Mindful & Aligning Mat Class

Welcome everybody to a math class that is going to focus on internal locus of control. And if you've watched the workshop that we did with Pilates anytime, internal locus of control is how we become more conscious of our inside and our internal feedback that allows us to be more present and happy in our daily lives, which was one of Joe's main intentions was that if we develop a healthy body, we can then allow the mind and the spirit to develop and participate in life fully. So that's my goal today. That's the overarching intention of this class. Wanna start in standing.

You're already in standing. Just feel the feet on the ground about hip width apart. Arms dangling down. And taking a deep breath. And as you exhale, let your eyes close.

And only close your eyes if you feel safe or not worried about falling. But create the image of a very heavy elastic band attached to the crown of your head and imagine the band being so thick and heavy that your body weight is actually dangling off of the band. So It's more like our feet. We're reaching our feet for the floor rather than reaching our head for the ceiling. So we're creating the space, and we're getting close to Halloween while we're filming this particular class. So imagine that we're the skeletons hanging on the doors and our bones are just pulling apart gently and separating and dangling.

So imagine the muscles sort of peeling off just a little bit of connective tissue as we're there. Now Feel the feet in the floor, wheel your toes into the mat a little bit, and allow the body weight to shift forward at the ankle and observe where the tension is, where the compression is. And then allow the body to sway back towards the heel. Looking probably about 60% of your body weight shifting forward and shifting back. So just repeat that a couple times.

And just leaning forward is if you were in skis, at the ankles. We're just leaning forward and back from the ankles and observing where the tension is and then reduce the sway to where you feel there's the least amount of tension in the front and the back of the body. The least amount of compression. Like, you feel this really spatial space, the calves are relatively relaxed, the hips, the hamstrings, the abdominals, the shoulders are wide, the space between the ears and the shoulders. We now can shift the movement side to side as if we're rolling to the right side of both feet and then rolling to the left side of both feet. And allow the body, again, imagining that elastic band on the crown of the head to still be pulling us back into that center line, but allowing the body to sway in that plane side to side, right, allow the hips to articulate the ribs to articulate. We can move in all directions in planes feeling how the body responds to the feet.

There's no such thing as a pure plane of movement in human anatomy. So as we shift side to side, you might feel a little rotation. You might feel some translation of the ribs. And then allow it to come back into that place where there's the least amount of tension again forward and back and side to side. Observe where your feet are placed on the ground. Where is the weight? Right? And then observe the space.

Now I want you to bring your fingers, and you can open your eyes. You wanna look to what we call the greater trochanter. We often call this the hips. This is actually a bone of the femur. That's that hard bone that we fill there to the side.

And then slide our fingers straight across the front till we hit the inguinal crease. Right? And that point there is where our hip joints are. Right? So if you think of just sort of allowing the hips to slide, side to side, like a little bit of merengue, We're now discovering where the hip joint is. And we could even do circles around that hip joint and appreciate that movement, like a hula dance or something, and appreciating that that's where the hip joint is. As we increase the consciousness of that, if we think of where the hip joint is and we think of where the sacrum is, they actually are associated with each other front to back in their planes.

So what that means is if we bring our feet now close together and I wanna be able to lift one foot up and then lift the other foot up, the amount of shift is probably less than 1 inch. Right? And that's because the hip and the sacrum, the central axis only has to shift a very little bit for us as bipedal animals. So it's really important we're thinking of movement and alignment through the pelvis, through the legs, how close the hip joint is to the spine. Right? So now we can come up and place your finger on your navel. And again, realizing the navel is directly opposite of L3. L3 is the apex of your lumbar spine. That's the narrowest point of the body.

So notice now as you shift the body weight forward and you shift back, observe the relationship that happens between the navel and the spine. And you might find there's nothing happening or you might find this a little bit of energy contracting, a little more tension, happening. Just observe it. And then bring the finger to the space of this sternum. We call this the Xiphoid process. This is directly opposite of our T7 or the base of the shoulder blade.

And again, just sort of notice relationship if I go up into a little bit of extension, or if I go into a little bit of flexion, I change the relationship between front to back, and we'll play with this a little bit through the exercises we select. And then last thing is just to let your arms dangle down and observe where your shoulders are in relationship to your body. Are they a little bit rounded, or are they back? Is the shoulder forward and you're trying to lift your chest? Everybody has a little different placement. Ideally, we want the shoulders to sit really out wide, and a good image that I like to use is one of a smile. So I think of a smile in the front of the shoulders is the same as the smile in the back of the shoulders.

So we're looking at that balance between the Bio Ten Segarty model of tension and compression. So if we're here all day long, we're gonna have compression in the front of our chest and tension in the back. So we might need to do a little more compression in the back and a little more tension in the front to sort of find that space where our shoulders have the most motion. So again, close your eyes one more time. Taking a deep breath fill the body weight going forward and back again and find that space now.

We have all these relationships we just created. Right? The hip to the sacrum, the navel to L3, the sternum to T7, the base of the shoulder blades, the shoulders out to the side. And find a place where there is the least amount of tension as if the skeleton is balancing on itself. And the elastic band is giving us just that little lift up. Take an imaginary picture of this posture of yours is if you can take a picture from the front, from the side, and from the back, and now store that away in your minds, open your eyes, going down onto the mat's feet, facing the center or facing me, if you're at home, knees bent in what we call a hook line position laying on your back. So this coming a little bit closer too.

