push your legs away from you. Pick your head up. So you find sort of this kinetic chain of, I don't know what the word is, but you feel connected. Start rocking.

Start rocking. Make it a smooth ride. Make it a smooth ride and a couple more we'll be up to seated. Here it comes. Voila! We're up. From here, just grabbing onto the band, this was, again, this can be done really easily without it, but what I'm trying to do in this next one we're going through some of the series of five is in this first one is if you pull a little bit to the side, it connects you in the middle.

It's like the yin and yang of the energy. So try it. We're going to slowly, theoretically, roll back and see if it'll work. Gently pull to the side with those arms just see how it helps you draw. Middle, bring those knees up. I have my band on my ankles just for somewhere to put it.

I'm looking straight forward. So my head is up. We're going double leg stretch. We reach the legs out. We reach the arms back. That's the inhale. (inhales) Exhale, bring it back in. Inhale. I do like pushing down on the ankles, to be honest.

It's sort of that kinetic chain thing again. And out. And in and out and in. The rest of the body is absolutely still wondering why we're doing these strange movements. Again, out. One more. Out and in.

You can put your head down for a moment, but take your hands, when you're ready, behind your head. You might have to, what do they call it? Choke up, or, I think that's a baseball term, but anyway, grab a little closer and use the band, almost like it's really a sling for your head. It's not gonna help you that much, but anyway, that's where your arms are going. We curl your head, neck, and shoulders back up, and by, the band is right underneath, right at the occipital ridge.

Look forward. Elbows forward a little bit. Extend the left leg. Pull that right leg in closer, like you're gonna help yourself right to that knee. Switch. Switch again.

Now we're gonna develop a pace. Last time, switch there. I mean, we're still going. Let's go. I'm going switch, switch, switch, switch. I'm inhaling, inhaling, exhaling, exhaling, but finish it. Finish it.

Exclamation point on the straight leg. Find the same thing. You're gonna touch each time with that imaginary spot on the far wall. Let's go. Let's go. Couple more.

La, la, pull both knees in. Let your head go down. Let your feet go down briefly. Bring them right back up. If you have to do one at a time, you go for it. Both are back up, you curl up again.

Take a moment. Even if the band has gotten all skinny on you, try to drop back into it. Then without pulling on the band more, curl higher. Pull that right knee into you. Rotate to it. Check it out.

Make sure you haven't opened the legs and done something weird. Keep them close, switch. Check yourself out. Yeah, here we go. Same breath, pull. Just rotating, that same exercise.

Inhaling. Then I exhale. You can do whatever you want, just stay up. Stay strong. Take the weight out of your arms if you can, and make it like you're gonna get up even on this one. Go, go, go, go a couple more.

Here's two. Bring both knees in. Set your feet down, slightly apart. Let the band from out from underneath you. Arms are straight up over your chest for pelvic curl leading to something else. It's an inhale, exhale.

Peel the pelvis up bone by bone, and go ahead and start to lower those arms. So the band meets the legs. You can push against it or pull against it, depending on how you look at it. Inhale and exhale. Just reverse it. Roll down.

All the way, I'm just either right over your chest, or you could go overhead if you want a little more shoulder stretch. Exhale, curl up again. Just adjusting my band here. That's what all that noise is. Pressing into it. What are your collarbones doing now?

(breathing deeply) Inhale, and exhale down. Reach the arms up in opposition either stopping at the chest or go all the way. And up. Up. Up.

Pressing down. Inhale. Exhale down. Go ahead. One more time. When we get up there, we're gonna stay up there.

So there you are from there with your arms pressing down on the band just a little bit. Go ahead and take your right leg up, but you're not moving your hips. Your right leg goes up. And kick it down or lower it down, I should say. Flex. Bring it up.

Try to keep everything stable. And this is a little harder 'cause your arms probably aren't on the ground. That's okay. We're doing three more. Up and reach, up and reach, up and reach.

