Standing Mat Variations

So welcome to my class on standing polarities. I have been, um, teaching standing Palladio um, from the beginning of my career, which was over 30 years ago and when I first started teaching mat work, the standing work was always a part of the Palladio's work. Then when things became very popular, I people started to say, oh no, no, the traditional work is just the mat work and we just want to see them at work. So for Awhile I was simply teaching Matt, Matt and more Matt. Um, then a few years ago people said, Oh yeah, we love that standing work. Could you bring that back?

So now I was just teaching a standing class and I'm thinking, what's wrong with this picture? The ideal program includes standing and met work. So we're going through all the variations of the body. And for anyone who says, well, the standing is not traditional, they should check out the DVDs and the old films of Mr Palati. He's doing his standing program in the woods. It's really fun.

It's really great to watch. But most of the work we have on film with him is Mr Pilati is doing standing work. So this program is a combination of the standing and the mat and it also, um, is based upon the original work that I learned over 30 years ago. We always begin and it was always taught to me to begin with the alignment of the body. So we're going to stand and bring our, our feet together and we want to think about the, the foundation of the body and the feet being so important for the way we stand, walk, move and carry ourselves. So we want to think about forming a triangle from under the big toe and little toe and back to the center of the heel on both feet, big toe, little toe, back to the center of the heel. And it's not enough just to think about that, but you really want to distribute your body weight into that triangle so that it prevents us from rolling in or out on our feet.

The next thing we want to do is make sure that as we're standing, we're not locking our knees back so that we want to make sure that we have the kinetic energy of the body passing through the center of the joint. Um, next we want to really think about the placement of our pelvis. We want to think about the pelvis as a bowl of water filled to the very, very top so that at any place on this bowl that water could run out of front, back, even side to side. So when we're thinking about this nice pelvis, we want to maintain that alignment all the way around the circumference of a bowl. Then we think about pubic bone to navel and navel to spine. And there's a big misconception about navel to spine.

It was never meant to be this tight constriction of pulling navel to spine, but it was a to be the idea of the energy traveling from the front of the body to the back of the body. And from master teacher Kathy Grant, she always told me to think about from your belly button to just below the Vertebra. At your waistline and make a light mental connection there so that it tends to allow the tailbone to drop down to the floor. The next thing she always said was, think about having a heavyweight on the tailbone so that the tailbone is not allowed to tip or talk, but just really reaches down to the floor. Next we elongate the space from the top of the hipbone to the bottom of the rib cage, making sure that the body is actively alive, but again, light, lightly lifted. As Mr Palati said that the body should be ready for the unexpected, so the muscles should always be lightly activated.

Next we want to think about the shoulders. So we want to place the shoulders over the hips so that we're not rolling the shoulders forward north, thrusting the ribcage out. And finally, the placement of the head on top of the spine is very important to prevent us from jetting the head forward. So we want to make sure that we have that nice line from the top of the body all the way through. And as Clara [inaudible] used to say, you must always check it up. Meaning when you are doing movement, when you're doing your exercises, you really always want to be aware of the wholeness of the body through movement. So that's what we want to have as are our guiding goals for our class today is to really be thinking about our connections and the way we are doing what we are doing. So now that we have a nice full body alignment, let's bring the feet just under the hips, maintain those triangles and let the arms float up as they come up. Don't change that alignment from the shoulders or the ribs so we're not lifting or thrusting. And now let's begin our roll down.

This we want to do by lengthening that space and keeping the the bowl of the pelvis still and steady as we roll up and away from it, the shoulders are down. We rounding the back and pulling, keeping naval up to spine, but also imaging. Then heavyweight on the tailbone when we're rolling and stretching all the way over. Keep Navel to spine. The hollowness in the low abdominals, tailbone down to the floor. Nice deep breathing. Inhaling and exhaling normally, naturally as we roll the spine up. Remember we don't lock the knees but we keep the alignment from the hips to the knees as we come up. Now once again, rotate through the shoulder girdle and let the arms float to the ceiling.

Again, round it, close the ribs, keep that space long as you roll the spine over and image that if you are standing against the wall, the tailbone could not move forward or back at the table and would stay onto the wall like an inhale and exhale as we begin that long journey rolling up, keeping navel to spine and roll. Shoulders down, but arms float back to the ceiling and again we laying thin the spine. We're reaching as if you're rounding over a giant ball, not letting the tailbone go back or front, but keeping that alignment and once again we're going to roll the spine up. Think of this as the roll up from the floor so that we are thinking that as we are doing the movement, we are keeping the body in complete alignment. Because if we were on the floor we would not be allowed to push back because the floor would prevent us from doing that movement. Let's bring the arms down from this um, aligned position as do some of our traditional mat works.

So the first thing we're going to do is take a nice deep breath, keep our abdominals tight, keep the torso long and let's take the leg up, right leg comes up and it in Andy enough. Feel the balance on the other leg. Feel how you need those foot centers. The leg is going to now extend out and come down. Try not to shift the weight but keep the pelvis in that nice neutral alignment and inhale and inhale a long ass hell and inhale, inhale, long exhale, watched the alignment and inhale, inhale, long exhale and inhale. Inhale, long exhale again. Inhale, inhale and along acts. How so?

