Session 2 Transcript

Let’s start.

So you can just watch and follow along the best you can.

Come on up, I’m standing.

Like like last time, if you feel more comfortable getting behind us or something like that, that’s absolutely fine.

There’s no there’s no rules around the positioning.

However you feel comfortable at any point in time you can move to a different position too and and practice along that way.

Alright.

So oops.

My socks off.

Once we pass the ignition, do you want me to do you want me to demonstrate or to walk around?

No, it’s fine as you can practice along maybe.

Just to recap.

Okay, so standing with the feet a little bit wider than the hips width apart.

And again, initially we we um will stand with the feet slightly pointing away from each other.

So again you’ll find a a comfortable position for the feet about hips width apart.

And you can try and tilt the pelvis downwards slightly initially just to feel how the pelvis can rock back and down.

And then bend into the knees and sit back to the edge. of that chair so that you feel a little bit of activation in the quadriceps.

Relax the arms first and relax the neck.

And similarly to that of how we explained last week, it’s almost as if uh you don’t have control of the arms yourself.

The arms lift up to shoulders height So initially here we’re not doing anything with the shoulders and we’re going to torsion the wrists forward and slightly squeeze onto those imaginary foam balls Lean the weight back a little bit more.

Check to see that the that this doesn’t happen with the chest.

Try to pull the pelvis back and down and move the weight back to the heels Almost as if it feels like you’re gonna fall backward and try to flatten out the lower spine and turn the wrists, torsion the wrists forward so you feel that the forearms become active.

And you can check again too initially uh occasionally to see that the neck, uh there’s no tension in the neck.

Again, here we’re not lifting the shoulders up, but nor Nor are we drawing them down at this point.

They’re just neutral, but the arms are the height of the shoulders and the wrists torsion inward and you can kind of squeeze onto those balls.

And try to keep that activity of squeezing onto the balls lightly throughout and the torsioning of the wrists forward so that you feel that the whole forearm and of course exactly at any point in time Anybody can lower the arms and take a rest and straighten the legs.

You can join back in whenever you want to.

Whatever feels best for you.

Occasionally just continue to check in to make sure the neck is relaxed.

So there should be no tension to the neck.

Torsion.

Weight to the heels, pelvis slightly down.

The belly totally relaxed.

So don’t draw the navel back into the spine.

Keep the belly completely soft.

Relax the breath as well.

If there’s a tendency to breathe deeply, that maybe that’s it’s requiring too much energy, maybe take a break and come back in again once the breath has calmed down.

We talk more about the breath later on.

If something happens to you, we should call.

Nothing happens, but sit to the edge of the chair.

Torsion.

Neck Soft belly I wanted to do it.

So as you straighten up through the legs, but slowly lower the arms down.

So the knees go straight and the arms can come down.

And when the arms get down beside the body, straighten the legs completely, let the belly go completely soft, and relax everything.

Move the head a bit if you want.

There might have been some tension to neck.

Move the fingers a bit.

So again, uh That initial part, maybe if there was any part that felt uncomfortable, an analogy would be that you drop that discomfort down.

So allow for it to fall down like kind of water is dripping off a tap or something.

If you think of that, the gravity is pulling the water down.

See that tension is pulling whatever residual kind of stress there was there down.

Mainly it’s practice first and then all the quiet Questions, discussions, there’s like later.

And then bring the feet hips width apart.

Yes, I see you.

The outside edges of the feet parallel, so be set up in the beginning.

Sure, yes.

Hips width.

The feet don’t point away from each other here.

We try to keep the outside edges of the feet as parallel as possible.

You can start by putting the hands onto the waist here for a second.

Let’s just play a bit with the with the heel traction.

So You can think that the heels are doing this type of motion inward, but we’re not going to move them.

We’re just gripping them toward each other like that.

And then with that I’m exaggerating, of course, you don’t have to do it so hard.

As you grip them in, you feel that the whole leg becomes active.

Everything becomes active as a byproduct of the tractioning of the heels.

So play a little bit with that traction, then release, and then traction again, see what it does to the legs, and then release.

See what it does to the pelvis, traction.

What happens to the buttocks?

Release.

What happens to the quadriceps?

Traction.

Release.

What happens to the ankle traction release?

Try to sense all that and go ahead and traction and keep. at something that’s manageable for you, keep the traction at a level of energy that’s not going to tire you out.

And then go ahead and draw the shoulders downward.

Again, it’s almost as if somebody’s slightly pulling on the wrists to draw your whole arm down, like there’s a weight. uh you know another analogy would be that you could tie a weight with some string onto the wrist and allow for the weight like a sandbag or something to to pull your arms down is that type of feeling that The wrists and the fingertips drawing down is like you’re adding extra weight onto the arms.

Continue to traction the heels slightly and go ahead and spread the fingers now.

As we spread the fingers, the shoulders draw down.

Remember I’m exaggerating the movements here, so you don’t have to do as with much exaggeration as I do. spread shoulders traction and then oppose with the movement of the neck so the crown of the head goes up the back of the neck elongates a bit If you want to draw the chin slightly down as you lift the head, it helps sometimes to get that sensation of the back of the neck extending.

You can play with that movement of the neck a little bit too, occasionally.

And when you think you’ve got control over the movement of the neck extending, the crown of the head extending up and and the fingers and shoulders drawing down away from this movement, the heels tractioning, then we’re gonna add the neck movements.

Slowly just trying to see okay, has any tension come through the neck at all?

Is anything going on there?

You can move the neck a little bit like that as you spread the fingers down as you draw the shoulders down.

Hi, how are you doing?

Spread the fingers, extend through the back of the head, traction the heels, draw the shoulders down, extend through the back of the head.

Spread through the fingers.

Move the neck.

The neck extends.

Shoulders draw away from that movement.

The fingertips spread so you feel the forearms become active The heels grip, the belly soft, the neck extends, the shoulders draw down, the fingers spread.

The heels grip, the shoulders draw down, the fingers spread, the back of the neck extends, the neck relaxes.

Now let all that go.

And for a second here too, you can feel that same softness.

You can move a little bit too if you’d like.

Draw the shoulders down again.

Shift the weight to the heels as the pelvis goes back.

So you can bring the arms forward if you’d like to offset that balance as the pelvis goes back.

It allows for the weight of the arms to balance you as you move backward And you can keep the arms to this height if you like, bend into the knees.

But try not to bring the knees over the top of the toes.

Keep the knees stacked over the top of the heels.

And you can keep the arms slightly forward like this And the chest isn’t flaring here, but rather the back is straight.

You can also see the neck is quite relaxed.

Now go ahead and draw the shoulders down on top of that. that and spread through the fingers.

So we’ll do a little bit of a variation here with the arms not lifted straight up just to try and see if we can sense a little bit more what the squat can be like.

Now when we unpack the movement here, think about going out the opposite way that you came in.

So as you hinge forward, the arms come toward you.

And the neck elongates and then relax So we try one more of those, and this time, if you can take the arms from forward to up more, the idea is that we’re trying to get them in line with the spine without selling out the chest opening.

So that means I think Asha mentioned it last week.

We can open the arms a little bit more.

You know what I mean?

So you see how you can just try it like standing like this.

See?

Can you open the arms out and have them be a little bit more in line with the spine?

Like that, exactly.

So why don’t we try a variation like that?

Make sure the rib cage doesn’t flare.

So we’re gonna go from this to this when we get to the squat with the spine straight.

Let’s try it again.

So shoulders draw down, spread through the fingers.

We set it up first Extend through the back of the neck.

This is our kind of foundation.

Then move back and as you move back you can bring the arms forward.

At this point the legs can still be straight You’re just playing with the weight of the pelvis and the weight of the arms opposing the movements from each other and allowing for you to use the weight of the arms to balance.

Keep the arms forward.

The outside edges of these feet are still parallel and you start to squat down a little bit here.

Now don’t go down so low if you don’t feel it’s appropriate.

Now at this point with the spine is being straight here Let’s try and get the arms up to the level of the back in terms of the same line as the back and try to keep the chest from flaring Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down towards the hips here.

Go ahead and add the heel gripping in towards each other and move through the neck.

Now if your shoulders feel like they’re moving towards the ears, drop your arms, come out, take a rest, and then come back in.

Continue to draw the shoulders down away from your head.

The neck extends away from the shoulders.

The fingertips spread.

The arms can be wherever it feels appropriate.

And then we’re gonna go ahead and we’re gonna accordion out the same way we went back in.

So you think about the movements.

So we unpack it the same way we set it up.

And relax the arms down.

So for a second here everything’s relaxed.

Just uh, you know, water dropping.

Everything goes down in between.

Belly also relaxed Bring the feet a little bit wider now than the hips width apart, and we’re setting it up the same as last week.

The feet don’t point away from each other here like they did when we started, rather they’re parallel to each other.

