Invert

Hey, I'm Mariska, and welcome back to another version of Pilates-ish on the reformer. Today's action word is invert. So I was trying to come up with a lot of different ideas of cool inversions that you could do on the reformer. So I would say first that this is not a beginner's class and I am actually going to bring in a spotter for one of the exercises that I'm going to do, mainly because there's no easy way to bail out of it, but we'll get to that part. I couldn't figure out how to be upside down the entire class, so for me, an inversion means that your heart is above your head, which is very good for different health reasons, but also because it's fun.

So I'm gonna start with two red springs. I'm gonna be on those two red springs for kind of a while, and then we'll just move on from there. So headrest is down. There's only one point that the headrest might come up during class, but that's not 'til later. So you can go ahead, slowly make your way onto your back.

You can just start with your feet in parallel. And then we're just gonna start with some bridging. So you're gonna press into your feet. It's a tilt of your pelvis. Lift your hips up, bone by bone, or lift your spine away, bone by bone, and then slowly lower back down.

We'll do a couple more like this. Press as you lift up and then slowly lower back down, press to lift up, and then slowly down. We'll do two more like that. Push into your feet, it's a little bit of a hamstring curl. It's you come up, and then lower down and we'll do one more like that.

So you're pushing into your feet, lifting your hips up. We'll lower down a little bit, and then lift back up. Just do like five of those. Down, up two, down, up three, down, up four, down, up hold. You're gonna push your legs out, and then pull to come in.

We'll do five or so. Two, three, four, and five. And then when you reach the stopper, slowly lay your spine down bone by bone and take a big inhale at the bottom. On an exhale, press into your feet. Lift your hips up.

You're gonna take one leg up. I'm taking my left leg off, and I'm just gonna keep my left leg up as I push my right leg out and in five times. Two, three, four, and five. And then I'll go ahead and just lower that foot down, re-establish a square pelvis, right leg comes up, about five presses. One, two, three, four, and five.

Right leg comes down, lower your hips down bone by bone. I'm gonna do one more variation of this. This one will involve extending your leg up to the ceiling. So you press into your feet, you're gonna take your left leg off, reach it up towards the ceiling. We're gonna push back five times Two, three, four, and five.

Go ahead and lower your left leg down. Lower your hips down. Press into your feet. Lift your hips up. Got your right leg up towards the ceiling as we push out five times.

One, two, three, four, and last one is five. Lower your foot, Lower your pelvis bone by bone. This one is not an inversion, this is just a warmup for a later inversion. So I'm gonna bring my hands. I have the double strap, so I have the smaller hand strap and the bigger foot strap.

I'm just gonna start by lifting my head and chest up. I'm gonna bring my legs out. So this is sort of your hollow body hold. This is the position I wanna find. Admiring all the wrinkles in the front of my clothes.

(Mariska exhales loudly) This could be the hundred if you wanted it to be. I don't. I just want it to be a hold. (Mariska exhales loudly) Go ahead and bend your knees. You're gonna slowly lower everything all the way back down.

So again, we're on two red springs. I'm gonna bring my legs into a tabletop. I'm just gonna do a little tiny, tiny, tiny little baby rollover. So I'm gonna push down and let my hips lift. And notice my hands are not going all the way down.

It's not like overhead Little lift, and down. Little lift, and down. We'll do four more. One, two, three, and four. I'm gonna go ahead and let my feet lower down.

I'm gonna hang the straps up for a brief moment. Let my elbows go to the side. I'm just gonna let my legs go to one side and then the other, just because it cracks my back and that always feels very satisfying to me. So from this position, what I wanna do is we're gonna go back to having the straps. We're gonna have both legs in the straps.

So I'm going into the larger foot loop, and we're gonna take your legs out. We're gonna immediately go into some overhead kind of footwork, which means our butt is going to lift off. So I'm just gonna let my legs come in, let my hips lift, and then I'll slowly lower down, and I'll lower my legs down to maybe 60 degrees or so. So it's a little rollover. Lift up.

Slowly back down. So this should feel good. Generally feel like a little back massage. Can't promise this whole class will feel good, but you know, throw in a good, like a cookie every now and then. Lift up, and lower back down.

So two more like that. Lift up, and lower back down. Last one like this. Lift up, and lower back down. This next one are gonna come way higher on our shoulders.

