Prenatal Reformer Flow

Hi, welcome back. I'm so excited to be here. Doing another prenatal Polonius reformer classes. Class is designed to just make you feel good and nice and open. And I really hope that it does that for you. So for this class, you're going to need a jump board that we're going to be using for a work and maybe a little pad to help your back feel a little bit, come from more comfortable on that jump border. You can use a towel. And the other thing that you might want to have handy is for our arm we're going to be doing a kneeling is maybe like a yoga brick.

Or if you have like a little moon box, you can use that as well. If not, maybe you can roll up a towel. And when we get there, I'll be a little bit more specific about what you might mean. So those are the things that you'll need in addition to, of course, your reformer. So we're going to start sitting side with your legs crossed just right on your bottom. And I'm on a half a spring, so I'm on a really light spring. You're more than welcome to do it a little bit heavier, but I think you'll enjoy, especially for this warm up to just be working a little bit lighter. So I want you to place your right hand or whichever way you're facing into the foot bar here. The other hand just extended out to the sides.

So we're going to start with just a little bit of lateral movement as we go. Push the carriage out. We're going to take the breath out. Exhale. Then inhale, exhale. I want you to bend your elbow as you come in and Xcel over. So there's really a lot of force or you know, big contracts or anything here.

It's just more about just letting the carriage glide and letting the body move in here and upward and do four of these and exhale. Now we're going to go into the lateral flection and going to little circle. So you're going to go exhale and circle around. So again, just kind of free and exhale and circle around. Grab your inhale and exhale and circle around.

And one more time just taking that ride and that gliding of the carriage. And circle around. It's a very nice and simple. Now I'd like you to sit facing your foot bar, kind of straddling the carriage here, and I want you to place your hands down or your arms are there, down on the carriage and your forehead on your forearms. So you're going to XL, pelvic Kerlin, bring the carriage forward. Then inhale, reach it back. So again, very subtle. The carrots just moves because your pelvis is moving and inhale, reach it back. Just feeling that Nice, beautiful rotation of your pelvis underneath your body and out away from the body. XL underneath the body and away wants you to continue this. But I want you to feel the sensation of doing it up on the hands.

So exhale and inhale. So again, just think the carries doesn't move without that pelvis. And when you're in that light spring, it just feels really good to manipulate the carriage with the pelvic movement. Exhale and inhale. One more time here and exhale and inhale. I want you to continue, but take both hands over to the right side, sir, doing a little bit of on rotation so you're getting a little extra oblique work.

Inhale, exhale and inhale so you're rocking back onto your sits bones and then forward onto your pubic bone. Inhale, one more time and exhale and in him. Then I want you to take your hands over to the other side and continue XL underneath you. And inhale back. Now you can really ground your feet into the floor is you have a higher reformer. Just go ahead and let your feet dangle. If that feels comfortable. Exhale and inhale. One more time and exhale and emails are just really nice and short and sweet.

Bring both hands to the center and come up and we're going to do the other side with a lateral flection. So crossing your legs, sitting right on the center of the carriage here into the side bend. Exhale and inhale up. Bend that elbow. So again, just enjoy that spinal movements and just being drawn into the stretch as you go over to the side and all the way up. Give me one more exhale and then we'll go ahead and add the rotation and Xcel rotate, drop in the chest forward toward the thigh and bring it around XL and rotate. And it just feel so good to let that spine kinda turn and that rotate that rotation.

Just guide the solutes forward and bring it around one more time and exhale and rotate and all the way up. So now I'd like you to come forward again, this is a little bit of a longer warmup and I want you to go onto one spring now just so that we can feel a little bit more seated upright. I'm going to have you actually do a small beat with your feet on the platform versus the foot bar today. So it's very simple. You're not going to be able to extend your legs all the way, but we're going to do kind of like a, a little bit of a modified Tesla. Just mobilize the spinal a little bit more so as you extend the legs, they won't extend all the way.

I just want you to think of bringing the upper body slightly down toward the lower body. Then inhale, bring it up. So kind of like you're doing an upper pipe kind of hooking the upper body up and over and in Haleigh. So very simple and just fill the scapula as they come over and around. But you'll also start to get this really nice subtle legwork here. Okay, and give me one more then we'll do it on rotation and XL and bring it up. Rotate to the left just four times to the left.