You see that if in fact we are shifting as we do this, that we are losing our base of support from uh, the alignment, shifting the weight. So we want to keep that Nice, neutral pelvis. We want to keep the weight aligned into the foot centers so that as we begin this movement, which your we're going to do now with a single breath, we want to make sure we're not shifting or moving, but maintaining our alignment through our core muscles. Let's begin. Inhale, exhale down, and inhale, exhale down. And inhale, exhale, and inhale. Exhale down. Inhale, beautiful down. And inhale, exhale down. And inhale, exhale down. Inhale, exhale down. Inhale, exhale down. Inhale, exhale down. One more. And Inhale, exhale, n come down. Very nice, very good, very secure. We didn't have anyone falling to the floor yet, but we will see.

Alright, next movement. We want to now work with the work of the alignment from the foot and the ankle. So that same lift for coming up once again, keeping that the hips bolted so we're not leaning into it. Maintaining alignment of the, the, uh, foot as our base of support. And we're just going to roll onto the ball of the foot. Let's bend both knees.

Now. Once again, as we're bending, we're going to go straight down and straight up. We want to make sure that we're not tipping forward, putting too much weight on the forward knee or tipping back so that as you, once again, we're using our core muscles to maintain that alignment as if we're sliding up and down a pole and bend and straighten one more time and bend and straight and feel how the activation of the core muscles really maintained your stability. Bring your leg up and roll the foot down. Let's do the other side. Take it up and take it back in behind you. Lengthening the spine and we're going to go down and up once again.

Now feel that you are on the foot center, on the back foot so that you're not allowing the ankle or heel or knee to roll inward or outward. Now that's going to come from that power of the core muscles, maintaining the alignment so that we're not putting all our weight into the legs, but we're supporting ourselves through the core and bring the leg up and roll it down. The next one we're going to do is going to take the same positioning from the beginning, but instead of the ball of the foot, we're going to go onto the top of the foot. Now it's Incruse. She'll in this position that we do not lean too far forward. More importantly, do not lean back. If in fact you do, you're going to feel too much weight or pressure on the foot behind you. Let's begin. That's like linkedin it up and take it to the back.

Then in straighten, nice deep breathing and once again, feel that you're sliding up and down the pole. Feel the stretch through the foot, and for some of your clients, you may want to allow them to hold on to a a bar or a counter so that they have more support, but it's really excellent work for your balance. One more time, down and up and lift and rural through the foot. Lift to the other side like comes up, find your balance point and take you to the back. Anchoring and bend. Of course we have nice deep breathing all the way through as if you're sliding up and down a pole.

We're watching the position on the foot behind us so that the ankle is not turned inward or outward and that the heel is directly under the knee. We're bending too straight and inhale to exhale. Now you steep breathing, full core alignment two to go. Bend it down, push and lengthen yourself up. Bend down, lengthen yourself up. Ring the like up, up, up, and roll through your foot. The Mermaid is next. We're going to bring the feet out in a nice comfortable position.

The toe slightly turned out and we'll just take the work to the side. So we're going to lengthen through the hips and stretch the body over. Now we want to slide down as if you're sliding your fingertips down the side of your body, down the leg and coming straight up. Shoulder remains over, shoulder stretch, stretch, stretch, and lift to come up. Lengthen it out, linked and all the way over to the side. Lift and stretch up. Lengthen it out, stretch it over, and lift to come up. Now we want you to think about this movement as really doing the side bend for our nice waistline work. So the next part of it as well, take the arm behind the head and we will stretch down and up.

Stretch down and up. Stretch down and up and stretch down. Change side, stretch down, lift up, reach it down, take it up. We're reaching up and over really length into the side of the body. Last one and come, uh, let's repeat this now, but we're going to bring the feet together and we're going to first add an arm reach. So instead of the arm staying in this position as we go out, let's reach the arm out and pull it back in. Reach it out and pull it back in. Exhale over.

Inhale up and hips. Remain in alignment. Watch your core and change sides reaching out and region a longer stretch up. Good. And reach it directly to the side. That's one out and in. Now let's add the foot with that shall we?

So as we go out we'll go and we'll bring the foot out and bring both arms out into a modified serve position and pull it back in and take it out and pull again. Now because we have maintained the alignment through the core and through the foot, we are going to make sure that we are at state with that alignment so that the foot will lift and lower lift and lower reach long and lower into the star reach and come in other side. So we just slide the foot and pull it back and slide the foot. Exhale, inhale back and reaching them. Very nice.

One more time and now find your out in an stretch. Pull it in. There's one side more difficult than the other. That's where we find our balance and work really long to find symmetry and harmony in the body. So that is the mermaid working in to the star. The next we'll separate the feet again just a little bit and we'll work on the standing saw.

