Class #3395

Creative Foam Roller

55 min - Class
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Description

Discover what your body likes to do in this creative Foam Roller workout by Jennifer Golden Zumann. She is joined by her team from Pilates Chicago as she teaches movements that will connect you to your center. She includes fun variations of exercises like Double Leg Stretch, Tendon Stretch, and so much more!
What You'll Need: Mat, Foam Roller

About This Video

Apr 18, 2018
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Hi, I'm Jennifer Golden's, human and A. I'm here with a bunch of my crew from Palladia Chicago. Uh, and we are going to do a foam roller class today. So let's start standing up, grab your roller and just start with your roller in front of you. Put your hands on the roller and bring your feet together just to, so the toes are just a little bit apart and we're gonna get kinda close to the roller. So as you press down on the rollers slightly with your arms, you can feel a little bit of a lift in your abdominals. Doesn't mean I want you to suck in like that.

All I want you to feel as how that light downward pressure creates a little tensioning in the low belly. So just a small press and then a release shouldn't even see it. Small press and a release a couple more times. Small press. And again, small press. And now as we pressed, you're going to rise up on your toes. So you're still feeling those muscles and then low. Wear yourself back down.

Want a little bit of activity pressing down the whole time. So the arm is are alert. It should have a feeling as though you're pushing yourself up out of the side of a pool so you're lifting yourself up. You could imagine if you were some kind of amazing park core or Ninja or something that you'd be able to just push down and just jump right up on top of it. That's what I want you to imagine could happen. And one more time.

Okay, good. Now take your toes just a little more apart and imagine that you're connecting in the sides of your hips towards the midline, not the bottom, not your, not your touch, but really right at the center of the pelvis here, right where your legs get into the sockets and the two sides of the pelvis connect. So at the pubic bone and the sacrum, they're connected inwards and come up again. Then bend your knees, lower your heels and straightened back up and up. Bend still a little activities so the arms are alert. One more time.

This direction bent down and now we're going to reverse bend heels up. Don't throw that away. I want you to keep the sensation of pressing into the roller. One more time. Bend heels. Good. Now, just to step a tiny bit to your right, just a tiny bit. So your left foot is lined up with your roller.

Wherever you are standing, and you're going to swing your free leg. Just swing it up and back. Swing the free leg, just loosening up the hip joint, standing sturdy and straight with your standing leg. Couple more times. Good. Bring that leg down and let's do the other side. Okay, so anchor that standing leg, rooting down, pulling up through your hip joint, pressing into those arms still and swing the free leg. However it feels like it feels good in the socket. So some people, your hip might feel better. A little turned out. Some people might feel better.

Little more parallel. Find your own hip swing few more times. Good. And bring it down. Good. Now turn to face me. You're going to pick up your roller. You're going to hold the sides of it. Now my arms are pretty short. So if I put my hands all the way on the sides here, it's a little awkward for my arms. So I have to kind of hold with my fingertips. You can decide how that feels for you guys and just start swinging the arms side to side.

The arm that is pressing into the roller makes the other arm move freely. So we're getting a little passive abduction in one arm while the other one bends. Good. Now we're going to go just to this side and we're going to repeat to that side. So just then down, up and down, up and down, and in the middle. Keep the rest of your body nice and stable.

Begin to notice how this opens up the ribs on that side and feel how the arm connects down to your sacrum. Like it starts to get a little bit of a hang time up there and now we'll swing it to the other side. Got To let it build a little bit. I picture those on carnival rides that starts swinging and then eventually go all the way over the top. So let the momentum built. Let the ribs begin to open. Feel the arm, get some height, feel the stretch going down all the way into your sacrum. Get some hang time a couple more, and then go up and up. Oh, over and down.

We're just going to swing it around really freely. There's no rules to this. I just want to let your arms begin to swing and move a couple more and then we'll swing it out the other way up. Been around swinging around, keeping your hips in the middle as we do it so we're not swaying the hips side to side. One more time. Loosening up the shoulders. Good. Now hold it down in front of you. Now we're going to do a a roll down exercise and I want you to watch out for this so you guys can turn to the middle again. So this roll down exercise, we want to sending the hips back into counterbalance.

So I want you to roll down and it might only be a few inches for some of us because the moment we'd start to go like this, that's where I want you to stop. Okay, so start by rolling down. Then when we come back up, we're going to lift the roller up overhead and roll it up and then roll back down again. Arking forward keeping your center of gravity over your feet. If you're going down pretty far, be suspicious because I'm pretty flexible and I'm only getting to about here because if I go further, that means I've switched it.