So we're gonna lift your legs up so they're kind of straight up towards the ceiling. I always feel like this one is one of those that you kind of have to find your sweet spot, might come in a little bit. You're gonna lift your feet up towards the ceiling, and then slowly lower down, trying not to move the carriage. Again, lift up, and down. Lift up, and down.

We'll just do two more like that. Lift up, and down. Last one. Lift up, and down. Go ahead and press down.

We'll just do some leg circles because, you know, a leg circle a day does something. I don't know if it keeps the doctor away, keeps you from having to have a hip replacement. There's definitely a benefit. Just throwing hip circle or any kind of hip rotation into the daily mix. I have no clinical trials to back that up, but I strongly believe it.

Go out. And I'm in parallel, you can be in external rotation. I'm just in parallel because that's what my body decided it wanted to do right at this particular moment. This time, we're gonna do a roll over. We're gonna come up pretty high on our shoulders, but we're gonna go more up and back.

So where are your legs are? This whole shape that your torso to your legs is, you're just gonna try to take that shape straight up towards the ceiling, and then you lower down. So the degree of your thighs toward your chest, doesn't really change. You just lift it up and lower it back down. And to quote the amazing Cara Reeser, you have to use your ass to lift your ass.

So a little squeeze on your glutes makes this a lot easier. We'll do a couple more. So you're lifting up and lowering back down. And last one. Lifting up.

We're gonna take your legs out, down, and around. Do that lift up. So it's a circle. Out, down, and around. Let's do three more.

Straight up, out, and around. Lift up and over, out, and around, and last one. Up and over, and out and around. I'm just go ahead and bend my knees, take the straps off, and then going to actually, I'm gonna be lazy, and I'm gonna leave the foot bar where it is. I'm gonna hold onto the posts, and let my legs kind of extend out.

Now, the classical way to do this is with your elbows out to the side. I don't like the classical way, I like the Mariska way. So I let my elbows lift up. It's just easier for me. So I'm gonna take my legs up and over.

So similar to what we did before, we're just gonna do a little corkscrew. So your legs are gonna travel towards the right. Think about that rotation happening at your pelvis. You're gonna lower down, you're still lowering down in the middle of your back, lower your legs down, around, up to the left, and then back to center. So even though your legs are twisting from side to side, you're still lowering down to the middle, and then you're up and center.

Go to the right, lower down, around. Up to the left, and then you go left, down, around, up, and center. We'll do one more. To the right, lower down, around, up, and center, and last one. Lower down, around, and up.

Kind of jackknife it up just because, and then you'll slowly lower down bone by bone. I want this to be a teensy bit lighter, so I'm going to go, you can maybe do a red, yellow. I think I'm gonna do a red, blue. So I'm on one red, one blue, and then we're gonna only have one foot in the strap. So I'm gonna go right foot in the strap first, I changed my mind.

I decided I want to do red, yellow. I feel like I need somewhere between a yellow and a blue. We'll go with red, yellow and see how it works out. Okay. So I've got strap.

Right foot, hands are gonna start down. You're gonna go ahead and let your right leg kind of stretch up, and then you're gonna kind of prop your hips up. So it's like if you were doing scissors and bicycle, which is actually kind of what we're gonna do. So your left knee is gonna come in. You're gonna try not to move the carriage as your left leg taps the foot bar, and then you pull it back in.

Left leg taps the foot bar, if you can find the foot bar, and then pull it back in. We'll do three more. We're gonna do a down tap, and up. Down tap, and up. And I like having something to reach for so I know I'm being kind of consistent in how I'm moving.

Now, I'm gonna extend my left leg out, just kind of hold it there, and then I'll bring my left leg in. I'm gonna hold on to the shoulder rests. I'm gonna bring my left knee more in towards my chest, and I'm gonna push out, and then fold my leg back in. I'll do that five times. Push out two, push out three, push out four, and push out five.

And then from there, I can slowly let my hips lower down. I'm gonna take the strap off of my right foot and I'm gonna try the whole thing on my left side, which is my bad side. So we'll see how that works out. So starting with left leg up, I'm gonna take my hips up, where I'm in towards the stopper. I'm gonna reach my right leg down to the foot bar.

I had to find it. And then lift it up. Reach down, two, and lift it up. And the carriage is moving a little bit because this side is tighter for me. Three, four, and five.

My leg is gonna come in. So I basically hit my knee towards my nose, my foot towards my other knee, and push forward five times. One, two, three, four, and five. And then I'm gonna slowly lower down. And was my left leg shaking?

