Pelvic Floor Connection

Hi there. I'm so happy that you're back to join me. This is Leah Stewart, and we are going to be doing a short, short pelvic floor class for those times, those days, when you feel like you just don't have much time to do Pilates, but you wanna move your body, and perhaps you wanna focus on the pelvic area, strengthening and mobilizing your pelvic floor. So that's what we're gonna be doing today. We're gonna spend a lot of our class in this kneeling position, so hopefully that feels comfortable for you. Of course, if it doesn't You can slip a cushion, a towel, or even a foam roller under your bottom on your heels if that helps to kind of help with the, the deep vent of the knees.

So let's go ahead and start with our knees together. Our hands are gonna be nice and gentle on our thighs, and we're just gonna mobilize the pelvis a little bit here for a short warm up. So you're gonna shift your hips over to one side on what on the outside of your heel, and we're just gonna shift back and forth, and we're just gonna work on mobilizing that pelvis. But you can also feel that we have this beautiful sort of lateral flexion happening, this lateral tilt happening in your pelvis. And what this warm up does is it obviously is mobilizing your spine, it's kind of creating that contraction and lengthening of the pelvic floor muscles, warming up the hips, kind of activating your thighs here. So it's just a really nice way to try to get up into that warm up quickly.

So let's go a couple more sets, side, and just breathe naturally and side and side. So now you're gonna come to the side. I'm to the right, and I want you to rotate your body this way. You're gonna place your hands on the opposite thigh. So you're here. You're gonna exhale, curl the pelvis underneath you into a little pike position, a little connection with the obliques here.

And reach out. And I want you to really draw the pelvis out behind you. Lift the sternum up so you have this nice arc of your back here. Exhale. And extend. Excel. You can press down on your thigh a little bit if you'd like to, just to get a little bit more connection with your upper body. Excel.

And you will fill your thighs in this class as we work in this kneeling position, and that's a great little bonus here as well. Reach. Last one that should have been 5, and reach at a whole disposition. So I'm thinking of an anterior tilt in my pelvis, I'm on this beautiful rotation, this extension up toward this diagonal. I want you to place your hands down on your mat, and now I want you to just come into a nice stretch here. So drop the head down, the chin down toward the chest, and I want you to open up that side of your body.

For me, it's the right side here, and just feel that stretch. Now hands, press down into the mat or the floor, and lift the sternum up. Bring your hands back to your thighs, and come to the center. Now we're into the other side. So we're here, we're sitting over, and we're excel and extend. So we're going into this little side pike with rotation, exhale, and reach.

And just feel this beautiful marriage of your spine, and your pelvis, your thighs, and even a little bit of your shoulders activating here as we do this work together. Now extend, take the hands down onto the floor, the mat, press down onto the floor, fill that extension, and then push away With your hands, allow your chin to drop down towards your chest. You can even let your hips sink a little bit further to the side so you feel that beautiful opening and that side stretch. Hold it there for just a little bit longer. Use your breath.

Pull. The hands back toward the bodies. You draw your chest up. Release the hands and come back to center. So here, we're gonna reach to the side.

We're gonna come back to here. We're gonna bring the arms out. We're gonna come up into the side pike. We're gonna reach around the center and down. So we're just gonna now do a circle. So we come up here, so we're going signal here.

I keep the pike as I swing the body down the direction, and then I come into that extension. You're sort of making a half circle and reach. Excel. Now what I want you to imagine as we go back and forth, just this very simple movement, you'll start to feel your abdominals engaged beautifully here. As you can move a little bit more.

When you're in this position, I want you to focus on your 2 sits bones getting nice and wide away from each other. Then when you come up into the pal into the tuck, I want you to imagine 2 cis bones coming together, then I want you to widen them here. So now that our body is moving, we're gonna focus on that sits bone action, as we lengthen and open the pelvic floor here, and then close and tighten it here, and reach. Exhale and inhale. Keep going. Exhale and inhale.