That's good. Yep. Now in this position, what I want you to think of is that the pelvis is like a large bowl of soup. So we could think of the pubic symphysis, the navel, and the 2 crest of the ilium as being the mouth of the bowl. And the sacrum then is the bottom of the bowl. It's the round part of the bowl on the mat.

And I want you just to start sort of tilting the bowl towards the feet and back towards the shoulders, finding a rhythm in that movement. And another little image I like to use, if it was like a big bowl, let's say it was half filled with soup and you're sloshing the soup towards your feet, sloshing the soup back towards your shoulders. And I'm looking for a rhythm. So I wanna feel this kind of a rhythm. Mhmm. Accentuate the down. Good.

And I find that if I accentuate the anterior tilt, I get a springy post to your tilts rather than thinking of having to lift anything, all I have to do is relax a little bit more. Let me do it. There it is. Find that rhythm. Yeah. Do you see how you're able to let go of the muscles freeing that up? And then let that settle down.

So the soup settles back down. And now we're gonna tilt the bowl of soup to the right and to the left. So the knees are gonna stay still. And a good image of this is if I put a coat hanger underneath the knees and you're just tilting the pelvis around the femur. So now if you remember where those femur heads are, where the hip joints are, put your finger where we found that. Right? So it's right in the inguinal canal.

Inguinal crease coming across. That's where that rotation's coming from. So we're rotating the pelvis around those points, becoming aware of that. Temptation often is to do a hip hike, and we really wanna just be able to do like a pure rotation in the low back. That's it. Good. And then let's combine those 2 motions into a diagonal.

So we're gonna take the tilt towards the right foot back towards the left shoulder. Right foot left shoulder. Find that rhythm. Find that oscillation now. So the accent to the foot and spring back to the shoulder. Accent. Accent.

Accent. Keep going. You're doing good. Here. There it is. There it is. That's the rhythm. Good. And then let's try it to the other side.

So let's try going down to the left foot, right shoulder. And fill that nice articulation. Now here's something I want you to fill. That is like the communication between the spine as that pelvis tilts down to that left foot, what's happening to your head? What's happening to your shoulders? What's happening to your spine? You could think of all 24 vertebra talking to each other and just saying, given a little nudge and they're pushing and gliding in those directions.

And let's finish up doing a full circle movement full circumduction. Imagine that bowl of soup, a big wooden spoon stirring that bowl of soup, getting a rhythm, a tempo in there that's just natural, using as little muscle with as much movement as possible. And then reverse that circle. Now a lot of these movements find it seemed a little tough, in particular, the diagonal, but I want you to realize the diagonal pelvic movement is walking. So if you notice a difference on the right versus the left, you might find there's other things correlating with that in your body that might be causing knee or hip or back pain or foot and ankle pain and relax.

From here, I want you to bring your feet together, hands out to the side, and that both knees go to the right side. Yep. And just leave them there. Taking a deep breath into the left lung. Let's do that a couple more times and feel like the ribs are separating, almost like a, fan opening up or a slinky opening up, finding that movement between the ribs all along that left side. And then on this next deep breath, as you exhale, send the rib up at the highest point down to the mat in each subsequent rib until it pulls your legs back up towards the ceiling.

That's it. Good. Take the legs over to the left side. Again, same thing. Be patient here, deep breath into the right lung. That's it. Couple times.

Fill that expansion. That fan. I often think of sometimes the, accordion instrument is probably a little more representative of our rib cage opening and closing with a breath. On the next exhalation, bring the ribs down, bring the legs back up. Let's go a little bit faster. Legs to the right, inhale, exhale, bring the legs back up. To the left, exhale back up.

A little bit faster. Right up. Left up. Right up. Left up. Right up. Left up. Right up.

Last one left and relax. Open both knees, like a butterfly stretch, just to observe how the legs open. Are they symmetrical on both sides? Do you feel like they're both opening and then close the legs? Place the hands on top of the pelvis We're gonna do bent knee openings. And the idea is when I open up my right leg, you're gonna open up your right legs, can I keep the pelvis quiet?

Can I keep that soup quiet and then bring it back up? And then open up the left leg. And bring it back up. And then right leg. And up. Do it a couple more times on your own pace, and then we're gonna do it together, and we're gonna play with tempo because tempo changes everything. When we go into the tempo part of Bentney openings, 2 things are gonna happen.

The faster we go, the shorter the range of motion's gonna be opening the leg. And the stiffer the trunk's gonna be naturally be cause of the speed and the load. This would be similar to us running or walking fast. Both legs together and up. We'll do this together.

Open right. Close right. Left up, right, up, left, up, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left. That's it. Keep it going. Very nice. Well, through your right, left, left, and relax. Very good. If you were able to keep your pelvis quiet and increase the tempo, that's adaption adaptation that happens neurologically for you from a spinal cord reflex. All you had to do was think of the task of keeping the pelvis quiet and speeding up the passage. Right?

Open up the feet, hip width apart. We're gonna go into the bridge, segmental bridge, and I want you to imagine, like, here we are, right, at this beach, right, this beautiful beach, and imagine yourself lying down the beach and maybe even being a jellyfish at the beach. And your feet are facing the water. And that warm we're gonna make it warm water from Miami instead of cold water from California because I like the warm water image better. And that warm water is gonna come in and roll your gelatinous bottom back and spine up off of the sand. And the reason why I use a jellyfish is because I don't want you thinking of bones.

I want you thinking of sales moving. Now take a deep breath up here on top. Imagine the water going back out into the ocean, pulling your spine, pulling this, the jelly fish back out into the sand. Here we go. Let's do it a couple times. Xhale roll up. Take a deep breath on top.

