Heat & Connection Wall Class

Hi. I'm glad you joined me today for this session where we'll use the wall to provide us feedback. We'll use the wall for balance for some standing exercises. We'll use the wall for pushing and pressing for some other exercises. I will count several of the, several of the repetitions, or I will time them using my watch if I want you to hold, and exercise for a certain amount of time. Alright? So we'll start first with our back to the wall, and your feet are about your own foot distance away, maybe a little less. Just feeling your knees bent and your hips flexed just a little bit.

So in this position here, you will feel that there'll be a little space behind your neck and just a tiny little sip of air in your low back. Those are our natural curves in our neck and in our low back. We're just gonna stay here, and we're gonna use our hands like a pump handle. So we're just gonna breathe in and out. And as you are here at the wall, If your head is comfortably at the wall, I want you to notice that you just pull right between your eyes backwards so that, like, the eye socket area is pulling backwards.

And the reason why that's important is the back of our eye socket, right, where that occiput is, that's like the center of the back of your head. So we don't want the chin to be way up, and we don't want the chin to be way down. This straight ahead. And now we'll take up a little higher. Inhale, turn your palms, reach them up as high as you can, and then exhale down. Knowing that it doesn't matter if you make it all the way up or not.

We'll do three more of these. On an inhale, we fill. On an exhale, we gently contract kind of tone the abdomen. Two more. Inhale. Last one.

Letting the arms rest down by your side, pressing down onto your legs, minimizing a curling of your bottom, maximize now the peeling of your trunk away from the wall. Staying here, reach your arms one side and then the other side. Feeling your shoulder blades come to the sides of your rib cage. This would be shoulder blade around the right rib cage. My trunk starts to rotate a little bit left.

This would be shoulder blade coming around my left rib cage trunk rotating a little bit right, and then place the spine, the rib cage back on the wall, bring yourself all the way up. We'll do that twice more. The head knots, The chest softens backwards, the ribs soften backwards as we make a curl forward. You go as far as you can, that you don't necessarily get into a lot of hip flexion, because we're using here our breath to open up the back of body as we rotate and reach the shoulder blades. Repress the feet, restack the spine, bring yourself all the way back up one more time, inhale big, Exhale, gentle rounding.

Inhale again on the way down in that inhaling when your front body is closed, that inhaling helps you fill this back body. Let's stay here. You should feel nice and connected through your thighs now because we've been here for three repetitions, reach, and reach. Pay careful attention that when you reach one arm down, that you are not bending the other arm up. So you just wanna keep reaching. And then you wanna keep reaching and then come back and then stack your spine and then bring yourself all the way up.

This whole idea of reaching with a rotation gives us a lot of mobility in our rib cage. Bringing yourself up a little bit closer to the wall, feel your feet press down. Your knees slightly bending are so that you're not driven to extend and drive through your knees. Okay? So just be mindful of that. Press the feet. So now we do a side bending. When you side bend, you're just being curious if you can fill one side while you contract the other side and then return yourself up.

One more time for learning, and then we'll do repetition. So we're holding in this frontal plane, inhale side bend, left, exhale return. Inhale side bend right, exhale return. Inhale prepare center, exhale side bend left. Inhale center, exhale return, inhale stay, exhale side. So you just notice I'm using some different breath patterns to see which one ultimately feels really nice. Okay.

Couple more. I like an inhale to side bend, exhale return, inhale to side bend, exhale return one more time with the arms out. Let the wall be your guide, and then return. Bringing yourself away from the wall, pressing your arms gently backwards starts to open up your chest feeding your spine with an extension force. So this would be like a chest expansion arms, if you will, pressing all the way back, and then pushing the wall.

And since the wall pushes back at me, it's kind of driving my chest in the upward direction, and then returning down. One more time, inhale big. And then exhale return. Continuing on facing sideways, we're going to take the side that's towards the wall really close to the wall And we're gonna lift up the leg and press the entire leg and foot into the wall. What you're going to get here is a big awareness in this standing leg here.

Try it on both your legs just so you can feel what that feels like and make sure that you understand that in this standing leg, you're pushing down and you're pushing out, like I'm trying to move the mat that way. And then my left leg is pushing into the wall. So I really wanna feel the outside connection through this hip. So now we're going to do that for a thirty second hold so that you can feel the light up, the left leg part here, the standing leg. So my leg is about at 90 degrees or a little less.

