Let it Flow

Hi, friends. Welcome to our practice. Let it flow. Let's start in child's pose, and you might wanna have a couple blocks handy. Take your knees wide apart, big toes to touch and walk your hands forward. Relax your spine, relax your forehead down to rest on the earth or or a block if you need to. And just take a couple of breaths here into the curves and folds of your body, the folds of the knees, stretch across the top of the ankles, and that release in the low back, take a deep breath in, right to that spot, and exhale completely.

On your next inhale, just rise up to your hands and knees, rounding as you rise, centering the knees under the hips, the hands under the shoulders, and then release the belly, open the chest, inhale, open the heart, simple cat cow. Exhaled around, pulled a belly in, and just surrendering into this simple, easy flow of breath. This is one of the most therapeutic things we can do for our spine, as I mentioned earlier, and one of the earlier practices that tilt to the pelvis. And we're combining it with the entire length of the spine as we round and pull in an inhaled arch. Now this time as you round to pull in, press into the tops of the feet and let the knees hover and inch off the mat.

Navel is in, back is rounded. And then set your knees down inhale once again arch. Xhale round the spine, press into the tops of the feet, let the knees hover. Set it down, bring your hands back a little bit towards the knees inhale to arch. Exhow round, press into the tops of the feet, let the knees hover.

Set it down, walk your hands back another few inches. So our base is getting shorter inhale to arch. And then exhale round, press into the hands, lift the feet. Walk the hands back a little more, inhale round, folding into the hips, rounding into the spine, hover. And then set your hips on your heels.

Grab your blocks, actually, for this next little variation and open the chest, inhale. And if it doesn't work for you to fold all the way into your knees, you can be up on the knees, open the chest. And then round and press into the blocks and hover the knees. And do that again, either seated on the heels or up on the knees, open through the chest, and then exhale. Connecting into the deep Udiyana bandha, that navel to spine, and then open up the throat, exhale coil it back in, press into the hands, lift the knees.

One more time like that. Inhale. Just feeling these two extremes in the spine, a flexion and extension coil in, and then set it down and set your blocks to one side. We'll continue with that pattern, but come back to neutral and extend the right arm and the left leg long. So we go right into our back or that diagonal line from left hip to right shoulder as you exhale elbow towards knee, inhale extend. Exale, elbow to knee. And it's these big motions with the large joints of the body, hips, and shoulders.

And we'll start to kind of explore some circular movements here. So bring both hands down. And then arc the back foot up and over, if you imagine, a big rainbow over the back of the mat. Just find this arc here as we tap from the left side of the mat to the right. It almost feels like you're wagging your tail a little bit, and we're just getting some intelligence into the back body, the back core. Now take it into a full circle here, big circle with breath, and then draw the knee into the chest, extend it back once again, and set the ball of the foot down. Press back into down dog for a moment.

Just bicycle pedal through the knees, and then come back onto hands and knees. And let's extend left arm and right leg long. Moving back into that. Coiling cat cow with the extension of a limb, feeling that diagonal line as you move in and out from your left shoulder to your right hip. Great strengthening for the back core.

I talk about the back core a lot because it needs our attention as well as the front core equally as much. Reach it out nice and long, and then set your hands down and let's work with those little toe tops up and over that imaginary arc across the back of the mat, wagging the tail a little bit and feeling those large movements from the hip. Take a couple big circles here sweeping out and around. We'll be working with leg circles as a theme for this whole practice. It's one of our classic mat exercises one more time, extend and place the ball to foot on the mat and press back to your down dog.

Take a couple bicycle petals through the feet and knees. And then go ahead and shift forward to plank. Now from here, lift your left leg up, see if you can take a few leg circles here, and you'll feel right away we're warming up the core, warming up the legs. Lift up and back into a three legged dog, and then shift forward and just draw that left knee down. Draw the right knee down.

We'll take the left arm up and open the chest and then take a little twist. Underneath. Do that again. Inhale to open. XL reach underneath. Outer left shoulder one more time.