Xhale roll down. And repeat that two more times on your own. Xhaling up. And every time we do the bridge, we're really thinking of how do I find segmental movement in my spine, particularly in the lower thoracic and upper lumbar? Another image I like to use as you're going through this is imagine every vertebra is like a small shot glass. That's half filled with water, and we're just tilting the shot glass each segment until the water comes to the lip of the glass.

So we're finding more movement. This next one come up and stay up. So we're in the bridge. I want you to feel the chest drop down a little bit. Alright? So sternum's gonna drop down, but keep the sacrum up. Yeah.

Keep bringing this down a smidge more. Yeah. Good. Right there. Now from here, imagine that your bottoms are on a skateboard. And we're just gonna slide it to your right and to your left, slide it back across, come back to center, drop the chest down another centimeter. Slide to the right, slide to the left. Come back to center, drop the chest down another centimeter. Keep dropping down side to side and drop. Side to side and drop.

You should be getting close pretty soon where your bottom is gonna be dusting the mat as you come down lower and lower. Finding that segmental movement observing if there are certain areas that might be more restricted than others. Right? So you might find there's a place. We'll do it one more time once you come all the way down. You're finding a lot of vertebra. Right? That's good.

Alright. Rest your hamstrings for a second and exhale roll up. Drop this sternum down a smidge, slide to the right, slide to the left. Looking better. Drop down another segment. Right? That's nice. Good. And left.

Now we're finding it. Keep going. That's it. Now do you feel like there's one side or a couple segments that slide better than others? Right? So what we're experiencing here is certain muscles are naturally guarding.

They could be related to the fact that you had one diagonal that was easier than the other diagonal. Most of us have that. That when we're walking certain muscles are grabbing and contracting to try to protect us and we lose that mobility in those segments. Come all the way down and relax. Very good.

Bring your hands to your sternum, fingertips pointing down. So the back of the hands are together. Mhmm. And from here, imagine that I am grabbing your elbows, and I'm gonna pull you up into a chest lift position. Just right there, right, to the base of the scapula and then come back down. And the goal for us is to be able to roll up into a position that the head actually can be pretty relaxed.

Like feel this reaching for me. Good. Rather than the head. Let's do that two more times. Elbows reaching for me. Find me with the elbows, not the head. No.

Not the heads. Relax. There it is. Right there. That's it. Good. And down. Last time. Very good and down.

Now we're gonna go into chest lift. So hands behind the head, have the elbows so that they're in your periphery. You can see the elbows to the side. Push the head into the hand a little bit to lengthen the back of the neck. And then from there, same idea, sternum's gonna slide down towards the pubis and just come up to that same spot. Yep. Good.

The head is actually pushing into the hands a little bit, and it's the scapulas that are bringing us up. Can you feel that? That chest lift is built around a hammock of the trapeze in the back of the head down to the middle of the back and come back down. Let's come up again. Same way. Same exact thing. And from here now, rotate to the right. So your right elbow's gonna come down to the ground and then come back up to that same height and roll it. So the left elbow comes down.

Notice where the movement comes from. Come back up one more time each direction. And up and left and up and relax. Very good. Arms down to the side. Back of the neck long.

Same idea of rolling up to that same place. Now we know that place base of the shoulder blade. We're going into a set of the hundreds. Roll on up. Bring the legs up to 9090.

Beating the hands. Breathing in 2, 4, 5. Oh, 2, 3, 4, 5. Key in this exercise is always about breath. Feeling the breath laterally in the ribs, posteriorly in the ribs, like you're filling up the cushion behind you. If you feel good about this, go ahead and straighten out your right leg to 45 degrees.

Keep going, beating in. Out switch the legs. And if you're feeling good about that, then let's go both legs for the last two full breaths. Breathing in and out. One more time.

And out and relax. Bring your knees into your chest. I want you to grab the back of your thighs with your fingers and what we call a lumber cal grip. So you're gonna grab it just so it's hooking on to the tendon there. The image I want is that if you have really heavy lead boots on your feet, right? And you're gonna send those lead boots away, hanging onto your thighs, and it's just gonna pull you up into a seated position. Excellent. Smile at each other.

Very good. So now imagine that you have a book on top of your heads, and we're gonna leave that book in place. And all we're gonna do is gently roll back without the book dropping down we're rolling the pelvis back and then rolling the pelvis back up. We're discovering how the lumbar curve, when it lengthens inflection, we don't lose any height. We actually gain or maintain that same height, but we're moving from the right place. Now with the feet heavy in the mat, think almost of pushing the feet in the mat, as you start to go down to the next few segments.

So you've rolled back through the lumbar, keep pushing away, pushing away. Your arms are just elastic bands, and the legs are gonna start to come up as you roll down controlling that space all the way down until you're on the mat flat. The goal here is that you should be able to roll down and roll up, stop any time. And really, the only muscle we're using is our fingers and maybe our diaphragm. So let's try coming up with the same way. Deep breath in, exhale. Send those heavy feet away.

Heavy feet away. Body just rolls up. Inhale, up nice and tall. Excel rolling the pelvis first, and then rolling back. And here's another image.

Stop there. Rule of ribs. Number 1 is if I can go into flexion, it's gonna follow the disc. Think of the ribs coming up underneath your heart. As you're rolling back. Can you imagine that as you're coming back? Keep the legs heavy and away from you.

Arms are long. Keep rolling down. Sending those ribs back and up underneath your heart. So you should be able to stop anywhere along the way. That's right.