So depending on Hip mobility, you’ll change the width of your legs according to what feels appropriate for the outside edges of the feet to be parallel to each other here.

And you can play a little bit with the pelvis as it comes down.

You can see the rocking of the pelvis as it sort of drops down, the pelvis pushes forward a little bit.

Relax the belly.

Watch the chest flare initially here.

Just keep the chest completely neutral.

I’m happy I’m a little bit fat because I can show you how my belly’s relaxing here.

Just think about the belly being that relaxed.

There’s always a tendency when we start to do active stuff The automatic thing is to draw the navel to the spine to make like um the core strength active.

Forget about that, let that go soft, move the legs away from each other As you move the legs away from each other, feel how the hips become active.

You can feel behind, feel the buttocks, feel the hips, feel in front here, the hips become active.

The arms are relaxed down first.

The legs continue to pull away.

And we’re going to move the arms up to the side.

Palms face forward, shoulders height.

Watch not to flare the chest and to flare the pelvis.

Pelvis comes in, the chest comes to neutral, spread through the fingers.

Look at the head’s just completely straight.

Crown of the head extends upward, away from the movement from the shoulders.

So the the neck is extends up.

So somebody’s kind of pulling the neck upward like this.

As the fingertips spread, as the legs pull away, pelvis is neutral, belly’s relaxed.

Spread through the fingers, shoulders draw down.

And again, we didn’t do much of it last week, but now what we can actually do is start to undulate the rib cage.

So that the rib cage floats around over the top of the pelvis into one of our patterns of micromovements as you spread through the fingers Another pattern would be slightly hiking one shoulder or the other shoulder as we move through the neck, spread through the fingers, then bring it back in to the shoulders drawing down, spread the fingers, activate the legs away from each other So these microcalibrations around maybe what feels stressful, trying to neutralize or calibrate the stress out of the picture.

You can move the shoulders, lower the arms if you need to, move the shoulders, spread the fingers, activate the legs, move the neck.

Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, activate the legs away from each other.

Static again, one more time, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, extend through the back of the neck.

And as we come down, similar idea, shoulders draw down away from the extension of the neck Opposing the feet feeling grounded.

So there’s an there’s a kind of an opposition, a springy opposition from the feet coming up.

As the shoulders draw down, as the neck extends.

So there’s this kind of a bouncy feeling from the feet to the extent to the top of the head when you’re at when you’re releasing down.

And once you’re down, relax everything once.

Bring the legs back together for a second, which is before we go to star form.

Uh not sure if everybody read Ash’s post and saw the video.

Did you see the the tall video?

Sorry the CSS is totally fucking broken on that.

You can ask Austin’s help.

Um that that we put a tall video in the skin, but it didn’t work on desktop.

I hope you watched it on mobile, but it works perfectly on mobile.

But that tall video of Asha was trying to explain with the f with the blue dots on her shirt how when you’re doing this movement, the symmetry of the dots breaks.

Remember?

Yeah, so what we’re trying to do, I think I’ll let Asha just do this one.

Why don’t you take everybody into Star form?

Okay, I’ll let it.

Yeah.

Um who watched the video?

Yeah, it didn’t we’ll check out why I checked after that it should work strange but okay so clementine didn’t see the video most okay most people saw the video no I don’t think it’s not that video it’s okay it’s not going anywhere it doesn’t matter I’m I’m I’m gonna We had just i yeah.

You can imagine in the video she had a black shirt and she had um four blue dots on her shirt and we were trying to keep the rectangle with the dots.

So just imagine that that sort of rectangle shape.

Yeah.

And generally speaking, when we do the start tilt, the task is to keep the upper body as one chunk, right?

You can also think about it could be moving like this So the upper body stays as one chunk.

We add complexity by adding the arms.

So we don’t want kind of these things to happen because they sometimes happen.

Arms stay as is.

This rectangle angle stays as is, as we tilt.

What sometimes happens or what can mix in together with this movement?

Even when I so you may be thinking, okay, I’m gonna do exactly this.

But if you cannot distinguish between different movements of the spine, what may mix in is that you may be doing a little bit of this Do you see the difference?

Right?

My hips don’t move.

Yeah, you can walk around and look at me This movement happens here in the spine.

We don’t want this movement.

We want the pelvis to tilt.

Another movement which can happen, I’ll first show like this Just so that everybody can see me.

If I were just to go from here, this movement is possible possible right so the pelvis doesn’t move the shoulders parallel to the floor and the spine can do this translation movement yeah so So if we do it in the start tilt, what may happen is that the pelvis doesn’t move, but my spine just starts to kind of shift forward like this. leading with the chest, right?

This is also not what we want to do.

All we want to do is that you have a pelvis.

The pelvis tilts Right?

The movement happens in this hip.

This hip controls the movement.

This just follows.

So this hip, think about just your left hip The left hip wants to go back.

The pelvis tilts.

And the upper body just follows.

So focus all your attention here.

Your left buttock wants to go diagonally back and the rest of the body follows Just try it yourself a few times.

Okay?

Just let’s bring the legs in the position.

First parallel.

I’m just gonna turn back to you so that it’s a little bit easier. to follow the right foot will go 90 degrees to the right yeah and the back heel will go forty five degrees to the left approximately approximately.

Okay?

And then just relax your legs.

Hello friends.

And now your pelvis is kind of looking diagonally forward between your legs.

So that’s your leg position.

Yes, and then when we pull the legs away from each other, it just becomes a bit easier to control the movement of the pelvis.

But from here, first let’s just for to make it easier, let’s bring the hands onto the hips.

Think about your pelvis.

So in this case the movement will happen from the left buttock and back like this.

Okay?

So just hold your pelvis and try to tilt your pelvis but without breaking the line of the spine.

So the spine stays together with the pelvis How you prevent your knee from locking?

Yes.

Yeah, so okay.

Okay, in your case, look.

So your heel is like this, make it more like this, and also bring the legs a little bit closer together, just a bit, yes.

And the starting point is approximately this point position of the hip.

From here try to tilt.

Kind of like this.

Is it locking?

If it if if the front is locking, you can just bend it just a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

If somebody feels the knee hyperextending, you can bend, micro bend the knee.

Yeah, so it’s not like this, but you can just a little bit with microband.

So try a few times.

If you don’t get it, just lift your hand and I’m gonna help you.

Okay.

Okay, let’s try together.

I’m gonna walk around So let’s start with the feet in the 45 degree position here.

Activate the legs away from each other first.

And as you do that, you can see that my right hip wants to go back.

And then the arms come up like the same line as the upper torso.

And then the right hip draws back As we go like kind of this far down.

We don’t even have to go so far.

So Clementine, you’re leaning a little bit too far forward, as opposed to that, draw the right hip back.

Yeah, right hip goes back, like this one.

Yeah.

Yeah, the right one.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

That goes back.

Exactly.

That’s it.

That position backward and then take the arms up.

Asha will help you in a second.

And then just think the upper torso comes down like this.

Like this.

So yeah, yeah.

This one, the right hip.

So right hip back, four dots on the shirt, activate the legs away from each other, come on up once and lower the arms down.

We’ll go into it again This time we’re gonna add more of the finger stuff and the shoulder stuff as we go into it.

So let’s set it up first like Asha did initially with the hands onto the hips.

Draw the right hip back first.

The upper torso follows that movement back.

And then bring the arms up to the side of the body.

The shoulders will draw down.

The fingers will spread away from each other.

The back of the neck extends.

And then you can use only the hips to lower the upper torso.

So don’t reach, just allow for the upper torso to lower with the movement of the hip itself, if that makes sense So think about the hip opens and comes back up.

The right hip draws back and sort of allows for the upper torso to come forward and down.

Spread the fingers.

Draw the shoulders down.

Activate the legs away from each other.

Lift the hip up.

Lower the arms once.

Turn the right foot in, the left foot out, the right heel back.

So we’re to the opposite side now, right?

Now hands onto the waist again.

Allow for the left hip to draw back.

That’s it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That’s it, Clementine.

Left hip draws back.

Raise the arms up. to the to the same position as the upper torso, as you can see here.

Now I’m exaggerating the position of the upper torso a bit.

Think this left hip draws back.

And as we come down, but don’t lead with this arm.

The left hip draws back and the upper torso just drops.

So we’re doing a kind of variation of it here.

Legs spread away from each other, spread through the fingers, the shoulders draw down, back at the neck extends.

Activate the legs away from each other, shoulders draw down, back at the leg extends.

Lower the arms down.

Lift the upper torso up.

Hands come back to the waist for a second.

Turn the foot the left foot in, turn the right foot out, the left heel back.

Um can you see what I’m doing here?

So when I when I move my feet, the hips are kind of moving in the direction my feet do.

You can watch for a second.

So see here.

I can even change the order.

I can take the left heel back, my right foot goes forward, and my hips are following the movement of the legs.