Yes, it was. Why was it shaking? Because it was harder on that side and that is kind of what I wanted to do. So I'm gonna go ahead and make my way up. So from this up position, you can stay on, if you're on like a red, yellow, that might be good, or you could lower it down a little bit.

You could be on like a single red. We're just gonna come to sort of our elephant position, which is technically an inversion because our head is going to be lower than our heart. So both feet are on, I might not be all the way to the back because I wanna be able to really kind of reach my arms forward and be more in a, more in like a down dog than, I consider this more of an elephant, but let's be in more of a down dog and let's push our legs back a little bit, and pull them in. Back a little bit, and pull them in. Basically, I'm doing this because I want to be able to sort of stretch out my legs and hamstrings because of something we're doing.

After this, we'll go out, pull to come in, out, pull to come in. Couple more. Out, pull to come in, and out, pull to come in. I'm gonna take a hand down to the mat. Now, you could be on your fingertips.

You could be on a flat hands, kind of whatever works for you. We still wanna be square through the pelvis if you can. So we'll do six of these. Three, four, five, and six. Switch hands, push out in one.

Out, and two. Out, and three. Four, five, and six. I'm gonna go back to both. Hands on, really kind of drop your chest, lift your butt up, and then we can kind of round for that more elephant-shaped elephant.

We'll just do a couple presses back from there. Two, a couple means six, three, four, five, and six. And then we go ahead and slowly make my way all the way down. So people with hair in ponytails, speaking from experience, you want to do this exercise on one spring. So one red spring, but you don't want it to be the center spring.

You want it to be a spring that's all the way to the side so that your hair doesn't get caught in it. Now, how long do we get stuck when our hair gets stuck in these springs is really determined on how much hair we're willing to give up. I have a lot of hair, I can give up several strands of hair, but if you have, you know, less hair than me and you need to hold onto it, we're going to really try to make sure your hair does not get caught in the spring. So we're gonna do some footwork upside down. What we're gonna do is we need to get our feets to the foot bar.

So I'm gonna scoot all the way forward, and then when I come to lying down on my back, I want my head to be kind of close to the edge to where it's kind of able to rest on it a little bit, but not really. And then I'm going to take my arms and I'm gonna press out, and I'm gonna roll over until my feet can find the foot bar. Now, for me, I also like to have my hands on the rails because it kind of feels better, and I'm just gonna start with some calf raises. So we'll push out, and in. Push out, and in.

Push out, and in. Out, and in. Let's see, we'll do four more after this. One, two, three, and four. Now, I'm going to go into a Pilates V.

I'm gonna bend my knees as I come in, and then push out. Bend as I come in, and push out. Bend to come in, and push out. And if you have tighter hamstrings, you don't have to go all the way straight with your legs. I should have said that initially.

You could also be like, "Mariska, you are crazy woman, and I am not doing any of this," and that is also fine. Bend in and push out. So now, I'm in parallel. I'm gonna go for prance. So we're gonna drop one heel, bend the other knee, and lift.

Drop, bend, and lift. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. So now, I'm gonna go a little bit wider with my feet. Kind of interesting to get into. Bend your knees, push for eight.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight. I'm gonna walk it in a little bit. I'm gonna take my left leg, reach it up. This time, I'm gonna reach my hands down, and I'm just gonna reach my left leg like I'm trying to lower it some, and then push and I'll lift it up. Lower it down in a way, and lift it up, and lower it down in a way.

And if you want to, you can just keep your hands here if that felt better, and lift it back up. My leg likes to do weird things. On the left side so we'll see if it's being disagreeable. And you could reach this all the way out to a split stretch if you want to. And reach it down in a way, and lift it back up.

So to come out of it, I'm just gonna bend my knees in. I'm gonna hold onto the sides, and then I'll just kind of keep my position as I roll up. Lost not a single hair, which I consider a win in this situation with this exercise. But again, it's all about making sure the spring is not like directly in the line of your hair. Okay.

For the setup of this next exercise or series of exercises, we're gonna be doing some handstand variations using our long box on the reformer. We're also going to change potentially our bar height and position, and then you need to figure out where your stopper is. Since I've already done this before. I know what the setup for me needs to be. So for me to be able to get into a handstand L, I need the foot bar to be all the way up to the top.

I also need the box to be on, and then I have the stopper because there's gonna be no springs on this. But don't worry, it's not going to have any risk of, you'll want it to be pushed away. So I have the stopper. So there's the closest to the risers. This is the second closest to the risers.