This is a great movement from when we are standing as well as in the mat work. So we're going to take the arm up and we're going to take a long inhalation and we're going to reach down and over. Now as we are reaching, we keep the opposing hip in alignment so the hip is not churning with the body. That is your anchor point. The other arm flow tie to the ceiling and we're going to just reach past the little toe and pass. It'll to pass into a head in line with the spine, navel to spine, roll up, dredge up and your gaze is going to be going down toward your toe. Come up and stretch it over. Head in line with the spine.

Good. Keep the navel to the spine and keep that hip back. Very nice. Stretching, stretching, stretching and roll the spine up you TOEFL and change sides. Again, lengthen, inhale, exhale and stretch. So you're feeling your anchor point and reaching away from that, getting that long lengthening stretch and reach it and stretched to pull up, round up and changed sides. Lengthen up and over round the back and get a nice diagonal stretch.

The more you hold that hip back, the more stretchy we'll get. Reaching stretching. It's not a bounce. It's a long lengthening reach as you're climbing closer to that toe every single time. Roll the spine up and roll it up. Let's do one more on each side and come around and down. Very nice and once again would keep the head in line with the spine.

There you go. So your gaze is just going to follow that line from the neck through the top of the head and reach it longer. Reach it longer and roll the spine up last time. Linkedin high. Inhale up. Exhale and stretch the body over. Hips in alignment, navel to spine. Nice strong breath with each movement.

Remembering it. It is not a bounce but a lengthening, stretching movement. The opposite are the top arm is floating high to the ceiling and hold it there and roll the spine up. One arm comes down, other arm comes up and will lower in to the center. Very, very nice. Next exercise is called the butterfly. We do it both standing and in Mat class.

I love this exercise. It's a Kathy Grant, um, movement and it comes from placing hands behind the head lengthening. And once again, watching the um, core alignment. The rib cage is um, we're not allowing the rich to flail out, but we're keeping the ribs lightly in keeping this space a long gated from the rib cage to the hips. We're going to lengthen upward and we're going to stretch to the side. So lift up first and stretch over to aside and reach the torso to lift it.

Center lengthen and stretch the elbow down toward the waist. Reach it out to the side window and back into the center. Lengthen and stretch over and the length and the torso and reach to come back up and lengthen the torso and more rigid over any length and even more to come back into center. Now lengthen the torso upward and go over to this side. Now we're going to stay in this position and this is, we're going to start to do our butterfly.

The top arm only is going to flap down and open up and flap down. Open wide to the ceiling, flap it down. The other elbow stays exactly where it is and flap it down. Open storage more and lift center. Come on up and over.

Maintain your alignment and let's begin. Exhale, flap down in hound you get up and make sure the whole body is perfectly aligned. Reached down and open and we got open even more higher, higher, higher fly, fly, fly out and up. Okay, so now we're going to start flying, not just flapping. Lift up, stretch over. Now this time we're going to take the whole movement down towards your knee. Follow that movement along the floor.

Follow it up the side wall. Go high to the ceiling, higher to the ceiling and land in the center. Lengthen yourself upward. Go over to the side first. Fly down to the floor, rotate around, climb up the sidewall, climb up the ceiling. You look great. Higher to the ceiling. So there's a little bit of extension in this position.

Lengthening into the center, lift it up and stretch it over and fly it down. And reach along the floor, up the side wall, up higher to the Cla and in to the center up in Dover. And when you say tomorrow that you feel an exercise, it'll be this one and take it along the floor. Remember, the hip is resisting the movement so that you're getting out long twist along the spine and into the center. Okay, now we're going to take it over to the side. Fly down to the floor, reverse the movement so you can go to the opposite window along the floor, along the floor, along the floor and up the side window and land in the center. Lift up over. Go down to the floor, rounding the back of the naval station to the spine. Reverse your movement.

Go the other way, up the sidewall and in to the center. Lifted high and stretch it over. Reach down. Beautiful and reverse. Come around. Very nice. Reach up through the center lanes in this behind the a little bit more and reach into the center. Once again, take it over to the side, reach down to the floor and reverse them. It goes to the side. Reverse the movement and go around and come up and up and up and lace it in to the center. Very nice and it feels so good.

So now that we've done all of that nice rotation, we're going to continue to work with rotating basically ribcage right around the spine. And this is spine twist, the arm of typical mat exercise that we do and we want to now image that there is a straight line from your fingertips to your fingertips and that we can't break that line, that it is as secure and steady as a pole. So if you did have a pole across your shoulders and reaching out to your fingers, this would not be possible because the pole would not move. So they want you to really image at that pole is across the shoulders. And actually that's how I learned this exercise with a pole across my shoulders. So we're going to lengthen her torso, keep the hips where they are, taking nice deep breath and we're going to twist and we're going to reach on four counts. One, keep the hip where it is and keep the arms where they are.

So you're really rotating that ribcage right around the spine. Inhale and exhale to come back. Long exhalation and hold. Inhale up and take a long, long, long exhalation. Keep the arms where they are. Try and keep the hip back and inhale, lengthen the spine and exhale, exhale, exhale and place and inhale, taken enough air to complete your movement rotation on the exhalation.