So if I come back to center here, I’ll do it with my right foot forward first.

So my right foot goes forward, the left he heel draws back And then the byproduct of that is the movement of the upper torso comes in the direction of that leg.

Now from that position, activate the legs away from each other again, reach the arms up to the side, draw the shoulders down, spread through the fingers, back of the neck extends.

Draw the right hip back a little bit more and allow the upper torso to come down.

So it’s not the upper torso that’s moving down, it’s the hips that’s moving the upper torso downward.

It’s kind of an involuntary movement of the upper torso.

Activate the legs away from each other as you lift up again.

Lower the arms down, hands come to the waist, turn the right foot in, the left foot back to center.

We’ll try it on the other side.

Turn the left foot out, the right heel drops back.

You see that it see my my body moved with it.

Right heel, left foot, my body moved.

Arms come up, activate the legs away from each other Left hip draws back and allow your upper torso just to move with that.

So this upper part of the body, uniform with the arms extended out, lowers down to that left side.

Draw spread through the fingers again.

The shoulders draw down away from the back of the neck extending.

The legs grip away from each other.

As you grip the legs away from each other.

Lift the upper torso upright again, lower the arms, come to place the hands back onto the waist.

Just take one break in between.

I think it’s good that we do it a few times while Asha goes around So let’s try it with the arms up this time.

Extend the arms up.

Shoulders draw down, spread through the fingers.

Turn the right foot out, the left heel back, the upper torso follows that movement.

Now draw the right hip back and the upper torso leads.

You can see that, right?

It doesn’t, sorry, the upper torso doesn’t lead.

The hip leads the movement in the upper torso.

Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, extend to the back of the neck, activate the legs away from each other, lower the arms Turn the right foot in, feet come back to center again, hands onto the waist once.

So we just do it one more time on the left side.

Look, I’ll go behind you.

Close the chest.

So let’s try it again with the arms up and then change the position of the feet.

So as you bring the arms up Draw the shoulders down, spread through the fingers, turn the left foot out, the right heel back, and then the upper torso turns.

Now draw the left hip back as the upper torso drops a bit.

Try not to lead with the arm, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, back of the neck extends, activate the legs away from each other as they stabilize, micro-bend the knee if you feel a little bit of stress in the back of the knee.

Activate the legs away from each other now as you lower the arms.

Turn the left foot in, turn the right foot forward, step the feet together one more time.

Outside edges of the feet parallel to each other again with the feet together like this.

Bend the knees a bit, straighten them, bend.

Heels gripped toward each other, but not so much, just a little bit.

Activate the legs away.

Sorry, grip the heels toward each other, straw the shoulders down one more time, spread through the fingers, extend through the back of the neck, crown of the head moves up, and then move through the neck Shoulders draw down toward the feet, opposing that movement is the stability of the feeling of the feet, kind of bouncing off the floor.

It’s just a it’s more of a visualization than anything as the heels grip toward each other.

It’s a springy sort of feeling here with the legs so active.

And then the shoulders draw down, extend to the back of the neck.

I don’t mean legs so active, I just mean active.

The legs are active.

And then relax everything and take it. it easy.

Okay, so we’re gonna that’s just a recap, but we’re going to do what we didn’t do last week, which was simple cross.

It becomes a little bit more challenging and I think that we’re going to offer If somebody, when we do this, how many of these chairs do we have?

If somebody’s feeling like It’s going to be challenging.

I’ll demonstrate when Ash is doing it what we can do in the chair.

So the hardest we can sit sit down on the floor.

The hardest part For this one, and this is where it gets a little bit challenging, and at any point in time you can just stop, put your hands back, and take a rest.

Okay, so please uh uh the disclaimer, right?

What is disclaimer in French?

Huh?

Avectismo.

Avec yeah like like uh don’t don’t do this at home type like disclaimer.

Yeah well There’s a couple of other words I think Avecma is probably.

Avec what is Harris probably?

Avechtzisma.

It’s like French A V E R A Avec.

Avec tis no but tisma, what it’s Avec Okay.

I’m gonna write it down after because I want to learn this.

So disclaimer is uh uh if some people had had um uh read Annie’s comment on the on the platform today.

She said she went home feeling very sore.

We know it’s easy to get sore initially when you first try what we’re doing.

So uh That’s normal, but we can’t overemphasize stopping and taking a rest when it whenever you can.

So I Asha look when Asha can and I can hold the arms up forever, but that’s not because we built some sort of um endurance up from weightlifting or something like that.

It’s just through the continuity of the practice.

The nervous system adapts to the movement and then eventually it’s no longer challenging.

So But on days I would come in, I would lift my arms up, and I wouldn’t be able to hold them up for very long.

So there are days even for myself that I would lower my arms and I would take it easy, depending on how I feel.

So really pay attention to how you’re feeling at any given time.

When we do these movements, the reclining transitions, it requires abdominal strength and balance.

So there are different variations of it and we’ll show you you can use the chair for one variation in a second and we’re also going to use the chair for the variations of peak hold today and V SIT because those are two of the forms that we’re practicing from the third section So just to give you a little bit of an example, when I’d when we’d mentioned you don’t want the belly to go to the spine.

You don’t want to activate the core strength in the way that you would activate core strength in physical fitness. or Pilates or yoga or something like that.

And I’m using those as examples because when you’re in a yoga class and they’re telling you, for example, to do Navasana, the boat pose, right?

They’re asking you, drift the belly to the spine and activate the belly, right?

So that’s actually the byproduct of doing that exercise in relation to yoga.

But what we’re using is gravity.

So I’d like to give you this sense of how gravity works without the necessity to grip any muscles.

Hook your arms around the front of the legs like this and clasp your hands.

Um at this point because your hands are clasped and the knees are kind of being supported by the arms.

Depending on your level of mobility in the hips, the belly should feel soft here.

You shouldn’t feel like the belly has any activity.

But when you let go of the arm with the leg when you let go of the legs and you lean back What actually even just keep the feet on the ground for now when you lean back, feel the belly, it becomes active.

Does that make sense?

So I’m not I’m not gripping, I’m not blocking the the belly at all.

I’m letting the belly get act actively strong from gravity, if that makes sense.

Okay, so let’s come back around and hook one more time So our objective when we’re developing these transitional movements, and this is this one is called reclining transition.

And when we get down to the floor work in Baseworks, and there’s a shitload of floor work that we do, we probably won’t cover much of it in this course.

But the floor work, we have reclining transitions in between every form that we do.

So we go back, we land with the arms, we extend the legs, balls of the feet extend.

The legs become just as active as they are when we’re standing.

Activating the legs and gripping the heels toward each other.

But for today we want to just give you the introduction to the first reclining transition with easy cross, changing the position of the legs.

So to start, why don’t we just hang on to the knees and hang back?

Keep the feet on the floor for the time being.

Just let your feet rest onto the floor.

Hang back to this position here first And see if you can tilt back a little bit more to the point where the feet just naturally lift up off the floor.

Now some people might feel this is a bit uncomfortable on their pelvis.

If anybody feels uncomfortable on the pelvis, you’re gonna take a chair right now.

And this is not like I can I can show them first And this is not gonna be like some sort of like, oh I had to use a fucking chair, man, so like I couldn’t do it.

It’s none of this.

This is just another alternative You can sit onto a chair anytime your pelvis feels sore.

Go grab a chair.

Also, let’s let’s just quickly check the seed bones.

I’m just gonna show them and everybody is gonna check whether they are tailballed.

Okay, okay.

So look, the movement that we will be doing over and over is coming from here to here here without any details just try to do something like this and let me know if your tailbone hurts because for some people the skeleton is as such that it hurts.

So for some people there’s a there’s a bone here, the sacrum there’s a bony protuberance.

Yeah.

It’s on the floor and that hurts.

Anybody?

Yes?

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s not here.

It doesn’t hurt.

So how uncomfortable is it?

So you could choose to sit on something yes like what guilein is doing this is why we said bring a towel so so so we so we had mentioned we had mentioned bring a small hand towel.

You could bring a hand towel for that reason.

Yeah yeah Do you want to be on the chair or uh let me finish because you’re going too much you’re doing too much detail right now.

All right.

So we can switch to a chair at any point in time.

So as you can see, Ash has got a chair there.

She’s gonna She’s gonna demonstrate this after.

Let’s hang back onto the knees here for a second and hang back.

You can fold up your your um towel and pad your buttocks if you’d like to.

Hang back to this position here Now take the arms out in front of you and we’re going to take the arms out to the side, lower them to the floor as we extend the legs forward like this.

Lift the chest upward now.

Or keep them bent.

Or keep them slightly bent.

Then we’re going to cross the left leg over the top of the right, or the right leg over the top of the left leg, and we’re going to lower the heels down And when we lower the heels down to the floor, we’re still on our forearms behind like this.

Take the right arm forward.

Yeah.

