Move with Joy Reformer

Hi everybody. Amy Havens here. So happy to be with you for a wonderful reformer workout and flow for the joy of it. All of these should be for the joy of it, right? But it's just really how I feel most time to feel this work and to have fun with it.

You'll need your magic circle and a box. We're gonna get started on no springs on your reformer. So just mindfully walk that back. And magic circle for me often is that really great way to connect to the midline organization, but there's also a little bit of work that we'll feel for the lateral line. But we'll start here pretty close to the front edge of your reformer.

Get up on those sit bones, we're gonna put the ring right away between our knees. Feet straight down underneath the knee, so you have a relatively right angle here. Let's take a nice scan through your sitting organization and just start some nice full breathing. And then as you're exhaling, you can go ahead right away and press into the magic circle to feel, right? To feel into those abductors and then inhale, release it.

So I want us to also think about the lower ribs on your body, on your ribcage, staying nestled in. There's just a lot of times that urge to breathe and expand and let that go. Let's see if we can keep that quiet and instead, breathe wider back here, right? So inhale wide through here and then exhale, squeeze the magic circle. So when I fill up the ring, when I let it go, I'm actually filling up through my diaphragm, letting the ribs expand and then exhale and press.

Couple more times like that, inhale and exhale a little bit of stomach. And inhale and exhale. Okay. Keep a little bit of contraction in your legs. We're going to move, push the carriage back.

You're not gonna get to full knee extension because you've got the ring in there. And then pull yourself forward, you will go past 90 degrees of your knees. I want your ankles to flex, get some nice dorsiflexion there, right? So you're just gonna cruise back and forth. And I love this because it's like I imagine my feet, if the bottoms of my feet had suction cups on them, it's a real image I work with, that I'm trying to pull my feet up a little bit, can't, but what that does is it connects me into the whole relationship of my foot to my pelvis.

Couple more times, so it's an extension of the knees and a flexion of the knees. Let's do one more with the magic circle between the knees and we'll try a few without just so you can feel the contrast with the prop there versus not. So you can just put it in your hands. See if you can go a lot farther now, almost even to full knee extension. Grab that floor with your suction cup feet and pull yourself forward.

Try to keep your heels flat when you come all the way forward, right? So you get that good dorsiflexion. Great warmup before footwork. We'll do one more here. Everybody, inhale and exhale.

Pull, pull, pull your way in. Okay, return to that 90/90 here. We're gonna put our thumbs inside the magic circle and the pads of the magic circle right in the creeks of your elbows and feet are still suction cup to the floor. Press your palms together and take a moment to open up your chest. Again, it's just the kind of collarbone chest.

I want us to take a deep breath in, continue to work on widening your ribs, and then as we're exhaling, everybody, press your elbows into the ring and really stabilize those lower ribs 'cause they might wanna flare out again. So feel the abdominals working to hold the ribs in. Inhale release. Now of course, you're gonna feel a lot of additional muscles around your chest, the shoulder girdle, the obliques, the lats. It's so nice to get this upper quarter connected.

Let's do one more, just the elbow sitting tall. Connect into that center line organization, right? Okay, let's add a little bit of tailbone curl when you squeeze the circle and you can go into a little bit of lumbar flexion. And then, inhale release, you'll see that the carriage begins to move. As you move your spine, you're moving the carriage, right?

Inhale and exhale, elbows, abdominals, inward, upward, tailbone curls, get a little lumbar flexion. And ah, press. We'll do two more just like this. Don't forget to connect up through the top of the head, even though we're making motion in the lower portion of the spine. And one more time, I'm gonna have you press and hold the contraction.

Hold the contraction. We're gonna pulse the ring just four extra pulses. See if you can get a little deeper in your lumbar flexion and pulse. One. Exhale, two and three.

Can you lift the stomach anymore? Four and we come on up. Okay, rotate your torso a really small amount to a right or left. I've just gone to my right. Inhale here.