Inhale to open. XL reach underneath. And park it here, right on the outer shoulder, the outside of your head, you can start to extend through your right leg, pull up through the core, through the center of the body, and float the right leg out up and back. So you have almost like a tail feather extending. Working with a little bit of control and precision here, take that leg out to the side, and then let the sole of your foot land just beyond your left hand.

Top arm's gonna take a couple of big back strokes here. Opening up through chest and shoulders, letting it flow through the body. Let your whole spine, your hips turn and rotate with this one more time. And then bring that right hand down. Unwind sweep the right leg back and reach your left arm forward.

And here we are in that balancing cat again. Let's take this opportunity to open up our quad, lift through the chest. And then exhale child's pose. Take a moment. Sit back, settle in. Deep breathe in here.

Exale completely. Shifting forward to your plank, curl the toes under, lift up, find that grounding. We work with plank so much in our yoga practice. Go ahead and lift the right leg up and take a couple circles. We also work with quite a bit of planking in the Pilates mat repertoire and feeling these, like, single leg asymmetrical variations, reach it all the way up and back into a three legged dog.

Airing out the hamstrings and then exhale shift it forward and bring right knee followed by left knee down. Right arm reaches up, simple twist, threaded underneath. Just warming up the body. Big movements of the spine. With a breath inhale to reach, exhale, dial it underneath.

One more time, reach up. And like you're chasing a butterfly, right underneath your chest, park it here. Now let's start to extend the back leg. Sometimes I just like to curl the toes under and press into the heel. And sometimes it feels nice to float the leg up, keeping your attention centered in your core. That's your balance point. And then open up that leg out to the side float at forward, the solier left little land somewhere in the vicinity of that bottom hand.

Topworm can take some big flowing back strokes here. And I love to just pivot. On the outer right shoulder. One more time, exhale. Bring that left hand down.

And then back leg goes back, right arm goes forward, elbow to knee, reach it out. And let's take that quadriceps stretch opportunity here. Just open up as you grab your back foot, lift the chest, lift the quad. And then let it go back to downward facing dog. So now it's kind of a nice little bit of a longer warm up before we move into our namaskars. Start to walk our feet towards our hands.

Soften the knees, hang out in your forward fold. Hold on to opposite elbows. From here, release your hands. Soften the knees a little more. Draw the naval and then slowly round up, surrender your head neck and shoulders.

Articulating through the spine, let your head come up last. You know where you're going. And then circle the arms out and up. Reach up to your full length and beyond. XL, hands to the heart.

Samesty. Bring the feet together. Let's actually grab our blocks. We're moving into a surya namaskar c, and it's really nice. I love working with blocks for this particular namaskar.

So you can set them low or medium height just right, shoulder width apart on either side of the feet. Let's go ahead and circle the arms out and up full body breath in. As you exhale swan dive into your forward fold, hands land on the blocks. As you lift your chest, step the right foot back to a long lunge, And then the left foot, you can adjust your blocks as you need. The left foot will swing all the way up and back, and then we shift forward to plank. We've got a high chaturanga here. A high upward facing dog.

Don't forget to flip the feet, shoulders over the wrists, and then exhale downward facing dog. Little variation here. Bring the feet close together. Let's explore that leg circle. Take the right leg all the way up open the hips and around, and you can even flex that foot.

And just take we usually do this with a bent knee, but it feels quite different with a straight leg. You can feel all the outer hip muscles working. The shoulders stabilizing. Let's take the second side, the left leg circling directly back, and then out to the side and around flexing the foot. Big opening through hamstring and hip.

And then bring it back down. From here, the right leg gets to reach up again, and then take it directly through the midline runner's lunge looking forward on the inhale, exhale to your forward fold. Inhale, lift your head and heart, come all the way up, exhale hands to your heart, release, fix your costume as necessary. A lot of the pilates work We roll around a lot. We gotta adjust our pants.