Take it upstate, up. Refold the knee. Roll halfway down. Make any adjustments you need to. Peel back up. Looking for that long line of body. Left leg comes up. You can adjust the band if you need to here.

And kick down six, one. Flex up. Two. Three, little bit of balance in there. Four, oh boy. Five.

Here's six. Stay up for just a second. Refold the leg. Roll yourself down. Taking the band right around either the ankles or the knees. You might end up just using your hands. All are fine.

I'm gonna try ankles today. I think it was last week or maybe the week before, I don't know. No last time we did TheraBand together, we wrapped it around our body, but today we're gonna just keep it on our legs and start a rocking motion. So what I have to do for me is elbows wide. Again, you can just hold your knees we're rocking back and forth, back and forth.

We're gonna come up, stay up. Let the band rest. Grab on and bring those legs closer to you. So we draw them in. This lovely cue that I learned from, I think it was Rachel Taylor. It's just almost like you're sliding your skin up your body, and you draw the abdominals back.

The elbows are wide. We keep the shape. Let's do about four more or so rolls. Let's go back and forward. Back and up. If you're getting wobbly, that's okay. Wobbly is kinda good. Two more.

You could also open up your ball a little bit. Just try to keep the same shape. One more. And up. Set yourself in the middle of your mat, extending your legs. I'm gonna try to keep my band again.

When my band is folded in half, it's like three feet and probably really good tension, but we'll see. It's out in front of me. Let's go ahead and just pick it up now. If you need to wrap, wrap, but we're doing some spine stretch action. So with your arms a little bit wider than your shoulders, you are sitting up tall, bend the knees if you want.

Pull a little bit. It's back to that idea of the energy going out can allow you to connect in the middle more as well. Inhale. On this exhale, we're just gonna dive downwards, crown of the head toward the floor, backs of the legs into the ground. Arms basically just go forward.

They can lower a little, no big deal. Take an inhale for now. Keep the resistance to the side, and exhale. Come back up. I'll just do one more with that breath, slow.

So you can check out your resistance. Exhale forward. (breathes heavily) This is where it'd be really easy to let go. Think pinkies to the side of the room. Inhale, hold. Can you stretch further? Pull back further in your spine and then exhale.

Come back up. Subtle change for now. Roll down on that, exhale. Can you get any lower? You pull back with those front hip bones.

Can you get any lower? Come on. Don't just go where you normally go. Check yourself out, and then just inhale back up when you run out of air. That's the subtle change. (laughs) The point is get all of the air out. That's the point. Get the air out.

Get the air out. Exhale. Use the shape of your body to get the air out so that when you have to inhale, it's so natural to come up. (pants) Moving on, inhale. Exhale, go down. Go down.

From here, this is the one where we start to lengthen our spine on the diagonal. Not easy for me, but I love it. So we start from the table, and we go through the low back. Our arms are just following our spine. We come up to a long diagonal.

Don't worry about where your diagonal is. It might be almost vertical. And for some of you, it might be much lower than mine. Exhale. Round forward again, and roll back up. A lot of words in this one.

I'll do my best to not oversay it. Inhale, keeping the mild tension on the band. We exhale just to get the air out. Get your forehead, not your forehead, the crown of your head down. (laughs) Maybe, just kidding.

Inhale, lengthen your spine. Start at the tail, wanna go long. Go long. Get longer. Flex your feet. You can bend your knees. It's not a big deal. They won't even change it much.

Get your spine long. Exhale. Re-round and roll up. Go again. Exhale. (exhales deeply) Inhale. Press down on the legs maybe. Grow long in that diagonal. Can you get the upper arms by your ears?

Exhale. Re-round, and come back up. If you do, you'll start to fill your upper back, I hope. Let's say two more and then a little bit more after that. Exhale. (breathing deeply) I'll tell you. Where are your legs?

It's okay if they're bent, but drive the heels into the ground. Elongate your spine. Get a little millimeter further. And by further, I mean longer. Wherever you'd land, exhale and roll up.