So I'm folding my hip joint. Instead. What I really want to do to keep going, guys, what I really want to do is think about taking the diaphragm and massaging it over your organs and then come back up. So there's a number of different ways you can do an exercise like this, but I'm specifically looking for a lift, a support of the so as up the front of your spine, holding your spine up as we roll forward and stretching this region right in here. Now bring it down. Last one and up. Now we are going to let it go farther if that's possible. So we're going to roll it down and then we're going to sweep it out towards the window back here. So you're going to roll it down and you're going to sweep it out towards the window. So you come up looking like a candy cane straight to the side, not letting your hips counterbalance and come down again through the center and sweep it out the other way.

Look like a candy cane and back down and over. Good. Keep going. And if we're doing this right here, we should have no strain in the back, but you should be feeling a lot of work, lot of work through the waist. Be Very specific with yourself that you're not taking your hips around as you go. Keep the legs right in the center. Good. One more time towards the window. Then go up and all the way over and down to the center and then go back the way you came. So towards the back wall, up towards the windows and down and then back towards the windows over and up.

And we're massaging the diaphragm. Continue to breathe. Let's do one more time towards the windows and over and one more time towards the back wall. This time when we hanged down in the middle, we're going to roll right back up to the center all the way up and then bring it down and place it on the floor. You can bend your knees if that's more appropriate for your body here. Head you're gonna roll your spine up. Now put one on the roller.

Bring your hands to your hips. Now just really light. You're going to roll the roller. When we do this, let the heel drop down towards the floor as the roller rolls towards you. So we're arking the foot over the roller where you're working on some ankle Catholics ability and then leave it so when you get to the balls of your toes, lift the heel up, keeping balance and low or it down harder than it seems. We're balancing on that standing leg and we're balancing to keep that roller in place one more time and stepped up to the floor. Let's do the other side. She feel pretty nice when you stand on it though, even though it's a really subtle massage and start gliding it.

Just getting that glide through the ankle and stimulating the sensory receptors at the sole of the foot is a wonderful way to wake up your feet and legs cover war times. Okay. I don't leave it by the ball of your foot. Find your balance and lift the heel and lower now the same muscles that we were using through the front body where it's not overly tense. It's only as much tension as you need to balance.

We don't need to squeeze the abs any more than that. How much do you actually need here to hold yourself up and to hold your ribs over your pelvis? Only use that much. One more time. Good. Okay. Now move your role or towards the middle of the room a bit so you can lie down on your back. You're going to have knees bent and put your feet on top of the roller.

Nope. When we do this position, give it a test for a moment. Roll the roller out in in once. What's important is that your roller isn't rolling on and off your mat here. So you either when you're at home, have to move forward or back on your mat to make sure you're not trying to get over the edge of your mat as you roll. So we're going to do basically footwork here.

We're going to start by warming up the upper back. So wrap your arms around your body like a straight jacket and hold onto your shoulder blades. If you can just get a little bit of a grip back there. And as you do that, you just get to make a little bit of space between the shoulder blades. Okay. And allow your breath to fill into that space.

Notice if the chest really wants to rise into the arms and just allow it to be a bit more gentle so you don't have to force the air in noticing the back ribs where they meet your spine and make a little more space where the ribs meet the spine. And then take your arms off your shoulders and interlace your fingers right over your pubic bone. Like you're holding a bowl in your hands, and as we inhale, bring the arms overhead and roll the roller away with your legs and then exhale, roll that back in. Now at home, this might be tricky. You might find that your roller slips away. The trick here is to be supporting your legs from your core, from your trunk, so you're not putting all that much weight on the roller. You're not trying to massage your legs with the roller.

We're just using the roller as a tool to get some nice opening motion through the whole leg. As you stretch the legs out, feel space between the hip bone and the belly of the thigh muscle. As you breathe. One more time like this. Good. Now stay in the stretched position so the arms are overhead, the legs are stretched. We're going to do three breaths here and think about a long activation through our rectus abdominis that goes from our sternum to our pubic bone. So as we inhale, feel the openness of your ribs, spine like a slinky.

As you exhale, just the very surface, the skin from your sternum towards your pubic bone, slides towards each other. It's not a tight squeeze. It's a surface connection. Now keep that connection as you inhale again, and exhale. Feel sternum towards the pubic bone, very surface sliding towards each other. And one more time.