Same thing, press the circle, contract and curl that tail. You're gonna feel a little more of the oblique connection, of course. Inhale here. Three more. Press, contract and curl and release.

See if you can keep the chest open. It would be easy to collapse the shoulders while squeezing the circle, but we sit tall and we curl from below, okay? Let's do the other side four times. They're very small. Inhale.

Exhale, squeeze the circle. Contract, connect. Ooh, into those obliques. Inhale, release. Doesn't take much.

Ooh, it feels so good. Inhale. Twice more, exhale and in and lower spine and up and center. Okay, take this out of your hands or elbows, put it in your hands. Reach your arms in front of you.

Press your circle a little amount. You're not gonna get a lot of movement, but you will get a lot of connection in your upper inner arms and your chest. I want us to bend the elbows and bring the ring toward the body and aim your elbows extremely wide and your shoulder blades wide. So this is not a grab of the scapula, it's the opposite, okay? I'm gonna have this exhale there.

Inhale, stretch it forward. Exhale, pull it to the chest, inhale forward. Twice more, exhale, pull it to the chest. I'm also bringing my abdominals up, away from that pubic bone and center. Same thing on the rotation.

Exhale, pull it in, you'll feel that oblique connection again. You don't even have to curl the spine to feel it. Pull it in and reach and in and other side four times. And (exhales). So we're having our shoulders nice and low, elbows wide, scapula wide.

I'm pulling energy inward and upward, feeling all of those core muscles really waking up and here, okay? Relax your arms. Let's try something. I want you to walk your carriage forward, place your feet up on your platform. Make sure you're pretty close to this end.

Let's see what happens if we do a roll back. Take a breath. Press your circle a little bit and we start at that tail. I'm using my feet. You can probably see that.

It's a nice little prep for footwork, but I'm using those suction cup feet also to connect into my hamstrings and my adductors. I bet you are too. We're rolling up, let's see what we've got. Reach the ring toward the foot bar, we're gonna do it just two more times. You can squeeze the circle if you'd like, you could just hold it if you'd like.

Feel the articulation of your spine. Inhale. Might help to squeeze the ring as you come up and that's fine with me that that just happened. I know I need to connect somewhere. Curl, curl, curl.

Only one more. That's okay. It's really fine, right? We know it's a practice and not perfection. When I warmed up, it worked.

Oh, well (laughs). Okay, hey, we're gonna load up some footwork springs. I would love to do three red at least. If you'd like a little more, you can, you don't have to take that and you can keep your headrest down. So everybody, lie on your back.

I want you to put the magic circle on the outside of your knees, heels on your foot bar, arms nice and long. Take a deep breath. Pelvic curl again. Now pull outward on the magic circle. We know not a lot happens, but you do feel a big connection here.

Think of those as your stabilizers to warm this up, right? And coming down. Just feels good. Pull the circle apart, breathe in, and exhale and roll up. Breathing in and exhale rolling down.

We'll do it one more time. Breathe in at the bottom and exhale rolling up. Okay, stay up in your bridge. Let's move the springs a little bit and pull them in. So you did this warmup for your hamstrings when you're seated.

Now of course, we've got a few other elements going on. Out here, stay even on your heels please as much as you can. We'll only do one more. Moving this bridge, keeping those hips suspended. And then everybody start to roll yourself down and articulate as best you can.

Great. Okay, now we'll take the magic circle into our hands and I want you to go to a Pilate stance with your feet. Your choice to leave your headrest flat, which I prefer, or you can prop yours up. All right. Scapula flat, arms straight up, we're gonna pull the ring to the chest as we move the legs.

So let's do eight of these, one. It's a little combined movement. Two. So by pressing the palms against the circle, we're gonna feel that upper inner arm connection to the chest. It's important to work that part of the shoulder girdle, which I think it is part of the shoulder girdle.

Not always the lats, but they're working too. Last two here, exhale and inhale energy through those hands and release. Keep the arms integrated, just spiral your feet out to parallel, breathe in. Here we go, exhale. And so, every time we exhale, I'm pushing on the circle.