Perfect control. You should be able to breathe anywhere in that line. How you doing? Okay? Great. Yeah. So again, don't make it about muscles in doing a modified roll up. Right now, we're learning distribution and movement equals distribution of 4. If we can pick up those 2 or 3 more segments you picked up in the bridge, the lateral translation, you're gonna be able to figure this out fairly easy.

Let's do one more time rolling up with assistance. All the way up. Straighten out your legs. So now you can scoop back a little bit of just, yep, just there's the mat, and we're gonna do a full roll down. Right? So arms in front. And on this one, same idea. Right? The head is tall.

On the book, and we're gonna initiate just rolling the pelvis back, just the pelvis. The head stays the same height, then start sending the ribs back up underneath your heart as you roll down. If you need to stop and take another breath to figure it out, that's fine. And keep sending the legs down into the mat. Eyes coming down towards your toes. Beautiful.

Nice. Nice. Good. We're gonna incorporate singing right now, and I'll sing with you. If I could see you at home, I would expect you to sing with me at home as well. And this is why vocalization is very powerful tool of controlling breath.

Breath is what we're controlling on the roll up, not the abdominal muscles. Wreath. It's the intra abdominal pressure. So the song we're gonna sing goes like this. You all know the words to this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. That would be us up to the top.

Here comes the hard part going back down. 87, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now my rule in a big class, if I catch anybody not singing, they get to sing a solo. So it's better to sing with me and sing poorly, but have the experience. I also want you to belt out the numbers 4, 5, and 6 as we're rolling up.

You ready? Here we go. Deep breathe in to prepare. Excel eye gaze comes down rolling up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, deep breath in. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Again, deep breath in. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Deep breath in. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Very good. Roll over onto you're both facing different directions. Let's both roll towards the camera. There we go. Side kick. So come up onto your forearms.

Legs are on top of each other and pitched forward about 10 degrees of a pitch. So just a little bit pitched forward. And the reason why we do that is because we often think of standing straight being 0 degrees, and it is with a goniometer, but if we think of where the loose pack position of the hip is, it's really about 15 degrees of flexion. So that means when we're going back into our sidekick, we wanna have some range of motion to go into. If you start with 0, some people don't even have 0 degrees.

So they're not gonna have any experience that's gonna immediately cause their back to go forward into an arch. So from here, organize. I see nice lines on the body. Lift that top leg up about 6 inches. Yep. And just do some circles right there. Just some little circles going forward towards the camera.

Forward forward forward. 5, 6, 7, and reverse. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, side kick. Leg goes forward and dorcey flexion. Take a breath in. And reaches back in exhalation. Now, I'm gonna have you do what some people would think is cheating, but when the leg comes forward, let your spine flex.

Go into a flexion. Yep. And when you go back, go into extension and exaggerate it. You're not gonna hurt yourself. It's not a it's not a cardinal sin in Pilates, like some people think, and add your breath to it. So we're inhaling forward, exhaling back one more time, and then let's change the breath.

Exhale forward with the curve inhale back, exhale forward, and back, and just listen to your body what it's saying, and then come back leg stacked on top. Let's do it without the body moving now. Top leg lifts up, dorcey flexion the foot, inhale coming forward without the body moving, exhale sweeping the leg back in point, and inhale forward and back. At a double pump, and back and forward and back and forward and back. 2 more. Leave the leg back.

Take the right arm, stretch forward as far as you can, reach it forward in the rotation. They left arm. Sorry. Yep. See, I got myself there, but really feel the rotation. Yep. So the leg goes back. Good. Good. Good. Posting on that support of elbow.

Taking a deep breath. We're gonna pretend that we're bees. Making the buzz sound until there's no more air in our lungs. So deep breath in, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, filling the ribs, narrowing, fill all of that connection, fill the vibration, louder buzz until there is no more air left in your lungs. Obviously, there's a little bit of residual air left when you're done, roll over onto your belly. Very good. Rest your head on your hands.

Elbows are out to the side. Feel the soft tissue of the chest widened too. So that you can get a little closer, little wider triangle around the shoulders. And from here, feel the hands actually pushing into the floor a little bit, and elbows feel that groundedness with your legs, cock the toes underneath the foot, and push the heels back until the knees come off, and then just float the foot by pointing the foot, leaving the legs floating in air. So just point the toes. Yep. Beautiful.

Point those toes now. Yep. So the lakes should still be floating. Right. So you're here. Point the toes from there. Yep. And this one. Good.

So I wanted to feel that engagement there. Keep them up good. So that's the connection that I wanna have. Relax everything. Now that you know that connection, we're going to start with the head pushing the hands and elbows into the floor.

Just lift the head up with the eyes focused on the hands. So let the head lift up. Try to keep the space in the back of the neck long really focusing on that upper thoracic mobility that we get stuck with on our phones and come down. Let's bring that back up and down and up and down. This time up stay up and float the elbows in the hands up to meet the forehead.

Load them up. Yep. Good. Now heads, elbows, and hand all come down together. Head, elbow hands all come up together. That's it. Good. One more time down together and up together. Stay there. Cock the toes, reach the legs, point the toes that are hovering.

Bring the hands down to your side palms up towards the ceiling, dark position, breathing in and pulsing the hands up towards the ceiling. It's not about how high you lift. It's about how long you lift. So feeling the length, we do not wanna feel this in the low back. We wanna feel the length of it that we've already created, the hips extending, the upper thoracic extending, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, lay on your opposite side facing me. Side kick opposite side, top leg floating, 10 degrees, 15 degrees forward pitch, lift that top leg up, circles going forward, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 side kick. Bring it forward.

