Session 4 Transcript

Okay, let’s start.

Yeah.

Something stuck

Uh we will, yeah.

We’re gonna do we’re gonna first go over all the forms and then we’ll stop and we’ll have a little bit of a discussion.

All right, so everybody can stand up please.

So you can you can stand wherever you want to uh around us and Asha you could also stand like do ver you could walk around do variations however you want to.

So

Please don’t hesitate whenever you want you to change your position in the room.

You can stand wherever you’d like.

We actually encourage it.

So periodically just

Uh for the purpose of working with a different perspective, even if my back is facing you, you could stand over here and follow along that way.

Or it’s not uh it’s not fixed

It’s kind of fluid in the way that you would perceive your approach to the practice.

So that I can’t overemphasize.

So we’re just going to go over the same forms that we’ve been doing in the past weeks because some people are still late to come.

So we can start, and then we’re going to go into a little bit of a discussion about intensity modifications, and we’ll take a look at those forms too.

Okay, so standing with the feet about hips width apart, outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other as usual.

We just make sure that that line is parallel to the outside edges of the feet.

The outside edges of the feet are also

Or sorry, draw the heels in toward each other first, just to sort of actively and remember to altogether depending on how you feel, moderate the intensity according to what feels most appropriate for you today.

It never has to be too hard.

All of our, I can’t over-emphasize it, but all of our demonstrations are over-emphasized for the purpose of

uh a visual cure or reminder for what you need to do.

So you look at me, dial that back by whatever you need to do.

So activate the heels in toward each other, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down towards

the floor and with got kind of an opposition as you feel the shoulders draw down you also feel under the armpits become a little bit tight

The heels grip in, the shoulders draw down, extend the shoulders downward.

The back of the neck extends away from that movement of the shoulders drawing down.

So you feel like

gentle extension here up through the back of the head.

It’s kind of like cord of it in in itself is a kind of a calibration to start.

It’s like

So we’re just doing one of these first before we get into our ignition.

And the ignition is something that comes after you finish this course.

You’ll carry on with that into the um

into the preceding segments after segment five.

But we still do one in the beginning.

So let this go soft for a second.

Relax.

So we just started a little bit of a different way around.

Let’s bring the feet now away from each other a little a little bit wider than hips width apart.

The toes maybe point slightly outward here.

I’m not maybe they do.

They point slightly outward.

And then we’re kind of sitting back onto that stool.

You remember that?

So the feet again, the position of the feet, something that’s comfortable for you for the hip mobility.

uh that you can feel comfortable in and when you sit back you remember that the butt doesn’t come up and and and flare the chest rather you’re keeping the chest neutral

Nor do you have to overtly draw the tailbone down either because that’s uncomfortable as well.

We’re just sitting back.

The spine is more or less in its neutral S shape, but we’re not flaring the chests.

The arms are relaxed.

Morning.

How you doing?

Relax the arms like that.

Weight to the heels and just a little bit of swinging like this.

Sit back to the chair.

The knees are slightly bent, so you feel the quadriceps slightly active.

Marionette arms as they extend out and up.

And again, I was a little bit fast in the entry there, but you don’t have to be so fast.

You can raise them up

And then once they’re at shoulders height, you torsion the wrists in.

And remember anytime drop the arms, straighten the knees.

You don’t have to keep the knees or arms bent if you’re tired

torsion.

This is very important that we torsion this forward.

So rather than the hands pressing away from each other like this, we’re doing this really kind of almost awkward movement with our wrists as we torsion them in like this

So the palms are facing forward.

So it’s hard to face the palms forward, but that actually turns on the forearm.

The shoulders do not draw down here.

They’re just shoulders height.

We’re just kind of leaving the shoulders relaxed here

Again sit back to the edge of that bar stool.

You can imagine that.

Relax through the neck.

And as you torsion the wrists forward to try to

To face the palms forward you can also squeeze a little bit onto that imaginary physio ball thing or whatever you want to imagine there.

It could be like a foam thing or just something squishy and nice.

And squeeze, squish onto that.

Relax the belly here, same time.

You’re making sure that the belly doesn’t pull towards the spine, but you’re trying to sort of activate through the abdominal wall.

The belly is completely soft here.

There’s no activity at all in the belly.

The most activity you’ll feel is in the forearms, really.

Of course, the shoulders will also be tired, so you can let them down occasionally if you need to.

And again, just the duration by which you hold the arms up is only the byproduct of the amount of time that you can commit to doing this on a daily basis.

It’s not the measure of your progress.

That’s very important.

So

Don’t feel bad if you can’t hold the arms up.

It’s just a reality.

The more you practice, the more you’ll be able to hold them up, but that’s not the goal.

So don’t forget, that’s not the goal.

The goal is what do you feel today, what is most appropriate for you today.

That is the 100% bonus point winning goal.

Moderation and this is where we start to learn about moderation and intensity modification right here in the ignition because this gives you a good opportunity to calibrate, hmm, can I hold my arms up for longer than a minute or can I not hold my arms?

up is our tension.

This gives you an opportunity to tune in in a very passive and kind of neutral way.

Maybe it doesn’t feel that way if it becomes tense, but there you go.

There’s your indicator.

You lower the arms down.

You don’t have to worry about keeping them up if it feels too much.

You can straighten the knees if your quadriceps feel active.

If you find yourself occasionally saying to yourself, why doesn’t Pat just shut the fuck up and let us do this?

is because I’d like you to remember all those things as we go through occasion uh eventually I will shut up and we’ll do this quiet.

Right.

So it’s just a question of reminding you you can adjust whereby needed and to remember the things that we’re doing, the torsioning of the wrists.

Check the neck is relaxed

The knees are micro-bent, sitting onto the edge of the stool.

Don’t flare the chest.

Relax the breath.

The breath is totally calm.

The belly just hangs.

Relax the phase two.

Okay, so as we straighten the knees, we’re going to slowly lower the arms down.

So kind of synchronize the movement of the knees going straight, even though it’s a very small amount that the knees go straight, try not to let them go straight completely.

until the arms are all the way down.

And then when the arms are down, the legs are straight.

But we don’t lock the knees.

Let the arms relax.

Let the legs relax.

But when you let the legs relax here too, don’t lock into the knees.

Just the legs become straight.

That’s all.

And then the arms relaxed, and here if you want, you can think, oh wow, today I held my arms for a little bit longer.

That was more challenging.

Or I could hold my arms for longer.

Interesting, I don’t feel tired.

This is where you sort of take a check marks to see how you feel.

And remember that.

And when we get into journaling a little bit later in the course, again, this is after we complete our seven sessions together.

You might want to journal that stuff.

Ashley, can people even journal now?

Yes.

They can.

You can even go straight to the journal section, add a journal entry right now if you’d like to.

You don’t have to wait till that segment

Well maybe we should wait until the end of the session.

Oh oh right, okay.

No, not now.

I didn’t mean to stop what we’re doing and do that, but uh you know what I mean, right?

Or just write down the notepad.

It doesn’t really matter.

How you feel right now is a pretty good indicator of how you should approach what we do today.

It’s not as if

As you go through today, I’m bound to feel better, or it’s not as if I felt like shit.

As we go through this today, I have a resentment thinking I’m gonna feel worse

This is how you feel right now.

So this is the the starting point for which by we we approach the our understanding of the practice.

Okay, so the feet come now, hips with the gain.

So we started first in this just to offer a little bit of a different entry point to the ignition.

So let’s try again now.

Outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other, the feet are hips width apart, the heels grip in toward each other, spread their fingers down, draw the shoulders down, extend to move away from that movement of the shoulders with the neck extending.

You can draw this chin slightly down towards the

The chest as you spread through the fingers and extend through the arms up.

Remember, at any point in time, if you feel compelled to move

Move.

Go somewhere, go behind me, beside me.

It doesn’t really matter where you stand.

I’m I we we’d love for people just to take advantage of the of the beautiful big spaces that we have here to change your perspective.

Heels grip, right?

As the heels grip, the legs activate.

As the shoulders draw down, the neck opposes that movement.

As the fingertips spread, the neck opposes that movement.

As the fingertips spread and the shoulders draw down, there’s a light bounce off into the feet, which reverberates back up into this depression.

So you think about the forces at play here, and it’s kind of just playing with those forces a little bit.

It’s very subtle, nothing too major.

Okay, relax the legs.

We’re going to lean as we pivot, right?

So the arms will come forward to offset your weight over center of gravity.

It’s like the butt goes back, and because the butt goes back, the weight of the arms keeps you from falling backward.

And then we hinge only to the point where you feel it’s appropriate.

I’ll do a baby squat today just to demonstrate.

At any point even in the baby squat you could have the hands down like this and just work into the baby squat first.

and then raise them back up again.

The hands can come either forward like this or in my baby squat I’m going to go something like this.

So I’m still weight comes over towards the heels.

The shoulders drop back down towards my hips.

I spread through the fingers.

I extend through the back of the neck.

Even now in the baby squat here you could grip the heels and toward each other.

By the way, you can all take the baby squat variation or if you will feel compelled to

you can try a deeper version of the squat.

But it’s not about the deeper version of the squat.

The deeper version of the squat, again, is the byproduct of the continuity or commitment to the amount that you can do the practice over time.