I'm actually trying to narrow my waistline also. It's an image. Four more. Resist the urge to curl the tail. This is a very flat tailbone angle.

We know that, two more. And then I want us to stay out here on this one, hold. You can just hold the circle against your chest, close to it and just take your heels down and up. We'll do eight. Get a good stretch, but focus on the lift.

You don't have to exaggerate the down as much as I want you to feel the power and the strength to lift. Four and up. Three, shoulders are low on your back. Two and up, last one. And then inhale, ring goes up, carriage comes in and we go to heels.

Let's go heels wide, okay? That's what I was planning. Now as you pull the carriage out, pull the ring to you. Inhale out. Exhale.

Just keep that flow. Four more and in. To the body, pull your strength in and reach. Now everybody, stay open with the carriage. Heels here, you're gonna spiral your leg bones in and just do the leg presses.

Let your arms have a break. Internal rotation of your femurs. Even weight on the heels as best you can. Knees in. It feels a little awkward, but it's important to change the angle of load in your hip joint, I think.

Once more and then we'll just spiral the legs back out to external rotation and we'll come all the way back in. Okay, great. Just set your feet back in the middle of the bar and you can set your magic circle just to the side of your reformer. Headrest still down, springs just as they are unless you are heavier. I've just had three red springs, right?

So I'm just gonna keep mine there. I want us to go to heels parallel. We'll be doing a single leg movement here. So if you need to lighten your spring tension, now's the time to do that. All right, breathe, roll back up to that bridge line.

Okay. Take a leg forward. I don't have a preference which one and you're gonna lift that leg up with a flex foot as you push the carriage out and point as you lower. All right, we know this is challenging, right? We're hoping to keep the pelvis pretty aligned.

It's okay to take a look at your own body and make your practice your practice. Okay, one more time. That was our six. Let's stay lifted. Put that heel on the bar.

Now you may need to reconnect and lift back up, right? I'm gonna set my hands here, everybody, it's nice for me to monitor my alignment. And so, we press and we stretch and press. You don't have to go to full knee extension on your pushing leg. I'd say it's more important to keep the organization of your torso and your pelvis.

Last two, good. Last one. And then set the heel down, take a breath, relift, oops, and roll all the way down. Once you're down, lift your head up, bring your knees in, hug yourself. Nice deep hug.

Everybody, come on up. We're gonna take our springs down. Keep your circle pretty close. Hands and straps. Either two red or red and blue.

I'll let you decide what you need. I'm going red and blue on this reformer. Same thing with your headrest. You can keep it up or lay it down. Raise those arms up.

Feel your shoulders pulled down off of the shoulder rests. Knees come up to your 90/90. Feel strong, I like a fist with the hand here, take a breath. I just want us to start coming up into the chest lift. Reach your arms towards your knuckles.

Just start a single leg stretch. Just get the legs moving, keep the arms working nice and simple. Four, three, two and one. Both knees in. Take your body down.

Come up to the 100 position, just the position. Open the legs, reach your hands through, close to the 100 and back down. With a little tempo, it's one, reach two, reach three and lower. Reach in. So every time you reach in, try to reach farther forward also.

Reach, go a little farther. One more time and curl. And two and three. Now, it's not a snowy day here (laughs), it's a rainy day, but we're gonna pretend we're in the snow somewhere for snow angel. So come on up to your 100 position, externally rotate your legs and your arms and make an angel in the snow.

I'm gonna have you do five. The objective is to not lose the height of your chest lift or the stability of your pelvis as best you can. Last one. And let everybody come on down and just lower your feet for a moment. Wiggle down off the blocks if you slid up, bring your knees back up.

Okay, stabilize your upper body to your ribs. Lower one arm over to a T. Keep tension on that rope and bring it back up. Other side, keep tension in both ropes and ribcage stability. Once again on each arm.

There's a little bit of movement that might wanna sneak into the ribcage. So see if you can control that, right? First arm, pull both arms to your hips. Hold. Take the one arm up to the ceiling, the other out to the T.