I said, we'll do one more, and then we'll add a tiny bit of fun. Still got tension on the band a little bit. Exhale, down. Feet are flexed. Knees to the sky. I never said that, but try that too. Oh, elongate. I'm starting to feel my upper back.

Can you get any longer here? Stay here. Just stay here, and pull back a little bit more. A little bit more. Pulse it if you will. It's not fast. Three. Here's the four. Lean into it.

Here's five of 10. Get longer, like someone's pulling your wrists. I'll call this seven, eight, nine, 10. You thought we were done. We're not, rotate. Just take the entire spinal column, and look to one side.

Your arms went with you. Come back to center. Switch it. Other side, your hips aren't moving. Why would we do that? And center, that's enough for me.

Pull the arms back a little bit more. Lean into it a lot more. Exhale, round forward. And roll up. That's my fav. Thank you, Rael.

All right, into a open leg rocker with or without the band. I'm tempted to toss the band right now. I'm gonna tell you that, but I'm gonna give it a shot 'cause I don't mind having fun when I work out. I have to scoot forward. I'm wrapping this bottoms of my feet with a band.

I am an offer this right away though is you could do this holding the back of your thighs or even calves. And we're gonna rock back and forth. Sometimes a band can just give you a little bit of an opening for addressing an exercise differently. If you're doing it with the band, well, in any case, everybody slightly roll back behind the tailbone, but be long about, oh, sorry. Let me reset that up because the setup is everything.

You're as tall as you can be with knees bent right now. Then draw the pelvis back. So you're behind the tailbone, but you haven't really collapsed at all. Then if you're gonna play with the band, you're gonna pick up both legs. Otherwise, just use your hands to support behind the legs.

From here, I can't go super wide. I am gonna widen my feet a little. I'm gonna extend my legs. So wherever you are, start, just look at whatever's right in front of you, maybe a little bit above your feet. That's what you're gonna find when you come back up.

Do your best to keep your arms and your shape exactly as it is right now. We go. Roll back. (inhales deeply) Exhale up. Hold, hopefully. Roll back Come up.

Find that spot on the wall or the ceiling, wherever you were looking. And for those of you using the band, it's another example if you slightly push to the side, you don't have to do nearly as much with your hands, and the middle stays connected. See if that means anything to you in your work. Keep going. I'm gonna fit two more here. Back and up.

And one more back. And up. Hold when you get there. Is your back long? It's not arched. It's long and hopefully not super rounded in the upper back.

From there, can you just rotate the entire arm so the palms are up? We're still up, and just bend the elbows if you're using the band. If you're holding the back of your legs, just flex your biceps, and everybody flex your feet, no matter which position you're in. I'm just doing a couple more. It's your old row, right? One more.

Cool. Bend the knees. Set it down. Leave the band alone, meaning put it down. Sit right back up on the middle of your mat or wherever you are where you have room to widen your legs a little bit. And that you can do this all with me.

So our arms go right out to the side. Hopefully we're right upright. We rotate those arms. I'm gonna go upwards for now. Actually no, just keep them forward. Rotate to your right. Reach outside that little toe.

Keep weight on the other side and push the back arm up as it reaches. Come up to the rotation, and center. We rotate. Reach. Sit up.

And center, and rotate, reach, sit up, and center. Do something different on this one. Meaning let's keep the hips anchored, but maybe you can find energy behind you, reaching. And I do think of something heavy, pushing it up And center. I just wanna find more room in the body I have.

Two to go. (exhales heavily) Center, last one. And up. Feet together, fingers face your heels ideally. You might need to turn them out, or you might need to be on your fist.

That's all cool. I'm trying to get that computer stretch, so I am aiming indeed for the fingers facing the heels. Let's see what you got. Here we go. Our feet are together. I am attempting to sort of lengthen the tops of my legs.