It is not the measure of your success.

So my baby squat today feels good.

Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down.

You can actively grip the heels in toward each other here.

The weight moves over towards the top of the heels

Spread through the fingers, back of the neck extends, shoulders draw down, you feel under the scapula and around the armpits activate.

And then as you straighten the legs, we slowly lower the arms down.

So stand there for a second and uh check the breath for one, right?

Because there’s a lot of talking.

I’m saying different things today, trying to give some different cues.

Maybe you’re paying attention to that.

Maybe that requires some of your energy.

Has your breath become any labored at all whatsoever?

Try to relax the breathing.

Time for eleven fifty Asha, we have to be out of the room.

Yeah.

So we have to wrap up by 1140, right?

Okay.

Okay.

Feet a little bit wider than hips width apart now.

Remember, uh if you feel compelled to with the hip mobility, the outside edges of the

feet can be parallel to each other.

Otherwise just forget it.

Point the toes slightly away from each other.

It’s easier to do it that way.

We’re going to reach the arms forward again like this.

And as we reach the arms forward, we shift the weight back in towards the heels first.

And then we’re coming down to the point where we think it’s manageable.

I’ll do a variation today where I don’t go deeper.

I’m just hooking my arm.

elbows and arms into the inside of my legs and you can see I’m straightening my legs a bit more and you see my my upper torso is more upright so it’s easier for me.

to stay upright like this.

The back of my forearms are pressing into my legs and the legs are pulling into my forearms.

So here’s my wide squat.

I’m see my I’m keeping the spine straight here.

The shoulders are drawing down

The legs and arms oppose each other.

The legs are pulling in.

The arms push into the legs as they oppose each other.

You draw the shoulders down, the back of the neck extends.

The toes are relaxed here for the time being

Of course, you go deeper into squat or just stay higher like me, it’s absolutely fine.

Shoulders draw down, legs oppose the movement of the arms pressing away.

So I’m trying to press the legs away, the arms pull in towards the or the legs pull in towards the arms.

At the same time you you do that, feel how the quality of the shoulder depression becomes more stable.

So the hands and the legs press oppose each other

Shoulders draw down.

See what that does to the upper torso.

Keep the belly relaxed though.

Don’t pull the navel to the spine.

Sort of throw that core strength stuff out the window for now.

Shoulders draw down, legs oppose, back of the neck extance.

And then come on up.

So we’re gonna unpack it as the same way that we go in always.

We come up to standing, check the breath.

Uh the the the uh the body temperature?

Uh do you feel hotter?

Do you feel um

Tired?

Do you feel invigorated?

Just quick check-in between each form that we do.

Okay, feet come hips width apart again.

Yeah, we’ll change it.

Let’s get these hard ones out of the way first.

Feet hips width apart.

So uh Asha, maybe you would demonstrate something a little bit deeper.

I’ll demonstrate something a little bit less deep.

Okay

The lunch.

Okay.

So we’re hinging.

Yeah, I’m just doing the lunges.

Okay.

We’re hinging and we’re gonna keep the line of the feet like this.

And we’re going to be sliding that right foot back.

How about I do the easiest possible version so that it’s easy to see?

Because I’m tired.

Okay, then you

So you do the difficult version because I’m tired, okay?

How’s about that?

Huh?

Is that definitive definitive enough, darling?

So activate the legs away from each other as the heel is high up off the ground here.

The most important part, even if you’re not so wide here, is to

Keep the heel high.

See what I’m doing here is I I can even straighten that front leg a little bit more.

It’s a little bit micro bend, and the back heel is coming up high.

So it’s actually quite easy for me.

When I’m here

The position of the upper torso follows that back leg like this.

So that left knee is bent.

Now we’re going to be raising the arms forward.

Bringing the arms forward, spread through the fingers, and the arms themselves are going to try to come to the same line as the upper torso, but they don’t need to, they can stay slightly down.

As we activate the legs away from each other, shoulders draw down, move through the neck.

You can also move through the rib cage slightly here as we activate the legs away from each other.

Heel comes a little bit higher.

Lower the arms down.

Shift the weight to the left leg, and we’re going to slowly slide that forward so that it’s

Just as we set it up initially, see that it comes back to the feet hips width apart.

Relax the arms down.

So hinge into the hips

Shift the weight over to the right leg.

Remember we some may go deeper, some may not.

This one goes the same line as the width of the hips back.

It doesn’t

It doesn’t come in line with the back leg.

Now if you come up a less deep version would be this, right?

The right knee straightens a bit more.

top tiptoe of that back foot comes a bit higher.

So see I’m adjusting with the position of my right knee here extending.

My upper torso is still more or less in line with that back leg.

Reach the arms forward as the legs grip away from each other.

Keep the heel nice and high.

Spread through the fingers.

Draw the shoulders down towards the hips.

And then move through the neck.

At the same time, here you can move slightly through the rib cage.

It makes sense of the midline here too.

You think that the nose is in line with the sternum, is in line with the pubis, is in line with the line between the center of the feet.

in the floor.

Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, extend through the back of the neck.

And then as you lower the arms down, shift the weight to the right leg

And this one in a controlled manner comes forward.

So you have to understand too that my legs are quite long, so

The shorter the legs, the more you adjust.

Or the longer the legs, the more you adjust.

Relax.

Again, check.

See if there was a big like um like

Whoo after that, that maybe means there was too much exertion.

Does that make sense?

Like if there was like a big sort of oh thank God it was over, you know, that type of thing is like ah

It’s it’s hard it’s easier said than done.

The moderation is something which, you know, this is what drives people fucking crazy, right?

Because we say moderate.

And uh it’s hard to it c uh it’s hard to come from the moderation mindset when you’re thinking about the perceived goal of what it should look like, right?

The goal is just the byproduct of what your mobility can bring in.

That makes sense.

sense so remember moderate as we go into the torsion right because the torsion is a little bit more challenging we stay for a little bit longer

My torsion, for example, would be something kind of like this.

Okay, does that make sense?

So we’re trying to just find a way that you could stay and continue to talk, talk, talk, talk to the person next to you.

here.

Alright, so the feet again, the hips width apart, and I’m going to do the very mild version of the torsion.

So first we’re going to hinge into the hips.

We’re going to shift the weight over towards this left leg first.

You can see when you shift the weight to the left leg, that left quadricept turns on.

And then you step this one back.

Come to the tiptoe, set it up.

So you’re onto the tiptoe first.

This left knee stays over the top of the left ankle.

It does not go over the top of the knees

Activate the legs actively away from each other.

Stay high to the tiptoe.

Reach the arms out to the side.

Yeah.

And then draw the shoulders down as you spread through the fingers.

activate the legs away from each other and think midline center of the chest just torsions toward the front leg

But we’re not moving the body that direction.

We’re just torsioning toward the front leg, keeping the line of the shoulders and arms the same.

Actively pull the legs away from each other, draw the shoulders down, spread through the fingers, move through the neck.

Now torsion back to center now.

Lower the arms down.

Shift the weight into that left leg.

Very strong.

And we’re going to step that right foot forward like that.

Alright, take a second there.

No matter what, you’re gonna be a little bit sort of flustered.

The temperature is gonna change.

That’ll get better over time.

So we’re just working towards what the moderation looks like or how it’s framed after some period of time.

Always check before we get into anything that the outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other.

It’s very easy to start doing this in between.

Because this is the way people we normally stand, right?

Or we stand something like that.

We seldom see people standing like this, right?

Or walking like this.

So we just think anti-functional, this is not normal to be standing like this.

Set that up again from the beginning.

Pivot.

Yep.

Weight goes to the left.

Right.

Right.

Right leg.

Activate.

See that just automatically activates

And then that supports the movement of this leg as we take it back.

So this right leg does a bit of the work for you initially.

And then I’m not going to go so deep.

You can see here my right knee is not so bent.

I’m staying high to the tiptoe of that back foot.

This right knee is over the top of the right heel.

My upper torso is in line with the back leg.

I reach the arms up to the side, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, the back of the neck extends.

Don’t flare the chest.

At any point in time, you know, if you feel confident, you don’t have to look at me, you can just look uh diagonally down to the floor.

That’s the most comfortable.

And then from here, we’re pivoting from the center, midline of the chest toward the right.

The arm line doesn’t break when we do that.

And you continually activate the legs away from each other.

They anchor as you torsion, right?

Spread the fingers as you’re anchoring and torsioning, come back to center.

Draw the shoulders down one more time and then lower the arms down.

And then again, this right leg is doing the stability for the movement of the left leg, if that makes sense.

Right?

So the right leg is what supports that coming forward like this.

Check again.

Outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other.

So we can go into next.

Grip the heels in once, draw the shoulders down, spread through the fingers.

Okay, let the legs go soft.

Bring the feet a little bit wider than hips width apart.

Outside edges of the feet are parallel together or towards the you know what I mean?

Activate the legs away now.

Again, this angle of the hips depends on how your hips feel

So for me, I have osteoarthritis.

I can push it more, but not at the expense of this.

Okay?

So for me, because there’s a bunch of uh does anybody know what osteophytes are?

Osteophytes?

Osteophytes are calcifications that grow around the hip when somebody has arthritis.