Last one, exhale. This will be the last one, I think. And from here, hold here. Come back to the center and up. So now I want you to open your thighs here. So your knees are nice and open. You're sitting on your heels here.

So I'm actually gonna come to the side position. I'm gonna work a little bit here. So this is a movement that I really, really love And you've probably seen it here before on Pilates anytime, but we're gonna repeat it again. So hands behind the head, we're gonna come forward into a bow, you're initiating this movement from the rib cage. The pelvis comes underneath you.

So now you're gonna almost get your head all the way to the mat. Then you're gonna reach out into extension. Now this is gonna require a lot of upper body or spinal strength here, so I want you to hold this position. Reach out into the extension. I want you to come down, almost tap the head to the ground, and come up just 3 of those.

So bowing forward, all the way down, all the way down. So here, the, the cis bones are close together, The tailbone is tucked underneath, and then initiate from the pelvis as you come out. Fill that extension, and then you're going to draw the sits bones back together pull the rib cage down and roll up one more time and forward. And inhale. Now you're gonna hold here.

You're gonna take the feet and make them parallel to the mat, to they're just as wide as the mat. You're gonna sit down as low as you can in between your heels, and you're gonna rise up. Keeping that angle and you're gonna feel like your sit bones are gonna come together. Why didn't the sit bones? Why didn't the pelvis as you go down? And then feel like they squeeze together, and that's what lifts you up, holding there, and opening wide filling those hips mobilize here and drawing up. 2 more inhale.

Excel. One more inhale. And exhale up. Hold it here. Draw into another rounding of the body, another fraction of the spine, and reach out. Form or exhale.

And inhale. Sysmos join together, and then expanding them as you reach out. 2 more. Inhale. One more. And inhale, hold it there, sit down and hinge up. So I want you to come back so you're facing me.

To the front so you should feel nice and warm here. So now we're gonna do a series where we're gonna kinda step out with our legs. So I'll go through it slowly and then we'll sort of speed it up a little bit more of a rhythm. Ready? Okay. So hands here behind the head, take your breath in, and let's come up here. So in this position, I want you to bring your legs parallel. So we have this nice open position here.

You're gonna take your right leg you're gonna step out. So my leg is rotated outward. You can see my foot is rotated outward, and I'm pulling in to that. So I'm getting this beautiful stretch, not only in my inner thigh, but of the pelvis here. Then I'm going to rotate it inward drop the knee down and come into a tuck here. So I want you to go inhale.

And then exhale. And inhale? And exhale. 2 more inhale. And exhale and inhale. And exhale.

And come up. So just nice and slow, feeling that beautiful rotation Now try to marry that leg movement that you're doing with that expanding winding of the pelvis, then when you inwardly inwardly rotate you're narrowing the pelvis and you're feeling that engaging, because the important thing with pelvic floor is to get as much opening and length as we can, and then to do the contraction So really get that full range in the muscles there inside the pelvic floor. Alright. Here we go. So hands behind the head. We're gonna reach out externally rotate. Feel that beautiful stretch and then come in.

And inhale, and exhale. Inhale. Reach and Excel. How was underneath you? Last one. And, Excel. And come up. And now we're gonna just try to switch side to side.

So we did 4. So we're gonna do a pattern. We're gonna go 3. 32211. And let's do that together, and hopefully we can keep our balance as well. So hang behind the head, right leg out.

Inhale and exhale. Reach, open, expand, and narrow. Open expand, and narrow. Hold it. Roll up other side and reach and together and reach and together and reach And together and roll up 2 to the right and reach and together. And exhale, roll up to the left and reach, and together.

Reach, and together roll at 4 times 1 each leg. We'll go into the transition reach. And together, roll up and reach. And together, roll up and reach. And together, roll up and reach.

And together and roll up, rolling up, rolling up, filling that length. Now press the hips forward. Lift the sternum up. Good. Come back to the center here.

Hold the arms up. Reach down to the side and swing your hips and feel that stretch and then come up on the diagonal, filling that connection deep in the pelvic floor, filling that rotation. And now side bend, So we're coming up. The right hip is reaching forward. We're keeping that rotation there.