Inhale rotation as you come into the center on an exhale. Inhale and exhale. Use the breath with the movement. Use it. Press the hip back. Very nice head stays in line with the spine. Inhale, come back into the center. Let's just do one more time each side. Lengthen it up.

Remember that's a full full inhalation so that the exhalation carries you all the way through. Feel it under the rib cage. Take a long breath and rotate it back into the center one more time and lengthen and remember we've got that long pole. The arms cannot move independently. They move only because the spine is rotating ticket up and in to the center and arms lightly float down. The next movement is Chris Cross, so green to once again bring the feet into the parallel position and we're now using all of that rotation that we've been working on and putting it to use with movement from the legs. So we want to take the arms and place them once again behind the head.

We're going to take the leg out and as we come up we go across the body and go across one, two, three extend your leg out and take it down other side balance and come across one, two, three. Take it out and take it down and balance and lift and come across the body. One, two, three, very good, accented and come down one more time. It takes a lot of strength and all making sure that we have that alignment through the core and through the pelvis so that we keep it all the way through to three and take it out and take it down. Let's now do just a single, come up, out, down, come up, out, down. Come up, out, down. Come up, out, down. Come up, out, down. Come up, out, down. Come up, out, down. Very nice. Up, uh, down. Lift.

Read down, up, out, down. Lift eight more and lift and come down. Bring the arms out and come all the way down. It's challenging. It's challenging on the core muscles. It's challenging on balance and it's challenging through the rotation of your move. Okay, so we're going to now bring a feed at a comfortable distance apart with a slight turnout. This is the standing body twist. And again, this is a traditional exercise I learned so many years ago.

It's absolutely one of my favorite exercises. So we're going to stand and the first part of the exercise, we just going to lift up onto the ball of the foot and lower the heels down. Now as you lift, make sure you're feeling this from the core muscles you're going to need to call upon them as we go through the movement. If your legs are too wide, when you go up, if you're feeling unbalanced, pull your heels in just a little bit. One more time. Lengthen. Now as we're going up, we are going, once he straight up, there's no movement to the front or the back with the body. So we have perfect balance. Just lightly touch the heels.

Take the movement. Ah, now we're going to rotate all the way around, all the way around. So you're going 180 degrees. So once you're facing the opposite wall, lower the heels down, but not until you get there. Inhale and you're going to exhale and take the arm and reach down. Softening the front knee to the back foot. Come back up from that position.

Lift onto the toes and rotate. Once again, all the way around, all the way around and lower the heels down. Let's go the other way. Take it up. Rotate the body around. I know it's tough all the way, all the way, all the way. You're going to keep going. Keep going. And now lower the heels down. Take the front arm to the back foot and come back up. This one goes to the back foot.

Back to there. There it is. Watch your head alignment. I gotcha. And come back up from here. Arms are out. Lift the body and turn and turn and lower. Let's go the other way. It's challenging, but it's fun.

Lift it in the back. Yes. Come around. Come around, come around more. All that rotation we've been doing. We really need it now. Now lower the heels now. Yes, you get to soften the knee as you go to the back foot. Beautiful. Soften that front knee. Reach it down and back. Good work. Come back up and lift onto the ball.

The foot rotated all the way around. Oh all the way around and lower it down. Let's do one more to each side. Lift it up and rotate. Rotated around all the way. Good. Go further, further, further, and lower the heels down and soften the knee as we go to the back foot.

Very, very nice. Bring the arms up, come up and rotate it around. Rotate and we have one more each side. Let's go up. Take it around all the way with heels lifted, he'll stay up until you get to your position. Then the heels come down, the body goes all the way back into over. We lifted back up to the center, we lift the heels, find our balance point, rotate all the way back and around and lower the heels. Last one, take it up, rotate it out and around, out and around. Very, very nice. Once you're in that position, lower the heels and stretch the body over.

Nice, deep breathing, stretching, long. Beautiful. You got it. And come up, lift the heels, rotate around, rotate around and lower to come down. Very, very nice. Once again, that is such a favorite exercise of mine. I enjoy it so very much. Okay, now we are going to bring the feet back into the parallel. It can just be a hip distance apart. Nice long, long spellings. Bring the arms in, reach them all the way up. Take a nice inhalation and let's once again do our roll down.

Rolling. Once again, pulling into the sternum ruling all the way over, easily coming down and breathing naturally with a fluid breath. Neat the breath. Match the movement as we begin to roll the spine back up, navel to spine, tailbone nice and long toward the floor. All of that initial alignment is with us as we begin the program and as we finish our standing, let's go again. Lengthen the spine and reach and stretch all the way over. Stretch it down nice and long.

Nice debriefing as we stretch. Inhale, exhale and begin the journey up without locking the knees. Feel the alignment of the foot to the knee. Feel the alignment through the pelvis. Watch the pelvic alignment through the hips, through the shoulders, and let the arms float up so that as we finished our standing movement and bring the arms down, we have the same alignment that we started our program with. Let's continue now on to the floor. Drop the shoulders down, roll the body over, rule it down.