I'm gonna press my heel, my ankle, and my thigh into the wall, and I'm gonna look at my watch, and we're going to do a thirty second hold. This is where I can tell you things like, hey, resist snapping back your left knee because that would put an extension through your spine. That's why we keep that the down knee a little bit bent, the hip a little bit flexed. You should be feeling this by now quite a lot, and there's about ten more seconds. So both hips are working in this nice stabilization mode.

And then rest yourself down. That's one left leg standing. Turning around, right leg down, left leg up. So it's really important. Let's press. I'm going to look at my watch here for thirty seconds.

It's really important that we understand that the standing stabilizing leg, this would be really important if we were going to do a hike and lift our body up, right, and press the ball of the foot. So for first, we have to just create this downward pressure in this back leg. Take inhales. Right? Fill up your ribs. Try not to grip them. Try to fill them.

Five seconds more, four, three, two, and one, and then we release. So that's one time on each leg, and we still have to do it two more times. If you roll your eyes during this exercise, it's okay because this might be something new that you haven't done before. We can, we can compare this exercise to, standing leg pumping on the chair, right, where you're holding yourself upright, you have a firm base right here. So already, I forgot to look at my watch, but we're gonna say ten more seconds.

Three, four, five, get inquiry, 67, 8, 9, 10. We're gonna lower down. You can wiggle yourself a little bit, get away from it. So this is an exercise session here. So that's why we want to feel these actions. So I'm going to stand on my right leg, lift up the left one. Push the leg down and out.

You can make your grocery list. Right? So we want to stay really focused on the down leg. Getting the base, and then when you push the leg into the wall, more into the wall, you get a little deeper connection into the hip. We'll get about five more seconds. Four three, two, and one. And then rest right there. We only have one more time.

Each leg. Turn to the side, standing on this outside left leg, lift up the right leg. Right? Press it. It's supposed to feel challenging. It's supposed to feel stabilizing. Right?

So we'll hold that right here. Again, you wanna resist the urge to kinda arch up you wanna drive down instead with your leg, and then fill up your rib cage with your breath. Okay? Ten more seconds. Three, two, one, and rest. Turn around one more time.

So when I started doing these exercises, press down, I really started I mean, I have respect for my dancing, colleagues and people that are dancers, but this whole thing must be like what their one leg feels like when they're doing all their little twirly things. Right? So really bear burrowing down into the mat, pressing into that right leg, holding it right here, feeling the length through your spine, five seconds, four, three, two, and one. Alright. So what do we do now to release the legs? So now we go sideways. We cross the front leg over the other one, elbow on the wall, and we side bend, turn your head to the left, look over your shoulder like it's a little slide down that elbow. And then we push on the right arm into the wall to bring ourself back.

So the first version of this sideways is to open up the right side from the right hip and thigh up to the right waistline, always pushing into the wall with this right side and then come up, and we'll do two more. Short and left, lengthen right, and then come up two more. Really press that right arm. Last one, the reason why my head is turned like this, because we're going to turn this exercise into the side bend exercise in just a little bit. Other side, elbow into the wall, Inside leg crosses over the outside leg, right, pressing away from the wall as the elbow is into the wall to feel opening on the right side of this hip, up into the waistline.

This was the hip that we just got tired in the standing sequence. So you want that arm that's on the wall to always be pressing into the wall. You want to be sure that that arm on the wall is shoulder level or lower because when you side bend, your shoulder will then be level with your elbow. Pressing it. Oh, that's really, really good lengthening. Bring ourselves back up.

So now your hips should feel just a little bit happier from from lengthening sideways after we did that balancing sideways. Now we turn to the wall to face the front for a second, and we talk to our plank exercise here. So your hands are kind of in front of where they are in front of your shoulders. You make your plank the distance that you can just hold. So the hands against the wall are dragging in the downward position, and that's creates a little, closure for the front of your torso.

You're not clenching your bottom or anything like that. Since I can't see my watch right now, we're gonna hold the plank for fifteen seconds, and I'll count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Bend your elbows. Push up. Don't think too much about this because this is gonna build. Well, I don't mean don't think too much about it. I just mean we'll we'll talk about the position of the elbows in just a little bit.

Let's do five more here. One. Two. So the whole angle of my plank is going forward. Two more. Last. One. So we're going to build that exercise now, and we're gonna build it to a regular push up. Right?