Try to keep your feet down on the ground if you can.

Take the right arm forward, then bring the left arm forward.

So from that position you still feel like you’re hanging back, the abdominal wall’s working.

And then what we’re going to do is allow ourselves to come up to this position.

See where the legs are crossed here?

We want to do this opposition with the feet, like you want to push yourself away like this.

Okay, like you want the feet to push into the floor away from you.

So push the feet into the floor and as you push the feet into the floor the upper torso flexes.

So you get a very round back And then you’ll be sitting onto the sit bones.

Relax the arms down beside the body now.

So the feet are opposing this movement as the upper spine flexes.

The shoulders draw down towards the floor.

The hands are just kind of relaxed to hear to the side of the body.

Continue to oppose the movement from the feet as you flex the upper spine and then from here you might take the hands out to the side as you straighten through the spine upward like this So the feet you can see they’re not it’s not extremely crossed like this.

I’m a little bit more on the soles of my foot in this variation to show you.

The hands are not ideally supporting the weight behind.

They’re lightly onto the floor as the feet press.

And when you see the feet press, I’m rolling on my sit bones.

It shouldn’t be painful.

You should just feel a little bit of a roll of the skin on the sit bones, a little bit of the soft part of the muscle rolling And from there, let’s flex again.

Draw the flexion into the spine so like you feel that the front part of the body becomes hollow, the shoulders are drawing down, the feet resist the movement as you flex the upper spine forward.

So there’s an opposition of force here.

The feet are resisting the floor and your upper spine is flexing, trying to go into that resistance.

I’m exaggerating, of course.

You don’t have to use so much activity here, but this resistance opposing the movement.

And then from here you want to try to find the place where the spine can go straight again.

So you may adjust You may come more onto the sit bones as the spine becomes straight.

So we’re doing flexion to extension.

Let’s do it together a little bit.

You can take the hands like this.

Flexion.

The extension come more to the sitbone tips.

Flexion again.

And then extension, you come more to the sitbone tips One more time.

Flexion to extension.

Sitbone tips.

Now let’s add this.

Press the feet.

Flex, oppose.

So you’re flexing in, the feet are trying to push you away.

The hands are relaxed.

Flex.

The head is just relaxed, moving naturally with the position of the spine Continue to press the feet to the floor and extend.

So the feet are still continuing to press to the floor.

You feel the hips active because of that movement, and you feel your buttocks become more active And it almost creates more of a cushion in your butt from pressing the feet into the floor.

Now flex and relax again.

Tilt back to this position. with a with the upper spine flexion.

You’re rolling back again close to the sacrum, lift the feet up off the floor.

The arms and the legs Like a bay like a baby, you know, become free and moving.

Exactly.

It’s kind of playful.

And then as you extend the legs, you lower the upper torso to offset the weight over gravity and the forearms come down as you lift the chest up.

Keep the knees bent if it’s too much for you.

Or straighten the legs.

Now cross the other leg.

Right leg crosses, left leg crosses over right Take the right hand forward.

Sorry, take the left hand forward.

The right hand forward.

So the arms are working to balance you.

Lower the feet first.

Oppose the movement forward as you press the feet into the floor.

So as you come forward, press the feet into the floor away.

Upper spine flexes as you come forward.

Shoulders draw down.

The feet move away from you.

From the flexion, we move to extension.

And when we move to extension, the hands can just spread out to the side like this, and you’ll feel the pelvis kind of rock up onto the sit bones like this.

And when we get to this position here, you continue to draw the shoulders down, extend through the back of the neck.

Now let’s go a few times flexion to extension.

See if you can keep the feet active.

Flexion to extension.

Move the arms with the movement.

See the arms also want to move with that flexion.

To extension.

They’re not actually moving on their own as much as they’re moving with the spine.

Flexion to extension.

The feet continue to press.

Flexion to extension.

Lean back a bit.

Let’s flex from here.

Flexion.

Hands come down.

Oppose the movement as you’re flexing forward.

Don’t go so far that it feels uncomfortable Continue to press the feet into the floor, opposing the movement.

Draw the shoulders down at the same time that you flex Relax the head too.

Turn the head from side to side.

Make sure that the neck doesn’t become tense because of this movement, this opposition.

The feet continue to press away from you.

The upper spine flexes.

The neck is relaxed.

Now we’re going to go to our extension.

This should feel good.

It’s like an unraveling.

As you extend, the pelvis rocks forward a bit.

And then you come more to the sit bones.

If you continue to press the feet, the muscles in the bum become active a bit and create more of a cushion in the bum.

Now flex again, turn back.

Find again, put the arms forward if you like.

Find again the position where the arms are helping you.

They’re on the payroll for the balance.

And then as you straighten the legs or if you if you keep them bent, it’s okay.

Lower the forearms once, lift the chest.

Lower the legs.

Lie down once.

Bring the legs away from each other on the floor.

Chill out.

So just lay flat, spread eagle.

And Lucita made a good point last week.

I was somehow in my brain thinking that the pelvis should go forward and backward.

But it’s not.

It’s actually swaying side to side.

So you can sway your pelvis a little bit side to side to maybe let any kind of residual tension that’s come up there kind of release a little bit.

Okay.

I feel the weight of the body into the floor.

This is just the invite thing.

Think of the points that we talked about last week.

The back of the heels, the back of the calves, the back of the pelvis.

Now we’ve been on the pelvis for a while, the weight of that pelvis going down.

The back of the shoulders, the back of the shoulder blades, the back of the forearms, the back of the hands, the back of the elbows, the back of the head.

Re-sense how that weight is really in a comfortable way merging down into the floor, floor.

And there’s a little bit of a springy feel there, similar to that of how when we were on the feet, I was explaining it as well.

The springy feeling is not airbound, it’s just comfortable.

Make sure the belly’s relaxed Eyes can be open or closed, doesn’t matter.

Now I’d like you to do the same thing that we did last week.

We’re not going to do the spinal traction just yet.

Let’s just roll right over onto our stomach. in the most natural way that’s possible for you.

So choose the best way to roll over onto the stomach.

You can bring the arms away from the side of the body.

You can either have your forehead down or you can turn your cheek to either side And then you can sway the hips again from side to side.

I find the cheek down works a little bit better, especially when you’re trying to allow the front of the shoulders to lay flat onto the floor.

So If you’re comfortable with the cheek turning to one side.

And remember which side that you did this with the cheek this time, because at the end of the session today we’ll do the cheek on the opposite side.

Try to remember that.

So you want to feel again the weight of the shoulders, the front of the shoulders, the weight of the face, the weight of the front of the thighs and pelvis, the weight of the knees, just above the uh the knees, I should say.

The weight of the tops of the feet The whole weight of the leg actually, the whole weight of the arm as well.

And you can sway again from side to side, uh, the hips.

And one at one point just stay neutral.

Come to center, relax, don’t move.

And again, sense the weight All right.

Okay, so however you want to, just find your way back up to however to sit.

If you want to grab a chair and sit for a second, you can as well.

We’ll explain a few things about how we’re gonna approach the next part of this.

We’d like to try and get through this and leave a little bit more time for some questions at the end today.

So that what we did just now the thing lying on the back and and um on on the front of the body. like without very much activity is uh uh a part of uh our assimilation practice.

So the assimilation means that we’re allowing for the body on its in its own way to calibrate whatever types of movements there have been, it’s not obvious what the result of that would be at this point in time.

Okay, so.

That’s another disclaimer.

We claim no responsibility of what the outcomes are for your experience here at Baseworks.

Don’t sue us.

If your life falls apart, it’s not our fault.

Um so we’re gonna move on to Some slightly more challenging forms today, but they don’t have to be challenging.

So we’re gonna be doing some variations of them.

We’re gonna start with the uh peak hold.

And that’s requiring a little bit more shoulder strength, so I really would encourage people to try it with a chair just so that we don’t run home feeling tired and sore and and like it was too much work for us.

So come on over here for a second.

Come to the wall.

So the peak hold, there’s a few different things that are going on.

We’re working with some of the focus today as uh the foci was one of the topics of segment three.

And one of the foci is gravity, and the other one is converge.

So we’re working with two different principles here.

We’re trying to understand the dynamics between the weight of gravity against the position of the body over center of gravity, depending on how the body is positioned in gravity.

So we’re going to start first with our our bodies facing downward, and then we’re going to end up with the bodies facing upward in a similar position, working with both gravity and converge foci So to do the peak hold onto the floor when you’ve got tight hamstrings, you would lift the heels up like this and you would do it like this.

But what happens here is that the shoulders get very tired for some people Right?

So to avoid the shoulders getting tired, we’re going to use a chair.

Anybody can use a chair.

More than the wall, we’re going to try to use chairs, because the wall it doesn’t work the same way.

With the chair, we’re gonna do something more like this.

Does that make sense?

Right?