We're alternating the arm pattern. Pause, pull both arms down to your hips. So it's an alternating, one arm to the ceiling, one arm to a T and close. Find some flow and breath with this. I like an inhale out and an exhale to come down.

And lift. And one more each arm. I'm gonna add a little bit of arm circle with some chest lift. So start with both arms back up, everybody. Open the arms to a T.

Pull them toward you as you chest lift and just get that connection of your tummy. Palms to the ceiling, arms out to the side, curl up again and hold. Just one more of that direction. And connect to your center. Other direction.

Chest lift when the arms come down and circle out. You can always add some extra with the leg extension. Why not? Fold them in, you get one more here. Oh, always so good.

All right and place your feet, place your straps down. Now I do want us to come up, add spring again. I'll take away the blue, put a red one back on. I'm gonna keep this up, we get this again. It's going between the ankles, okay?

Probably best though for feet and straps. Get your feet in first. Can you get your feet in at the same time? Watch this. Right there and then circle between those ankles.

Start in a neutral pelvis kind of table-toppy legs parallel. Feel the work in the inner groin, the lower abdominals, maybe even in your lower back. Take a breath. Let's use an exhale to extend and an inhale to flex. And I'm thinking about extending from the hip, then the knee and then flexing from the hip and knee.

We know how wonderful these are for the legs and the connection to our center line, right? Feels so good. We'll do three more. And on the third one, we'll keep our legs out there straight. Coming up next and then we'll take both legs holding here.

We're trying to keep the magic circle stable. Okay, get a contraction of those legs. Take your legs up. I'd love to see if you can get to 90 degrees here with your tail down. Relax your feet.

Let your legs be what's working, not so much in your ankles here. And then lower your legs. These are mighty, mighty, mighty. Legs up, tailbone stays flat and press. And legs up.

And a little bit of work is all that's needed, a little extra contraction of the legs to hold that circle. We'll do two more and we'll stay at the bottom after the second one for extra little squeezes. Sometimes you hear the word pulses. All right, and the pulse is not from your knees, it's from up here and around on your sitting bone. So let's pulse.

Two, three, four, five more, five, ooh, three, two, one, and that's it for that. Feet still stay in straps, this just sets right over here by your reformer frame. Now I wanna take us into leg circles 'cause I think it always feels good after the contractions to reopen and pull the legs down. So use what you need. Some of you are gonna wanna really go for a stretch of your legs.

I need to always keep mine a little bit mild, my range of motioning. I've got more range on this hip than I do here. So I have to hold back, try to feel them work uniformly. Yap, so this one has to stretch more, this one has to hold back. That's just my knowledge of me.

One more this direction. That was six and we'll do six the other way. Oh yeah, ready? Inhale. So every exhale, go back to the warmup when we were squeezing that magic circle with the elbows and pulling that strength into the center, reconnect that right in, that midline organization.

All right, last one. They always feel so good, you wanna do about 45 of those. Okay, diamond. Ooh, diamond is interesting. So what I know, if your calves start to get crampy, you can make this shape with your feet, which is dorsiflexion.

I'd like it if you can to not do that and have the toes more toward each other. This is just how I learned it. But again, take care of your calves, right? Now, here's the hip joint. We know that, we're going to move the diamond shape of the legs up, the tail is still down and then pull down.

All right, so we're getting into external rotators that all the way, that wrap around the thigh, feels so nice. And press down. Three more. It's important to kind of check the chest every once in a while, the upper arms are pressed back. Last one.

All right, now we're moving into short spine. Let's keep the legs in diamond. And I just want you, as your legs stay in diamond, we start at the tail anyway, right? And we roll up to the shoulder blades. Stay in this position.

Take a few moments to let the breath expand into your back. Rather than flexing the hip and bringing the knees down to the shoulder rest, I want you to keep your legs in diamond. How we start to roll down, we have to really engage this upper quarter here. And I'm moving my spine to the mat, keeping the legs in the diamond shape. At the bottom, we close and we straighten.