And back. Allow whole body to move. Test the breathing. Switched the breathing up. Next one. So now we're going to exhale coming forward. Feel the connection of how breath facilitates movement, movement facilitates breath, come back to the center, reorganize.

Trunks not going to move this time. Take a deep breath in. Inhale as the leg comes forward, exhale as it goes back, double pump, and back, and forward, and back. Last one, and back, leave the leg back. Reach with a top arm away from you full rotation length and still posting on that elbow, taking a deep breath and buzz like a bee.

You're good. Fill that coming the ribs narrowing, connecting the rib cage, vibration all the way out, no more air, and finish rolling over onto your bellies. This time hands in a push up position. So hands are right next to the chest. Elbows are up towards the ceiling.

The energy that I want you to feel is as if I was grabbing your elbows and pulling them down to lift up the chest. So let's let the hands come back a little bit there. You feel that? So let it be about the elbows, not about lifting the head up. It's just that's what's gonna happen when the elbows get sent down. Let's see how it feels to you.

Let's bring the hands a little bit lower for you. I'm like, here. Yep, and feel my hands lifting up, but the back of the head is long. Neck is long. Yeah. Good. And back down.

And send the elbows down and long. Good. Let's do that two or three more times. I want you to feel how the shoulder girdle is lifting the chest up. Shoulder girdle lifts the chest up. On this next one, cock the toes underneath again.

Send the heels away, float the legs, and point the toes. Right? Now continue with the hands pushing down into the mat to roll yourself up onto your knees. You're gonna come all the way up onto your knees. Yep, in our Swan position. Now in Swan position, we wanna be careful of not dropping into there, right, and still having that position. Let's roll back down onto the mat.

All the way back down. Bend your elbows. Yep. Good. So when the hips come up into extension so lift the hips up, the legs. Yep. Good. Keep this now the same. Elbows come down and you push right up onto your knees.

There it That's the position we wanna keep. Let's try that one more time. Come down and come back up without collapsing in the low back. Very important. We should not feel this in the low back. That's better.

Now from here, we're gonna go into Swan tube. That's where we're gonna today, but you're gonna come all the way up into Swan 1, so all the way up. Yep. Let's find it a little bit higher. And on Swan 2, we're gonna let ourselves down roll down because the legs are connected. They're gonna come up with our roll down and we'll come back up and catch ourselves on the hands.

We're gonna do this all together on 3, right? So everybody's okay. You're just practicing. If you gotta practice because I gotta demonstrate it perfectly for you out implies any timeline. So here we go. 1, 2, 3 rock down and catch up. 1, 2, 3, roll down and up.

1, 2, 3, down and up, and relax sit back on your heels. Very good. I wish I could take a picture of you out there doing it because that's one of my favorite pictures to take in a class. Alright. Hands forward should you give me so that relaxing the low back, just sitting back. Very good. Taking that deep breath. Why we're relaxing a little bit, again, sort of bringing consciousness and awareness to where our body is in space.

Everything in this class is designed with really purposeful intent of how we're organizing or becoming aware of the exercises and their builds. Let's come up into a quadruped position. And from here, we're gonna do exactly what we did with the pelvic clock or the pelvic circles. So I want you to imagine the pelvis again is a bowl of soup, and imagine we're on the moon. Some place it doesn't have much gravity.

So the soup's not gonna fall out. What we wanna start doing is just an anterior posterior tilt, right, of that pelvis so that we're allowing the head and the whole spine to be part of that motion. So when the tailbone comes up, the head should come up. When the tailbone goes down, the head should go down. Ask yourself, is every vertebra talking to each other?

So if the tailbone goes down, is it pulling on sacrum, pulling on L504, and arching that back up towards the ceiling and vice versa. And then let's try something different. Try to see if you can organize the movement starting with the head. So if the head is the first thing to go down, can we connect it all the way into the sacrum? Right? Just changing where we orienting from, and I always think of the slinky in this particular mode. Like, how do we move more like a slinky in the spine?

I'm gonna challenge you a little bit now. Let's do the diag and all that we did. Side to side. So we're gonna take the pelvis down towards the right foot and anteriorly towards the left hand, just tilting the pelvis. So we're just gonna be going here. Yep. Good. And then you're gonna go here, here to left hand, right foot, left hand.

That's it. And then we're gonna switch that direction, switch to the other diagonal. And I know this is awkward. It feels weird to try to go on the diagonal and quadruped. But I like weird. And then go full circumduction, just like we did on the mat work.

Full circumduction is your head part of that pelvis. I want to feel like when the pelvis is circling, your head should be circling. Right? Find that head. Where is your head? Right? The head should be also circling with you opposite of that pelvis.

That's it. And you can literally free form here and go any direction you want. Goal is connection. Mobility with connection. You think of having like the, I remember as a kid, we had those wooden snakes in Chinatown that you could sort of whip the tail and the bones would articulate around and the head would move in relationship to the other pieces of wood and relax. Shake out your hands a little bit.

We're gonna go back into quadruped in just a moment. So I'll get those hands shaking out. And find your quadruped position. Now let's have you both in the same position for quadruped. So, yeah. Perfect. Yep. Good. Okay. So from here, we're gonna find that ideal alignment that we talk about.

If I was to lay a stick across the sacrum, thoracic and head, they would be touching each other. Yep. Good. And that that come. Ribs come up just a smidge. Yep. Good. And head comes up a little bit more. Good. Good. Good. Good. And this looks great.