They’re like a new

bone that grows around and it prevents the mobility of the hip.

So I have osteophytes uh um I have osteophytes anterior

lateral, front, if you take a look on an MRI, it’s like a horror show.

So that really did that that prevents my mobility to a certain extent.

Believe it or not, not as much as doctors think it should.

Right.

It’s just because I I I attribute that to what I’m doing with base source.

But even this, I’m neutral, this feels uncomfortable for me.

So it should feel

manageable right so again it you may not have arthritis but you may have tight hips sort of play around with it a little bit too the most important thing is we can find an angle

Where we can feel comfortable pulling the legs away.

Now I just did this with a kind of a forceful motion, but I’m not trying to be forceful.

I’m just trying to encourage you to remember to activate the legs away

So as you activate the legs away, make sure the rib cage doesn’t flare, the butt doesn’t stick, it just comes to neutral.

Nor does the pelvis turn down.

It’s just neutral.

Reach the arms up.

You know, yes, but for now just think of the feet apart.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Eventually you can do that as well.

Yeah.

It’s a little bit more, takes more of this, right?

So for the time being, um yes.

Yeah the answer short answer yes.

Activate the legs away, reach the arms up.

Shoulders height, turn the palms forward, spread, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down.

So you see we approached the forearms in a slightly different way today, so you can also see how you feel at the end of the practice in relation to the order that we’re doing.

As you spread through the fingers and you draw the shoulders down, activate the legs away from each other, move the, extend the back of the neck away from the depression of the shoulders as you spread.

and the legs actively pull away.

And at one point here you can start to actually move the rib cage a little bit too.

So you’re floating the rib cage.

This isolating movement is not the hips

It’s the rib cage being uh mobilized over the top of the pelvis.

So this is what a part of our fixed lift

fixing separating isolating principle the rib cage is mobilized it’s not the hips you can see the hips don’t move i’m mobilizing the rib cage at the same time this is one of our micro movement and fixing

separating isolating spread through the fingers draw the shoulders down the mobilization of the shoulders too when you do this spread through the fingers extend you can mobilize the wrists here a little bit

continually activate the legs away from each other.

Let the arms go down once.

As you let the arms go down, relax the arms and relax the legs.

So let’s try with the hands onto the hips first.

Let’s break it apart.

Turn the left foot out, keep the right foot where it is.

Now drop the right heel back.

Okay, now keep the hands onto the hips.

Check in here to see if you’ve done this.

Okay?

I see a few people have done it.

A few people in this motion have gone completely forward.

What’s happening here is the femur rolls in and the you turn forward.

We don’t want that to happen.

We want this to happen.

Watch.

Everybody can just stop and watch me for a second.

We’ll try it together, okay?

So from where in position of room you can think.

So this left foot turns out, see, my upper torso turns.

And then that right heel goes back.

And my upper torso turns.

It’s not this.

Okay?

Does that make sense?

You can move a little bit further, right?

By drawing this left hip back, but let’s not do that for this point in time.

Let’s just practice this movement.

Yeah.

That’s it.

Stay right in front of me.

Yeah.

Let’s just practice this movement again.

Let’s do the left foot out first.

Yeah.

And or if it by the way, if it helps, if it’s more comfortable for you to face

To have this foot facing me, uh because you’ll be looking at me the whole time, that’s absolutely fine.

Like if you want to face me like this and then or like I’m

uh I I’m looking and Lucida is me, right?

So then I luc I’m h Lucida’s me.

I’m I can’t see her.

Then I can see her.

At any point in time move if you’d like to.

I think for this movement it makes more sense to stand behind Patrick because

then his body looks like your body because if it’s mirrored it’s more difficult.

Good idea.

If you want to I’ll go there you can stand behind me.

How about that?

I’m gonna be watching it.

Alright yeah.

So everybody can just follow along

And I’ll get back in the middle after.

You can stand right behind me and take a look.

So this foot goes out.

Look at this.

See my upper toes have just moved.

Look, I’m not doing this.

Okay, nor am I doing this.

I’m just doing this.

Look, the foot moves, my upper torso moves with it.

That’s all.

Now look at this.

The back

If I go to the tiptoe a little bit here and the back heel drops back, my upper torso comes a little bit further forward, but I don’t do this.

That makes sense?

Right?

Hands come here.

Now look

Here the hips are facing that way.

They’re not facing that way.

The hips are facing outward like this.

Bring the arms up to the line of the hips.

So you’re actually you’re not looking to the front.

You’re looking that way out to the front of the chest between both legs

That makes sense.

Now activate the legs away from each other.

As you activate the legs away from each other, draw the shoulders down towards the hips.

Now what we do.

.

is just drop that left hip back as we tilt a little bit forward.

Like watch how how small it is.

See this hip is what moves.

I just go back a little bit like this.

Place the hands down onto the waist for a second.

Let’s just do this so that it’s easier in the arms.

The left hip draws back.

This is what I’m doing.

That’s it.

When the arms are up, the arms really move a lot with this movement.

When they’re down, they don’t

You don’t feel it move so much, right?

So you think it’s just this hip goes back as you activate the legs away from each other.

So let’s go up again.

Let’s start from standing, bring the arms up

Draw the shoulders down, spread the fingers.

Now draw the left hip back a little bit and you can see the arms and the upper torso follow that movement.

The face again can just be looking to the same direction with the chest forward.

As we activate the legs away from each other now, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down.

See if you can take that left hip down a little bit more.

Watch so there’s not too much of a stretch on the back of that left hamstring

Continue to activate the legs away from each other.

If there’s a hyperlock in the knee, bend the knee.

Micro bend the knee.

Move the neck.

Move the rib cage.

Mobilize the shoulders.

Come back to static.

Stretch the fingers, shoulders draw down, back of the neck extends, activate the legs away from each other.

Calibrate.

Move rib cage shoulders.

Neck.

Static shoulder drawdown spread.

Activate the legs away from each other, move the neck, extend through the back of the neck.

As we turn the left foot in

The right heel comes in.

We come back up to SAR form.

Lower the arms.

Once just a light grip with the legs away from each other, like this again

And then relax the legs for a second.

You can relax the arms too.

Is everybody kind of understanding it a little bit better now?

Yeah?

Is that making more sense?

Okay, so let’s try the other side again.

We’re gonna break it up.

So the hands go to the waist here.

And then let’s just do one foot at a time.

We’re gonna turn that right foot out, and as we turn the right foot out, the upper torso just moves just a little bit with the right foot.

Now as we drop that left heel back.

It moves a little bit further more.

Now reach the arms up to the side, the same line, so that you’re looking that way, right?

You’re not looking toward the front leg, you’re looking diagonally between the arms.

Spread through the fingers, activate the shoulders down towards the hips, activate the legs away from each other, draw the right hip.

Down a little bit more as you lower the upper torso, a little bit, but you’re not lowering the upper torso.

The upper torso lowers just as a byproduct of the movement of the hip.

Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, move through the back of the neck, extend through the back of the neck as you depress the shoulders downward as you activate the legs away from each other.

Now mobilize, rib cage, shoulders

Spread through the fingers, neck, then back to static.

Spread, shoulders draw down.

Activate the legs away from each other.

I can see them.

Shoulders draw down.

Activate the legs away from each other, spread through the fingers, shoulders draw down, extend through the back of the neck, mobilize.

Shoulders.

Shoulders

Spread, shoulders draw down, activate the legs away from each other, extend through the back of the neck.

Try to feel turn that right foot in.

See the left foot stays where it is.

The left heel comes back to center, back to star form.

Shoulders draw down, activate the legs away from each other, lower the arms down.

And relax.

Uh are we going down to the floor now?

Record.

Wait, okay, let’s do that.

I got peach.

All right, let’s sit down on the floor.

We carry on with what we were doing last week.

No.

Suspended star inflection we missed.

What?

Suspended star inflection.

Suspended star inflection.

We should do this the square.

No, but uh standing we we we we miss it it doesn’t matter.

Okay.

So you know what we’re gonna do today?

Before we get really into these these transitions, you know, fuck it, let’s just start with the transition.

Let’s go.

Okay, so come here, hook, hook on.

Asha, can you go see if the record like look at the camera and just make sure that the the the red record button is playing?

I don’t want to miss any of that.

Thank you.

So when we’re here, and see the hands are connected and when we’re hooked onto the knees.

Once we’re hooked, uh

Let the arms support the weight.

If you feel a little bit of discomfort into your lower back, let the legs move further away from you.

Okay, if you feel discomfort into the lower back or if you feel it’s difficult to hang.

So legs can go further away or if you’re comfortable to keep the legs closer toward you like that, that’s fine.

If you feel tense into the lower back, that’s probably an indicator that is it all good?

Yes.

Yeah.

That’s um what was I saying?

If you feel a little bit of discomfort into the lower back, that’s probably an indicator that uh

Something is tight like what I mean if if you’re hooked and there’s a little bit discomfort, doesn’t need to be pain, it just could it could feel like this is uncomfortable.

Let the legs go forward more so you can lean forward more and you’re still hanging and hooking.

That’ll offer a little bit of an adjustment.

So we’re going to play just a little bit with the balance to start off here.

Take the arms off, hang back.

Keep the arms forward though.