We take a little moment to do it again. Open to a diamond, keep the diamond shape and roll through the spine. Let's take a breath. As we exhale from the upper abdominals, the middle abdominals, the lower middle and then the very lower and then parallel. Continue to flow, rolling up.

Breathe and... I think it's a nice version of short spine. It seems like there are a few versions that we know, right? What's the theme of short spine? It's articulation.

I like this because the legs are really just one shape and then I can focus on the way my spine moves. Breath in. Roll down, that's the last one. Okay, here it is, that's the last one. When you come down, feel a neutral pelvis and then final pose or final shape with the legs there.

Wonderful. Hey, let's take our feet out of the straps, everybody. Place your feet on your headrest or your foot bar for a minute and just move those knees a little side to side. We're about to come up, so come on up. You can move this just a tad bit out of the way.

Springs can stay just as you are and I want you to sit straddle on your reformer. Now if you're not a person that has a lot of external rotation in your hip, you might need to go back a little further and practice this, right? Back a little farther, you might have less demand on your hips. If you're pretty turned out, go up. I'd love to see if you can get right near the foot bar.

Okay, vertically sitting. Again, there's the hip joint. I want us all to crease forward at the hip joint. Keep a nice flat back with your spine. Your hands can just be right here and just hold.

Suction cup feet, knee aligned over second toes. You should be feeling quite a lot in your glutes and your back. All right, and then come to vertical. You'll also feel stretch here. So let's breathe in and out, in and out to return.

Couple more. It's a lot of trunk stability, right? Head over shoulders over pelvis and we just tip that right from the hip joints, feels quite nice. Now let's challenge it and we'll take our arms forward, but a little bit of lift. The scapula kind of rotates up toward hand and then leaning forward.

This turns on the back quite a bit more. I want you to feel your back. We do want low shoulder blades, like not up, down. Yap. Okay, we're gonna add to it.

Oh, this is so great. So take your body forward, hold that hinge. You can do hitchhiker thumb if you want to. We are gonna pulse these arms back. Now when we pull the arms back, it's not an invitation for ribs to push forward.

It feels like it should be, but it's not. We want the ribs stable here, work your tummy. It's the arms, but also the shoulder blades kind of press in on the back. Four. Push your feet into the floor please.

You're gonna feel like you're almost about to stand up. Did she really say that? She did, put your hands here. You're gonna lean and stand, oh boy, and sit back down. Three more times.

And it's great for the hips and the butt and the body. Try to keep that trunk organized in a hinge while we work these hips. Ready? Gonna add to it, hold here. You know it is, again.

And a eight and seven and six and five. Go a little lower if you can, four. How are we doing, three, two and one. Everybody's doing so great. Come here and then oh, come out of straddle.

Round your back for just a second. We're gonna put our long box on the reformer. So get that box up. Don't worry about moving the foot bar, okay? We're gonna keep it up just for flow and springs.

We need something lighter, not too red. You can do a blue or yellow even if you have that. I'm going blue. Not too light, but certainly not too heavy. And let's sit up on our box pretty close to this end.

And we've all seen this one, I love it. Pad of the magic circle right underneath the chest line, the strap across the pad of the magic circle and then go ahead and cross your ankles and cross your hands. And honestly just sitting here is a lot of work. I feel a lot of demand right here on this side of the body. Can you juice that up and just like an inch or two more movement, not from the shoulders.

Shoulders are set. It's trunk. Trying to go around my vertical axis. I'm not giving in, not going toward the rope, I'm pulling away from the rope. And let's do three.

I love these. And two, joyful rotations. And one more, hold and release. Okay, take the strap off the pad, keep this, kind of handy. Put this inside hand in the loop and you can actually just hold maybe hands on the side of the box.

Okay, arm is raised about a 90-degree angle. Let's work on lateral flexion, right? So I don't need to go very far to get the benefit of this side body contraction, I do wanna think about going up and then over. I'm not pulling my arm, it's just helping hold the tension. And up and over.