So we're getting on elongated rectus abdominis contraction and bring your hands, your interlaced hands behind your head on the next exhalation. As you roll the roller in, you're going to roll your spine up, up and back down. Good. We're going to pick up the pace a little up and down. Continue to feel the surface connection. So everything beneath that relaxes back into the body.

Keep your head up now. Just the leg stretch away and stretch away. Pumping the abdominals with your breath, massaging your organs two more and one and bring it back down. Stretch the arms over head. Keep your feet on top of your roller. We're gonna go into roll up. Your legs will be straight.

Inhale as you lift your arms and your head, and exhale, roll your spine up, stretching forward, and then roll back down. Okay. And again, inhale, arms up, head up, roll your spine up and back down. Yeah. One more time. Like this.

Opening up the back. Stretch your arms out over your legs and back down. [inaudible]. Okay. Now we're going to do this, a little bit of a different variation. So we're going to have the legs turned out a little just so when we come up we can bend the knees and they'll open towards your shoulders.

A little more like a stomach massage. So again, arms up, head up, roll up. But this time we're going to come in and we're going to lift the arms up and then stretch it back down. And again, roll up, bend, lift and stretch back down. Roll up, give a nice tall lift. Okay. Get into the rolling motion that the roller provides for you.

Up and back. And on the next one we're going to stay up and bring the arms back behind you to the floor and bring the legs in. So now just like stomach massage, exhale and inhale. Exhale, keep the spine nice and tall. If you can for this version two more and hold it in. And now turn your palms or turn your fingers towards your body here towards your, your hips and roll back just a little bit into your sacrum and continue here.

So elbows back. If you start to feel that without you wanting to, your spine lifts up. That's going to tell you that you're overusing your hip flexor. So try to pull the roller in from here. Two more and one good. Okay, now stretch the legs back out. Move that roller away and come up to your knees and Hanse.

Make sure you have space in front of you to roll that once again and lean the hips back just a little as you inhale. And then exhale, bring yourself back up on top of your roller. Okay. And again, imagine that your tail is getting pulled back like a slingshot. And back up. One more time.

Back and up. Okay. Okay. Now Curl your toes under and sit back towards your heels. So we're gonna do a few version of like a, a gliding cat. I call it the gliding cat. So the first one, you're going to keep your heels, you keep your bottom much on your heels and you're going to roll forward. So your sitting bones shift back, but you remain sitting on your heels and then curl back by pulling your sitting bones into your heels and just come up to your fingertips, keeping your spine round and again, stretch and massage back as you stretch forward. Ribs like a slinky.

Open up the springs of your rims. Okay, one more time. Good. And then come up right. Let your toes relax back. And now our next version will stay with the hips up and stretch forward here. Tail comes up a little more now.

Now pull your sitting bones into your hamstrings. Embed the sitting bone into the hamstring to curl yourself up, and then stretch back forward. And again, curl it up and stretch back forward. Let's do two more of these. These look great guys. Very slinky like and last one. Step your right foot back and plant the toes into the floor.

Okay. And stretch here. Now this time when we come up, we're gonna keep the spine pretty straight, so you're gonna roll yourself back up and again, lengthen out and lift yourself back up so you have to take a lot of the weight off the roller to do that. One more good and switch legs. I don't know about you, but that gets you here. I don't know. I guess the on that other side and lift and two [inaudible] and three. Great. Let your role or come forward a bit and then lie down on your belly. Actually, no. What I'd like to do, I think I want to do this. Let's, let's do this where you lay on it, it's going to make your bottom stick up. This is a little bit of a release first, so you're going to lay down your front hip bones are going to be on the roller so it makes your bottom stick out.

It opens up your tailbone and your sitting bones. You can choose at this point to either keep the feet relaxed or you can curl the toes under whatever it feels best right now. But I want you to totally let your bottom open up and breathe into the tailbone sitting bone space. [inaudible] no, do curl your toes under and reach your heels back. So the knees straighten and then bend them back down.

Okay. And again, let's exhale as we reach back. And in this position I'd like you to feel the two front hipbones on the roller, but all of the space here by your bladder lifting away from the roller into the body, the legs may not be able to get all the way straight. It all depends on your hip flexors. So we exhale as we do it as though you're lifting the bladder away from the roller.

Okay? And one more time. And then keep the legs in that up position. Okay. And lift your right leg up, okay.