Take an inhale and an exhale, and now this time soften the knees, bend them and lift up onto the ball of the foot. From that position. Lower the heels down and let's sit down on her nuts. So we're going to now begin the mat work section of the program and we want to, uh, in this program on emphasizing a lot of work on, on our lateral and side movements. So we're going to begin of course with abdominal contractions and with the um, an easy rolling positions. So we're going to sit up nice and tall and arms.

They're out in, up, and we're going to roll back very slowly, curling the Cha, the tailbone under, and feeling that just as small of the back. Go down. Now from here as Mr Polite always told us one vertebra at a time. So if you need some support, you may walk yourself down your thighs to come down to your role position. Bring the arms up now when they are here, up to the ceiling. Inhale now exhaling, just really drop them into the shoulder joint so that you're really feeling a connection all the way through from the pelvis, through the shoulders and to the top of your head. Let your arms float back, bring your arms up and make that contraction in the upper body to pull the upper body up. If you need to at this point, hold onto the thighs and roll yourself up and gently over gently over and keep the background did now roll back. Now once again, come down one vertebra at a time. Slowly rolling.

If you need the support, use your body so that we're not hopping over the places that we tend to miss, but we're allowing the body training the body to go through its full range. Let's go up one more time and use less pressure on the hands. Each time you come up and each time you roll down supporting yourself, but training the muscles who go through the full range of articulation and the roll down. This time we're well down. Emily will bring the legs out, extending them nice and long. Brittany arms now out at the sides of your body at shoulder level and take your leg up to the ceiling. And now, once again, level the pelvis level of shoulders.

Keep the body aligned without changing the level of the hips without letting the hip come up. You're going to take your leg out to the side of the body and lifted back up out to the side and lift it back up. Inhale to stretch and exhale and lift and Halan stretch yet. Exhale and lift it. Now keep it in that position and lift your arm up.

Lift your head up. Now in one piece, roll your torso up and over so that we are still on your mat. Now for me, this is pretty dangerous because if I don't do it right, I'm falling on the floor. So now from here we'll take the leg to the back and the arm to the front and we'll bring the leg front and we'll bring the leg back and we'll bring the leg from oh, sorry. Front and we'll bring the leg back and again, sweep it front and back. Good. Try not to move that hip, dry or sway the body. Good and front hip, over hip and shoulder over shoulder, which is going to make the range of motion a bit smaller and back. Now from that position, the leg is to the back and the arm is to the front.

From there in one piece, once again, roll the body up so that we are still on our mat and let's take that leg and lower it down. Other leg comes up and arms are out at the side over to the side and lift to this side and lift to this side and lift to the side and the lift the head, neck and shoulders. Let's do our roll. Now you should be in this still in the center of your mat. Roll it, roll it really very nice. Or you're still aligned at the front of your mat. Bring the leg down, leg, back, and arm front. So once again, we want to make sure that we're just making that nice line, but we're not letting the hip move too much.

So arm is going to come to the back. As the leg goes front and leg goes back, arm goes front. Very nice. Little more stability in your hip and reach. Very good. And reach to the front, reach around and reach again and reach front. Very nice. Now from that position, keeping the leg to the back, let's rotate it like comes up, roll the body, roll it in one piece and you are all still on your math leg.

Comes down other leg up, arm up, head up, roll again onto the first side. Very, very nice. So now we're going to bring that leg down and keep the buddy in that alignment and bring the leg to the center of the the torso so it's very, very long. Now the bottom leg is going to come a few inches to the front and we're going to take now the arm they had can be resting on the arm or we can simply fold the arm in. Arm can be straight or out. And from here we're going to point the like up and flex to reach down, point the leg up and flex to reach down. Point up, flex down and point a flex. Now flex up. Now as you point, reach it very long away from the body.

Flex and point and reach away from the body. Flex up and point to each away from the body for the ax it up and point. Reach it long, reach it down. Now let's take the leg straight out of the hip and keeping shoulder over shoulder and hip over him. We're going to walk the leg to the front. Now the leg should stay right off of the hip at hip level and then we'll reach and take it back and front, front and flex back pointed front, front.

Flex back one more front point point and now add the flex front. Flex front point to the back. Flex front point at back flex front and point. Very nice. Let's do our bicycle movement. So now we're going to take the leg and we'll bend it in.

We'll extend it front and we'll flex the foot as we sweep it around. Now the important thing here is as you been, do not tip the pelvis so we're not letting the knee drop down or the foot come up. So we're going to pull it in, stretch it front and keep the leg on that level all the way back and through. Bend it to extend. Go through a full range of motion, but keep people over hip and shoulder over shoulder. One more time, front extended and sweep to the back. Now let's go the other way. Take it to the front, fold the leg and bring it back and around. Making sure that we keep the knee, hip and foot on the same plane as we take it all the way to the back, all the way around and one more time.

Bend it and push the leg back and take it around. Now go take the body into your straight line again. Stir recce out. Bring your arm at shoulder level, other le top leg up, arm up. Roll once again in one long piece and lower the leg down and other side comes up. Arm up or roll it over and roll it over.