Before we go up, we're just lifting up and down, I'm anchored in my hands, and that does matter 'cause I wanna start this with straight arms if I can. If I can get there, I even try and inch them back a bit more. Here we go. We are simply using our entire backside to lift up. We're looking on, oh, somewhere upwards, but not behind and hinge to come down.

Flex your feet. Keep your hands there. I do like a little finger stretch there, too. Heels of the hands go down. We lift up again. (inhales deeply) Exhale, sit down. Flex the feet, flex the fingers or whatever that version of the hand would be.

Lift up. And down. Stretch. Last one here. Lift up. Sit down.

Flex, let the arms come up. This time, the entire arm does turn over. Palms are up. Feet are flexed. Feel free to bend them, the knees. And we are going to the front for a spine twist.

It's exhale, exhale, center. Exhale, exhale, center. Press, press, it's all about the spine. If you think it's nothing, you can put your hands behind your head and make sure that you are really doing it just from your spine and not from swinging the arms. One more each way, please.

Feet aren't changing, right? You wouldn't do that. There it is. Relax it. We're going onto our side. I'm gonna leave the band out of it. We don't need to be fancy all the time.

I wanna do just a bit of side quick here. So let's go to our elbow. I'm doing the version I've been doing lately 'cause I enjoy it. And that's part of this workout, plus it's just solid. Elbow, forearm straight out from your elbow.

You're lifted. Your hip's just back. You lift that top leg, kicking forward and back. It's kick, kick forward, back, back. Flexing forward if you only care about the foot and back, back, but really trying to just let your hip be free a little bit, but nothing else gets to be free at this one, in this version. I'm only doing one more, so enjoy it.

Take it back, hold it back. Check out that it is back, and that you are not back. Just the leg is back. So your hips are still stacked. From there, press the hamstring back.

10, nine, eight's small, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one. Just switch sides. Just switch sides. I would encourage you to stay facing front 'cause who knows what I'll do next. I mean, it's better if you can see sometimes.

I have my lower knee at 90, right off the hip, top legs reached out, standing tall. And we kick forward. Flex, flex. Ooh! Different, wagging back, two, two, and back. Three three, let's go six. Four, four.

And finally, take it back, hold it back. Really push it back, and maybe think top hip pushes forward. Then fix yourself after that, keeping the leg back there. In other words, don't be in a super rotation, but just fix it after that. 10 back, one.

It's just the the bone, the hamstring, anything just back. Here's three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And 10. Hugging these in. Ah, do we need yet? No, we don't.

Just go face down, face down. And by face down, I should have said come up to your elbows. Your belly is on the floor or near it. Legs are straight. I like to walk my elbows forward just a touch here so that I'm not worried too much about my low back.

Although it's not really that. It's almost 'cause I can get into the upper back more. So I'm gonna encourage that as we continue with this extension. All right, so arms are forward. You are gonna draw the abdominals up, reach the legs long, as if they're being pulled.

Then here's the fun part. Come down a little. We're not sinking in the shoulders, but it's like a subtle like, okay, I'm just gonna rest my abs and then reach your chest through your arms. You can almost draw the forearms backwards, like you're gonna literally drag yourself forward. Look wherever it feels natural, but not at the floor. That probably feels natural. So I take that back.

Look forward a little bit. Six feet, two feet on the ground. Hover both knees. Do whatever you want with your hands. Kick one foot to your butt.

One, one, straighten, switch. One, one, straighten. Nothing else moves. Find the hamstring. Alternating each side, kick, kick. Kick, kick.

Imagine you could take your elbows off the ground and hold yourself with your upper back. I'm still doing the leg thing, and it's kick, kick, straighten. Kick, kick, push, pull, pull, push. Pull, pull, push. One more, each leg. Even yourself out, if I wasn't with you.

Come on down. Turn your cheek to one side, lacing the fingers behind your back. Take them up as high as you can and try to get your elbows down. You can rest your head. I'm not going to based on the mic. All right, from here, draw the abs in again.