So when the elbows come out to the side and the chest comes closer, the distance of your arms is about the distance of your chest and a half. Okay. So we're going to do a real life push up which is pectoral and arm in nature. So your arms are gonna be a little bit wider than you would think. So it's about a chest distance and a half. So that when I push, I'll actually even come up on the balls of my feet.

So the shape of my spine and my pelvis is staying the same. The blades are on my back staying the same. So my arms and my chest are doing the work. Let's get five more. One, two, three, Four, five.

When we get into the idea of having a narrower arm with the elbows shaving the ribs, that's more of a tricep type of push up. One isn't better than the other. One isn't hard well, some are harder. Some are easier for certain body types, but let's try that one. So now my hands are roughly level with my shoulders.

And then I'm going to bend my elbows. My forearms will approach the wall. So this is pretty much isolated to my tricep. Your distance from the wall will depend on how much force you can tolerate in your trunk so that you're neither arching nor flexing the trunk. Let's get five more.

You got this. You could always stop if you want and continue. This is three. This is four. One more time. Five.

So those are two different types of push ups, push ups with your arm wide, push ups with your arms narrow. Let's continue with that, for 20 repetitions. Okay? Open arms 20 times. Yes. That's a lot. But we're gonna go for it.

Here we go. One, two. You're always pushing the arms away. Always pushing them into the wall. Spine not changing.

Five Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, one, Two, three, push the wall, four, five, feel some heat build up, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Work up to that. Be proud of that because that's a push up. If you wanna build a push up on the ground, you need to build a push up. If we keep modifying the push up on the ground to our knees and bending and pressing, we'll never get to the full push up. So that's my point of being here with your arms a good distance. And your legs here, and we push up. Right? So that's the push up from the floor.

As you get better at those, you will certainly get better at the push up. Continuing here back to our side, side plank, So I'm gonna look at my hand. The hand on the wall is a little bit in front of the shoulder, just a little bit. Kinda like when you'd be on the mermaid, you have the arm a little bit in front. So I'm gonna hold this side plank at an angle, and I'm going to recognize or hope that both sides of my ribs are roughly parallel.

For example, if I was like this, This would be a side bend to the left. So first, I'm gonna find my ribs parallel. Now I'm going to do the exercise side bend, like on the mat. So my head will turn to the left. I'm gonna push my right arm down dip my pelvis, look down to my left shin.

Then I'm gonna press this right arm away, reach my left arm all the way up over my head, look down at my right arm pit. Rainbow on the left, push the arm away on the right, dip my pelvis, my ribs, a shift right, push away arm comes up, head looks down reaching left arm. Let's get two more. The head rotates. It looks down at your left shin.

You push up. You side bend, the head rotates, it looks to the right. I'm gonna make a note of where my hand was, so it's roughly in the same place. And now as I face this side, I'm gonna notice if my ribs are roughly parallel, and then I'm gonna let the ribs glide left. Let the pelvis glide left.

Right arm slides down. Looking over my right shoulder, I'm really pushing this left arm. And then as I make the hips come out and the right ribs open, I turn my head to look down underneath my left armpit. Arm comes up. I dip the ribs left.

I look over my right shoulder. And then I push, and then I come up, and then I have one more. You can use your breath however you see fit here. So I just always like to breathe in a direction that gives me the most open availability and that breath pattern might change. Did I say one more? Oh, let's do one more or let's do last one. So let's look down at the right shin, look over the right shoulder, push the wall away, and then I'm gonna look underneath my left arm as I side bend in that position.

Alrighty. So now we're gonna take our box, and we're gonna use the wall for, like, a little standing side kick series. So I'm just gonna use the wall for a little bit of balance. So I'm gonna step in the center of the box. And actually before we, use the wall for the standing balance, let's just review what a hip hinge would be, and what a vertical would be. Right? So in a vertical position, it would be down and up. In a hip hinge position, it would be more horizontal in nature.

Come back. I just felt the need to re explain that because sometimes when we do these exercises, some teachers do a more horizontal lift, where they push off the floor behind them, like they're a runner getting ready to go forward. And that would be more posteriorly controlled by the back of that right bottom. If I stood here and did a step up, this would be more quadricep dominant because I'm going from knee flexion to knee extension. So let's do five of each. So you just learn those two.