And bring it down. If your hips are a little tender, you can always put like a towel or another mat over your roller so it doesn't hurt. But if you exhale and you only move your leg in the range that you feel like you can keep your pelvis stable on the roller, it might be okay because we'll do one more time with each leg. [inaudible]. Okay, then let it relax again one more time. Now what I often find after this, we'll get the roller out from under your pelvis now and just lie on your belly with your wrist over the roller. What I often find though is after doing that, the front of the pelvis feels much more open to the floor. In order to do a good healthy extension, we want to have the hips open. If our hips are a little tight like this, then we have to choose to Tuck the pelvis or to arch the back.

So now hopefully the front of your pelvis feels a little more open into the floor and we'll be able to use that as our anchor point as we do some extension exercises through the upper body. So we're going to lift up and just kind of peek up over the ruler and then roll it away and imagine a real stretch. So roll the roller a little further and visualize as you roll that like you're stretching the tissue just to the point where it feels like it can recoil back and then lift back up again. So we're going to get this little rhythm going and want you to just go stretch and back up and stretch and back up and find your internal rhythm here. Stretch everything opening in the let it recoil to lift you back up.

Couple more times. Stretch and up, stretch and up. Good. And then stretch back down. Now let's see if we can add a little bit of a lift of the legs with this. So this stretches is just a micro stretch. I don't want you to really feel like it's your shoulders stretching up by your ears. I want you to feel like that stretch is more in the waist, in the ribs.

We've got this very thick fashional sheet, this for the Rocco Lumbar Fascia through the sacrum that goes all the way out into the lats. And I want you to get into the springiness of that and how that helps to lift both the upper and lower body. Okay. We'll give it a little stretch and then we'll lift it up and maybe the legs will lift with you. And again, stretch and lift, stretch and lift. One more time and lift. Now see if we can lift a little more. And Rock, you know that's like my favorite thing.

So we're gonna do a couple more of those if that's not appropriate for your body. Just keep doing what we were doing a moment ago and stretch it back out again. Lengthen yourself back down to the floor. Come on back up onto your hands and knees. Let's do a couple of those cats again. Those were awesome guys.

Those were awesome. Back up to your hands and knees and just a couple of these. Once again, just in case, just in case. Sometimes we get a lot of Gusto and the low back feels like it gets a little bit shortened and it's nice to give it a little a clearing. One more time. Great. Now you're going to put your knees on top of your roller hands on the floor. Okay, so we're going to do basically knee stretches here, but I don't want you to come from just the hips.

So what I'd like you to do first is feel the sense of the abdominals lifting up, lift your pubic bone up towards your navel, and then pull the legs in and back. I would like you to feel almost as though you're lifting yourself off the roller pol and back. So I don't want to see a flat spine here. I want to see a round spine. Everybody round. Look at your belly, look at your legs. Two more and one good. All right, come back for a moment.

Sometimes we need a little bit of a risk stretch after that. So just sit back, give your wrists a little little opening because we're going to do a pike version of that now as well. So we're going to bring it here and you're going to start with it a little closer to your ankles. And again, begin by lifting up through the pubic bone and come up to your toes. And then stretch back down to a plank. Let's do three more of these up. These look so good. I hope you're having fun. They're challenging.

Imagine that you could just lift right up into a handstand. Yeah, let's just do a couple more because I'm, I'm enjoying watching them. Let's do one more like you can lift up into a handstand and back down and step your feet to the floor right behind your roller and put your hands on the roller here and you can bend the knees a little if you need to, but we're going to do a little ripple of the spine, so you're going to roll it away and then curl up to your fingertips. And again, stretch and lift the pubic bone, pubic bone up, sitting bones down a couple more times. Pubic bone up, sitting bones down. One more. Great. And now come down. Wow. We're going to take the roller into your hands.

Okay. I'm going to reach forward and we're going to roll back to the floor. And this is a really fun one. I'm going to warn you right now. By Fun, I mean really hard. So we're going to stretch the arms overhead and then slide your legs into a tabletop position. Okay, so now I need to hold the roller with my fingertips here. And that's not a problem cause it's very light.

You're going to roll your head up, see if you can bring your legs through and up towards the ceiling and then back through and stretch them out. This is our double leg stretch with the roller and up and in and stretch. Good. Three more. See, these are great. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of fun. You get to really pull your knees in, you let the knees open a little bit so your feet can clear. And one more time. Look towards your abdomen and very nice. Come back down.

And now we're going to put the roller under your pelvis. So you're going to lift your pelvis up. [inaudible] find a comfortable spot under your sacrum so it shouldn't be all the way by your tail. So you talk. But I also don't want your back extremely arched. You have to find a spot where you feel that you can kind of Nessel onto it and your hands will be on the roller. To give you a little bit more balance. Take a nice comfortable breath in and on your gentle exhale.