So there’s not as much load on the shoulders here with the chair, but we’re still getting this peak position in as we try to work through it.

And then we’re going to be adding all of the different patterns into it.

Again, the shoulders draw down, and we’re doing some activation through the legs, whatnot.

If you’re confident with your shoulder strength at this level, and you can feel comfortable doing it, or if you’ve if you can remember to just put your knees on the floor and take a break periodically and come back, then please go ahead and do the peak floor on the floor.

If you think you need some support, please use a chair and Asha and I will come around and make sure that you’re doing it properly, right?

So I mean properly or appropriately, right?

I don’t want to use the word proper.

That’s another disclaimer.

Don’t sue me, right?

So let’s let’s mention that the knees tend to even bent as much as possible and all that stuff.

So well yeah, exactly.

Um those uh Yvonne, those chairs roll a bit, so you might want to just take those chairs.

Yeah.

Yeah let’s Um, yeah, you can take that, yeah.

Oh, you know what else?

Yeah, you know what else, guys?

We can also use the tables if there’s not enough chairs going around.

The tables work exactly the same way.

So you can put a table against the wall wherever and you can use a table.

So what did you say you wanted to do?

Well just uh explain that you can open the arms, you can bend the knees as well.

So Asha’s gonna give a little bit of um the short version.

Yes, the short version.

So how to make it the easiest possible, okay?

We are going for the easiest possible version which is possible for you.

Okay, if you are doing it on the floor, you will be bending your knees as much as you can and you can open the arms wider.

Right, so it’s gonna look something like this.

We don’t want to see this and we don’t want to see something like this The rib cage and the pelvis stays the same.

Yeah.

Like all the other forms.

That’s looking good, Clementine.

Yeah.

Yes.

Well Wait’s okay, no don’t correct just yet.

But watch this.

The next point here is Because her knees are bent, she’s compensating for the inflexibility.

You’ve got to think that she can hold that in the crease of her hip.

Okay?

Yeah, this is the converge.

Because this is the converge.

Um, it’s not just about the peak It’s also about this.

So yeah.

That makes sense, yeah.

That was this is this is a rather big obstacle.

So essentially you need to find a way To hold something like this in the crease of your thigh.

So you have to bend the knees.

You have to bend the knees.

I mean You have to straighten the spine.

So also don’t let the heels drop like this.

It’s very, very active see so the entire position is very active you’re pressing forward you’re gripping back and we never want this to happen Okay.

If you’re using a chair or a table, yeah, you won’t have a it won’t necessarily be as effective.

But still the idea is that high tiptoes, you can open your arms more and you press back.

Well actually maybe you can just Yeah, I think it’s possible.

Okay, there you go.

Yeah, so you’re doing something like this.

But you can see um th there’s not as much load on her shoulders here.

So we can play more with the dynamics when there’s less load, if that makes sense.

The load comes with your ability to to continue with the practice.

So if you’re confident to be on the floor and work with the dynamics of the load, that’s okay.

If you’re not, grab a chair or a table.

Let’s do it together.

We’ll start on the floor, but the people who will be by the tables can go to the tables or chairs.

So let’s go onto all fours, onto our knees like this.

And the tops of the toes will be down to the floor like this.

At any point in time you can come down and take a rest and and watch.

Okay?

So the f the arms Let’s do this.

The arms will come a little bit further away from each other.

When you bring the arms closer together, they’ll impinge the shoulder more.

Okay, that makes sense.

So So it becomes easier to try like this first before we start to understand how to mobilize the shoulder in its vertical position more.

So hands can go a little bit further away Spread through the fingers at the same time and we’re going to be using the fingertips to slightly grip onto the floor and that’ll stabilize the wrist. if that makes sense.

So if you grip the fingertips onto the floor, you’ll find that the forearm becomes active.

And from that point onto the tiptoes come up this high.

So you’re like in a little bit of a crawl here.

Now you want to keep the knees bent if necessary because it’s not about the hamstring stretch here.

It’s more about lifting the sit bones as high as they can, bringing the lower part of the rib cage close to the thighs Grip the fingertips into the floor now.

Draw the shoulders down towards the hips.

You’ll feel it in the back of your shoulders.

Shoulders draw down to the hips, fingertips grip to the floor, the toes grip away from you as the hands grip away from the toes.

So the hands are gripping to the floor and pressing forward, the toes are gripping to the floor and pressing backward, and the sit bones are lifting up and your rib cage meets the thighs.

Now lower the knees.

And just sit onto your heels for a second if you can.

Or just sit like this also is more comfortable.

It could be if you’re at the tops of your feet So we’re gonna try it again again.

So remember what we don’t want what we don’t want to happen here is that everybody gets so sore they say oh those fucking bastards at Baseworks made my goddamn shoulders so sore.

Let’s sue them now Please um and it’s not I’m just joking.

It’s because everybody gets sore when they do Baseworks for the first time.

And we really want to emphasize that you can stop at any point in time and just watch and take a look.

We don’t want you to get too sore because we got a nice packed weekend coming up for lots of interesting stuff.

So when we go up again, as I’m explaining, and you feel it’s tiring, you can always just come down.

Because we’re gonna do it five or six times.

Okay, I promise you.

Okay?

So at any point in time, come down.

Is that good?

Capiche thing signed, right?

You understood capiche.

What’s capiche in French?

Comprend?

Compris.

Compris.

But is it is it really as as the same as capiche?

Compris?

No.

It’s not really the same, is it?

Capiche is more the same.

Okay, right.

Compris.

Okay, complete.

Okay.

Tout va bien?

Okay?

Allez-y.

Right?

So fingertips grip first, stabilize the wrists.

Grip the fingers to the floor, stabilize the wrists.

Press the hands into the floor away from you.

Come bring the knees up off the floor.

Adjust the position of the feet if necessary.

Lift the sit bones high.

Draw the shoulders back toward the hips.

Press the toes into the floor away from your hands.

Press the hands away from your toes.

Shoulders draw down.

Relax the neck.

The rib cage meets the top of the thighs.

And then lower the knees to the floor.

But so come on to the heels one more time, lower the knees to the floor.

Yes.

Bend the knees more.

Yeah.

Yes.

It looks good.

So let’s do another two times and Asha’s gonna go around.

Hands come to the floor.

Or sit out if you want to.

If you want to take a break on this one, you can sit out and you can watch.

Fingertips grip.

The toes grip to the floor, shoulders draw down.

We’re doing different types of activity in this time.

The rib cage comes to the top of the thighs, the knees can stay bent, the heels can be off the floor.

If you’re very flexible in the hamstrings, you can try to put the feet on the floor, but not at the cost of the peak of the sit bones.

Okay.

Hands press away from the feet.

The feet press away from the hands.

The neck is relaxed.

The shoulders draw down to the hips.

Feel it in the back of your shoulders.

Toes grip to the floor as the feet press away from your hands.

Now lower the knees with that opposing force.

Yeah, these conventions.

So you can think that this is the movement that you want to be doing all the time when we’re in it.

Does that make sense?

You want to push away from you want the hands to push away from the feet.

Yeah.

You’re trying to bring the floor apart.

Okay, let’s do two more times.

You can sit out if you’d like for one.

So slightly differently we’re going to go in now.

We’re going to press the palms into the floor first.

Press the tips of the toes into the floor.

Draw the shoulders toward the hips.

Lift the knees up, sit bones go up high.

Now grip the fingertips to the floor to stabilize the wrists.

Shoulders drive back down towards the hips.

You can feel that in the back of the shoulders.

Relax the head.

The rib cage meets the thighs.

If you’d like, you can bring your heels a little bit further down, press the chest a little bit further back, at the same time the shoulders draw down, spread through the fingers.

Now opposing the hands and the feet movement, lower the knees down to the floor.

Yep, you can sit back to the heels.

I have a question, Satcher.

Yes.

Yvonne.

Um is there like a cue to know that your shape is correct when you’re doing it?

because I have a problem.

Did did Asha show you or were you around were you yes I did.

Can I just comment on that in June?

necessarily grasp yeah where the that’s okay yeah thank you please go ahead yeah um overall to answer yvonne and also to answer some other comments about what is the final shape, what is the final shape.

Please don’t think about the final shape because it makes you think differently about how you move.

The peak is about pressing the chest back and pressing forward with your toes.

Just watch me for a moment.

It’s like a competition.

The arms are doing this movement.

Like this movement.

Right?

And the legs are doing this movement.

And it’s a competition.

So I’m pressing forward, gripping back.

I’m really really exaggerating, but it’s a competition.

You just need to compete, compete, compete. until it becomes a perfect piece.

So e Yvonne, that’s a really good point that Asha made that um rather than think about okay where are my hips going, think about those things more than anything else.

The f the toes oppose the movement of the hands And you’re trying to pull the floor away.

And over t over time.

Oh, another thing is that you could feel the top of the thighs come closer to the rib cage or to the belly.