Uh so you’re hanging back to your oh by the way, yeah, exactly.

So at this point, if anybody needs their towel or the pad under the butt, you can go ahead and get that ready because we’re going to be spending the next few minutes on our butt.

So we’re gonna hang back to this position here.

The weight of the upper body is bringing you backward, but the weight of the arms, they’re very heavy.

can support a balance.

Tilt back a little bit more.

Again, watch the bony protuberance of the sacrum there, see if it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.

And just suspend here for a second.

Yeah, and then try to find your way back up to this place, hook around, and hang.

So hang in between.

Just want to get used to that a little bit here too.

So Jesus, I’m thirsty.

Feel thirsty somehow.

Did anybody feel dry last night?

I felt like so dry.

I don’t know what it is.

We have hot water heating in our apartment.

I think maybe it’s just no control.

We can’t control the hot water.

I feel like a fucking prune this morning.

Uh hang back a little bit more.

Arms oppose this movement.

The belly’s not activating.

It’s I mean you’re not drawing the belly in.

It just becomes active.

Tilt back so you can balance.

So support that weight.

Maybe even that’s just a little bit challenging.

When the legs come up, the hip flexors act activate a little bit too.

So try to balance forward now.

Extend the arms forward, legs forward a little bit, and try to come back.

We’re just playing now a little bit with the transitions before we get into it because the transitions are relevant later when we start to do the leg uh leg raises.

Let’s try again.

So as you release, the legs are long.

And we tilt and the arms oppose and we find that tipping point where we’re balancing

Now we’re going to take the arms around, hug them into the side of the body, allow for the forearms to go down, landing a spaceship.

Balls of the feet press forward.

Outside edges of the feet are parallel.

Open the feet out.

Open the legs out to the side, bend that right knee in like this.

Cross that left ankle in front of the right ankle, lower the feet to the floor once like this.

Now take one arm forward like this.

You can actually move up like this, one arm forward, and then a little bit with help with this one, other arm forward, but you’re still in the suspension.

So you’re still suspending back.

As we start to flex the upper spine and come forward, you can press the feet into the floor, opposing the flexion.

As you can see

When I press into the floor, my back becomes flexed.

That’s what you want to see.

This aids the flexion.

And as your flexion activates and you come forward,

Oppose the movement of your upper flexion with the feet pressing down and forward.

Okay, so this is just simple cross here.

It’s not the uh it’s not the weird square one that we did last week.

We’re gonna do that in a second.

Upper body flex.

Now depending on level of mobility in the hips, as we go to extension, we might move the hands out to the side a little bit more here.

continue to oppose the movement with the uh oppose the the spinal extension with the feet pressing into the floor.

So the feet press into the floor.

it almost feels like you’re gonna fall backward.

But oppose that as the spine becomes straight.

Shoulders draw down again.

Back of the neck extends.

So as we oppose and the spine extends, the shoulders depress, the back of the neck extends, opposing this motion.

Now let’s flex.

As we flex, you can see we can tuck it back a little bit.

This is the game seatuck technology, right?

Do C tuck back.

And again, we’re finding that point here now when we go back where the feet just automatically lifts off the floor.

And then we lower the forearms down.

Extend the legs.

See I’m still floating.

Forearms lower.

Balls of the feet extend.

Lift the chest.

Chin draws in.

Look toward the legs.

Cross the right leg now.

Is that right?

Left leg, right leg.

Now we can help ourselves up a little bit.

Opposite arm helps up first.

See?

We do a little bit of a balance.

Heels come in towards the pubis.

Lower the legs.

Flex.

Again, we’re finding the arm weight over center of gravity support.

Flex the upper spine, oppose the outside edges of the feet to the ground as the upper spine flexes.

Opposition.

Shoulders draw down.

Hands are lightly touching the floor.

They’re not reaching, they’re just out to the side.

Outside edges of the feet are pressing downward, opposing the flexion of the upper spine as you tuck in forward.

The shoulders draw downward.

The back of the neck extending, the chin slightly even dropping, drawing slightly in.

Continue to flex the upper spine.

The lower back should feel very free.

Just the upper spine flexion.

Focus on that.

Now we’re only mobilizing the top part of our spine here.

So as we continue to press into the feet

We’re finding a way to get the spine to extend.

And as we extend through the spine, the shoulders draw down, opposing the movement of the extension as the back of the neck extends up.

So it’s this kind of like it’s an opening, but it’s not this la opening.

It’s more just a it’s an unraveling.

You see everything just goes like this and becomes straight.

Because this is stable anchoring.

This extension becomes quite uniform in its dynamics.

So we’re trying to allow for the shoulder depression

To lock the extension dynamic in up, back of the neck extends.

Check it.

This shouldn’t be tense.

The neck should be fluid.

The shoulders draw down.

The feet oppose the movement as the extension goes up.

Relax through the neck.

You can now do some micro movements on the second side.

Again, mobilize the rib cage over the top of the pelvis.

Mobilize each shoulder over the top of the pelvis.

See how these become mobilized?

Anybody any people are dancers here, right?

Is anybody know a dancer from Europe called Martin Calvadi

Yeah.

So Martin Calvadti does a lot of really great stuff like this.

He’s a very big inspiration to uh a lot of dancers and a lot of people that are practicing different movement disciplines.

Martin Calvadti uses a lot of these mobilizations which are part of our antifunctional movement patterns.

They’re really cool.

But it it doesn’t stem from the work that he does, it stems from a lot of stuff, martial arts, other different types of

applications to physiotherapy and so on.

Now let’s go into the flexion.

Oppose the floor, press the feet

As you flex the spine, right?

So there’s this types of movements here.

The feet press down and forward, flex the upper spine.

And by the way, I’ll put a link to Martin Calbatti’s stuff on the

Group form after.

So you can check them out.

Flex the upper spine.

Opposing this movement first we flex.

The shoulders draw down here.

Now with this flexion, let’s see if we can mobilize in the same way.

See that?

The rib cage mobilizes, the shoulders mobilize.

We’re trying to see that we can become fluid even in the rigidity of the flexion.

And you can see I can still talk.

I’m not like I’m not saying this.

I’m my my my my voice is relaxed.

I’m flexing my spine, it’s like a turtle shell, right?

But I’m mobilizing the rib cage, it feels completely fluid.

The contents of my stomach are floating around in that, and my diaphragm is relaxed.

And the neck is extending.

Now we’re gonna from the flex position, we’re gonna tilt back.

We’re gonna tilting back, tilting back, tilting back.

You’re gonna find that point where you’re teeter-totter tip.

Try the arms down first as you extend the legs.

Let’s coordinate the movement.

The legs extend to offset weight over center of gravity.

Abdominal wall becomes

Naturally active, balls of the feet press forward, lower the arms down, lift the chest.

Bend the knees.

Fe come down.

Come here.

Right leg, hand, left hand, come up.

Find that way that you feel comfortable.

to hang here.

I could just say we could lie down onto the floor, but it’s better to come to this to rest because it keeps you more

dynamically engaged in the stuff that we’re doing here.

So I say just because of our time, we’re gonna s well no, we should fucking do that.

Alright, let’s do it.

So let’s go ahead and do the very strange um

Uh with seated water.

No, maybe not.

We’ll practice that one next week.

Let’s just do some of the forward folds here.

So we’re gonna hang back.

With the arms tilting.

We are gonna go into VSIT a little bit later, right?

I should say something.

For segment four.

Balls of the feet extend, lift the chest, open the legs.

Balls of the feet pressing out, lower the legs.

I lowered them a bit too fast.

So let’s set up the feet here first.

Not like this, out to the side and in like this, but rather peeling the feet away from each other.

Balls of the feet press forward, the toes pull back in towards you, the ankles extend.

We’re going to bring one arm forward, the other arm forward, abdominal wall active.

Don’t let the feet go away from each other.

Slightly torsion the legs in toward each other as you flex the upper spine.

Flexing the upper spine, relax the belly.

Don’t let the feet fall away.

Upper spine flexes the feet.

The hands are just gently down to the ground.

The legs slightly turn in towards each other, the feet turn away, the ankles are extended.

Even the back of the calves can slightly be pressing down toward the ground here.

But don’t hyperflex the knees.

Upper spine stays flexed, the shoulders draw down.

If you’re not so flexible, you’ll stay more upright like this or even back like this.

Check it out.

So if you don’t feel like you have much flexibility, you’ll be back here with this upper spine flexed.

Maybe I’ll stay here.

Now we’re going to go with the legs actively pressing forward and the legs torsioning in toward each other, with the shoulders drawing down, with the back of the neck extending.

So

We’re going to go from our flexion to extension.

And again, with the extension, you can continue to press the back of the legs down as you extend up.

And the hands, see, I’m not using my hands here.

The hands are out, but you can use the hands slightly to the side.

That helps to support yourself a little bit like that.

You can do that in the flexion.

By using the hands too much, you don’t mobilize the spine as much.

So just the hands are a light guide always only.

The back of the neck extends, the shoulders draw down.

Now we’re going to add a little bit of the mobility stuff to it, the micro movements.

Now let’s flex the upper spine again.

As we flex the upper spine, activate the legs.

Flex in a little bit of a flexion in.