Let's do five of each. So we're going to be and, pardon me, we're gonna use the wall So we don't feel like it's a balanced challenge so that we can get to the meat of the muscle if you will and get that feeling. And then if there's a time you wanna treat it as a balance exercise, you you certainly can, but I'm gonna use the wall to be sure I don't fall and to maximize the work in the legs. So we'll do five of each. This is a hinge.

So I'm going to push away with this leg. Push away with the back leg. I'm gonna keep this load in my hinge. Four and five. Right now I'm going to do five knee bends. This is an elevated front leg, So now I'm gonna bend and come up.

Bend, push down, come up. Bend, push down, come up. Two more, push down, come up. Last one, push down come up. So hopefully, you feel the difference between a more horizontal move, which is a little more butt drive, and then a vertical move, which is a little more quadricep drive.

So on this side, Right leg is back. Hit hinge forward. If you just hold this hip hinge, you'll you'll go. Oh, yeah. I feel my butt. Right? So you just hold the hip hinge for a little bit. That's fine. And if you don't wanna do these motions here, then just stay in the holding position because you will still feel the benefit.

So I'm gonna push off I'm a push off two more. Push off last one. Come on back. Now we do our vertical. So I'm gonna bend and push up. Bend.

So this is more quadricep on this left leg. Two more. Last one. So then you feel some leg drive exercises in this wall workout that help you get, that feeling through your thighs. Alright. So now I'll take the box away.

We'll come facing the wall. So now that I'm facing the wall, my hands are going to be up at the wall. And as if I had cleaning gloves on my hands, I'm gonna reach, reach, reach, and reach. So now I'm in a big, long long stretch position, if you will, pushing my hands into the wall, making a front body connection. That's a doozy. Left, right, left, right, hold. Ten seconds.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one. Two, three, four. Let's do that one more time. So when you reach the arm, where is the reach coming from underneath that shoulder blade? Reach right. Like, you're climbing up a rock climbing wall and reach and reach and hold. Notice my head. My ears are between my arms. I'm not looking up.

I'm pushing the wall. Five more seconds. Four, three, two, and one, two, three, and four. Great exercise against the wall. You could also use a physio ball and press that ball up and down, but I promise you the holding is what starts to build that heat and build that, connection into your torso. Alright.

Side ways again. So now my front leg's gonna come forward almost to the wall. I'm gonna bend just a little bit so that I'm not extending through my knee. So as I bend my arms are in front of me. My right arm reaches across the wall. I'm gonna open my torso.

And then I'm gonna take my arm across my chest, and then I'm gonna go in the other direction. And then I'm gonna take the arm back. I'm gonna reach that right arm forward. Try not to turn this knee, try to turn my rib cage and my chest in the direction. If my arm can't go all the way back, let's put it right here and pay more attention to the ribs going back. One more time.

Arm comes forward. Open the chest. Open the rib cage. Two knees reaching that way. Chest starting to open this way. And then return.

We'll take this now to down to our knees. So on the knees now, what I want to be specifically excited about is now I'm only gonna turn in the direction of my front knee because this is kind of our our walking mode. So when the left arm reaches forward, the right knee also reaches forward. And then I'm going to turn and reach and turn. I'm gonna stay here inhale.

Stay here exhale. I hope you can see my left glute has turned on a little bit because My knee is pressing down, and it's that glute that helps build this rotation to the right as I burrow that knee down. Keep reaching. Keep rotating, and then bring yourself all the way back, and we'll come to the other side. Left leg in front. First, we started with our legs in this split stance with them straight, but a little bent.

Left arm was out. We did a little torso twist as we open. Now this side feels a little bit more restricted to me, so I'm not gonna throw my arm back But I'm going to invite this left arm a little bit further forward. I do not wanna drive rotation from extension, so I wanna feel the rotation in my ribs. And then my arm will just end up wherever it ends up. And then we'll come back, and we'll reach in the, their direction.

So when in this position with the left knee forward, we're gonna favor opposite rotation. So this will always be a challenge because I'm going opposite of the knee that's in front. So it'll always be a challenge. And then we'll come back. Rotate. Now we'll come down to our half kneeling position.

Left foot against the wall. Torsal is long. This knee, you want to be pretty much under that hip This does not do anything to stretch your psoas. Okay? Because this is all arching in the back and all that business. So you want that hip joint to be back. You want it to be vertical. And then as you heavy your ribs in the back shape, you're gonna feel the power of this bottom to help rotate your trunk to the left.