You can use a pin like in the before or or just bend the knees more to the point where you can feel the rib cage touch the top of the thighs at the same time that you’re pushing.

Also one more uh three I think also overall for everybody, we are teaching you to understand movement better and control the movement better and be more aware.

So we are doing movement tasks which are difficult in terms of awareness and control.

So when you do these movements and you’re like, I don’t understand this movement. cannot feel I cannot control that’s exactly the point this is why we’re doing this okay so it’s completely fine that at first it’s like oh my god what is this what am I doing It’s a completely normal reaction to what we’re doing.

Actually if it wasn’t like that, Uh uh I you know, people people get very upset sometimes.

It’s just like, what am I supposed to be doing?

The questioning of that is actually very good, you know, in some ways.

I came to Baseworks by the way.

So that’s I um Mike Magali, you had a question.

Yes, because you feel like Yeah, you’re like you’re like this, so you need to find a way to bend the knees more.

Bend the knees more and press back.

No, it feels curved to you because your norm is this.

Um Kate, you know, um here here’s another great analogy for you.

So we started off the the first form that we did was squat.

Okay, so the squat, the hinging is very similar when the when the hips go back and the weight is going to the heels, whoops, we’re trying to understand that this hinging movement is another It’s another dynamic of the same movement in a different position in gravity with a different gravitational load on a different part of the body.

So it’s sending messages as kind of a neural feedback from different positions.

So when we work with the squat, it informs the peak hold and vice versa.

That’s just some Diarrhea theory for you for the time being, but it is actually meaningful in that way.

So the hinging of the hips transfers here to the same hinging of the hips when we’re here.

Uh, if you can remember that Yeah.

But you know, um, let’s move on because let’s do the other way around now, which was similar to what we did in the simple cross, but slightly more challenging.

And this one also, if you wanted to.

You could use a chair because it’s kind of easier in the chair to do this movement.

I find it easier anyway sometimes.

Rather than being on the floor, it might be more comfortable.

Because different to that of the one we were doing before here, it may feel a little bit bonier on the pips in some ways.

What are you looking at?

Let’s try.

Maybe let’s demonstrate the ascent aspect of a peakhold, peak hold, VCD.

And then we need to do the other one.

That’s okay.

So Basically, we will just do a movement which looks like this, right?

It does require some abdominal strength.

So how much you do really depends It can stay here, just keep the legs active.

But what’s very, very important, and this is the ascend focus, when we build from grounded up, control of the movements.

Here are the knees, and then even if you lift just a little bit, the knees don’t move.

Okay?

So I don’t want to see this.

Okay, so we will come like we’ll be here, back, up, push, push, and this is where the knees are and from here on as you lift the knees don’t move okay so that’s a point or this is the ascent focus of this form and this is converge okay so yeah So think the rib cage is touching the top of the thighs in the same way that it was when we were just upside down?

Yeah.

And we lean back.

We also entered this one from here, but today we won’t.

Let’s just lean back.

The rib cage connects.

You can bring the arms forward.

Lead with the shoulders forward.

Draw the shoulders down and then try and straighten the legs.

Or just bring the legs to here, this position.

Now bring the chest up a little bit more.

Try to bring this rib cage closer to the thighs.

If it’s possible.

If it’s possible.

Keep grounded.

And then lower the feet once.

Come up.

Hang on to the legs.

Let yourself hang completely.

So that everything goes soft.

And we’ll try a few times like that.

And also for the distributed activation, push the balls of the feet and uh Spread the fingers.

So we add that to the subsequent versions.

We’ll do a little bit more of adding everything else.

Okay.

Let’s hang back again once.

So you teeter totter to find that balance.

Draw the shoulders down now.

Shoulders draw down.

Extend through the fingers.

Spread.

Thighs come in towards the chest, try to straighten the legs up a little bit more.

I’m good here today.

I’m good here.

And I can do a very beautiful V sit when I’m not so fat.

And activate the feet, push the ball.

Lower down, hook.

We’ll add the feet more next time.

Hang here once you’re not pulling yourself in here, just hang at this at this point, just like hang and let everything really go soft.

So this time we do a little bit more of the feet activity like Asha was just saying.

So let’s start by activating the feet this time and end with the shoulders.

Hang back.

Balance, activate the feet, extend the ankles, spread the toes.

Lift the legs up.

Extend the arms forward, draw the shoulders down.

Try to connect the thighs to the rib cage.

Extend the ankles again.

Balls of the feet extend.

Hook on, lower, come forward.

When you hook, let yourself go completely soft.

Sometimes when you’re doing the activation with the feet or with other parts of your body you might get cramps.

If you get cramps, then don’t activate so much.

Clementine had a question.

Yes, Clementine.

So in the upside-down version, like the the the coming together comes from pushing away.

But when you’re saying bring, when you’re like that And you’re saying bring this to this.

Like what are you bringing?

Like, am I bringing my legs closer or am I bringing my or or How am I doing that?

Combination of both.

Yep.

Why don’t we do that now a little bit more just for that purpose to try and try and use those both those analogies a little bit more?

Let’s try together one more time.

Okay, so we hang back, bring the arms forward, offset, balance, activate the balls of the feet together, bring the chest forward and the thighs back.

Chest forward, but lift the chest up a little bit more, thighs back.

Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, extend through the ankles Relax.

So the difference to the peak is that we’re pressing away as opposed to in the V SIT, even though the bot body’s in a similar position, we’re using the dynamic between the chest and legs pulling toward each other and muscular wise we’re using the hip flexors the the the muscles in the hips to pull their legs toward you a little bit.

But rather than think about that too much, just think about the legs pull toward you and the rib cage goes this way.

Yeah, let’s try actually, let’s go right upside down again, try the peak hold and let’s try and do one thing here before we continue.

So come up to this position.

Let’s try and feel something similar in the peak hold without pressing the feet and the and the hands away from each other too much So come on up to the tiptoes.

Bring the chest in towards the thighs.

Try not to press the hands or the feet away from each other now.

Just try to bring the thighs toward the rib cage and try to bring the rib cage towards the thighs.

And do you see what that does automatically?

Did you see what that does?

Lower down.

So when you Try to bring the rib cage and the thighs together.

The byproduct in the position of gravity that you’re in means that the hands and the feet will start to press away from each other.

Does that make sense?

Watch.

So here I’m trying to press my hands forward and my feet back, and I don’t need to bring the rib cage to the chest Now I’m going to relax this.

I’m not going to press.

I’m not going to press back.

I’m just going to bring my thighs to my ribcage.

And when I bring my thighs to my rib cage, this pressure is automatic.

That’s true.

That’s you know what I mean?

So now let’s go this way.

There’s no floor, right?

No more.

There’s no more floor.

Bring the legs up.

Squeeze the thighs into the rib cage, lift the chest.

Just stay here for a second.

We’re not using the floor, but the shape is the same.

The load of gravity is different.

This is giving the body another type of a signal or a message around a similar movement.

But the dynamics are not the same.

Yeah.

Also just um Sometimes, not just actually sometimes, almost all the time, in fitness and sports, the focus is all on muscles.

It’s everything is about the muscles.

In Baseworks we don’t think about the muscles.

We think about movements and these two examples, the peak and the V sit, here the movement is identical, but completely different muscles work.

So what you need to pay attention to is the movement and how that movement works in different directions of gravity.

But the movements themselves, whether you’re upside down or right side up, feed into the inherent muscular contraction dynamics.

I it r so meaning even though we’re using the floor to push the hands away from the feet, you can add The thighs to the rib cage on top of that, and it will enhance the feet pushing away from the the arms, and that’ll send a whole bunch of new signals to the body, and over time that translates to other stuff.

But let’s not load that too much right now.

But you did get it, right?

You felt it.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Okay.

So what’s supposed to be happening with the lower back?

But I feel like I’m wrapping it up.

That’s yeah.

So basically when you lean back at first it’s rounded.

And then if it’s possible you extend.

Yeah, it’s just more challenging so if you can do it you extend if not you keep rounded.

Yeah.

Um but if it’s uncomfortable for the Sacrum sacrum sacrum.

It’s uncomfortable for me rounding it.

So I’ve got to do that.

Bonus!

Bing bing bing bing ding ding ding.

She got 50 points because she understands that the rounded part, even though we don’t feel it sometimes, is a little bit more uncomfortable for her.

But Sarah does a lot of Pilates too, so she’s indoctrinated by the Pilates instructors that talk to her a lot about core strength.

So she’s already got a little bit of a head start.

But we’re not thinking core strength.

We’re not thinking which muscles are being used.

We’re thinking of direction.

Does that make sense?

So shall we try one more of each just for the hell of it?

And then let’s get up onto our feet and finish up the last few forms.

So let’s try one more on all fours again.