So the low back is long. You hover both legs. We wanna kick in three times, double leg stretch. One, two, three, and straighten the leg. Straighten your arms again. Look forward, but probably not as high as before.

Switch so you look the other way. Bend everything. Elbows to the ground theoretically. And one, two, three. Stretch long. You're like a dart, keeping the feet off the ground.

You don't have to, but I do. Switch, one. I mean, I don't either, but I am today. (laughing) Switch. (grunts) Kick, kick, kick, straighten. This is gonna be it. So if you're not even, I'll just pause for a second. I'ma put my tops of my legs on the ground.

I'm drawing more into the belly, which draws me down a little bit. That's okay. Let go of the hands. Gently take them out to a T position with the palms down. Rotate the entire arm.

Make that rotation come from the shoulders. So the thumbs are now going toward the ceiling. You can go lower with your chest. In fact, I want your sternum on the ground. Don't be, no need to be hero on this one.

Raise the arms up. 10. Nine. You can take them lower to your body. Five-ish, four, three, two, one. Just take the arms back however you want to towards your legs, then bring them right back over your head. Come on, go ahead.

It can be low. It's fine. Bend the elbows. Bring them right next to your side or under your head. Anything that allows you to let go for a second, just let go. Just relax.

And you can start thinking you made it 'cause you did. When you're ready, hands by your shoulders so you can use them. Draw the abdominals in. Use your legs, your knees to help you up to round back. Next week I'm gonna do a tiny bit more shoulder stuff.

And so to finish this off, I wanna go into a plank. Just to start getting us ready to really be able to do those pushups and all the other advanced work in Pilates. For now, we're in this rest position. Your arms reach them way out there. They're straight. Hands are ready to be used, and just curl the toes.

I just shifted my weight forward. Curl the toes under, and straighten both knees. And just hang out. You can even wobble side to side. Just get used to what it feels like to be in this position.

If you're always in this position, you can even do your pushups right now. But what I want to get is like, yes, my heels are flexed. My toes are getting that nice stretch. My arms are straight. My body is straight. Ooh, it wasn't. Now I think it is.

The idea that everything's involved, but nothing more than is needed. You're gonna hang out here, not that we would or even should, but here we are. So soon we'll be playing with that a little bit more. But for now, just draw the abs in. Is it the abs? I don't know.

Pull your chest up. Look down, look towards your feet. We're coming back to our feet with our hands, walking ourselves back. You might need to walk forward if you came off your mat. Hang for a second.

Bend the knees. Straighten the knees. Bend the knees. Get closer to thighs. Straighten the knees. Bend the knees. Hang out with the bent knee.

Can you go even lower? Lower? Lower? I used to be able to do it. I don't know if I can't anymore, but where you could lift your hands and actually sit all the way down.

Ooh, that's something we'll work on, too. Then take your hands back on the floor, and straighten your legs. While we're here, let's bend the right knee only. Keep the left foot down. (hands smacking) And shift into that left hip.

Like I said, bent the right knee. I didn't let the whole foot roll out on the left side, but I did shift weight over to the left hips. Almost like there's no weight on my right, almost. Woo! A little bit of stretch there for me. We're changing, so I came back to center. The left knee bends. The right leg is still straight.

I'm hopefully not leaning back too far. Remember how we started. Then shift that hip over to the right. So left knee's bent, right leg's straight, shifting hip to the right. Both feet are down.

Oh, and relax your head. (laughs) Too many words. I know. Can't help it. Back to center. Bend both knees. Slide your hands up feet. Pet yourself a little bit, and with help from your hands, but also certainly just naturally roll yourself up. (sighs) Shake out whatever you need to, stand tall.

And take a deep breath. Stand however you want. Be however you want, but be nice to yourself. Exhale, down, last one here. Just a deep breath all together. (breathes deeply) And may you enjoy the rest of whatever you're doing today or tomorrow. Thanks for being here.

Hopefully, see you next week. Bye.