We just work it into the flow. Circle out and up big inhale. XL forward fold. This time, step the laugh left back runners lunge as you look forward and up. And then from here, exhale down dog, the right leg is high.

This is a variation of serious c. Shift forward to plank. It's a high, very buoyant Chaturanga, so don't go too low. Flip the feet, open the chest. I love up dog on the blocks, and then exhale downward facing dog, feet together.

Let's take that left leg back out and around, working through the hips again, exploring the leg circle. Stabilizing through the center of the body one more. Feel the dynamics in your core here, and then take the right leg out and around. Try to keep the shoulders even as best you can. The hips will turn.

And become asymmetrical, but then we come back to the midline. Take the left leg up, right through the center, runner's lunge. That's your inhale. Land exhale forward fold. Inhale all the way up to stand, exhale, readjust your pants.

Let's do it again. Inhale to reach. XL forward full. Right foot steps back. That's your inhale.

XL down dog, left foot flies high. Go ahead and open it out and around. We'll connect the dots. Shift to plank. Lower chaturanga, inhale, open the heart, exhale, fold it back.

Take the right leg back and circle it around. This time, step it through. Big inhale. Excel forward fold. Come all the way up. Inhale.

XL, fix your pants. Let's do one more. Inhale reach. XL forward fold. Left foot sits back runner's lunge, big inhale.

Exhale down dog. The right leg sweeps up out and opens. Back to down dog. The left leg circles. And now shift forward to plank, take a high chaturanga, open the chest, inhale, exhale. Left leg reaches straight back.

Step it all the way through big inhale here, exhale forward, fold. Come all the way up deepest breath. Exhale, hand start. Circle the arms out and up full breath. Biggest breath you've taken yet, exhale swan dive into a deep forward fold.

Step the left foot back, inhale to your runner's lunge. Exhale down dog let the right leg go high out and around and place it into down dog shift to plank on your inhale. You can ripple through the spine. High chaturanga. We don't have to go lower than the elbows. Inhale to your upward dog, exhale downward dog. Now let's take the left leg up out and open, and then bend the knee and step it all the way through a big inhale.

Exhale forward fold. Inhale all the way up. Exhale hands to the heart. Beautiful. Let's move on, circle the arms out and up. Big breath in.

Exhale to your forward fold. Lift your heart, step back to plank, feeling into your plank. So we were here in the very beginning of this practice in our warm up, working with some single leg circles while we were in plank. You can take the left leg and just revisit that for a moment. Followed by the right leg, small little circles, and then bring the right knee in swivel and set both knees down, come on to the side of your hip, and we're gonna set the blocks aside.

We don't need them for this next little couple moments here. And set yourself up for mermaid. We saw this particular exercise in some of our previous classes. So let's revisit it as we reach up and back, and then over. And we find this really nice.

Generous kind of feminine quality, the curve in the side bend, and opening up through the side waist. Just a couple of these. Give us a moment to kinda catch our breath here before we move into our next powerful side bends. So as your right hand comes down, we don't want it directly under our shoulder, but we don't want it too far away either. So split the difference.

Kind of just kicking out a little bit like a kickstand. And then today, we'll come on to turn the toes so that you can get the balls of your feet on the mat. Your bottom foot, right leg is forward, and the left toes are back. And then from here, we power up into a side bend, a side plank. From the balls of the feet.

And then just play around with extending and bending your knees. Not quite sitting all the way down today, but keeping it hovering. So we're working into the strength and the sideways. Inner thighs and the shoulder. Come up and pause.

Chase a butterfly right underneath your right ribs and then reach back up. Again, right underneath and reach back up. And then from here, we'll come all the way down side lying to explore a little bit of different work, side lying leg work, which is classic Pilates mat. So from here, notice I'm not lying in a fully straight line. I've got my legs kicked forward a little bit, and my shoulders are stacked. We'll go ahead and extend. Flex the top foot and bring it back down.