Uh this one I’d like you to uh if you If you up until this point in time, if you had the hands further apart, I’d like you to play with the hands closer together.

But when your hands are closer together, if you feel an impingement or compression to the shoulder, bring the hands apart again, just for the hell of it Let’s try a different position with the hands slightly closer together.

Now let’s grip the floor first with the hands, with the fingers.

Press the palms into the floor as you press into the feet.

Lift the sit bones into the air Now press the palms into the floor away from the feet.

Press the feet into the floor away from the palms.

Now bring the tops of the thighs into the chest.

Draw the shoulders down towards the hips, grip through the fingertips, relax the neck, oppose the feet in the hands, shoulders draw down to the hips Relax the neck.

Thighs come toward the rib cage, sit bones lift into the air.

Now lower the knees and relax.

Okay, and sit down.

Let’s get the hands away.

Feet are on the floor first.

So let’s get into this position.

Let’s move back and forth a little bit like this.

And then get back to this point where we feel that the weight of the legs and upper torso oppose each other first.

Shoulders draw down, spread through the fingers.

Bring the chest close to the thighs.

Straighten the legs up a little bit.

You don’t even have to straighten them today.

Shoulders draw down, spread through the fingers, back of the neck extends, thighs come in towards the rib cage.

And then lower down, hook, come forward, hug, chill.

Let yourself, you know, that type of It’s challenging to learn.

Okay, let’s get up.

Yeah, it’s a good too.

Désolé.

No, you do, France.

You do.

Je pense que oui.

Okay.

Okay.

Asha, please.

Um the high lines So not the technical version, just take them through it.

So we will do a form with a very very pronounced ascend focus.

Yes, ascend is when We have a foundation and we’ll build on top.

Really watch your legs.

You don’t want to get tired.

So I will show two extreme versions.

Very difficult and very easy, and you choose some something in between.

Okay?

So the more difficult version.

I said not the technical version.

I will show one, another, and they will choose.

Okay?

So it’s gonna look like this.

So I draw the shoulders down, spread the fingers.

The feet are like this.

Don’t do it yet, just watch me.

I’m just gonna first demonstrate and then we’ll do together.

So we’ll hinge bend Shift the weight onto one leg, arms diagonally forward, and then we find the straight line and we lower the foot.

This becomes our foundation the knee is above the heel straight line so see the leg upper body completely straight we wiggle the spine we pull the legs away and then we slowly begin to lift the ribcage only to the point where we don’t feel anything here.

The moment you feel something here, lean a bit forward.

So we do something like this.

Shoulders down, spread the fingers, continue pulling the legs away, then forward.

Transfer, return, and up.

So if this is challenging for your legs, it’s just gonna look like this.

Shoulders down, spread the fingers. transfer arms you just bring the leg here okay knees above the heel wiggle the spine shoulders down pull the legs away Lift, forward, exit, done.

The most important thing is the front knee.

So what I don’t want to see is that we come here so we wiggle we found a straight line and what tends to happen is that as you come up your front knee straightens Okay, this is what we want to avoid.

Pull the legs away.

Really think about the knee.

The knee doesn’t move Wiggle as you wiggle you go up up up up up up up up this doesn’t move okay so then forward and exhale Okay, so when you select the distance, just as you move here, you just think, how does this leg feel?

Yeah.

You lower QA stance.

Q and A.

QA.

What?

Think about QA.

Yeah, okay.

So let’s do this.

Okay, I’ll guide you.

Feet hip width apart Shoulders down, spread the fingers.

Arms diagonally forward without moving your rib cage.

Spread the fingers, shoulders down.

Bend the knees, hinging the hips just a little bit.

Transfer the weight onto the right foot Right foot, yes.

The left foot goes back really slowly, only to the point where you feel comfortable.

And make sure that the back heel is high up.

Up, high up.

Yeah.

The front knee is above the heel.

Pull the legs away.

That’s it.

Pull the legs away for stability and wiggle the spine.

Find a completely straight line between the back leg and your torso.

So you’re leaning forward.

Find a straight line.

Wiggle the spine.

Pull the legs away.

Then from here think about your front knee And as you wiggle the ribcage, begin to lift the torso without moving the front knee.

Without moving the front knee, lift the torso, keep wiggling the ribcage, pulling the legs away.

Keep that bit higher.

Yeah, keep the back heel high up.

Okay.

Lean forward, find the straight line one more time, and then shift the weight onto the front foot.

Bring the legs back to hip widths apart.

Arms down.

Quick quick note and we do another one.

Um the the legs are not the same line.

They’re the hips width.

Okay, uh the same width as the hips.

Okay, let’s try again.

It’s much easier to balance when the legs are slightly off.

So we will do the other side.

Shoulders down, spread the fingers.

Arms diagonally forward, don’t move the ribcage Okay, then hinge bend the knees, weight on the heels, shift the weight to the left foot.

Opposite side.

Right foot goes back to the place where you feel comfortable. and heel high up.

So never drop the heel, keep the heel high up.

Lean forward, find a straight line between the back leg and the torso Wiggle the spine.

That’s it.

Pull the legs away.

The legs will be stronger if you pull the legs away.

That’s okay.

That’s okay.

Go ahead.

The pelvis is looking forward.

Okay, and as you pull the legs away, start wiggle the spine and lift the ribs.

Shoulders down, spread the fingers, pull the legs away, watch the front knee, don’t move.

The back heel As high up.

Very good.

And then lean forward one more time, find the straight line.

And then shift the weight to the front foot.

Return the right foot back to hip width apart and arms down.

That was pretty good.

That was pretty good.

Everybody was doing really good.

Now let’s let’s let’s add the twist.

I know not everybody finished the uh the um assignment, but it’s okay we’ll just add the twist immediately.

Okay.

Yeah, right.

Remember, we already set this up, right?

Yeah.

So So the twist basically instead of being here, our arms are going to be here and from the center of the chest chest we will be slightly twisting that’s a load to the side again without breaking the line of the arm so this line Stays as is.

Yeah, and again, the hips don’t move, the legs don’t move.

So I don’t want to see something like this happen.

But again, we we changed the position of gravity here before we were like this The star form, right?

Now we change the position of grab or star form, but we’re leaning forward, and then we um lever, right?

So we’re moving from the center of the chest.

Also, what tends to happen happen is that arms begin to move, right?

And if I were to return to standing position, this is not where we started.

It should be here.

Yeah.

So let’s try.

I’m gonna guide you.

Same size, right?

Same, yeah, well same size So feet hip width apart, shoulders down, spread the fingers, arms diagonally forward, microbend the knees and hips, shift the weight to the right foot The left leg goes back to the point where you feel comfortable.

Left heel high up.

So lean forward, find the straight line, and then bring the arms to the shoulder height.

Spread the fingers, create this T arm shape, find the straight line and then from the center of the chest are still twist to close together to the right.

Just a little bit to the right.

It’s very awkward.

Twisting to the right without changing the position.

Yes are to close together more.

Keep pulling the legs away.

Exactly.

Back heel high up.

That’s really, really good.

Performance.

Return to center. untwist arms forward shift the weight to the front foot movement is turned feet to heap width apart arms down Great.

And opposite side.

The opposite side.

We’ll try it.

Okay.

Shoulders down, spread the fingers and arms diagonally. forward hinge and bend the knees shift the weight onto the heels and then to the left foot right foot goes back right heel high up onto the tip Pull the legs away, create the foundation.

Lean forward.

Yvonne, right heel high up.

High up.

You see.

Yes.

Turn in.

So lean forward, wiggle the spine from side to side.

Bring the arms to the shoulder height.

Create the teeth arms spread the fingers shoulders down really rigid arms and then from the center of the chest twist to the left continue to pulling pull the legs away right heel high up Very high up, tiptoe.

Keep the arm line.

Okay, return the center to center.

Arms forward.

Shift the weight onto the left foot.

And feet here.

Arms down.

Yeah.

Come on up.

Yeah.

Come on up, I’ll show you.

So um tendency is Um this yeah here we don’t do that.

Um so we’re we’re uh we’re not doing this.

We’re just see the leg?

The leg and the upper torso are the same line.

And then it’s just a lever.

You got it.

Yeah, so just to show you.

Everybody’s getting it.

So it’s really good.

Just to show you the difference.

Look, here we isolate this movement.

See, this is just the only movement that we are doing here.

Yeah, but actually, one thing about that, they’re isolating the movement is not just a lifting movement like this.

But it’s the but it’s the separating of the pelvis from the sternum.

Okay, does that make sense?

So I’m not going into a back arch here.

I’m not doing that.

I’m actually taking apart The diaphragm.

I’m sorry, lifting.

And then this part becomes hollow and the chest is leading and lifting.

So you feel more in the back of the shoulder blades than you do anywhere else.

Let’s try both of them again one more time.

Why not?

We do have we just fuck what time do we got that?

Shit.

Nine forty I think.