Fold your right leg up into a tabletop and then inhale to bring it back to other side. Use gentle breath to keep your pelvis steady. If at any point you start to feel yourself straining with your breathing, like something like that, squeezing your stomach, give yourself a moment. Just have a moment to take another breath and allow everything to settle in. Now lift the right leg and meet it with the left leg. You may need to adjust on the roller now. That's fine.

Find your new balance point. Stretch your legs up, reach the right leg away. Now if that, um, left hamstring, if the hamstring that's up is too tight, you can bend that knee a little bit and said, that's fine, but I don't want you just to let yourself arch your back all the way into it. Keep your pelvis, your ribs even and bring it up. And again, other leg. Now reach it down and by even I mean maintain the space between your pelvis and your rib cage. First leg reaches and bring it up. Uh, their leg reaches. And now let's give it some, some awesome fun to it. Let's pulse the scissors, pulse and pulse and pulse and one more with each leg.

And then turn it into a bicycle stretch. I don't want to throw this bicycle away. Sometimes I see these bicycles and you're just kicking your legs around. I want to see you really working to Paul the back of the leg. So the hamstrings working hard to activate the back of the leg and helps you elongate the front of the leg. Let's circle the other direction.

Even this direction, the back of the leg is working and our entire trunk is working to keep the pelvis and ribs stable for three, two and one both legs, up, hands on the roller. On the top of it, we're going to do a roll over. So as your legs roll overhead, your arms are going to roll the roller to their extended. So ready, roll it over. You're already partway there, extend through your arms, and we're not going to open and close the legs here. We're just going to roll back onto it and pull the pelvis back. Good. So this is phase one. If you can do this, if this is not appropriate for your body, guys can keep doing a couple more here. If it's not appropriate for your body, you can just work on straightening and bending your legs here and that could very well be enough. But phase one of the rollover is to land with your legs upright.

Phase two or I would say to advance it, you're going to let your legs tip just to use a demonstration here. Let your legs tip keeping your body like a seesaw so the legs can keep going. The chest lifts up and you extend through the upper spine and then we pull back in and roll over. So it's a, it's a fish variation and I'll show that again as we come down. The leg stays sturdy, the chest lifts, it's not too much back art. So we keep this sturdy connection that we built in the front, but maybe the breastbone goes towards the back and then we gather it back in and roll over. Good.

Let's see if we can do two more of these of whatever's appropriate for you. It feels good to just like go back and indulge in the back bend, but I actually want you to let the, the back bend to be mostly in the upper upper regions sternum collarbones upper ribs, not so much of the low back. Last one, finishing it up. Whatever feels best for you today, and then let your knees come into your chest and just let that stretch happens. So when your knees are in your chest and the roller is up against your sacrum, there's a little stretch through the sacred here. And then let the rollers scoot away from your bottom and put your feet on top of it. We're going to do some bridges here now, so find a comfortable distance.

If it's too far away, you'll end up almost feeling some strain in the knee. So just make sure you're in a position where your feet are right on top of it. The goal of these bridges here is that the roller will not move at all. So again, gentle breath in and on the gentle breath out. The belly drops in and relaxes and then the pelvis will roll up.

Let your feet be comfortably draped over the roller. Now I'd like this roll down to begin all the way up by the sternum and upper spine. So let the upper most vertebrae begin to find their way to the floor. Just like rain drops straight down each ring of ribs dropping down into the floor. And again, rolling up through the hips. [inaudible] draping the foot over the roller and opening the hips to the sky.

Make sure you're not opening your navel to the sky. It's really the hips and then low are yourself. Back Down. We're going to do two more of these. Rolling up. Okay. Relaxing a little through the jaw.

Give yourself a lot of time in this upper upper part, allowing each ring of ribs to find its way back to the floor. And on the last one, we're going to stay up and we're going to do small rolling of the feet out and in, out and in small motion. Four, three, two. Hold it in on one. Bring your arms overhead and again, let each vertebra come down.

Now you can give yourself a little bit of a sense of reaching your tail towards the roller, stretching that low back out into the floor. Great. Now we're going to come on up to a seated position. Okay. And we're going to do a little bit of a massaging, rolling kind of motion here. So you're going to sit on top of your ruler.