Now once we’re flexed in like this, you see draw the shoulders down as the balls of the feet extend and press away from you.

Then we’re going to mobilize the rib cage.

Mobilize the shoulders, mobilize the neck, and then we’re going to extend.

Shoulders draw down, back of the neck extends, and we’re going to mobilize the rib cage.

Mobilize the shoulders.

Mobilize the neck.

Legs are still active though, see?

Active.

The belly’s relaxed.

The only way the active the belly’s active is when you change the position of gravity, then it becomes active.

Otherwise it’s just relaxed completely.

And this is not an activation, it’s just a byproduct of the weight distribution.

All right.

Hook on

Can I make just one comment about this?

Well we’ll just let’s let’s carry on to the um you can comment and take over if you like.

So we’re gonna carry on to the intensity modification right now, please.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, but come please.

Just um this is depending on somebody’s flexibility, this form.

For example, for me

My pelvis is coming forward more than vertical, right?

It’s not an abdominal exercise for me.

But for somebody whose level of mobility is that they’re here, this is an abdominal exercise

So if you can come here, your hands are just here, touching the floor.

You don’t need the hands.

It’s not an abdominal

exercise.

But if like for example you are like this but extension brings you here this is an abdominal exercise.

In this case you bring your hands and you help yourself so that it is not an abdominal exercise.

Whenever we work with this flexion, flexion, extension, flexion, and then back, it is not about

Activating the abdominal wall so if you’re here hands and you’re helping yourself okay

Um shall we talk uh should we do the variations of the um explain the variations of the key points for segment four and then Okay for Z-Lunge maybe and

And uh let’s not start with Z-Lunge.

Let’s Leg rays.

Yeah.

Let’s do the variation.

So I’m gonna let Asha guide you through this one.

Um we start we started from

for clining transition, but just for the sake of trying to work more with the dynamics of the leg raise initially, we’ll start from laying down flat, and Asha will demonstrate

Yeah.

So just watch me first.

We want the lower back to be as grounded as possible.

So

Here should be no space.

You will tuck the pelvis so that there is no space under your lower back.

It’s very important to not hurt your lower back.

The hands will be away from the hips so that we can draw the shoulders down and press into the floor.

And then the legs, if if you feel flexible and you can do this comfortably

Extend, push the balls of the feet, the legs above the hips.

But if it’s tight or you feel like it’s already too much, you will bend the knees as much as you can, but extend and push the balls of the feet.

So I’m just gonna demonstrate this version, what it’s gonna look like.

When we do the leg raises, we maybe will do like three or five.

It doesn’t have to go low.

So I draw the shoulders down, push

And see, I can be just doing like this much.

I lower and I bring it up.

I keep drawing the shoulders down and I keep pressing into the floor.

My shoulders never hike up like this.

See, and this is very very manageable.

If your knees are bent, it is not really an abdominal exercise.

This just works control and strength of your hip flexors.

You don’t have to go like low like this.

If your legs are straight, also you can just do this much.

See, this is the extent of movement.

It should not feel tiring at all.

You need to find a way to perform this movement only to the point where you can feel

Talk normally.

If you can talk normally while you’re doing this, for example, for me this is comfortable.

I could be doing that for a long time while talking.

That would be what I’m doing

Mm-hmm.

I would even do that a little bit more.

Yeah.

And also another point, get Patrick, come let me push into your finger.

Patrick, come and let me push into your hand so that uh we we show

the dynamic when you do this also no uh into the ball of the foot like I want to show this so basically it should feel like I’m pushing resist can you resist as I

So it should feel like I’m pushing away and down.

Let me lower my legs.

Yeah.

So uh one thing that you can imagine is if there was a big

um sort of um uh kind of a circular surface here.

Like you’re you’re extending and you’re brushing the top of the circular surface with the the tops of the feet.

It kind of ends here or something like that.

If that makes sense.

And just watch my pelvis for a moment.

So if I just lower the legs, if I only think about lowering the legs, here is not really active, but just watch what happens if I try to push.

If I try to push away.

See it like see what it does to my pelvis?

It really activates the lower back.

So you think about pushing away and as you lower you’re pushing away.

Okay.

And then back up.

Another thing to think is that rather than think about even, even though you are pushing through the ball of the foot, think the movement originates from the hip.

So it’s almost as if somebody was grabbing here and pulling the hip.

Does that make sense?

And again, you might have experienced that with an osteopath

or a chiropractor or something, they will do movements during the manipulation.

They’ll grab like close the femur into the hip for people that have arthritis and hip mobility issues.

and they’ll say resist the motion as I pull the leg.

What that does is it creates space in the acetabulum and the the femur can move more freely.

We want to initiate that feeling without anybody helping us.

Yeah, and the last thing is that whenever you feel tired, for example, even even like let’s say this is tiring, then you can just bend the knees, bring them closer to

to the chest and the breast.

Yeah.

So watch your breath all the time.

Your breath should become so again, Ajlash just explained uh in a perfect world we don’t feel tired.

But bottom line, this is a motherfucker to get down.

Right.

It’s not easy to understand how to moderate in this one.

So at any point in time you can always bend and just watch.

It will become more obvious over time.

So let’s try it together from a line-down position.

Okay, so you can’t.

And you can demonstrate, yeah.

I’ll walk around.

Okay, so everybody let’s lie on the back.

First bring your knees to the chest, bend your knees.

Lie on your back, bend the knees

And rock your pelvis from side to side to flatten the lower back.

From here, bring the hands on the floor, a bit away from your hips, V shape, spread the

Fingers, draw the shoulders down and lightly press into the floor with your arms.

From here, extend the legs above the pelvis

And find a position where you feel like you are comfortable.

If extended knees is not comfortable, you can lightly bend the knees.

But make sure that you extend the ankles and push the balls of the feet.

Rotate from the hips, yep.

So the knees can be bent, it’s all right, but ankles extended, push

The balls of the feet.

Draw the shoulders down.

So just extend the ankles.

We want to high heels.

Leg extra.

So make sure the ankles are not flexed but extended.

Like you’re standing on the tip toes.

Draw the chin a little bit more, do this a bit more.

First.

Maybe you need to bring the legs a little bit closer to your chest.

So we’re not doing the leg raises yet.

We’re finding a comfortable position with the legs up.

Okay, so from now we will start doing the leg raises.

So come into your comfortable position.

Come back up and then high heels

Pull the legs away from your hips and bring them down just a little bit so that it feels comfortable.

Keep drawing the shoulders down and pressing into the floor with your

arms and then return the legs back to your comfortable position.

The thighs move in more like this.

One more time.

Slowly lower the legs just a little bit.

Only to the point where you can keep the form and the breathing is calm.

Annie.

I think that’s removal.

Yeah, exactly that.

And then balls of the feet.

That moves the position of the legs away.

The heels will be.

We will do three more times.

Watch your energy

A little bit more high.

You can also bend the knees at any moment to the chest if you’re tired.

So slowly bring the legs down.

Yeah, a little bit more.

And then a return

Back to the starting position.

Yeah.

Two more times.

Slowly lower the legs.

Keep drawing the shoulders down.

That’s it, Clementine.

It’s working.

Control breath.

It’s working

And even if it doesn’t feel like it works.

The legs back to starting position.

Make sure you extend the ankles, push the balls of the foot.

Last one.

Slowly lower the legs down.

And return to starting position.

And then bend the knees to the chest.

And one more time just rock.

your hips from side to side.

You can even hang on to your knees.

Yeah you can hug your knees if you want, bring them closer to the chest and rock from side to side.

Or just uh yeah.

Yeah.

Say abdominal as a exercise that it active the belly.

Mm very much so.

But but right?

Okay, roll rock up rock up everybody for a second.

So yes, as Annie said, it does it’s it does activate the belly.

Rather than thinking about it as an abdominal exercise, we’re thinking more about how to uh

Stabilize the shoulders and mobilize from the hip.

That makes sense?

So the mo and the the abdominal becoming active is just a byproduct of that

Right?

So we go like as Asha mentioned before here, even with the knees bent, you can just think about mobilizing the hip at the same time the legs are active.

And when you feel it’s too much of an abdominal activity, come back and do this more with the legs to

moderate the intensity.

Now of course even with the legs up for a while you feel it’s gonna um challenge

the abdominal wall and you become tired, you can always in between hang on like this and just hold for a second and join back in.

So this isn’t we’ll Asha will go through it again

There’s a lot of talking, there’s a lot of explaining things, but at any point in time too you can always bend the knees and join back in.

So what we don’t want is that the abdominal wall becomes so tired

in this, that we start to lose the sense of what it feels like to mobilize through the hips and to keep these legs active, keep the ankles extended.

and keeping the shoulders drawing down as the back is relatively flat.

So you can think that those things are more important at this point than the belly becoming active.

So if it becomes tiring, bend the knees and hold on to a second and join back in.

Let’s do another round.

Yes.

One more round.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

And also so it’s also modification.

for form.

If at some point you catch yourself doing something like this, right, you don’t you cannot keep the form anymore.

This is a sign that you should just

Wait and rest and then when you’re ready you come back and you do this very very controlled.

Heels apart more Asha for demonstration purposes

So people understand the rotation of the thighs.

Right, and no momentum here.