So from here, in that quadruped position, if I took a dowel and I laid it on your back, it would be touching your sacrum, the mid thoracic in the back of your head. You would have natural curve underneath the low back and underneath the neck. Maintaining that position, if I put a hot cup of tea on top of the sacrum, can you release an arm and a leg and reach them out away from each other without spilling the cup of tea. So let's take the right leg left arm. Reach them out and away from each other. Yep.

That's it good. High enough. Bring it back home. And switch the leg. Yep. Good. Side to side. Switching. Very good.

Cup of tea is still as can be. Legs and arms are moving freely underneath it. Yes. Let's do a few more of those. And relax. Now we're gonna do a diagonal.

So this is an important one. Right? We're in the quadruped. Take your left arm and your right leg out like we just did. So reach them out. Yep. And now go back over your left foot as you come down towards the left foot. And then come forward over your right hand.

Left foot. Very nice left hand. Let's do one more of those. You got it. Again, this is waking up rotators in the hip that often are sleepy from sitting too much.

Switch arm and leg. Same thing now. Going back over the right hip. Forward over the left hand. Again, hear the body talking.

Feel the tension and compression across the body, posteriorly as you go back, you're gonna feel tension around the hip. You're gonna feel pull across the front of the chest on the left. See if you can be aware of those connections. These bands that connect our body together. Last one, come back into quadruped, shift the weight over to the right knee and the right hand, and reach the left leg left arm.

So you're gonna shift over to me and look up in front of you. Yep. So open up into a pre star. Yep. When you're returning, allow the weight shift to happen through the weight bearing shoulder and hip. So shift over.

So you can let the leg and arm come back gently. Same thing to the opposite side. Shift to the left. Reach the arm and leg out. Good. Reach it long. Great.

Wear your eyes Very good. And then shift again to the left to let the arm and leg come down controlled. Yeah. That's okay. We're we're learning. Right? By the way, it is her 1st class with me, so she's doing fantastic. Reach the left side out.

Open it up. And let's go a little bit faster. Open and come down. You'll realize it's actually a little easier the faster you go. And open, you might give me some jazz hands too and down. And open. Good and down. Last one to the left.

And relax. Now from quadruped, take your right knee up to your left hand, just cross it across your body and sit down facing the front of the classroom in a z sit position for mermaid. There we go. Yep. Good. We're in our good z sit position there. Bring the right hand down to the mat. Left hand behind our head. Yep.

And from here, the arm actually creates like a kickstand. So if I think about elbow bending just a little bit into the body, that's the post. We're gonna lift the rib cage up over that arm. That's right. Pushing with that right hand. Mhmm.

So the opposition, if you look now, this humerus is in line with that humerus, and it's reaching up, opening up that rib cage. And just stay there for a little while. It's okay. Yeah. Let's bring this hand right here and push with that hand a little bit. Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, right through here. That's it. Good.

Breathing into the left lung. This is a rest exercise. We can recapture our energy here. And then come up over to the left side. Grab the left shin with your left hand, right hand behind the head.

Does a little difficult side open up? Again, reaching that elbow up towards the ceiling, opening up that rib cage, the accordion, right, really finding that lateral movement. And let's go into our full mermaid. So right hand comes down, left arm gestures long over the head reaching and flowing back over to the left. Right hand gestures and up and over.

Let's go a little more fluid to the right. To the left, to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left. Last time we come back to the right, place that right hand down and follow it with the left hand, and turn looking at that hand. So We're gonna put it down right there. Now in this position, and let's scoot your hands back a little bit closer to you. Yep. Think of this sit bone reaching down and back and the head going to a little bit of flexion.

So we're finding this diagonal there. Yep. Good. Breathing into this part of your back. Yep. Good. One more time. That's it. Good. Now from here, we're going to send the head up chest up, sit bone up into an extension.

Right? In this position, breathing forward, breath is a tool, breathe into the front of the chest. And then on the exhalation, we're gonna send that sit bone back down. And round the spine. Let the hip be the motion instigator. Right? So left hip's gonna push you forward in inhalation and back with the exhalation. Inhale forward a little bit quicker.

Exhale. Fill the connection all the way on that diagonal with the rotation through the spine. And, again, last one. Roll back. Bring your arm back up overhead. Both arms are out to the side. Bring the hands behind you onto the floor, onto the floor, and lean back and switch your legs to the other side.

Very good. K. Left hand on the floor will go a little bit quicker now because you know what I want. Reaching that left elbow to the ceiling. 2 nice deep breaths into that rib cage. Opening up that, especially that middle rib cage. And then switch over to the right side, breathing into the left lung, reaching that elbow up to the ceiling, fill that space.

And then let's go into our flow for Mermaid to the left, right arm gestures, to the right, to the left, find the flow with it, feel it very naturally moving and expanding through that spine, feel the weight shifting on the hips. The hips have already been warmed up into internal external rotation. Last one to the right. Come to the left, bringing the right hand down, rotating in, push with the hands and the sit bone down. Just do a couple breaths into that right lumbar thrastic area. Fill this expanding.

Almost like it's a sale of a boat, expanding and opening to be able to get that movement in that lower flank. This is where so much low back pain happens because the quadratus is so tight. And we're just breathing into that area now. From here, the next inhalation, pull with the hands, lift the hip up, chest comes up. Ex help push back with the hands, leading with the hip now, right hip pushes you up, Right hip pulls you back.