Your hands will be on the floor behind you. We're gonna work through the hips a little bit now that we just really worked the hamstrings and back of the leg. Let's start with one leg straight. Um, let's straighten the leg that's closer to the windows skies for now and roll on that hip. So you tip into that hip a little bit. Now a little word on using the foam roller. I know that it's very popular to use a roller to roll out things like your it band and things like that. Um, rollers can be a little bit hard for your tissue to respond to. What I want you to visualize that you're doing here is not trying to work out muscles, but I actually want you to feel like you're sponging through.

So it's a lighter motion, like your sponging through the tissue, like a squeegee. You go through and then it re saturates and you roll through and then it resets rates. Let's do a couple more times so it's a softer motion. And now pick up that leg and cross it over the other and tip and work through here a little bit up and down. Okay. Just a couple more of these. Okay.

I'm going to switch sides just for visual purposes. Now you're going to continue to roll towards the side and you're going to anchor that leg into the floor and you're going to set up the side of your hip on the roller. I want you to be not on the bone of your, of your leg or on the bones of your pelvis, but really in the muscle on the side there and come down to your forearm. Essentially, you're almost in a side plank and this is just propping you up a little bit here. Other hand on your hip and let's go up and down and up and down, up 10 down, two more. Okay, hold it up. Circle. I have my bottom leg turned out.

I find that that gives me a little more of an anchor onto the floor and that bottom leg is actually working a lot to lift up. Circle the other way. We're really anchoring into the floor and truly use that arm. Use that leg, feel like you're in a side plank position. Great. Now Bend your knees and sit next to your roller here and put the hand on the ruler. So we're going to stretch away from the middle of the room and then stretch back up. Now there's a lovely stretch available here. So turn your head away from the roller and then just let the arm roll the roller away a little bit, getting a stretch through the neck and then let that ease back in and again, over and up and stretch.

And that to this theme of finding a resilient springiness. Let this exercise find that we don't need the biggest stretch. Want you to go to where you feel like your tissues. Bring you right back again. One more time and opening. Good. Turn towards the roller. Now put both hands on it and stretch away and then the chest comes up and again, stretch away.

Okay, wind in your waist. As you tip forward, I want you to lift your bladder once again so you can get a lift and twist reading out of the waist to more lift and twist and wringing out of the waste. One more time. Good. All right, now we're going to go to the other sides. We're going to sit back on the roller again and we're going to begin rolling out the other leg. So the leg for us here that is further from the windows. What we're going to start with here and then begin rolling here.

So just a small tip first and again, keep in mind a quality of this motion. We're not trying to like massage it out. We're not even searching for knots. If you notice a little something, give it your attention and just imagine that you're trying to get some fluid into there. Um, muscle tension, muscle knots may or may not really be a thing. I don't know the idea of a muscle being tight. I don't know if that is really accurately what's happening in the body.

What I see, what I imagine I should say, what I imagine is that things are just glued together and when everything gets stuck together, it starts to get bunched here and more disorganized. So I want you to imagine that what you're really doing here is just trying to glide tissue. So you're trying to get some fluid into there and that can't happen by grinding into it. Now let's lift that leg up and cross it over, tip into it a little bit more. And now think about doing that here. So anywhere that you do some kind of myofascial release or whatever apparatus you use, whether you use a ball or a roller or if you get a massage, try to think about that in your mind. What the goal is there. The goal is getting fluid into it. Let's do a few more times here and then continue turning on to that side.

So you're going to straighten the leg. You were just massaging. You're going to anchor that foot into the floor. I find that a little bit of a turnout is best for me to anchor. Get your forearm into the ground there. Push the floor away from you a little bit and almost levitate from that roller.

Lift your leg up and down. The free hand can be on the hip. If you feel like you need more balance, you can put it on your roller otherwise right there on your hip and then that actually gives you a little feedback to show you. If you're moving your pelvis, you'll probably feel if you're moving your felt pelvis because it won't feel so great on the roller. Let's do a couple more and then we'll hold it up and circle. When we circle, I want you to imagine if you were in water that you're making like a like good for texts like a whatever, a tornado kind of motion. I want to see like you're making something happen with that leg. We're not just circling it. Let's go the other way. Where do these leg circles begin? They don't really begin just in the head.

They don't begin right here. They begin up here, up here. This is where they begin. Spin it around. Make something happen. Change the space around you with that leg motion and then have a seat bending the knees head. We'll move into our mermaid side bend so we stretch away from the midline and then back up. Good and give that little look away. Stretch your neck and again stretching. Find the resilient moments, stretch and let it pull you back and one more time. Let it pull you back and then turned towards your roller and stretch it out.