This setup is just what works for my particular height, which is five foot six, except my driver's license says I'm five foot seven. I don't really know why because I don't think I've ever once measured at five foot seven. Maybe I had heels on that day. Maybe not. So we have our set up going.

Now, we're gonna take the spring off. And once the spring is off, you can push this whole situation all the way away from the foot bar because essentially, this is going to be my wall. If I was doing like a wall handstand, (mumbles). And then this is going to be a second wall that I can kind of walk up to. Now, same rule applies for hair.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna push the springs to create a spot for my head in between the left side and the right side. So I take all the springs, and I just push them to one side, and I take all the springs, and I push them to one side. So this first set, you're probably good without anyone spotting you. If you feel like this is scary, you can always have a friend come in. I am having a friend come in to spot me on the second half of this.

So you're gonna stand inside the reformer. You wanna bring your hands to the floor. And in this situation, we're gonna try to get your hands almost directly underneath your shoulders. Now, your shoulders and your mid back, or whatever, are all gonna be pushed up into here. Now, this is an 18-inch reformer.

So this is a little bit higher than maybe if you were on a 14-inch or 16-inch or whatever the other inch heights are, but this kind of works out well for me. So I'm gonna bring my hands to the floor, and I'm going to bring my back up against the box, and I'ma walk myself up so that essentially, I'm in a handstand L. So first thing, I'm just gonna take one leg and I'm gonna lift it up, down touch four times. Two, and try to keep your arms really straight, three, and four. And I'm gonna do a big circle.

So we're going up, out, down. One, two, three, and four, and switch it One, two, three, and four. If you need a break, take a break. Otherwise, you can go right to the other side. So it's four leg lifts.

One, two, three, and four, and then circles. One, yes, my left leg is shaking, two, three, four, switch it. One, two, three, and four. And then both legs can come to the foot bar. You can just step one leg to the floor, step the other leg to the floor, and then I do a little pushback.

Again, trying not to get my hair caught in the springs. So now, we're gonna let all of the blood drain from your head back into your feet. I'd like to make a little note here that when you get older, they warn you about wrinkles, but they don't warn you that you're gonna get these horrible veins in your head. So I try never to take pictures of myself upside down if I've been upside down very long because it's just not an attractive thing. So on this next one, we are going to do legs off, if that feels safe for you, but I am going to get a spotter to help me.

I am going to bring in my spotter, his name is Brian. I picked him up at a Thai restaurant about 14 years ago. I recommend a Brian, Brians are useful. They can do like random things around the house. They cook, they help walk the dogs, he also used to be a yoga teacher, so I am comfortable with him spotting me.

Also, we're married, and then there's always the threat of divorce if things don't work out well. So on this variation, I am going to do both legs up, but were before my hands. I was going for them to be right underneath my shoulders. What I wanna do here is I wanna approximate more how it feels to do an inversion handstand type thing on the ladder barrel. So on the ladder barrel, you have the ability to hook your foot, and then you kind of walk down and your hands are on the floor.

Your hands are not underneath your shoulders, really, in that position. They're in a little bit different angle that actually makes it easier to balance. Also on the ladder barrel, you can kind of be hanging out on the barrel. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna try to create that feeling by having my hands further back. Now, one of the big reasons that I would want a spotter for this exercise more than I would even for doing it on the ladder barrel is because if you think about coming down from a handstand, there's a couple of ways to do it.

One is to Cartwheel down, lots of stuff to hit. One is to come straight down, stuff to hit. So unless you feel really safe and secure with your handstands, my handstands are always a work in progress, get a Brian, doesn't need to be named Brian, but an approximation of a Brian. So someone you trust to catch you if you're going to fall. So again, springs are out of the way of the hair.

I'm gonna come down, but this time, my hands are gonna be further this way. So, and that's actually just gonna make it easier for me to balance for a longer period of time. So then I have to find my happy spot. Then I'm gonna walk my feet back up, like I'm coming to an L. So Brian's gonna hold onto my left leg as I reach my right leg up.

And kind of find my balance. And then I'm gonna challenge it a little bit by doing little leg opens, I could do kind of a knee bend knowing that I have to counterbalance the weight a little bit with the other leg, and then he can grab my leg as I make my way back down to the floor. Again, watching the hair. Got the vein situation again. Cannot be helped.

Thank you, Brian. Please cook me something, I'm very hungry. Okay, Brian does do most of the cooking in this house. Okay. So hopefully, we have all survived our handstands on the latter barrel approximation on the reformer.