So especially when you return, don’t do this.

The pelvis is completely completely grounded the foundation and only the legs move down and up.

a little bit.

Okay?

Let’s do five more rounds.

Okay?

Five more rounds and then you should be relaxed while you are doing the five more rounds, but

In between each round, bend the knees.

If you need to, just you can turn your head to the side, stick and turn sideways and look at Asha, and then you can join back in for one or two rounds.

It’s up to you.

Try to just make it work so that you feel like you can manage your condition and so that it doesn’t become too much of an abdominal exercise today.

Yeah, so let’s flatten the lower back, bend the knees, rock the hips from side to side, flatten.

Arms on the floor, V shape, a bit away from hips.

Now extend the legs above the hips and find a position where you feel comfortable.

You can bend the knees a little bit or you can

can extend them.

Just make sure that in this position you could comfortably stay for an extended period of time.

But of course if it’s too much at any moment you can bend them

So from here, imagine that somebody is pulling your legs away from your hips as if you are drawing a line in space.

Slowly lower the legs just a little bit, only to the point where you feel comfortable, and make sure that the lower back stays on the floor.

And then slowly return

Return to your starting position.

Keep extending the ankles and push the balls of the feet.

Keep drawing the shoulders down, hands lightly pressing into the

the floor.

We do four more rounds.

Slowly lower the legs to the point where you feel comfortable.

Draw the shoulders down.

And return to starting position.

Really watch your efforts.

Keep if you need to.

High heels.

Slowly down, lowering the legs to the palms.

So even here when you’re relaxing, just practice the because

Natural breathing.

Right, yeah, no, but I mean okay, or tiptoe.

Think of it, tiptoe on the floor.

position and then again you can rotate the thighs in towards each other so the thighs actually doesn’t return the center what’s the heels come away from it movement is very very controlled too according to the the rotation of the thing slowly lower the legs

To the point where it’s comfortable, drawing the shoulders down.

Return to the starting point.

And we are going to do the last one.

Lower the legs down.

Keep pushing the balls of the feet.

Arching the back and press down.

Return to center and bend the knees.

You can hold your knees, hug them to the chest, and rock the hips from side to side.

Okay, shall we try the roll up?

Huh?

Shall we try the roll up with the hands?

Okay, let’s try.

Okay, so now from here, bring the legs up one more time to a comfortable position.

position and then lift your head look towards me and push the palms forward in front of you.

Side note, this is also how we’re setting up the last

Assimilation that we do at the end of the practice.

So just remember this.

This is also set up for that.

So as you push the bows of the feet, begin to lower the legs while you’re rounding the spine and try to find a point.

where you can just roll up.

Ah without momentum again.

Without momentum, yeah.

It won’t happen for everybody, but try to see if you can find the stepping point.

Exactly.

Ground the spine, press the arms forward.

And then maybe it will roll up.

So there was a little bit of a cheat there, but that’s okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

But that’s pretty damn good.

Pretty damn good.

Okay, so what what happens uh in in some of the videos on on the um

On the platform?

Around is fine.

Look.

Yeah, exactly.

Around as much as possible, around, round, around, because the upper body becomes short

Yes, Patrick.

Yeah.

So uh Satuco.

Yeah.

Extend the ankles.

Extend the ankles.

Yeah.

Well hey, yeah.

So Satuko on the on the platform, she actually has what’s the term called kyphosis.

Right.

Satiko has kyphosis.

So there are people that have a little bit of a problem with the back where the back is kind of very straight and it’s very hard to

find that momentum to come up.

It’s not impossible.

She worked on it for years and then eventually she was kind of able to do it.

But she’s always had to use a little bit of a a little bit of momentum.

But ideally we don’t want to use any momentum

So possible depending on the body condition.

The legs they’re heavy.

Uh I don’t know what the legs are.

I think that they’re about maybe

Between fifteen and twenty-five kilograms.

No, no, sorry.

Between ten and fifteen kilograms each, I think.

And the arms are between something five and or four and seven kilograms each.

There’s a lot of weight.

distribution there.

You think about that.

We’re transitioning.

These things can really make a huge difference, even without my flexing the spine too much.

I can find the bat the the situation where I’m allowing myself to rock up like this with the weight of the legs.

But the f spinal flexion is kind of like

uh not the cheat, but the thing that really allows for you to understand the dynamic of the transition and the dynamic of the recline.

As you go back.

So when we start from this flex position, the arm’s going forward, and you flex and your chin comes in, you get to one point, it just teeter-totters, and you come up.

And then we’re in trail work lining transition.

This is important because I get a bit tired showing that to you.

Uh when we get into the full and those are on the platform and we we don’t dare show you those right now.

There are 90 minute 90 minute sequences, right?

And the sequences have

Many reclining transitions.

So and this becomes very easy for people to do after a while.

So even people at the end of a sequence like of 90 minutes of combining these forms in a fluid motion.

Because we’re working so much with gravity throughout the

uh the forum practice and the understanding of that, uh that at one point it becomes quite easy.

But we can’t overemphasize for these, for example, and for this last segment, segment four.

And I and you know, we we knew it was a long one, right?

Eighty-six minutes or something.

I think it was eighty-six minutes to get through this whole last week.

And of course people are just like, Oh my god, there’s so much stuff to study and we’re going crazy.

And we understand that.

But the ide in a perfect world, you would want to be doing those those study labs once or twice a day.

If you do once or twice a day the study lab and take the variations and understand

It’s not uh we’re not scolding you, but the more you do it, the more it becomes inherent, and then we can move on to you know the the stuff that’s a little bit more dynamic in combination.

For that stuff.

So remember that.

Side note that even though what we do today here in person is good, take it home, turn on the study labs, watch the study labs, repeat them.

Once or twice a day if you have the time.

Also has everybody understand how to use the smart revisit feature on your dashboard?

Everybody saw

the smart revisit button do you understand what smart revisit is not everybody no on the dashboard like when you log in to the web

website you see the the guy who is in this position right and then under the guy that’s k his name is Ken his name is Ken

He’s one of our he’s a he’s he’s one of our teachers.

He was in the apprenticeship with me for nine years.

Yeah.

Nine years practicing every day, every day with us, about three to five hours a day.

Yeah

And he was like when he showed up, inflexible, uh stiff, disembodied.

So just a side note, yeah.

Yeah.

So under can the ken there is smart revisit and it gives you whenever you refresh the page it gives you

a suggestion to repeat one or another study lab, right?

Study labs are short, like four minutes, sometimes six minutes, right?

So once you’ve done all the key points

you know and you have five minutes just go there under can smart revisit press and just do for five minutes something it really helps to revisit okay what’s next uh

How much time do we have?

We have uh another little bit of time for sure.

Let’s let’s do the other intensity modification.

Okay.

For the plank.

Okay.

So but so we’re gonna carry we’re gonna carry on with the plank right now, but we’re not gonna go in from the peak.

Yeah, we’ll just do the knees.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So again, okay, so okay, we can try pressup.

Yeah, so okay, the key points for plank.

So first of all, the plank may be challenging for somebody as is, right?

So if you are uh challenging

by the plank then you sometimes might have to stop right but you can use distributed activation to help you to add uh abdominal strength

for the plank.

So the key points in the plank is that it’s not just like I’m just gonna ha hanging in, pushing myself up, but the hands are gripping forward and the toes are gripping back.

So these

two forces like press like this and they help your ribcage and the pelvis to be together, relieving some of the tension from the

Abdominal muscles and you draw the shoulders down.

It’s an important addition here that not only the hands press away and the toes oppose that movement from the hands.

At the same time draw the shoulders down.

When you draw the shoulders down, it activates this the whole sheath down the anterior part of the body that activates the muscles without you needing to grip the belly in or anything.

elbow in?

Um yeah, more uh it’s it’s it’s not a question of the elbow in as much as as much as it is the shoulders drawing down.

Don’t worry about the elbow so much, yeah.

Yeah so if you feel oh yes, yes, but don’t flare the elbows.

Yeah, pull the inside.

So when you’re in the plank, it’

should really be alive right so we never want to like go like this if you start going like this you just bring the knees down and you wait so the modification for form is whenever you feel like your form is not perfect just stop

Recalibrate, sink, relax.

Also another variation that’s uh of a plank that’s often taught in fitness and in yoga and stuff like that is do your do your a plank with your knees like this.

But this doesn’t help much either.

We’d prefer that people just do a very short and then come down, right, with the knees down.

And we’re going to be working with that today.

The shoulders draw down, the toes press.

And this is the most awkward part because the hands pressing forward and the toes opposing that movement and the shoulders drawing back with this whole weight of the body is difficult.

Okay, so that means in the variations that we’ll do today, you’ll drop the knees, you’ll lift the knees, you’ll drop the knees, you’ll lift the knees to take breaks

in between.

Does that make sense?

A capish?

So also uh let’s do it, Asha.

J just one second also the uh in the plank it’s also a great position to observe the stacking of the pelvis and the ribcage because we don’t want you to be doing

the plank like this.

So here she is, right?

So stack it, stack it.

So here she is, here here I am.

Remember?

This is just another uh version of the plank, right?

And then eventually you’ll do our uh full arm balances.

Right.

We have full arm balances, handstands, and Baseworks.

We get to a point where we do handstands.

That’s only after we’ve developed all this other stuff.

We don’t want people to do handstands from the perspective of fitness.

We want people to do handstands from the perspective of standing straight like this.

and standing stable like this.

And then it becomes easier to do those after some period of time.

But we’re not, we don’t care about the handstand.

The hand the handstand is just something that you you add.

When the other things become easy.

Does that make sense?

We have to continue to stimulate our level of uh uh energy and also stimulate the position of the body in different

Uh in in different um in relation to gravity.

So yes, and just about the press up because we’ll also try to do press-up, but again, so we are in a plank, you draw the shoulders down.

There are four steps in the press-up.

The feet

See, this is the movement of the feet.

The feet propel you forward.

And then from here you move the elbows back, but it literally can be just as much as this.

Baby.

Baby press up

Extend and back.

Let’s try the plank first and then we go to the we switch to that because we have a little bit of time.

We can do those two things.

It’s a great session.

And we opened some questions.

Yeah, you can you want me to okay I can demonstrate.

Okay, let’s let’s go together.

Alright, Nasha will go around.

So come down to the knees.

The hands here are directly below the shoulders.

You can see that.

See the knees are on the ground first.

It’s kind of fun to do it from peak after some period of time, but let’s just do it on our knees today.

And to get into it like this, we’re going to step one leg back and then the other leg back.

Initially.

Of course, if you feel comfortable, you can just bring the knees up and slide back, but I think it’s almost more productive somehow to step a leg back.

So step the right leg back, step the left leg back.

Draw the shoulders down towards the hips, look straight down to the floor.

If you need to look up to me at any point, look look up to me.

Press the palms forward, the tiptoes back, draw the shoulders down, now drop the knees to the floor

So we drop the knees to the floor once.

Your knees are more or less and you can when you drop the knees down to the floor you can rock back a little bit so that your thighs are perpendicular to the floor.

It becomes a little bit easier.

Also, when we do it again, make sure the fingers are spread and you can even grip the fingertips into the floor a little bit to strengthen the wrist.

Okay?

That makes sense

So we’re going to go ahead, we’re going to lift the butt up again.

We’re going to press the palms forward, the tiptoes press back, grip the fingers into the floor a little bit, draw the shoulders toward the hips

At the same time, press the balls of the feet into the floor backward, press the palms forward, lower the knees.

Sit back a little bit like this so it’s more comfortable.

You can even lower the arms all the way to the ground if you’d like to in between.

Doesn’t really matter.

Okay, let’s try it again.

Let’s come up.

Shoulders draw down towards the hips, palms press down and forward, grip the fingers tips slightly in.

Press the balls of the feet back, opposing the movement of the hands.

Draw the shoulders back down towards the hip.

Extend through the neck.

Lower the knees.

Okay, sit up and watch me for a second, please.

So we did a few of those.

You can carry on with those at home as many times as you’d like, uh holding it for between

one in five seconds if you’d like or just a couple of seconds each time.

You can do them as many times as you like.

The more time you do it, the the more often you do it, the easier it’ll become.

So into the press up, the most important thing is that we’re hinging forward.

So we don’t actually have to lower that much to the point of the full press up.

We can just, as Asha mentioned before, we can microbend the elbows in like this and press up to this position.

Now, because we’re going into the press-up dynamic,

It’s more difficult to sustain the hands pressing into the floor and the toes pressing back.

So rather than think too much about that, think only about the shoulders drawing back.

And who was saying about the elbows?

Annie.

And the elbows slightly uneven.

So as the shoulders draw back, you can think that the upper arm and elbows hug into the side of the body on the transition forward, even if we’re not moving that much, if that makes sense

See hug in and transition.

Think about shoulders drawdown, elbows hug.

Let’s try that.

So we’re gonna try one plank dynamic first, then we’re gonna go directly into our baby press-up

And then come back to neutral, drop the knees, and we’ll do a few of them like that.

And so the movement starts in the foot.

The foot is what’s moving the body forward, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so step the right foot back, left foot back, come to plank.

Draw the shoulders down towards the hips, drip the toes away.

Press the hands into the floor forward, draw the shoulders down.

Now as you tilt forward, squeeze the elbows into the side of the body, draw the shoulders down towards the hips, it’s difficult.

And then push back up straight, lower the knees down.

Sit back to a point that’s comfortable like this.

Let’s do a couple more like that.

It’s not easy.

Okay, let’s step the legs up again.

Starting from the plank, press the palms forward, shoulders draw back.

Grip the fingertips in slightly to the floor.

Tilt forward, squeeze the elbows, hug into the side of the body, a little baby press up.

Back of the neck extends.

Now press the arms straight.

Lower the knees, sit back.

And when you lower, you’re lowering with control.

So everything is lowered with control.

You raise with control, you lower with control.

Yes, yes, yes.

Exactly.

The belly is relaxed.

Sorry?

The belly is relaxed?

Uh the belly won’t be relaxed when we’re up in plank, but you don’t grip it towards the spine like they teach you in fitness classes.

Only draw the shoulders down and as you transition the belly will become tight on its own.

J adding that navel to the spine thing disrupts what we’re trying to do here.

It disrupts the natural breathing.

Basically.

Okay, so step the leg back again one more time.

Draw the shoulders back down towards the hips, and you’re gonna feel the belly automatically active there a little bit.

Tilt forward, squeeze the elbows into the side ribs, tilt down a little bit more.

Now press back, elbows straight, lower the knees down, sit back onto the heels

All right.

So everybody lay on the floor.

Lift the head up like that.

Look toward B.

Raise the arms up.

The legs can be a little bit away from the body.

We’re gonna do this like this.

Yo man yo you can think yo man hey this type of thing we’re trying to flex

Like we’re getting ready to jump into some sort of a fight or something.

Flexing the spine

And then chin stays in.

Lower the upper torso down.

Right?

So the lower back should feel a little bit more extended.

Allow the legs to flop out to the side.

Chin stays in towards the chest.

Allow the arms just to drop to the side of the body however you like.

Again, here you can just go ahead and close the eyes if you like, or you can keep the eyes open.

It doesn’t matter.

There’s no protocol in terms of what to do with your attention.

other than feeling the weight of the back of the heels, the back of the legs, the back of the pelvis

The back of the wrists and hands, the back of the elbows, the back of the shoulders, the back of the shoulder blades,

and the very weight of the back of the head.

You can feel all these points I just mentioned, the weight of those points connecting to that surface below you.

It’s really solid connection.

You can, if you want, one little detail that I forgot here is if you want to traction the neck a little bit more, you can take your hand up behind the back of your head

And extend the back of the neck a bit as you draw the chin in toward the chest, just to get that feeling like the back of the head, when it connects to the floor, offers a little traction to the neck, which is comfortable.

Not only of course if that’s comfortable you can go ahead and do that.

Otherwise just stay there.

So again from the heels, back of the legs, back of the pelvis, back of the shoulders, back of the arms, wrists.

back of the head you feel the weight of these points of the body connecting to that surface below you and even you can imagine that they’ll eventually merge into the surface below you.

So

The weight is comfortable.

The breath here is just neutral.

You’re not guiding it in any way.

Again, eyes are open or eyes are closed, it doesn’t really matter.

So here we’re just letting the body go kind of completely, allowing for that weight sensation to take over.

And you can also take note here a little bit if there’s anything that pops into your mind about something that may feel different or

Something you might have learned today, or whatever.

So make a mental note of it.

If you’d like to take a note after the class physically, that’s also fine.

But more than anything, we’re just kind of trying to empty our mind, be neutral in this weight.

And allow for the body to assimilate some of the stuff that happened in the practice here today together, because that is usually what we do this for.

All right, and if you uh feel m inclined to, you can sort of in the most uh natural to you feeling way, find a way to roll over onto the stomach.

Chin can stay down or the head can turn to either side.

Ideally the legs would be a little bit away from the body

uh that a little bit away from each other and ideally the arms can also come out to to the side if it’s possible.

You can be on the chin onto the forehead if it’s comfortable for your nose.

You can turn the cheek to either side.

Whatever is comfortable.

In the same way, we’re just feeling the weight of the front side of the body now facing downward.

No, por favor, no paye ya.

Okay, find your way to come on up.

Okay.

So we just let’s have a little bit of a QA right now.

We mentioned that we’re not going to have much and then

Before everybody runs off today, we’d like to propose something that if we have 15 minutes, by the way.

We have 15 minutes.

We’d like to propose something that if everybody’s down for it.

Uh I’m just looking at the message here.

Uh next week our session

on Sunday is normally from twelve ten to one fifty PM

We extended the time.

If everybody’s down for it, we won’t charge you anything extra.

If you’d like to stay a little bit longer, we can go to

Right now it’s a 1350.

We can go to say 230.

If everybody’s cool with that, then we have a little bit more time for the practical application and the practice.

You don’t have to decide right now.

If you need to leave, you can.

But you know what?

We’re just gonna go till two thirty next week.

How’s that sound?

Yeah.

No extra charge.

Huh?

Fifteen everyone.

Well we’ll post it on the forum.

We’ll post it we can we’ll post everything tonight to let you know.

Yep.

Uh so anybody so for one, anybody have any questions about anything we’ve done here today?

It’s not a question.

Yeah.

is that I actually felt the default levier.

And equilibrium.

No.

Yes.

Lift.

Le like a teeter time or something.

A teeter, yeah.

The Lieber.

What is it in French?

Lieber, yeah, Levte.

Levy.

Levi.

Le vie.

Le vlovi.

Le vilain.

Le vilain.

Shit.

Le vile.

No, le vila.

God, there it goes.

Lubby.

Lub.

But I think the A sound is is not easy, but the the it just makes it easier.

And I felt like a 3D bone and just bones and

and muscles and and lines.

That was really cool.

Yeah, cool.

But it was not like a flap on the page going on it.

It was like three D version of it.

Very cool.

Really cool.

and really relaxed and know like I did this week.

And then we did the thing.

It’s all important.

Nice.

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing.

Any practical questions?

Uh maybe some movements.

Well the practice in person really helps.

And it’s not a question, it’s just a observation request and like next fall

open to the class I think oh no actually for this for this group um we’re we’re gonna I mean for this group and for subsequent groups we’re gonna open either once uh sorry once a week or or once biweekly

at a different venue.

So it’ll be for people that completed this study group.

You’re more than welcome to join in the subsequent study groups as well and do it over again at a different at a

uh discounted price.

But to carry on with the work that we’re doing, we’re gonna open something up uh uh it’s either gonna be here or at my or there’s another space up in my land.

We’re gonna tr we’re gonna decide on one of those three spaces.

So we don’t want uh we don’t want the continuity to stop.

But at the same time, there’s um we we can’t overemphasize

uh the uh the importance of in between any session, try to carry on as much with the with if you can finish the um as mentioned last week if you can finish the

uh uh the primer course in three months then you get it extended for a year you can always refer back to the um to the to the key points

And do the and do the so by the end of the, so there is actually up to one one hour, one hour

A one-hour sequence at the end, right?

So by the end of the primary course, there’ll be a one-hour sequence that people can practice along with as well.

Up to one hour.

So 20 minutes, we have 15 minutes, 20 and one hour.

Well yeah, the later part of the course is more about trying to actually practice once we have understood all the concepts and we slowly build up.

So there are 10 minutes.

20 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minute, 40 minute, and eventually a 60-minute session.

But the at home practice

is nice, but it’s nice to have both.

Yeah.

So the idea is if we can do both here, like uh in in Montreal, that’s that’s the idea.

Uh because I

Uh we um we don’t have any interest to open a physical studio where we’re having uh ten classes a day like we used to have in Tokyo.

Uh well that’s where we’re trying to get people used to this idea of doing the hybrid, doing stuff at home and then coming coming and periodically practicing with us in person.

That makes it a little bit more doable for everybody’s schedules too.

Yeah

Any other uh questions?

Maybe I want to share something that I uh I shared already the phone, but uh not uh but

I I just wanted to know if I was the only person to to to uh be aware of that.

But since we we we started like uh each time we we have good stuff

station Saturday or Tuesday.

The day after I was sleeping and having my dreams, there were really uh like uh

uh really clear clear and it’s like a big quality of this material look at I um I

I was almost seeing some books with exactly the readings that I just had.

So it’s like I was aware of my dreams.

And and uh then I uh was thinking maybe it’s because of the do you know all the the distribute the the activation of

And um maybe it comes from the

from that that that that the frequency of the the uh th those humans like uh sprint figures and you know I I don’t know just uh it’s just

I I am I the only one Sarah I think you’re maybe connected with your body, that’s what’s happening, so you’re conscious

Conscious is being more uh available.

Uh Sarah, I was gonna say you’re mad, you’re crazy.

C

No, as a as Lucita’s saying, it’s very accurate.

So basically when what we it’s

not only dreams, but the amount of stuff that we’re asking you to pay attention to when we practice is not normal.

Is not normal.

It’s going to it’s going to have an effect on the central nervous system.

The central nervous system will uh cascade, the the effect of that will cascade into other domains of awareness.

So it’s not about a cosmic experience.

For you the dreams might be lucid.

For others, they might just feel like they walk differently.

For others, they might think that they um

uh they have more awareness when they do habitual movements like pick something up.

Uh it it changes for everybody and the more that you do it’s not just our practice, the more that you do this practice and the more this

gets transferred to the other stuff that you like doing, we believe we many people have shared with us many interesting things.

I have had very powerful experiences in perception on the basis of my commitment to these physical practices throughout my life.

That’s why I asked her to join before we became romantically involved.

Her to join the company because I knew she was a neuroscientist and I wanted a scientist to unpack

it because I was just talking to people and they’re like, oh yeah man, you know, like that happens in yoga.

And I said, this is not, this is not, I practiced yoga for years.

I said this is not the byproduct of some philosophical output.

This is practical.

What happened to me is practical, but practically profound.

It changed the way I talked to people.

It changed the way I problem solved.

It changed the way that I observed my reactions to different situations in life.

It changed the way that I would deal with injuries or sickness.

Many things came up.

It’s not just Baseworks, but I developed Baseworks in part for this to understand that

And her research now specifically in somatosensory awareness, and she just had a meeting the week before last with one of the top neuroscientists in this area in Montreal.

He’s at University of Montreal.

His name is Paul Chisek.

that validated a lot of her research.

So she’ll be publishing soon.

Yeah.

Maybe not soon, but but it was really great

Because um For one for one she’s been following Paul Chisek’s work for a very long time.

And she wrote him an email, not expecting a response.

And he responded and he says, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

But can you please come in and meet me at my office in University of Montreal?

Yeah, but we did have a two-hour conversation non-stop about the neurobiology of

of Baseworks like for two hours we’re just talking about that so there is um that much depth and novelty in the

techniques so if you are the top level sensory motor researcher you understand distributed activation like that but it’s um like we always think that like if I just talked for two hours about some uncontrolled

manifold hypothesis for example it’s not practically useful and this is why we’re trying to make these in-person sessions as practical

practical as possible.

For example, as Sarah was saying, there is something very special about spreading the fingers.

It’s not fitness, right?

Nobody goes to fitness gym

to spread their fingers at the same time.

Well they do, but for different reasons.

Yeah, but when you start spreading fingers in every movement, you’re here, you are here, like you are doing something, and your hand is constantly like this.

really really active, not flappy, but active, at some point it really changes completely how you perceive your movement and how you’re in space.

Yeah, so that’s after just a few sessions of spreading the fingers, this is what happened.

And why I wanted her to dive into this was because I had so many experiences

over and over and over again in my life and nobody had been able to explain it to me.

I wasn’t able to get some perspective from martial art my martial arts teachers or my yoga teachers because

they were ti dialing it back too much into the philosophy, into archety archetypical adhesion to the pr the presets of of philosophy, which didn’t make any sense to me.

I I resonated with it, but

uh it was much more practical.

And we can be bold to say that what we’re doing in terms of this research is not is not being done anywhere else.

So we’re very lucky that she had this meeting because for 10 years she’s doing the research and she’s had no academic mentor.

She’s only been hypothesizing on the basis of what she read and this guy validated it.

It’s a huge step.

So we don’t want to load that too much in at this point in time.

At a latter point of of the practice

And this really it means compounded.

If we can continue to practice together, both online and in person, and we’ll be around Montreal for a while longer, we will do sessions once

uh a week or once or twice a month.

Um uh a lot of uh your own experiences will start to crystallize in a way which makes sense to you but

I can’t overemphasize the the rinse and repeat part of the whole thing.

These aren’t things that we can just watch uh the primer course and then go away and immediately apply it.

easily.

For some they might be able to apply some stuff, but the the continuity of the practice is just like anything, like learning a language or doing whatever.

But yeah.

You know what?

It’s an honor to have you all here.

It’s an honor to have an ex-bodybuilder here who’s now a dancer.

It’s an honor to have all these unique people coming from different backgrounds here.

For us, it’s always an honor to work with new people.

And uh even though it’s it feels a little bit rigid at times, we’re and dogmatic, like I mentioned in the beginning, it is dogmatic in the way that we teach it

But not for the purpose of keeping people locked into dogma.

It has to it has to become practical for you at some point.

Yes.

but it’s always back to me, my own observation, my own perception.

And I find there’s a lot of power for me in this.

So yeah.

Um so I guess do we have to get out of 12 or 1150?

Well, the session is over.

We will be

kicked out at 12.

At 12.

Okay, so uh we will post on the forum.

We plan to go till at least 2.

30 next week, maybe a little bit longer.

We’ll post on the forum.

We’re only doing that just because we feel like it could be useful for people to practice with us more.

Like I say, if you can make the time to do it in your schedule, great.

If you have to leave, that’s also fine.

We’ll post the session summary as usual.

Those are good to go through that.

The next assignment is shorter, right?

Much shorter.

So if you have the time and the space,

uh uh smart revisit on on the dashboard or redo the practice labs.

If you have any questions, send us uh uh uh messages either on the forum.

If you put the questions on the forum

It’s good for everybody.

But you can also send us questions directly if you feel it’s more appropriate to do that.

Okay?

So uh voilà.

C’est terminé aujourd’hui.

Merci beaucoup.