Reach your right. Reach your right. Let's hold it here for a little bit. Reach your right. The right butt kicks on because the knee is burrowing down, pelvis not shifting forward or back.

And then bring yourself all the way up and bring yourself up to standing back against the wall again, head flexing, trunk rounding, Reaching. You should have a little more availability than you had when you started. You will feel lengthening in your back and then stand up. What you'll notice is that I rarely say in standing to tuck your bottom because what I want you to do is I want you to feel your lumbar curve lengthen from the top. So that means that you're really pulling up and over. Like, you're like you're an Olympian in the in the high jump or the pool or high jump, I guess, too, because they have to lift way up in their ribs. And then bring yourself back up. Okay. Last exercise in standing is a little seated squat.

Okay. So in this seated squat position, you wanna be able to hold this for about thirty seconds. And I did find the clock in the room, so now I'm going to know exactly when thirty seconds is up. So this type of exercise takes time to build and time to feel And there are, certain ages and seconds that you should be able to hold that give a status, if you will, come on and stand up, of, not of longevity, but, you know, if people are afraid of falling, things like that, this ability to engage and hold the quadriceps is a good one. Okay. We'll do it two more times.

Come on down. How far do you go? You just go till you start to feel a little pull in your thighs. Don't worry that it's not enough. Just give it a hold. You'll you're already feeling it. Right? You're already feeling it. Right?

So nothing else really helps that squeezing your butt doesn't help, gripping your pelvic floor certainly doesn't help. Just stay here. Just stay here. Right? So we only have about ten seconds left. Feet are pressing down, and then bring yourself up, and rest. We'll just do that one more time. You can jiggle your legs a little bit. It doesn't really help, but it makes you feel good just for a second.

You can do this for a little bit. Right? Give it some input. So we're just managing load. Here we go. Last one, about thirty seconds. So the wall is giving us a nice feeling here.

We're gonna vary this the next time we do it because this is a 90 degree almost like a chair sit. Right? Ten more seconds. Legg should be feeling it. And then bring yourself up. Take your legs closer to the wall.

Round your rib cage. Feel some power in your legs. Look at your legs. Okay? And ask your legs. Can you tighten without just snapping back?

You should say, yeah, do you wanna snap back? Sure. You probably wanna snap back, but resist that urge. Okay? Get the connection. Rounding down. Bring yourself all the way back. So we did a wall sit for the thighs. We did a wall sit to show yourself that you can do it.

So, the next exercise in that wall sit, because I said that was the last exercise in standing, and it was, but this is just a variation of that. So I still get this way. So the legs will come a little bit apart I'm gonna hinge my hips until I kinda feel my butt go back that I can stand back up. So I don't wanna go, wow. Do I have to fall back into the wall? So I'm just gonna do here. So this is another hip hinge.

Idea. There we go. So I'm gonna push the feet down, and then I'm going to take this hinge that was closed. I'm just gonna push the floor away, and then I'm going to open it. So I'm gonna slightly bend my knees. My butt touches the wool and then come up.

Okay. So if this is pretty easy for you, and you can feel that, what we start to do is we start to say, okay. Can I take this hinge a little bit deeper? And now I'm down here, like I'm gonna pick up a box or something, and that now when I stand up, I'm gonna press my feet and my thighs at the same time. Haven't we seen that in reformer footwork? Right. So now so under former footwork, right, would be bent and lying down.

I'm gonna be hinge forward. So I'm gonna press the floor, tighten my thighs, tighten back on my thighs by pressing the floor. I come up. Let's do eight of these. At whatever level you feel good about doing, understanding that if I had a pole on my back, my spine shape would not change. The only thing that's changing is my hip angle and my knee angle.

We got four more. Push the floor. Three more. Push the floor. The floor is there to help you. Use the floor.

Twice more. Last one. Oh, one more because I think I counted wrong. Alright. So hip hinges are always a good thing. We hear about those all over for osteoporosis, for safe spine, things like that.

So moving on down to our hands and knees. Hands down, the toes will be curled under so that you can kind of feel the soul of your feet pressing against the wall. In this position here, you'll take it inhale. And as you exhale, you'll press your arms firmly down, and you'll hover your knees up for ten, nine, eight, seven, nothing changes, six, five, four, three, two, and one. We rest. Sit your bottom back without rounding your spine.