I'm gonna lower my foot bar down to its normal operating height. Step back, I'ma keep the box on, but I'm gonna need to put some springs on. So from here, what I wanna do is I want to go into a little backbend reach, which will be a nice exercise to get into the exercise after this. So I've done this actually in other Pilates Anytime classes because it is a favorite of mine. So you're gonna have a seat on the box, and then you're gonna have your hands in the loop.

So I have one red spring on, and I'm gonna sit kind of far to the front. What I wanna be able to do is do a curl and then kind of a back bend press. So from seated upright into round back, I'm gonna do a bicep curl, flip my hands, drop my head, push my arms overhead, circle them around, chin towards my chest, and then come all the way up to seated. So first, it's just a regular roll back, then it's a bicep curl. Flip your hands, press, circle, and lift.

So do three more. Down, curl, press, circle, and lift. Go back, curl, press, circle, and lift. I'm kind of scooted back a smidge, I think, on each rep, so do one more. Go back, curl, press, circle, and reach to come all the way up.

Go ahead and hang the straps up. And we're gonna do a variation of a jackknife. Now, I have done this, also in a different Pilates Anytime class. But in that class, I made it easier because I locked the carriage by putting on all of the springs. This time, I wanna kind of take it up a notch and be able to move the carriage while doing the jackknife, which is a little bit on the weirder, scarier side.

So if you have not done my other version of the jackknife, I would do that first. I would just try it with all of the springs on before you try making the carriage move while you're upside down. So what I want is I wanna have my shoulders on the box. I wanna have my head and neck off of the box, but I wanna feel like my upper body is kind of stable here. This is also like the jackknife on the ladder barrel, except on the ladder barrel, you can't push the carriage out and in, which makes it a little bit less thrilling.

So we're gonna come down onto our backs. And again, you want your shoulder tips to be really close to the edge. And this is one of those rounded boxes so it's a little bit different. So then my head is going to be off. Holding on to the foot bar, I'm gonna take my legs up, and then I'm going to lift them up towards the ceiling.

So the carriage can press out with an overhead press, and it's actually not overhead press, it's almost like a pushup because of the position of my body. So push out, and come back in. Push out, and come back in. Now, I'm going to push out and bend my right knee down, sort of like I'm doing a sort of bow and arrow, and then I'll lift back up. Push out, left knee bends, and lift back up.

Push out, right knee bends, and up. Push out, left knee bends, and up. Now, I'm gonna push, reach my right leg down, and lift it back up. Push, reach my left leg down, and lift it back up. And I'm gonna push out.

As I come in, I'm gonna bend my knees in, kind of in and down so that when I push out, they're lifting up and straight. Bend, and push. Two more. Bend, and push. And last one.

Bend, and push. Go ahead. Bend to come in. Bend your knees, and then we'll slowly lower yourself down. You might need to scoot yourself back a little bit on the box so that you don't fall off the box.

I'm gonna come off, and then we're gonna turn this into a short box. So based on my leg length, I like to have my short box be over the shoulder rest. A lot of you might want it to be forward of the shoulder rest. Again, that's gonna be dependent on your height. Now, there is a reason.

I'm going to be lifting the foot bar all the way to the top. It's because at some point, I'm going to lose the strap, and I'm gonna need to be able to get myself back up. And so this is going to be essentially my second foot strap to be able to lift myself up. So I'm gonna put all the springs on 'cause on this one, I don't want the carriage to move. And I'm gonna start by hooking.

I'll do both feet first. So just kind of get the sense of one roll back. So you need to have about a hands distance from your seat to the back. You just cross your arms over your chest, you round back, and drop your head, chin towards your throat, and then lift back up. I'm doing this more so I can make sure I'm happy with my position.

So when I take my right leg and release it, I'll do a couple of stretches up. One, two, and three. You can hold onto your leg. You're gonna lean back, let your leg get caught, reach back with your hands. You can keep that leg up, and we're just gonna do some circles with your legs.

So take your leg across, round up, one. Across, round up, two. We're gonna do three each direction. Three. Out, round up, one.

Out, round up, two. Out, round up, three. Hold onto your leg. You can walk yourself all the way back up. Hook your foot.

I always get crooked on the left. There's many reasons, but I feel like all of us probably get crooked on one side. So you'll lean back some, you're gonna extend your leg. One, two, and three, and then you're gonna hold onto it. Take it back, try to stretch it straight, I'm talking to myself.