And it's I can't help myself, but think of Jane Fonda. She was a pioneer of kind of spreading fitness through video back in the eighties, and I did these with my mom. And so shout out to her work and bringing it right back here to our tribe at yoga anytime. So we're working through the hip flexion and extension as we start to circle again. So find your circles, reach back. Keeping your hips stacked, as you circle. So we're experiencing these leg circles in a variety of directions. Notice there's a little navigation in the hips. Try to keep everything centered. And then reverse, bring it forward up and back.

We always work with this attention to detail, attention to precision. Right? How we do one thing is how we do everything, maybe taking a bigger leg circle. And then from here, bend your knee, almost like a tree pose, right, in dance, we call this a passe, extend and flex and press it down. Bend your knee like you're coming through tree. Extend flex press.

One more time like that. I'm just feeling this beautiful extension work through the legs. We'll roll onto our back and just working with that same leg extend your left leg to the sky. Bottom knee can be bent. This is a little more accessible for single leg circles, or you can extend the bottom leg long.

And I love to actually you can press the palms flat to stabilize, but I actually like to hold a block or a magic circle right over my chest so that I really have to focus on my center here. Reverse the direction. Keep that leg as straight as you can. As you circle from the midline out to the side. One more.

And then go ahead and lower that leg down. Extend the block over your head if you're holding on to it. Flexing through the feet. Reach out to your full length. These first couple, we're gonna kinda let them be a little loose and playful.

We can toss the block forward. Keep it in your hands, though. And roll up around your spine. Reaching into your forward fold into your paschimott and asana. You can actually place the block at your feet, lift your chest. And if you can't reach your feet, it's okay. Just place your block at your shins and soften down.

And then sit up nice and tall. Roll down your spine. Slow as you can. This is probably one of the toughest exercises for me because I have a little bit of lordosis in my low back. So that slow roll roll up is challenging. Reach it forward.

Taking your paschimottanasana. And then really set your block to one side. We'll cross the ankles, climb up and over the feet. And find your way into downward facing dot. So let's inhale shift forward to plank.

This time, bend your left knee, foot is flexed, and just take a couple pulses here lifting your left foot towards the sky without overarching the low back. Just maintain your plank, keep the core nice and strong, and then set that left foot down, bend your right knee flex the ankle. Same thing here. Just a couple little pulses, bringing you back into the the world of the single leg kick and the back core is feeling that. And then set it back down.

Let's lift the left leg up again. Draw the left knee into the chest, and then turn, have a seat set up for mermaid. Lakes are like a pinwheel. And this is kind of our rinse. We did some work there.

We're about to do a little more work. And so this is a nice moment just to open up through the side of beautiful transitional exercise where we can feel into the intercostal muscles in between the ribs. Helping up all the sidelines and spiral lines, fascia. So from here, we'll come into that left hand reaches out a little bit like a kickstand, curl the toes under so you're on the balls of the feet. We'll lift and trajectory goes up and over, shoulder over the wrist, bend your knees in and out of this side bend.

Very similar to side plank, vasisthasana, but it has a dynamic quality. One more time, reach up. And this time, thread it underneath, inhale open. One more time, exhale, inhale open. And from there, we bend the knees gracefully come all the way down onto our side.

And we'll go into some side lying footwork or leg work here. Lakes are slightly forward. We go ahead and lift, flex the foot, and bring it back down. Back to our friend, Jane Fonda, keeping this long, very graceful, elegant posture, feeling that external rotation as the leg comes up, you can go back to neutral on the way down if you like, or you can keep it externally rotated. And just feeling the range in your hip, your hamstring, let this turn into some leg circles, hips are stacked.

The leg is parallel. Nice and even, balancing yourself with your core. And then reverse massaging that femur bone into the hip socket and reaching it away from the hip actually to create space. Mhmm. And then from here, go ahead and bend your knee like a tree pose.

And then extend and flex, press it down. Draw it in articulating through the hip knee ankle foot toe and then down. Feeling that high line up the midline of the leg and press one more time. Feeling that tree extension. And then rolling on to your back from here will still work with that same right leg.