Yeah, two more times. This blue spring feels just right. Red would be real hard, I'd be straining and grunting. Yellow would be probably not enough. One more for good measure.

Okay, how you feeling? Lateral orientation connection. Yes, let's go to the other side. Okay, you could sit more in the middle of the box, everybody, I just chose to sit on this side. Pad is right underneath the chest line.

You've got the strap across the other pad of the circle. Play with the cross of your feet. It may make a difference if you have one side crossed over the other. That would be a longer conversation, but right now, try that out. If you feel like you're getting pulled in one direction, it might be you need some support from the other foot cross.

Take an inhale and here we go. We're pulling toward the foot bar, right? Inhale away. Not toward the strap, toward the foot bar. We did six of these.

Not a big range. We really want the rib cage to stay right above the pelvic container and we're turning that cylinder. Last two. It doesn't take much to feel that. And release, okay.

Magic circle comes down, strap goes in that opposite hand. Hand can either be in here on fingertips or holding the edge of the box. Raise that arm, breathe in. Remember, we're gonna go up and then lateral flexion. Once again, if you need to change the cross of the ankles.

Again, we're feeling low back, side waist, probably obliques in the front, shoulder and bicep on the working arm or the holding arm. Once more. And then, we'll stay on this blue spring for a little bit of pulling straps combo. No need to go too heavy in my world. Take this and just put it down.

I think we actually are done with it. Lie in your tummy. Now it's kind of nice too that the foot bar is up, so we have to keep our legs lifted, okay? Chest is right at the edge of your box. Reach up and grab a hold of your straps.

And I'd love to have you start long arms. Let your torso round over the box. Rest your legs just for a moment so you can feel the contrast of the resting versus pubic bone into the box. Abdominals up the front of you. Tail is pointed to the heels and something magic, you see?

It just kind of your legs get organized. Okay, now here comes that upper body. Slow it down, we're gonna pull those straps. Go into a little thoracic extension, you don't have to do too much. Externally rotate, we're opening out to a T.

Close the T. Do a little tricep kickback. Then keep those arms straight as you come all the way down to that rounded over position again. And pull, you can breathe in. Really connect your breathing to your motion.

Wanted to go five or six rounds of this nice light spring. Should feel easy to move. Little tricep kickback. Probably the hardest thing for me is to keep my lower abdominal wall active to support my back. And stretch, we'll take one more, everybody.

Arms nice and straight. So yes, pulling down from the scapula. Raise the back of the arms up, palms face down, open to your T. Close that T, bend those elbows, we're gonna keep going with triceps for five more. Why not?

Four. Three. Stomach up, two, legs up. Oh, there was the foot bar. And last one and straight arms come down, relax your head over your box for a minute and then just shake your tush.

Shake a little bit of that out of the low back. Okay, I needed that. Place your straps down. We're gonna come up, face this way, up on our knees, we're still on a blue spring. Climbing on up, place your hands on that foot bar.

Wrap your hands and let's start ourselves knees under hips ooh, and a nice neutral spine. I just had a nice little click adjustment in my body. Okay, shoulder flexion. I can tell you this is tempting to move from the hip joint. See if you can keep your hips just where they are and your legs where they are.

It's from the shoulder joint. And go slowly. Ideally, the pelvis stays above the femurs, the femurs below the hip joints. Might take you a couple reps to feel this. Just linger, it feels quite nice I think on the thoracic spine and the scapula girdle.

Feel like you're lengthening your waistline. Push the bar away and now breathe. Let's exhale and flex the spine as we come home. Lift into that curl and then extend into a long line. Ready and extend.

Take your time. I wanted to get your shoulders prepared for like arms above the head with weight distribution. We're gonna go semi-circle after this. Take an inhale and then start with your tail, curl, let your head drop. Pull the carriage in.

Unfurl to a long neutral spine, let's take one or two more. I really like this position. We did it seated, didn't we, with the hinges? But now you're pushing some weight, so it's a little different feedback in the back I think for myself. Exhale, curl.