Very nice. From this position we will continue. Leg comes down and we can have the arms over the head or the top arm supporting us. Head can also be down. Find the position that you feel the most alignment in your core to get the most work for your body. Take the bottom leg front point to flex down, pulling up, flex down, hip over hip, shoulder over shoulder and reach. And now flex it up and point as it comes down, it should go past the other foot.

So we're getting a long reach out of the hips and working the body lies and long into our sweeps. We're going to take the leg to the front and it's a point point flex to come back and point, point flex to come back, reach it long. Very nice. And one more time and reach to come back. Flex to the front now and point. Push through the air as if it's a solid space and imagine really working on your own body, getting the most out of your muscles. Flexing Front v deep, deep breathing and flex it front and exhale to the backlist bicycle.

So we're going to band, remembering not to move the hip so that the foot stays directly behind the knee and extends out from the hip. And sweep it all the way around to bend it and extend it and sweep it all the way around and bend, extend. Watch the hip alignment. Watch the torso. Keep the shoulder over, shoulder and hip over hip and now will reverse our bicycle. Take it to the front bend and push behind you. Nice deep breathing.

A full breath pattern for each cycle that you do around. Then press. Sweep it around in back one more time. It's front and reach it and stretch to the back. Okay. Leg over leg, hip over hip. Bring that arm out at shoulder level.

Other arm up to the ceiling like comes up and roll yourself back in to the center. Lower the leg down, lift the other leg. Nice deep breathing. We're going to once again go to the side so the head comes up and open the leg slightly. Roll it over to the side one more time. Very, very nice. So now on this time as lower the leg down and bend your knees in.

Okay. Get a nice long stretch on the body and we're going to take the bottom arm that our head was resting on and place it across our rib cage, other arm in front of the body. Yes, we are doing our lateral push up now being the kind person that I am even start with the hand fairly high. Um, yes, under the [inaudible] just on your shoulder level and take a nice deep breath. Keep shoulder over shoulder, hip over hip. The leg position is wherever they're comfortable so that as long as they aren't nicely aligned, uh, some people find it better to have them in some people have them out. Wherever your position is because you need all the help you can get and push up.

Just straighten the front arm and come down and push up and come down and push up. Exhale and inhale down. Know just as we learned this exercise in texting you want to do is move your arm down about three inches. So it's kind of in front of your other elbow and push up and come down and push up and come down and push up. Very good and come down. And we have one more set. [inaudible] three more inches down, eh? Yeah.

All right about there. Very nice. Let's go and [inaudible] push up and come down and push up and down and push up and come [inaudible] all the way down. So now from that position, let's take the arm out, place it back under the head and the other arm is in front of the body. Legs are still bent, but we want to push them slightly away from the body. Hip over hip and the top leg.

Now we're going to just open the top leg so we're opening it up and closing it down and opening up high to the ceiling. Closing it down, open it up, close it down and open it up and close it down. Open it up now without changing anything. Lift and lower. Lift and lower both legs, lift and lower. Lift and lower lift. Extend the top leg.

We'll close it and lower lift. Extend the top leg and come down. Lift. Extend the top leg and load it down. One more time. Lifted if beautiful. And now my favorite lift.

Instead both legs come in and down. Lift. Extend them out, good in and down. Lift and extend. Pull in and down. Last time lifted. Extend, come in and come down. Lifted. Stand and hold. Scissors, small scissor kicks, small scissor kicks, length in the body. Remember not to be allowing the body to sink into your map, but to be lifting all the way through. Take the top arm out, oh over the body.

Continue the scissors and pull the legs back in and lower them down. Pull into the center and come up center. Extend out. And let's go to the other side. Push up. He's facing Europe at fishing these good. That way you can really watch what's going on.

Alright, such a beautiful challenge. Shoulder over shoulder, hip over here. Knees are bad and the hand is hopefully not past your head as he tried to creep down. So let's be in and exhale and inhale down and exhale up and held down and exhale up and inhale down. When we move that hand down, three about three inches. So he goes like, isn't that about this much? He went. No, I think a little, I think three inches is a little more than that and come up and down to lift and lower. Exhale up and inhale down. Come down again and exhale up.

Inhale down. Exhale up. Inhale down. One more time. Exhale and inhale. Take it kid all the way down. All right, so now once again, resting here, knees stay bent. Light fingertips on the front. Arm, shoulder over shoulder and leg simply opens up. So we're going to open so the knee goes right to the ceiling.

And then from the inner thigh muscles we close to come back down and lifted up and close to come down. Lift it up, close it down, lift it up, close it down. Lifting, hold both legs. Go Up and down and use your core and down. Try to keep very little weight on the front. Arm. Heat the throat. Open shoulder over shoulder and hip. Over hip. Now we he lifted up and it's the top leg that goes up.