No nine forty is it?

Nine forty.

Nineteen forty.

Nineteen forty Right in front of 1944.

Yeah.

Right now.

My God, what time does the space kick us out?

Eight.

Eight?

Yeah.

Okay, we can do one more round.

Okay, what do you want?

Do you want QA or do you want one more round?

QA is better.

Yeah, let’s So let’s QA.

QA or another round?

Another round QA.

Another round?

QA.

Let’s vote.

Democratic.

We’re in Canada.

Let’s speak Democratic.

QA.

QA.

One, two.

Two, three, another round.

Okay, the other round is a is it a tie?

Alright.

Okay, so let’s not let’s do this.

Let’s do a hybrid.

We will do one more of the of the high of of the um the lunch.

Only the lunch, not the lunch.

On the lunch.

Okay, we’ll do one more and then a quick QA.

Okay.

Quickly.

Okay, so shoulders down, spread the fingers.

Express higher lunge.

Arms diagonally forward, shoulders down, bend the knees, hinge on the hips, weight onto the right foot, left foot back high on the tip toe.

Front knee above the heel.

Wiggle the spine, find the straight line between the back leg and the torso.

So shoulders down, pull the legs away.

As you wiggle, lift the rib cage.

Lift, lift, lift without moving your front knee. or hips.

Move the chest forward more.

Very good.

Shoulders down.

And then lean forward.

Nope.

That’s and shift the weight onto the front foot.

Left foot.

And the second side you try to put the part, arms down.

Okay, what’s confusing?

What’s going on?

I don’t know.

And the last one.

So spread the fingers, shoulders down.

And doing the other hands diagonally forward.

Bend the knees, hinge in the hips.

Hips and you can see the phone.

Shift to the left.

The right foot goes back high on the tiptoe.

Watch your front knee.

Pull the legs away, shoulders down, wiggle the spine.

Find the straight line, keep the back peel really high up.

And as a few things.

That’s fine.

Just right there is good.

Just activate the legs away from each other.

Activate the legs.

Don’t think about anything.

Pull the legs away, keep the legs active, shoulder sound spread the fingers.

Okay, and then lean forward, find the straight line.

Weight onto the front foot.

Right foot returns to heap with support, arms down.

The movement originates here in the chest.

And that’s it.

So um you know what you know what we’re going to do?

We’ll start the QA.

I’m gonna start taking apart this I you can ask me questions and then if we’re running out of time, we just move into this little hall outside here and we can continue.

You can ask questions.

Is that okay?

Does that sound good?

Unfortunately we don’t have any tea or anything to give you.

Yes, because Madame. les jambes croisées.

Des fois j’ai mal à la longue.

Je n’ai plus de pente tout le mal.

Je ne comprends pas pourquoi.

Des fois ça fait mal, des fois ça fait pas mal.

Yeah.

She tends to have pain in her hips.

But when you move her a little bit, then she doesn’t feel it anymore, but she doesn’t understand how to reach that state of non-pain alone.

This one.

Yeah.

When when you’re on the right, this one as well.

I I don’t know.

We cross the feet.

Easy cross.

Easy cross.

Well look and I realized when I press my feet uh the one on the top it’s very low on the floor then it hurt but if I keep it uh I can press on it but I if it’s fine it’s it’s so the task yes thank you Sandra yeah so I’ll kinda address that as well.

The task is to press.

When I press it activates the muscles in the hip and creates space.

Okay?

So if the feet are too close, very difficult to press.

Just like this.

So you press.

Yeah, press, press.

Press and hold.

As you press, you hold.

And it’s active.

Right.

Right.

And keep, keep, keep, keep, keep pressing.

Keep doing it.

That’s better.

The movement you got it now.

Yeah, that’s better.

Yeah.

Did you want to try Sandra?

This is good.

Sandra’s essay avec le shades?

Okay.

I’m gonna show Sandra and April are you anybody else still?

Yes.

Okay, so when you sit.

Sit here on the edge of the chair.

Okay, now cross the legs like this.

And then with the feet.

Away from each other.

Yes.

Just push a little bit.

Okay, now lean back.

I see I see what you mean.

Flex the upper spine.

Don’t touch the back.

Exactly.

This is the foot and they are trying to go away from us up.

That’s the feet?

Yeah.

Flex the upper spine as you come forward.

So you’re making this type of motion.

Yeah, that’s it.

Exactly.

That’s it.

That’s it.

Remember.

Mm-hmm.

For when we’re on the floor, same thing.

Vertical.

Next time.

Bring the feet further away from the body.

Not so close.

When you’re standing, this is the tough It’s easier to show when the knees are bent and they compete the tone a bit.

Back and down?

In which form?

Do you remember what was the movement?

We were standing Because like the top part is going down, but the down part is going up to when it’s down, but it’s not alone.

I I don’t know what But generally speaking, the pelvis for many people it tends to be a little bit like this.

So we want it to be vertical.

It’s really Counterintuitive.

Like it’s normal for the spine to be in its natural S curve.

This is this curve we’re walking.

This is normal, right?

So we walk like this.

We’re asking you to do this.

It’s what everybody they tell you know physiotherapists say never do that.

But we’re actually asking you to do this to to just rewire the brain’s position of the pelvis somehow.

Like this, so see the butt sticks like this, and we’re actually asking you to do this.

And a lot of these movements also are aiding in that.

Yeah.

So like this.

Am I this am I forward?

It’s better down more.

That’s it?

Yes.

That’s it.

Yes.

So my so it’s forward.

Yes.

Well if if if this is what you call forward, it’s it’s not very clear.

I mean, the or is a bill Oh like my tailbone lower.

Tailbone lowers.

Yeah, as flat.

Exactly.

And that’s what we want your best.

Well we want the ribcage and the pelvis to be on top of each other.

Yes.

Stacked.

That’s a stack.

That’s a stack.

This is stack.

Yes.

Yeah.

Also, this is stacked.

Look, this is stacked.

That’s stacked.

Because I’m using my arms to offset the weight.

If I don’t use my arms, I bend the knees and I go like this in a squat.

Is that making sense?

If I lean the weight to my heels, I bring the tailbone slightly down and I’m stacked.

Yes, so you can stack like when I stand, this is the stacked.

If I’m in a squat, then this is stacked.

This is not stacked.

This is not stack.

We we had we had one more form to do today that we’re not gonna do next week, which will help inform the stack.

This one, right?

This helps inform the stack a little bit more.

So that we’ll do next week because we want to spend a bit more time with that one.

Not next week, Saturday.

We’re gonna spend a bit more time with that.

No.

No.

So I I need a neutral problem.

For you neutral.

This is why we don’t say tuck because for some people like you, for example, you will be overdoing.

So you know like is it like the perfect flow is Kind of.

Teacher says it’s like a cup of water, you don’t spill.

Yeah.

That’s a very good analogy.

Where is the cup of water?

In the filter.

Well here also, I would say if if you think of the um if you think of the sacrum like a bowl The jam the genitals sit inside the bowl, right?

So just above where the genitals are, right?

There’s this bone and then there’s a big space That’s where the cup of water is.

So that that’s a great analogy, the cup of water.

But just think when we say when we say tuck, when you say tuck the pelvis, which is used a lot in some exercise instruction.

This exagger over exaggerates the movement.

When you think about this, look, let’s stack one more time.

Let’s go to the weight to the heels, bring the arms up.

Let’s just stack without tucking the pelvis.

Arms come forward, weight to the heels.

You’re stacked.

A little bit too far back.

You are not stuck because you’re kind of like this.

Let’s go a little bit deeper.

Weight on the heels and arms forward.

Arms come forward Lean forward more as you sit over the top of the heels.

But look at your feet.

Are the knees over the top of the toes?

If you are, you’re not stacked If the knees are over the top of the heels, the lower back becomes straighter and you’re more stacked.

Of course, we’re not stacked straight, but it’s a similar stack, if that makes any sense.

No.

First around like this.

Oh look at me, like this, like this, completely like this, yes.

And then for the position where the ribbon is No.

No clenching.

No, not like this.

No.

The exaggeration of the movement maybe makes it seem like that.

There’s no clenching.

We have different forms.

Like for example when you do the peak, as the sensation goes for the muscle, you just better essentially just need to feel your muscles.

Here.

Oh yes.

And I’m just imagining that Like bring them.

The clenching of the muscles that was being explained here is the buttocks, right?

Yeah.

So these do automatically become active. when we stack in this way because we’re firing the big muscles on our butt.

But it’s not a conscious gripping of the muscles if that’s just it’s just the gravity is making the m those muscles become hard. effective way.

Um so we have five minutes to get out of this room.

If you would like to carry on the conversation outside.

I we can carry it on outside.

How about that?

Yeah.

Because normally you don’t need to use your pelvis, right?

Who uses the pelvis?

Yeah.

Take some time.

Thank you very much.