This is a hip opening to the back hip. This is not a cat exercise. This is not a a spine stretch. This is hips moving back. Bringing yourself back to the quadruped position, push your arms firmly, press your feet firmly, lift your knees up, for ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and rest.

Bottom comes back. This is not to round your spine. This is to open the back of the hip. Just to repeat that again. And then we come forward, and we have one more.

The arms will press firmly. The feet will press firmly, and then we just hover the knees up for ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one. Thyes on fire. Right? So now in this position here, our feeder against the wall, My arms are reaching back for the wall, so all this is an extension force, knees down, feet back, arms, press, chest lifts. Right arm up to the wall, left arm up to the wall, keep reaching chest up to the ceiling.

Return. Everything comes down. Three times now with both arms at the same time. So the arms reaching up and reaching will be the lengthening of the chest. The knees driving downward will be the support from the glutes.

Two more. You can still tone your belly in that extension position. Last one, reach, reach, reach, reach, and reach, and return. So a reach is not the same thing as a shrug. Right? So a reach is a reach.

It's a it's a pick me. Pick me exercise. You know, when you your teacher, you want your teacher to pick you. That's a reaching exercise. This is a shrugging exercise.

So they're different, a reach versus a shrug. With this leg, one leg to the wall, left leg comes out. Now in this position, we wanna rotate in the direction of the front leg. Right leg is vertical, pressing back to get a drive from the bottom. Reach and rotate.

Reach and rotate. Try not to reach and lean. Try just to reach and rotate. One more time. Reach and rotate, and then switch your legs. There'll always be one leg that you favor to be in front.

Mine's not my right anyway. So this feels this is always harder for me. So I want to rotate in the direction of my front leg. I'm gonna reach and rotate. Reach and rotate.

This will get us ready for saw, reach this back arm you wanna be so careful that it doesn't try to reach too far back that it's just going straight back, reach, and rotate. Oh, that's a good one. Taking us now to the box, You can sit on a box or not sit on a box or you can sit on a yoga brick or something, but I like to have the pelvis elevated because it just makes a little more room, and availability in the hips. You don't have to feel like you're forcing yourself to sit up tall. I mean, you want to sit up tall, but we want the invitation for length to come from the breath. Okay? Not to come from a grip. So First exercise is my arms reaching forward by way of my shoulder blades, my head nods.

I'm rounding, and I'm reaching. Now I'm gonna reach right. Reach left. I'm gonna reach right and reach left, and then I'm gonna reach both, and then I'm gonna stack up. So this exercise would be very similar to rowing front one.

Right? So when I reach and down actually, b rowing front two. So rowing front one is just from the shoulders. Right? I'm using the wall for feedback, and then rowing front two, right, would be peeling, excuse me, and reaching. That's really good. That's like a spine stretch. Right? So now I'm gonna move from my hips.

So I'm gonna engage my legs downward, and I'm just going to do a hip hinge. So if you had a stick behind me, my head, and between my shoulder blades and my sacrum would roughly be in the same position. So this would be a hip hinge. And then return. This would be a rounding and reaching, and then return.

Hip hinging. How can I challenge the hip hinge? I can raise my arms that are heavy now because they're distally way far away, and I just keep the hinge and the reach, and then I stack myself back. Up. Continuing now with saw, with only the front arm. Okay? Cause I don't have any place for the other arm to go behind me.

So I wanna teach my body how to reach to one side So I'm going to reach my left arm past or in the direction of that foot, and I'm gonna keep reaching and keep rotating. Typically, I hear the cue look backwards, But what I want to do is I wanna feel your whole chest turn. And then when you've used up all your chest rotation, then you turn your head, come back, other side. Reach rotate. Reach rotate. I'm gonna look at my knee first, and then I'm gonna ask for more rotation.

Let's do two more to each side. Inhale, rotate, exhale reach. Two, three. Inhale come up, exhale pause. Inhale, reach, rotate. Inhale come up.

Exhale pause. Let's do it with both arms out. Inhale reach, exhale rotate, rotate. Rotate, come up, center, inhale, reach, fill up that back body, exhale, rotate, rotate, rotate, come back up, feel your spine against the wall. Bending your right knee, bending your left knee, opening up your thighs, think of the exercise stomach massage. Alright, on the reformer when you reach in front.