This is my leg, that's my MS leg, and it's also my leg I broke, and it's jacked up in many ways. So it doesn't like to stay straight and then you'll lift yourself kind of all the way back up. Now, the next one's really weird. So you have been warned. We're gonna take your body, maybe a little bit more on the box.

Remember, this bar is here to save you and get you back up because you're gonna have trouble. Well, right now it's in a good spot. It might be able to get back to that strap, but I'm unsure. So I wanna scoot forward a little bit. You can hold onto the sides, and then you can hold onto the box, and then you're gonna go into that kind of same back bend.

But you're gonna take both knees in, both legs up towards the ceiling. From there, you can take one leg down, and you're just gonna do a little hip rock. You do not wanna do a back roll off the reformer. So keep it small. We'll switch legs, rock back.

Going five. Two, three, four, and five. So I'll see if I can grab my strap. Oh, that like never happens, and then lift back up. But again, if you didn't have the strap, that's why we had our foot bar at its highest and easiest to reach position.

I'm gonna bring the foot bar back to its normal position. I'm just gonna do a little bit of a forward fold 'cause that was, I mean, didn't feel bad, but it is a little bit of tension on your back, so I like a forward fold after I like a back bend. So we've only got a couple of things left. We're gonna come to, for me, I'm a one red spring on this exercise person. You could maybe make it a little bit heavier.

We're gonna take the box off, and we're done with the box for now. We'll take it off and we'll just take it to the back, remembering that moving the box is always your opportunity to catch your breath between one hard exercise and another reasonably hard exercise. So I'm gonna lift the foot bar, or sorry, lift the head rest up on this one and we're gonna do one of the headstands of the Pilates world. So this is a classical exercise. I'm not doing it classically, and I'm not getting into it classically.

So the classical way to do it would be your hands would be on the shoulder rests, and then you would step a foot up, step a foot up. This is definitely not a classical height of a reformer to start with, so it would be kind of a big step to get my leg up. Also, I wanna show you how I like to hold my hands. So I'm gonna bring the headrest down. You are more than welcome to do it the classical way where you're gonna put your head in that little divot between the headrest and the carriage.

I actually like to take my hands, make a fist, slide them in between the headrest, and the shoulder rest, and then push out. And the reason I like that is because here, I feel like sometimes my elbows wanna slip. And here, they're kind of stuck in a position where they're not gonna be able to move. So we're just gonna do the out and in. So I'm gonna get into it more like I was getting into regular kind of control front.

Now, my head is down, but I'm not going to be really putting weight in my head. I'm gonna lift up, press out. Lift up, trying to bring the carriage all the way in, and push out. Lift up, and push out. Two more.

One, and two. I'm gonna lower my left leg down, just bend my knee, and then come all the way in. So the way I had my hands, I actually was more like a forearm plank kind of position 'cause I did not have weight on my head. Now, for me, doing a headstand, the easiest, most comfortable position is a tripod headstand. Now, I would most certainly recommend don't even attempt the first part of this exercise if you are not comfortable doing a headstand on the floor.

I am only gonna do the first part of this exercise because I have released my spotter. So we're gonna do is come, what we are going to do, if you are comfortable doing this, we will do it. If you do not feel comfortable doing this, you will not do it. You're gonna bring your head to the mat. You're gonna bring your hands also to the mat, and you wanna be kind of on the top of your head.

And you want a lot of the weight in your hands. So I'm just gonna bring my feet up to the carriage. Then I'm gonna bend a knee, and bend the other knee. And I'm just going to extend my legs. You know, like a little.

I could go up to the ceiling, but again, I don't have my spotter, so I don't think that's necessarily the brightest idea. So I'm just gonna be here 'cause this is comfortable and safe for me. And then I'm going to go ahead, lower a foot down, lower my other foot down, and then I'll just come in to a child's pose. And then we're done with all of our upside down craziness. We're just gonna spin around, and we're gonna do one last nice child's pose facing this direction.

I love this exercise. Just bring in your hands onto the foot bar, lowering down, dropping your head between your arms, and you can kind of just shake your head yes and no. Hmm, for some reason, I always shake my head no first. It's probably something psychological there that somebody could study and tell me. And then we'll go ahead and make your way all the way up, letting all of the blood flow from your brain, back into the rest of your body.

This class is fun for me to make for you. I hope it was fun for you to do, and I hope that you have a wonderful spotter in your life.