And side bend. And reach up. Last one, side bend, and reach up. Through the center, and reach, reach, reach, feel that stretch of that pelvic floor. And then like the energy of the pelvic floor is gonna scoop you up and bring you here.

And reach. Stretch stretch. Stretch. Feel that expansion and scoop up to all the pubic bone of the cyst bones together. Reach 2 more and reach. Last one.

Inhale. Exale. Back to center. Open the arms. We're gonna start to transition into a standing position and do one final short sweet series for this public floor class.

Let's go. As we move up, I want you to turn to one side, and we're gonna finish with this last series of, again, pelvic curls by an outstanding position. Play with a little bit of mobility of the pelvis as well. So let's go ahead and stand parallel with our feet directly underneath our hips. We're gonna take arms down to our side. So just feeling that openness in the front of the hips, take the arms up overhead.

This is just sort of transition and dive forward hands on the knees and spine extended here. So you're building this nice position here. We're gonna start with just 4 sort of what I call reverse pelvic curls here. So drawing in with an exhale and inhale. Exhale.

And inhale reach. So again, you're feeling that widening of the pelvic or the pube, excuse me, the sits bones here, then exhale. And whining one more time and exhale. And whining here. So now I want you to take your backhand out in front of you. You're gonna keep your front hand on your front thigh. I want you to step outside the mat and they want you to feel that beautiful stretch here.

So you're getting this in all these nice, interesting angles in the hip joint. So reach as far as you can. You're gonna go there. Then I want you to draw in. So you're coming through the tuck, and then I want you to sweep the arm back here.

So you can have a little bit of rotation in your torso here, but I want you to feel like you're drawing that back hip, this might right hip, in this instance, I'm feeling a little bit of rotation in my pelvis. So then I'm gonna step back in here So I have this nice tuck here, and then I'm gonna reach and draw here. Excel step and extend on the little bit of the rotation. And step a little bit of a pipe here, and reach rotation. 2 more. Exhale.

And inhale. Rotation. Last one. Exhale. And ro extend rotation. So feel that position. Come back to the middle.

Let's center ourselves with 2. Exhale, and inhale. Exhale. And inhale hold it here opposite arm, my front arm, my left arm here, other hand here. So you're gonna come into a little bit of a pike here, and then swing a little bit of rotation. Excel, pelvis underneath you, feeling that connection, swing rotation. Excel.

Swing. Reach that hip out. So you have a little bit of rotation in the pelvis. Rotation. Excel, swing rotation, last one, exhale, swing rotation. Come back to center.

Come into a bending of your knees. Excel and inhale, exhale, And inhale. Extend the knees. Drop the head down. You can keep your knee soft if you need to.

Relax your head here. Now I want you to bend one knee. I'm bending my back knee, and I want you to alternate. And I want you to feel how your pelvis naturally rotates and moves here. And just imagine the sits bones sort of reaching and poking out behind you. And just feel how even without trying, you can feel that gentle contract and lengthen inside the pelvis.

So much of our pelvic floor work is this wonderful marriage of stabilizing and strengthening, but also lengthening and mobilizing. And we wanna make sure that we can address all of the wonderful ranges of motion that our pelvis moves in. Let's do one more each side Come back to the center, drop the head. Take your breath in, start to roll up. Roll up.

Say there if you want, you can face me. And they just kinda want you to stand shifting your hit from side to side. So this nice short class gives you this really beautiful variety of movement in your pelvis. It should help you feel really good, really open. And we are short on time. You're feeling a little bit locked up in your hips.

This is such a great way to sort of open that up. What I think you'll find is as you move throughout your day, you'll feel a little bit more easing your step, a little bit more mobility in your lower back, in your pelvis and your hips, and that is successful. If you want to learn more information about the pelvic floor, I do have a tutorial here on Pilates anytime. Go ahead and read or listen to that. And that will teach you a little bit more about the complexities of the public floor in a really easy to understand way. I hope you enjoyed this class.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Take care.