I understand the tailbone's not curled and we're not in the shape of that, but I do want you to just reach here. Reach. Reach. When you reach one arm, you're not pulling the other arm back. You just keep reaching that arm. So you really talk to how the shoulder blades come around the ribs. That's a really good one to help you prepare for that stomach massage idea of the thighs kinda hugging the tummy. Continuing on to a hip stretch, hip open. So now we're gonna cross the legs so the soles of the feet are facing parallel to the sides of the mat.

The exercise here is a hip hinge, hands come down, It's a hip hinge. So at no point am I rounding my spine? I'm pressing down into the sides of the mat, the sides of my feet into the mat. And that is making me feel these external rotators open up. And then I'm gonna sit myself back up.

Now you can also round and reach This will feel different in your back rounding, but it'll be tons less in your hip. One more time hinge pressing the feet down, that's a key connection here. As sides of the feet, press down till you feel that feeling in the back of your hips. You wanna make this heavier? Arms.

And then you have to switch which leg is in front because it'll feel different on the hips. Okay. So I'm gonna make sure my my sacrum is kinda back to the wall. So I'm gonna hinge, feeling the the skin of my bottom, if you will, staying at the wall. Pressing the sides of my feet down till I feel that feeling in the side of my hips, and then press down into the feet to bring me back up. And then I'll do one in a rounded position. Filling up my back ribs into the wall as I peel.

And then we'll do one more in a hinge position, so I'm gonna hinge pressing my feet down hinge as much as I can till I feel oh, my foot is even shaking right now. And then the arms reach out. So now I've added a weight with my hands up over my head, and then I press down into my feet and bring myself all the way back. Continuing now onto the floor, So lying on your back here with your arms Kinda like if you were on the Cadillac and you have your hands on the poles. Right? So I'm just gonna put my palms flat.

If if your range of motion won't allow this, then you could use your fist much like you're at the pole, but I want you to feel the pushing of your arms upwards to the ceiling. And so what that will do, it will start to feed the side of your ribs so that you can feel the connection so that when you lift your legs up off the ground, your top ribs are staying heavy, meaning, meaning the top ribs are staying down. Right? And so then in this position, Right? We can charge our legs while we keep our trunk level. So the forces that are produced by my legs moving is not affecting, but it's challenging the shape of my spine. Let's do that one more time. Arms, press the wall.

Arms pull up the wall. Two knees come in. Two legs go up. And how about two legs come down until that spine shape wants to change? Then you bring them in and up.

And maybe if it's just there, it's just there. It doesn't matter where it is. It matters that you feel all those connections because that's what ultimately makes the connections in your body is just feeling when they come into play. Okay? So more, to me, is never better. It's better to feel the connection. K. Final sequence, Coming onto our back, I'm gonna have you be pretty close to the wall.

About 90 degrees or so. And then you're gonna take your right leg and cross it over your left one. And then your left leg's gonna drop down so that when you raise your heel up and down, it will give you information behind your right bottom. This is not a tucked bottom. It's not a forced position.

If you needed something under your head, you could certainly have something there. Switch legs. So we're we're winding down our session, but we have one more, fun one coming up. This is just a way to kinda open the back of the hips here. So continuing now with a little bottom lift. So the feet against the wall, and the feet dragging down the wall start to feed your hamstrings. We do this in the chair exercises on the floor.

As I feed my hamstrings, then my pelvic bone starts to curl for my abdominals. Right? So it's the hamstring and your abdominals that start to give you a bottom lift. And lower down. Feet pull down, bottom left. Three more. Last one, feet pull down bottom lifts a little bit.

Hold the bottom, raise the heels. When you raise your heels, pull your feet towards the floor. So you're not just namby pamby raising your heels, but you're pushing the balls of the feet down. Right? This is like tendon stretch on the reformer, of course, but the knees are bent. So you're pushing down on your feet.

This goes to calves to hamstrings to butt, start to lift up. Start to crawl your feet up the wall, start to lift your chest towards your chin, not your chin towards your chest, and then lower yourself down. The feet flex, inhale, exhale pause. Now as you inhale, toes, press up and to the wall, arms press down because it's an extension force bottom lifts, left leg, right leg, left leg, right leg, dripping down, dripping down, and dripping down. You can stay there.

You can rest as long as you want to. Because the video will stop when it's done. But I certainly wanna thank you for joining me at the wall today, and I hope you had some good experiences and good feelings throughout your body.