Right. Hip lifts you up. Last one going back. Very good. And sit up nice and tall long sit facing this direction. Long sit facing that direction. Yep.

Now, from here, legs can be about shoulder width apart going into spine stretch. Fingertips are coming down to the side, and we're gonna walk those fingertips. We're gonna walk them out as far as we can on the ground, right? Until you feel that neural zinger? Can you feel a little neural zinger a little bit coming across here? Maybe a little bit of tension? She might be too young to feel that yet. I think you'd find it more often now because they're here. Yeah. So from here now, lift the arms up, hug that imaginary tree in front of you.

And now we're gonna roll over like a spacious role, creating space underneath us, and let the hands come to the side of the legs, palms up. Now from there, taking a deep breath, and as you exhale, start stacking from the sacrum up, pubic bone up, even drag the hands on the floor. I love I love just dragging the hands on the floor here. Yep. And we go walk the hands out, float the arms up, hug the tree over that imaginary ball, exhale, stack the spine back up.

Let's do that one more time. Hug the ball, hug the tree over the legs, stack the spine back up. Now open the legs about shoulder width apart going right into spine twist, but let's start in the I dream of Jeannie position. I had to do that. Nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon, you're doing good. Alright. So sitting nice and tall now on the sit bones, rotate the spine to the right without lifting up that left hip. So it's just really on the That's it. And then come back to center and rotate to the left and to the right and to the left. Now this time, we're gonna go to the right. Stay there on the right.

With just your eyeballs, you're gonna move your eyeballs to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left, to the right to the left, to the right, left, right, left, right, left until you feel like you wanna throw up, and then rotate a little bit further to the right. You know, I should actually get a few more degrees and then rotate to the left. All the way from the trunk. Eyes again, looking left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right. Can you catch this on the camera? My eyes going a little crazy? And then exhale go a little further to the left. Good.

So what we're doing there, that's the vestibular ocular reflex that we're relaxing that restricts our rotation. So if we can free ourselves up from that, we can have a little more movement in going now into the saw. So the legs are nice and wide. Your arms are out to the side. We're gonna combine those 2 exercises.

So we're gonna do is we're gonna go into our twist and then reach outside that little toe. Yep. Stack it back up like the spine stretch rotate like the twist, reach over to the saw. Stack it back up from the spine, twist and reach. Stack twist and reach. Combine the 2 exercises for the saw and reach articulating the spine back up, reaching stack, last one, and relax. Very good.

Scoop to the front of your mats, rolling like a ball, You're gonna bring your knees in nice and tight to your chest. I like to grab yes, just like that. Perfect. Can you find a balance on your sit bones? So the legs come up good and feel like you're expanding into a balloon. You're really expanding.

So the head's nice and safe. We're gonna roll to the top of the back. We don't wanna touch the head to the floor. On the inhalation rollback, exhale, push into your legs to come back up. Let's try it. Inhale back.

Exhale. Come back up. Find that balance. Good. Inhale. Back. Exhale. Push. Yes. Good. One more time. Very good. And now we're gonna go right into the seal.

So in the seal, we're gonna grab our legs underneath here. Yep. And bring the feet together. And what sound do seals make? So I just lost my breath doing that. When we come back up on the exhale hell, we come up front. We clap our feet.

We're gonna make the sound of a seal. So here we go. Inhale back, push into your feet, or or or and back. Hey. We gotta do something that makes us a little different than everybody else on the plies anytime videos. We all know them at work.

Last one, Good. Now stay there. Grab on the top of the legs. Yes. And we're going to straighten the legs up straight up and a little more narrow. You can grab onto the shin. That's fine. Yep. Good.

Still keep that rounded spine. Am I still in the camera here? Rounded spine. Yep. And we do the same thing. We're gonna inhale back.

You don't have to make any noise other than, ah, push. Good. Very nice. Back. Up. Very good. One more time. Now being up here, take your hands back behind your back. Staying there. Yep.

Just like on the mat. Yep. Good. Right. Bring the legs together. Good. Can you find your balance there? So lower the legs a couple inches, bring the legs back up. We're doing a little pre teaser here.

Down and up, down and up. Now, leave the legs up take your right hand and reach it forward. Bring it back down. Bring your left hand. Reach it forward. You got that feeling there right.

Now bring both hands forward. Good. Drop down. I got you. I'm with you. Drop down a inch. In the body. Come back up.

Nice. Back down. Back up. Now legs and body drop down a couple inches is all I want. And back up. You got it. Last one. Exhale. Grab those knees into your chest.

Roll onto your back. Very nice. Very nice. Alright. We're gonna go into a rollover here.

Right? So we got plenty of room. You're good. I'll assist you where you need assistance. We're gonna do is we're going to reach the legs up towards the ceiling. Grab the back of the legs for now. Yep.

And let's just feel the feeling of like, can we sort of feel the legs coming close to the chest? Yep. That's the position we want. Right? Now, put your hands down on the mat because that's what's gonna push you up and over, and we're gonna reach up over and over until the weight's on the shoulders. The legs are just gonna stay right there. Okay. So the legs are pound. Taking a breath there.

Don't be in a hurry with this one. This is just like our roll up. It's the same exact thing. On your next exhale, start softening the ribs down towards the heart and lowering the body, keeping your feet over your head. The feet are the counterweight or the balance as you roll down through your spine.

You got it. You got it. Keep going. That's it. Right there. And then let the knees bend. Yep. And then straighten them back up and do it again and roll over. Taking a deep breath.