Close down. Lift, extend, bend down, lift, extend, high bend and down and left. Extend Bend Net set. We lifted up and both legs extended long, pull them back in, take it down, lift up, push and extend and pull it in and down. Last time read. Inhale, you exhale and inhale to exhale. And now we go up and out and hold it there.

Scissors. Now remember we want to find that balance in the hips and across the shoulders. The arm is out nice and long. Sisera shoulders down, nick long breathe with it. Find your balance in your core and scissor, scissor, scissor, and lower the legs down. Pull the knees in toward the chest. Roll to your back.

So from this position, let's bring the legs up into that same position we were just in with the knees open, but the feet together and bring the knees toward the chest, slightly rolling back. So they were getting a stretch and our low back muscles neck is relaxed. Watch the position on the neck and the head. Now let's lift the head up into the movement and roll a little bit more just from a low abdominal contraction, stretching the low back muscles in this movement and now rule and come up. So from this position now we'll hold onto uh, the ankles or the outside of the leg and work with our rolling like a ball, which I think is one of the most misunderstood exercises ever.

Let's just roll back and roll up and roll back. Very nice. Roll it up one more time. Roll back. Unreliable. Now what Mr Pele said about this is that it should be vertebra, two vertebra, like the spokes of a wheel. So that we're really thinking about stretching vertebra and disc space to really get a lot of articulation in the spine. But so many of us, um, have spaces in our back where we're just really not rolling over as much as we should and we tend not to even realize this so much. We think, okay, that's, you know, we're, we're rolling and it feels just fine. So in order to maintain the roundness of this, fine, when you are rolling, let's do it this way. Instead of holding the legs, let's place the elbows onto the knees.

Now that space is going to maintain the distance of the shoulder to the knee through the role. So roll it back and roll it up and roll it back and roll it up one more time. Roll it back and roll it up. Yeah. The idea, and the goal here is to keep equal pressure all the way through the role. One more little hint is it's not, the spine doesn't end at your shoulders, does it? So let's end add the neck and the cervical spine into it, elbows and placed the head on the hands. Okay. Equal pressure all the way through and roll it back and roll it up a little more difficult.

But you're maintaining the body design of the role and you're doing great. Does it feel a little different? You getting a little more in touch with your spine in the stretch. Roll it back, roll it up and hold it there. Very nice. Very nice. So you can see how much more you can get by just doing the exercises in a little bit more intense fashion, but also just maintaining the principles of maintain body design and alignment and never, um, just go through range of motion at the expense of your body awareness.

So speaking of awareness, let's do some teasers. So the teaser is, um, it is of course one of my favorite exercises, uh, probably cause I've done so many in my life, but in any case, one of the ways I learned the teaser and it's my favorite favorite one, is we're sitting up out of our hips, we bend the knees, we roll back until we find where we are strongest in our core, where we can support movement, where the legs are so light that they simply will lift up off of the Mat. From there, one light comes up, the other leg comes up, we walk our fingers down to the toes, we let it go and there is your teaser position, fold the legs in and lifted up. So this was how Mr [inaudible] taught the teaser position. It wasn't to lie on your back and hop up to your tailbone.

It was always to maintain this curl in the pelvis to maintain, not to get off of the tailbone and uh, and to find your extension. Now what? Once you learn that you do it from different positions, which we will continue to do. But this is the best and safest way to do a teaser. And it's also successful for every student. So let's begin. So tell roll back, find your core.

Find the strength of your core. Bring the legs in this time. Let's take both legs together. Slide your fingers to your toes, reached long toward the toes, reach it out. Very nice. This time let's lower the straight legs and bring the body up. Round your back. Fold the legs in. They extend the legs out. Bring the arms up, lower the legs, lengthen the torso, round your back.

Bring your legs in. Lift them, extend them. Stretch longer. Take a breath, reach the arms high. Now Higher and higher. And at the legs come down and sit up nice and tall. Isn't that wonderful? And Are you feeling your hip flexors? Are you fitting? No. Where do you feeling what you're supposed to be feeling?

That is to me the most powerful of all of the teasers. And it is traditional. It is directly from the archives of Mr Paulie's. Um, so now that we have that, do you think I'm going to stop there? No, I will not. So this um, movement, again, this is a Kathy grant teaser and um, it's a really, really beautiful movement. So what we are going to do is we're going to sit up tall and we, it's a combination of rowing and teaser. So from this position we roll back again. You find where you are the strongest in your core. You bring your arms out, you bring your legs up, you bring your hands to the legs.

We lengthen it out and we sit nice and tall. Roll yourself back. Beautiful. Open the arms out. Let the legs float up, circle the arms to the legs. Inhale and bring the arms high, lowering down. Roll yourself back. Reach the arms out.

Let the legs float. If you're in your core place, the legs will come up. Bring me arms front and lower town linkedin any upwards. That's the point of this whole idea. You get to your core strength. You don't fight with the movement. Let the movement flow from the deep core muscles to the extremities rather than gripping into the hip flexors and saying legs go up.