Chest comes up and again, lift your bladder. Try not to lay on your leg. Try to actually lift yourself away from that thigh. As you stretch forward, you're going to get a little more out of that. Let's do two more and last one. Oh, that's snaking. Snaking Ness. Sneakiness looks so lovely. Beautiful. Okay.

Let's turn the roller now. Long ways and we're gonna lie your spine along the roller. We'll try and get to every position here with the roller and let this just give you ideas. Honestly, what I hope is that you will get into each of these positions. You'll start playing with your roller and then you'll just start playing around and discovering things that your body wants to do. Right now we're just kind of doing what my buddy likes to do and what I, what I like watching.

So we're going to start with your arms by your sides here and let's make the arms straight and let's open them to a load. Me So we have some alert activity in the arms when we first laid down. It can be tempting to arch the back up instead of tucking the pelvis or changing the rib cage to do that. See how much you can do with just the breath alone. So try to find that, um, long contraction of your rectus abdominis of your front abdominals first. So that creates a containment panel in the front of the abdomen.

And that brings a little more of the breath down into your basement and open into your back. Let the weight of your kidneys release into the back of the ribs. And perhaps just a few of these gentle breaths have brought a little more contact between your spine and the roller without having to Tuck your pelvis or change your rib cage. Now on the next exhalation, float your right leg up into a tabletop position and then bring it back down. I'm curious, let's see if we can do this on an inhale cause, but I'd like to see is that our deep hip flexor are so as muscle from our inner thighs here running up the front of the spine and attaches to the front right here where it weaves together with the diaphragm. And if we inhale, we expand the diaphragm. We anchor this side of the, so as in what does it feel like if we lift the leg up at that moment? Let's give it a try. So gentle breathing, gentle inhalation and float the leg up and then bring it back down.

I like that. I think that seems pretty cool. Um, you can decide what feels right for your body, but give it a try because really this is our anchor point when we lift the leg. Great. Last one. Now we're going to bring the legs all the way together, all the way together. Zip them together, feet together. If it hurts your knees to have them together, you can let the knees be slightly apart. Otherwise pull up the seam of your inner thighs and now lift the arms up towards the ceiling and balance harder than it looks.

We're balancing here. Open the arms on the inhale and then exhale, bring them back. That looks great. And again, open and bring them back. Bring the two sides of your waist towards the midline so it's not just front to back sides of the waist, towards the midline. Cool. One more of these.

And then let's do some sweeping circles. Arms come up, sweep around and down. Now, same anchor point. What does it take to keep this part anchored in? Inhale and inflate it so you have some stability from that spot and then the arms can move freely, but staying connected to your trunk. Let's switch direction with the circles open. I would like this to be a little more like exciting, like a little more invigorating. I want something happening here. Yes, something happening. Put some energy into it. One more time.

Okay, great. Okay, now open the feet back up again a little bit. Bring the arms back up towards the ceiling. Now we're going to lift up one leg at a time in this balanced position. Let's see about using the inhale. Inhale and lift the leg and exhale, bring it down.

Remember we've got this front surface woven together, keeping the length. We've got the sides coming towards the midlines. We've got a nice tensioning in our abdominals, the go around the waist, and that's what's going to provide us this balance or show us where our challenges are. Let's do one more time with each leg. Good. And now bring your hands behind your head, keeping the balance with your legs. Peel your spine up a few vertebrae and then lower back down. Okay.

And again, so we're rolling right into that region. And let's, let me get to the top there. Let's give it an inhale. So we roll up relaxing through the abdominal so we can roll over and inhale, feel an expansion back here, and then exhale unfurl back down. Let's do two more just like that and unfurl back down. One more time.

Inhale, opening the back and back down. Down. Down we go. Good. Okay. Now in order to get off of this, let's all roll towards me to let the roller come out from under you. Very nice. Just take a moment to see what your spine feels like after coming out from the roller. [inaudible].

Good. Now we're going to come back up to a seated position. I just want you to cross the legs instead of crossing the legs and we're gonna roll forward and up. Just nice and easy and roll and up and roll. And up a few more times and then put your calves on the roller. We're going to give it a little bit of that squeegee idea here. Just loose. Now if you tighten your feet here, nothing will really happen.

Give it a try for a second. Just flex your feet. Nothing really happens and then relax your feet and you can really get a little more emotion in that tissue here. Let's run up and down a little bit. Try a little bit lower, try it a little bit higher. Find your spots. Cool. Good.