Bottom knee can be bent. For a little bit more accessibility, or you can extend that bottom leg, grab it onto your block once again for your leg circles here, spreading through the toes, keeping the leg active. And then reverse, single leg circle. And I love this particular series because it's kind of a nice check-in for what's happening in the hips, the hamstrings, quads, last one. And then lower that leg down, extend over your head.

We're about to do our roll up. Reach out to your full length. Flex the feet. Notice when you inhale, if your ribs pop up, just invite them down. Down girls. And then little toss rounding your spine.

The slower you can do that, the better. I wish I could demonstrate it really slowly, but I'm doing the best I can. And, well, let's face it. We can't be good at everything. Right? So we try our best. Reach out to your full length. Oh, that was good. Better. Reach and roll.

Stretch it forward. And then sit up nice and tall. Let's get rid of those blocks. Roll down onto your back. Hug the right knee into the chest.

And I'm just gonna scoot down a little bit so I feel the mat under my head. Find a little tree pose on your back, reaching arms. We're gonna be practicing tree navigating into another posture in some of the our future classes in this show. So just feel the tree pose here. And then go ahead and draw the knee back to the center, extend your leg up to the sky, Patagustasana a, You can hold on anywhere behind your leg or your toe. You're welcome to grab a strap and loop it around your foot. But just take a moment here and enjoy, luxuriate in this posture for just a moment.

Maybe open it out to the side, and then sweep it down. And let's take the second side, the left knee in. Finding that tree lying on your back. This is actually a beautiful way to feel what happens with when you bend that knee, how the other tip rolls forward, trying to even out your hips and press the left knee open while keeping the right hip down. And then draw the knee back to the center, extend through your padagusthasana a really anywhere that you wanna hold on to.

Just try to keep that leg as straight as you can. And you're welcome to open it out to the side. And then slowly sweep it around. Hug the knees into your chest. Let's rock on up and set up for pigeon, keeping that right shin forward.

Extend the left leg behind you. Little arcing leg circle right there, and just drop into your pigeon. And if you prefer to thread the needle on your back, absolutely fine. And you can let yourself drop down as much as it feels good to you. Into the forehead, into the earth, stack the hands, whatever feels supportive.

And enjoy a couple breaths right here. We did a lot of work on the outer hips and the whole navigation of all the variety of leg circles. And so this is a really nice reward. Let's inhale to come up out of that, lift your chest. Lean into your right hips, swing the back leg around.

Let's change sides. So we'll just crisscross the left ankle shin in front. The right leg has gotta go over those blocks around the back, setting up your pigeon on second side, or your thread, the needle. On second side. And this feels amazing.

So let's enjoy this coming on down and releasing fully into your kitchen. One more deep breath here. XL completely. Start to come up out of the posture, rising up under your hands, your fingertips, lift your chest looking up. And then exhale leaning into your left hips, swing your leg around, spin all the way around setting yourself up for final couple of moments here so we can roll down slowly onto our back, hug your knees into your chest.

Reach your arms over your head. And as you exhale circle the arms wide curl up into that seeker that little ball of energy, take a couple of single leg stretch moments here just to feel that extension through the leg and then draw both knees in, extend your legs up hands behind your head, curl up a little higher into that c curve and lower, lower, lower, just like we did in our very first class, and then let that lower into your Shavasana. Feed wider than the hips, palms facing up, and feeling the effects of just these different elements that we're blending together. I'm working with both the simplicity and complexity of these shapes and patterns. Allow yourself to just receive and integrate. And start to bring your awareness back into your body, send a little movement to your fingers and your toes, rolling the head from left to right.

And then coming back to the midline, extending your arms long over your head, bringing the feet close together, reach out to your full length, engage through the legs, engage through the body, full body breath in. And then let's roll up. Oh, hey, stretching into that forward fold. And then arriving into our final, comfortable seated position, draw the hands together at the heart. Sit up nice and tall with your new hips, improve posture, calm mind, and open heart.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed.