This is a variation on another class in the library called "Move Your Tube". Developing awareness on how bends and "kinks" in our torso can affect our breathing. Moving our ribs and the parts that connect to our torso for better health overall and also for a freer breath.
Read MoreFinding stability and extension in the hips while learning to use the backside of your legs to drive the leg backwards in order to propel your body forward. Like an oar paddles a canoe.
Read MorePutting your hands on the ground and carrying some of your weight with the arms is common with many natural movements and exercises. However, when the load is great, it is easy to skip over tense and underused parts of us, and it is difficult to see the details of our movement and learn how to develop better muscle use and stability. We can practice many of the same movements by taking the load off and putting our hands on the wall. The wall is a great place to use your arms in varied ways and it is also a great place to practice using and moving your hips.
Read MoreLearning to stand with a vertical leg where there hips rest over the heels is an important alignment cue to help release the tension of the fronts of the thighs and knee joints, to engage the backside of the legs for better balance and walking, and it helps load the bones of the hips and legs for greater bone strength. This adjustment also helps create a vertical body all the way to the head.
Read MoreA forward fold can help lengthen the entire backside of the body. There are fascial connections that run from the soles of the feet all the way to the head, and getting into a forward fold can show us where we habitually shorten and hold tension in certain areas of the posterior chain of the body. That shortening of certain areas is caused by many things such as our sitting and shoe wearing habits, but it then affects our posture, walking gait and general ability to move freely. In this session, we'll breakdown all the parts of the forward fold and see how to get more movement throughout the body in this simple posture.
Read MoreLearning to stand and walk with the ankles at pelvis width apart is an important alignment marker that will help us to find better hip strength. Developing this as your neutral stance will keep the feet, ankles, and knees healthier as well. It also helps to load the bones of the legs for better bone strength.
Read MoreAn exploration of many of the parts that affect your breathing. Noticing how certain habits and tension in the body can stop us from breathing fully. Learning how to release the diaphragm, use torsional rib breathing, and stretch the arm muscles that can pull on the rib cage. Lots of relaxing deep breaths in this class!
Read MoreDisentangling the tensions and "stickiness" of the tissues between the fingers and the neck.
Read MoreLimited mobility tends to cause parts of us to rotate away from the tension. So our feet turn out, our thighs rotate in, our pelvis tilts causing our spine to flex when we go for deeper ranges of motion such as in squats. This class is a look at all those rotations and how to bring them back in alignment for better movement of your lower half.
Read MoreLet's play with how mobilizing the parts from our trunk to our feet can help with balance. When feet turn out, thighs rotate in, and the trunk gets too stiff, it's easy to be pulled off balance. We'll work on finding neutral alignment and stabilizing our body from there.
Read MoreEquipment: chair, block, half dome, strap, tennis ball (optional). The ability to balance can be affected by overly tense (or shortened) areas of your body. This class is an exploration of stretching and mobilizing your feet, shins, thighs, hips and then learning how to stabilize your balance.
Read MoreThis class is an exploration of instinctual resting postures as illustrated by a physiotherapist, Michael Tetley. The premise is that our modern life lacks the pressure deforming movements that would occur if we lived in nature without the modern conveniences of soft, cushy couches and beds. The movements caused by putting pressure on our bodies, which is the same reason we get massage, can help relieve tension, increase lymph movement, and even reset our spines. Here we'll explore some of those instinctual resting postures and add some stretch and restorative exercise to them in a sequence of movement flow
Read MoreImmobility and tension in the hips can pull on the spine whenever you need to move on the legs thereby putting unnecessary wear and tear on the spine. AND not knowing how to keep the hips stable when the spine needs to move can keep the tissues of the trunk stiff and unmoved. So in this class we look at the difference of moving the spine and hips both together and separately. EQUIPMENT NEEDED: Block (or book or blanket) and a strap.
Read MoreThe habitual positioning of our body (mainly chairs) and the shortening of the muscle lengths that result from it can lead to strain and tension in certain areas when we do the simplest action of laying down on the ground. It's why people often report neck and back pain while laying down. In this class we'll look at how to realign our posture and how to iron out all those kinks so that we can elongate to our fullest length while laying down.
Read MoreExploring breath mechanics and how our alignment and positioning of the body may be restricting the free flow of not only air but all the fluids through the torso. Then we'll look at how to align, stabilize, and mobilize the tissues of the trunk.
Read MoreResistance to movement in small parts of the body (ie: the fingers) have an effect on the larger motions. We can observe how hand tension can result in neck tension and vice versa and also how tension in one area can cause us to compensate and use other parts of the body differently. In this case we'll play a game for shoulder mobility, and then we'll work on getting more movement in all the parts of the chain from the fingers to the neck.
Read MoreA look at how alignment can help us move more of our body in our physical activities. This class will focus on the common yoga pose, downward dog. We'll see how limitations in our ranges of motion are causing us to avoid moving certain joints and how using alignment markers can help us get more movement and strength overall.
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