It's a matter of body and mind working in harmony, the mind, not forcing the body to do something that's not feeling natural because the body's not going to do it. And the body also not just powering through it. So with that beautiful harmony, find it in your own body and then you'll be able to give it to your students. Let's do that one more time before we moved to the next teaser. We sit up very tall. We round to our strong point. We open the arms out.

We legs just simply float up maybe to a little bit higher. We bring the earns up, legs come down and open all the way out. The next one adds the spine. Stretch forward. It's the same movement, but we are now still progressing. So from here we'll bring the arms back behind us. As we round the torso in front of us, we'll roll back. Arms and legs the same.

We find our strong point. Bring the legs together, legs up, open the legs, arms and legs together, and come down and sweep it behind you. Very nice. Bring it to the front legs. Close arms come together. Good. Rule it back our legs, up open. Arms and legs together. Lower the legs, lifting the arms and sweep it around two more times. Bring the legs in. Find your core strengths, lift the legs up, open legs, open, arms, arms come high, legs come down. Roll it to come over one more time, rural it back. Find your core strength. Breathe of course, lift, exhale and open all the way out.

Regional, higher end. Now lower stretch spine, stretch forward and a roll up to sitting. The next movement as um, once again about the control and precision of the movement. And it is the first part of it is we're going to do, are willing like a ball. But as we talked about before, it should always be done with complete control so that you should be able to stop the movement both in the back and in the front so that it's not enough to throw the body around. But to have that precision so you can start the rolling down and roll it up, or you can start the movement up and roll it down.

We'll start in the up position, but we're going to stop. We'll roll back and hold it there. All right, let's go. Bring the legs in. Rolling position. Roll back and hold. Extend your legs behind you and to your rollover. That's it.

Head goes down. Bend the legs to your rolling position. Roll up in hold. Roll back. Romantic. Stand at. Head comes down. Beautiful. Bend the legs again. Roll up and hold. Roll it back. Extend your legs.

Beautiful. Keep it in control. Beautiful positions. Bend it in and roll yourself back up. This time, let's do the movement starting in the ruling position and we'll roll back and we'll control it and hold it in the up position. So roll yourself back, roll it up and hold it. Now extend your legs here. Teaser, let go. Okay. Then the men really back. Roll it up, teaser, roll it back, roll it up. Nice. Deep breathing teaser.

One more time and we roll it and come back up and stretch. Okay. And then the in. So now let's put that together. Roll back, extend Ra, extend. Got It. So you now have the precision and control. Use the concentration, use the breath and make it flow. We've got all the principles in practice with prayer, so we're going to or and grace. Thank you. Of course. Of course.

Okay, let's see. Roll it back into extension. Bend, roll and teaser. Bend, rural extension. Make it one fluid movement. Banded in.

So as soon as you're there, we have our teaser started. As soon as the teaser finishes, we go into the next extension. Very nice. As soon as you got it. Beautiful flow. Wonderful Grace. One more time. Roll it back, reach it out, bend in and reach to come up and lower the legs. Bring the arms up and very, very nice.

That was beautiful. So effortless. It was supposed to be that way. Isn't that lovely? You are welcome. You are most welcome. I do. I love them. I absolutely, and I was the same way. I couldn't do it. I struggled. I don't want to do them and chill. I really understood them. You're very welcome.

Let's bring the legs around and come into the kneeling position. Um, bring the knees just hip distance apart and curl the toes under. Uh, from this position we're going to bring the knees up and extend through the back of the legs. So we're up nice and long nail from here. Let's bend the knees down again and roll onto the floor and we'll make a small contraction so that the tailbone drops to the floor. Just relaxing the back muscles, pulling navel up to the spine and now stretch out. Let the tailbone float high and reach the torso long once again, round and lift. And once again, relax and lengthen through the spine and through the upper back. And now bring the knees up, touched them to the floor, lift the knees up, touch to the floor, knees.

Just hover over the floor and down. Exhale up. Inhale down. Exhale up and stretch all the way out. Come all the way up now stretch your spine nice and long. Walks your hands in, round your backups, soften the knees and come up nice and tall. Turn the toe slightly out. Feet are slightly apart.

And bring your arms out. I love this exercise so much. We're doing it again. It's the standing body twist. Now really feel all the core muscles that you've worked with, all of that rotation and core strength into practice and float up to the ceiling. Turn the body around, coming all the way around, all the way around, and then lower the heels. Inhale, exhale and stretch to the front arm to the back foot. Lift the body, lengthening the spine, lift it back up. Turn it all the way around, all the way around and lower the heels up to the other side.

Linkedin end turn. Keep turning it around. Beautiful. Much easier this time and lower the heels. Stretch to the back leg. Getting a long, long stretch. Great. Come back up, lift the heels, rotate the torso, lower the heels and come down. Bring the legs in together. Feet together. Take an inhalation, exhale and reach and stretch out. Take an inhalation.

Exhale, stretching. Ice In long. Inhale. Now this time, open the chest to the ceiling, but don't lose the pelvic alignment. Reach Nice and high. Exhale, shake it all the way down. Round over, then roll up in length in the spine. Nice aligned bodies, nice long spines, and thank you very, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.