Sort of softening the spine. Don't make it about abdominal work, rolling back down. If the pelvis comes down, bend the knees. Good. Let's do one more of those. Reach up and over.

Very good. And roll down. Okay. So this time, we're gonna roll up and over. Right? So legs are up and over.

Shift the weight over onto the right side of your shoulder. Yep. And tilt the feet over towards me, roll down through your spine the same way, roll down, roll down, roll down, come around with the legs, and go up over the other side. Find it. Find it. That's it. Good. Come down over the left shoulder, sweep it around, You got it and up and over. Beautiful. Down to the right.

Sweep, up and over to the left. Last one, you're gonna roll down and sit up with it. And sit up good. Let's come back onto the mats. Hands behind us here.

Right. Let's start with a bent knee. Yep. And let's just lift the bottoms up off the mat. Yep. All the way up till you're open in the front of the hips. Table top position. You got it.

Very nice. And then hinge at the hips that the tailbone come back down to the mat. Yep. All the way down. And really let it be at the hip, not at the back. So I want to see the back staying in neutral. Just lift it up and then hinge at the hip.

So think of the tailbone leading the way. That was better. Let's do that one more time. Tail bone leads the way down. Beautiful. Again, stay there now.

Walk your feet close together. And march, right there, marching, keeping the hips up, trying to keep the open front of part of the hip. Eyes are looking at your knees. 5, 4, 3, 2, and relax. Excellent job. So this is sort of a modified.

Let the bottom come down. A modified leg pull. Right? But I like it because I really wanna get that opening across the front with a bent knee, which is much more valuable to us sometimes than doing the straight leg leg pull. Right? Cross your legs in front of you. All the way like crisscross. Yep. Roll over your legs into a push up position.

Yep. Roll over on the legs. Your legs go back. You learn so fast. You're gonna do great. By the way, She's only seventeen years old and just showing interest in Pilates.

So we're gonna give her a big round of applause, not while you're holding a plank position, though. So from here now, fill that length just like we did in quadruped, And we're gonna lift the right leg like we did in quadruped and bring it back down and back up and down. That's alternate legs, left leg up, and down. Right leg up, and down. Left leg up, and down. Very nice. Keeping that cup of tea.

Still, let's go a little bit faster. Right. Left. Right. Left. 5, 4, 3, 2, relax. Give me one perfect push up.

Walk your hands back into a downward dog position. You got it. Legs are straight. You got it. I know we're so close. We're like 30 seconds away from the class being over. We're doing so good.

Now come back up on your feet until your arms are dangling. Right? So you're all the way up on your feet. We're gonna do a standing roll up. Now from here, soften the knees a little bit. We're gonna send the knees forward, and we're gonna send the tailbone down and the pubic bone up to stack the spine. The head will be the last thing to come up.

Let that head relax. All the way up. Yeah. All the way up. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Now taking a deep breath, same thing rolling back down. We're not gonna do another push up.

We're just gonna roll down. Roll down, roll down, roll down, soften the knees. And here's the key. The center of gravity between our feet, we send the knees forward to keep the center of gravity. So the spine stacks up without any effort.

You could think of that elastic band now connected from the tailbone to the head. So as the knees go forward a little bit, the spine just naturally recoils itself up into a tall standing position. This is where we started. So standing firmly on the ground, find your place on the ground with your feet, about shoulder width apart. Yep. Come away from the edge a little bit there. Yeah.

Good. You're standing up out in Pilates any time land, finding that space, The elastic band connected to the crown of the head that we're suspended from, close the eyes. Let your breath slow down. Shift the weight forward onto the ball of the foot, back onto the heel. Starting to observe the differences between before and after the movement class. What is your body telling you? We are looking for the tension compression relationship from front to back.

And then we're gonna roll to the right and to the left of the feet. And this time, allow more movement in the body. Let it sway. You've introduced from the mermaid, from the spine twist, from side kick, from swan, from roll up, all this new spine movement. Now think of full circumduction and just let the body sort of free form.

Right? If you open your eyes real quick for a second and look at me, like let the body just sort of free form its way mood on and appreciate all the new places and nuances of movement that we have in our body. And you can explore anything you want, like forward and back and sideways and just allow the body to move in its very nonlinear form. Right? We are not linear animals. Even reaching for a doorknob or bringing the fork to our mouth or nonlinear movements. I think gradually, if things come back into a center, Feel that elastic band, the bones, relax, find the place where there's the least amount of tension, taking a deep breath, observe if breath changes your center. Can you let go of the glutes? Can you let go of the hamstrings?

Can you let go of the abdominal muscles, the shoulders, the neck, and just find a little bit of silence? Connecting the body. Appreciating the skeleton, the myofascial system, the organs of the body, the balance between front and back and side to side and everything in between. When you're ready, open your eyes. Observe the space around you.

In this connected moment, in this space of connectedness, we have an awareness of our bodies that should be heightened It should be one that allows us now to ask a question. The simple question is who am I? What is my purpose? At the end of every class where we have an alignment opportunity, These are great questions to ask ourselves to help us find that internal locus of control, the ability to be present, to know who we are so that our decisions become easier because we feel them inside, not because of influence of anything around us, but because of what we feel our true center. And we talk about those things in the physical aspect.

We can also apply those into the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspect of our lives. I hope that you can continue to incorporate this mindfulness into our beautiful work. It was originally designed by Joseph Pilates to be a mind practice. And an emotional practice and that you have a wonderful life, and we'll see you at the next class on Pilates anytime. Thank you very much.

But of all things, be kind.