Now we're going to do tendon stretch so your legs will be straight out here in a set your hands up. It's going to be a little too much to have your fingers towards you. Usually, at least it is for me and you fingers towards the side here. I'm going to lift up through your hips and roll the roller away, opening up your chest and then pull it back. Good. Sweep it through. I cannot do this exercise right now cause I have a little bit of a, I have a port in my arm so I cannot do this exercise here. Pull it back through, lift your belly up, drop your head down and again, stretch and open and pull it back through.

One more time. Stretch open and pull it back through. Everybody holds here for a moment and then come back down. Very, very nice. Good. Cross your legs and come back up to your hands and knees here and once again, nice and easy clearing motion. Chest opens and roll back up and again, stretch and roll back up and stretch and roll. Okay, this is a nice way just to clear in between exercises.

Plus we're kind of moving into a close right here and curl your toes under. You're going to lift your hips up and walk your feet so your hands and feet are both anchored onto the floor here. You're going to Tuck your head in, roll up onto your toes. Now I want you to imagine there's a rope around your waist lifting you up towards the ceiling. So as we exhale and lower the heels, you're draping your spine over that rope so we're not rocking back and forth to your hands and feet. The weight is staying in your hands. Exhale, belly lifts as the heels lower and down. I want to give a little bit of an example of this, so as she lowers her heels, I'm lifting her up here. Go ahead, come up onto the toes. So this part really stays lifted and lower those heels one more time and we get a nice stretch. This is the area we've been working on quite a bit.

As the heels lower, I want you to roll your spine up, take your roller with you, take your hands to the side of it, roll yourself up using those same muscles and then roll back down again. If your back is tender, if you have a bulging disks or something in your low back or Stenosis, you'll want to bend your knees instead there and put your hands back on top. We're going to repeat again up on your toes, Belize. Lifting up. Almost be like you're gonna do a handstand once again, and then lower the heels and lift the waist and roll back up. It's tempting to drop back.

We're going to keep doing those lifts and lowers of the heels a couple more times. So I'm going to put my hand on her back right here, and I want her to keep her upper spine against my hand so she's not traveling away at all. Good. Stay right here against my hand. One more. That's it. That's it. So it's like up into the, up into the belly. Now the heels lower and we're going to roll back up. Take the roller with you. Okay. And one more time. Roll that down. I call this a stomach massage.

It's a, it's another kind of stomach massage. We're going to do this one more time. Up onto the toes. If there were a wall right behind your head, your upper back, and your head would remain against the wall. Good. Two more. [inaudible].

And this time we're gonna leave the roller and roll up through your spine. Let your arms just hang by your sides. You can bend your knees if he feels tender in your back. [inaudible] bring one arm up, little little to the side. Bend and down. Still keeping that sensation of lift. It's not tension, it's just lift one more of these to each side.

Having a quiet moment with it. Let your legs open. Okay. Bend your knees and let your fingers come to the inner thighs. Wag your tail to the right and then wag your tail to the left. Look back towards it.

One more of these to each side. Okay. And then to the center and then curl the pelvis and then a reached the tail back. So for these there's going to be minimal motion in the head and shoulders curl and back and curl and back. And on the next curl we're going to pull the spine up.

Step the feet together or at least under the hips. And one last time, interlace your fingers and open yourself up from floor to ceiling. Right? And the arms come down. And that is all. Thank you so much everybody here. Thank you so much everybody. There is guys.

Feel the Length - Playlist 2: Roll to Release

Comments

1 person likes this.
so creative and fun!!! thank you Jennifer
A great class - a perfect combination of awakening and stretching the body and challenging moves. Thank you for the work and energy you put into every class making them unique and satisfying. The time just flew by in this one! all the best to you! xx
1 person likes this.
Just loved this! Agree with sandyjgrant. The tip for lifting the leg while laying on the roller on the inhale was very helpful for me. My new regular roller class. Thanks!
1 person likes this.
I feel amazing after this class! Thank you❤️
1 person likes this.
Great class! What a great spirit you have. This will get me through my day!
2 people like this.
Very great class and excellent teacher!
1 person likes this.
Amazing class! Love how the foam roller releases the tension in my body. Thank you:)
1 person likes this.
Excellent instruction to cue just enough and have it be understood without question! Such a balance of feel good and challenge!
1 person likes this.
what an awesome class! my favorite one on here so far. :)
1 person likes this.
Fabulous class - thank you so much!
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