Woo. Yeah, it's a one more for me and go. How much distance can you put from your scapula, lateral scapula to your pinky? Ooh, a little more length, right? You could push the legs, but we're not gonna push the leg and round, round, round, okay.

Return into your neutral, step off your box. Isn't that delicious? I think that's really nice. We'll take our box away and headrest will come up because what if you need all that space, right? If you have a stopper and you wanna use your stopper for semi-circle, you can, whatever springs you want.

And I know that sounds vague, but so many people have different schools, right? I learned on two springs, on a Gratz reformer, but I'm not on that. That would be two red springs here, Balanced Body. You could do a green, green, blue, red and blue. You can do whatever you want really, but I'm going two red.

Now, foot bar choice, same thing, up. I'm gonna keep mine up. Come along. You can always get up and make a change. So here go those arms.

You just did that beautiful shoulder flexion. Now you've gotta get your feet in Pilates V, shimmy your booty down into the springs. Push that carriage away. A minute ago, we pushed the foot bar, but now we're pushing the carriage back. Knees aren't splayed.

Imagine you have a little baby magic circle in those knees and linger here. You might need to linger and this might be it for a little while to feel that deep stretch in your quadriceps. Take a breath. But of course, we're here to move. So we're rounding down through the spine.

I'm pushing that carriage back so that I can get as much length and take advantage of that in the carriage and drip the tail to the springs. It's one of the best feelings I think in the method. This is one of my favorite places right here. And push back. Not all the way to straight.

Curl. Curl. There's that pelvic curl from the warmup and you bring it all the way in to take a breath. This really is one of my favorite exercises. And in this program, Move For The Joy Of It, I had to put semi-circle in my reformer session, I had to.

For me, it makes all of the things kind of sparkle and the things in my body that need attention, I need spinal articulation, I need hip flex or quad stretching, I need shoulder flexion. So it's kind of a go-to, reverse it. It takes control and strength. Yeah, joyful about that. And take it all the way down.

Ah, curl. Stretch, take a breath here, everybody. Hold, take another breath and contract the abdominals. Articulate down. Keep pushing those shoulders back.

You get one more. And then we come up for a beautiful stretch of our quads. This is also, but we get another one. Push your back and articulate. Yes, energy, energy, energy.

Let the length of that lumbar arch happen and come all the way in. Hey, to finish that one though, scoot yourself back. Before we rush out of that wonderful moment, just lie in your back and let it tingle, right? I think it's nice to kinda let that calm happen. It's a big exercise.

All right, but we have one more to do. So boy, I think I'm going back to a red and blue. Come on up on your knees, everybody. And place one foot up on this foot bar. Ball of the foot relatively in line with that hip.

Oh, I've kind of made a lot of expressional sounds here, did expressive sounds, but it feels good, right? The movement should feel so good. We're gonna be right here. So I have a little engagement around the back of the hip and the glute and hamstring. I wanna try to get the heel to touch that shoulder block.

If that's not you, I'd say make that a practice, knowing next time you practice this class, stick a little wedge or something in there or have someone help you, why? Is so you can connect the extension here, this wonderful nourishing stretch with your heel back. It makes a difference. It really, really does. Take a few more breaths.

You're gonna lift and lengthen. Oh, goodness. Okay. Ready to change sides. You could do hamstring stretches and all the bits, but today, this is the joy that I'm working with in this stretch.

Ball of the foot, suction cup, hip extension, breathe. There will be one last little thing at the very end here. Connect the heel, still breathing wide through the base of your low ribs. Okay, everyone, come out of that and just have a seat right on the edge of your carriage. Feet flat, we're gonna do just an easy spinal roll forward to touch your toes and just to recenter.

Let the weight of the arms hang from your shoulders, let the weight of the head hang from the neck. Thank yourself for your practice and for moving. It counts. All the gratitude and thank yous that you give to yourself, that is so meaningful. And I thank you for joining me and I'll see you next time.

Bye.