Exhale and bring it XL curve and bring it up. Restacking the spine on that rotation. Just fill that up and over like a hook and then unfold that hook and reach the energy up. Bend over and then connect it to the other side. Spiral around and up and over and just feel that natural dance like movement here and Exhale, kind of coordinating everything together. Just keeping that sequencing. Exhale, just that gentle abdominal control and exhale come up and release to feel really nice and good in your spine now. So, but I'd like you to do is gently come up on your knees and I want you to take your foot bar down. You're going to place your hands on the platform here.

So from here you're going to extend the pelvis back and you're going to move the carriage. Then you're going to come into a little cat stretch and bring it forward. So we already did this earlier in the seated position, but now we're going to do it in the kneeling position. So just a couple of those. My pelvis is what initiates the movement into taking into the leg movement.

So now what I want you to do is I want you to lift your feet slightly and internally rotate your femurs when you're in the pike position. Then I should go into the back position. I want to extend your back and externally rotate your femurs. Then Xcel internally rotate and come into the pike. So we're marrying this femur rotation with the pelvic rotation.

Exhale and inhale. I'm going into a little bit of an anterior tilt here and exhale, and again, the movement of my pelvis and the legs. It's what's moving the carriage and I'm just on one sprain. One more time, and x, excuse me, inhale and exhale. Bring the legs back to the neutral. Now this time I want you to just kind of internally rotate your shoulders.

You can even bring your fingers toward each other. You're in your pike, and then I want you to externally rotate your shoulders as you come into the extension, a little anterior tilt and internally rotate come into your pike. Now you're going to have to kind of turn your hands on the platform, which isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, I realize, but I just want you to feel the internal rotation of the Humerus and the opening of the Scapula as you come into the pike. Then the external rotation and the closing of the Scapula. One more time internally rotate, come in to the pike and exhale. So we just really kind of played with coordinating some femur rotation and some humorous rotation with our cat stretch. We're going to move onto our foot works.

I want you to load your spring up a little bit heavier, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then we're gonna go ahead and get our jump board. Okay, so with our jump board here, we're basically using our junk board to elevate our chest because we can no longer live supine once we're past kind of that 2022 week mark of pregnancy. So you're going to take one of the braces of your jump board and you're gonna press it up against, whoops, the shoulder rest all the way if you took were reformed my other prenatal weight former class, I do this work in my first series of prenatal reformer classes. Then all I'm going to do with this pad is I'm just gonna place it at the edge here, so it's just a little bit more comfortable on my back. So we're going to go ahead and sit and I want you to work in your VI positions here today.

So we're going to be in a small view and just let your shoulders relax it. If you need to put a pillow or a cushion under your head, you absolutely can do so. So take your breath in and you're going to press out. Exhale. And then Helen, now what I love about this position other than that makes it nicer to breathe. It's not so uncomfortable is that I kind of can feel this length of my pelvis as I'm kind of on this. Um, decline here, can really feel my pelvis get low away from my torso, which kind of provides us like little sense of traction, might be a little too liberal here, but I really love the sensation that it gives me and by doing these v positions that can really feel that beautiful work in my head, doctors as well as my hamstrings. One more time pressing the heels together and we'll go to the wide v position, flexing those feet and exhale and join that expansion as you come in.

Exhale, just letting the chest nice and open China. Just feel like you're sinking and melting. And did that jump board drawed in XL and just feeling that strength that you're developing in those legs you need. Really my strong legs for Labor. They're going to come in handy for whatever position you may give birth in.

And then of course that mobility last two and exhale and inhale control it in. And one more. Now we're going to move on to the wide v on the toes m press. I want you to be really aware that you're pushing equally through both legs, which can be tough to do in both legs or on the foot bar, but I want you to feel like there's that 50 50 effort and then I want you to draw that energy up into the body and then let it flow back out and Xcel jaw up into the body and inhale it of flow back out. So getting that sense of that pelvic floor contraction as well.

Three more. Inhale [inaudible] and too. And then we're going to move into some calf work, which is really important to keep our circulation nice and healthy. So we're going to come back to parallel toes. I want you to press out now without going into hyperextension of your knees, especially if you're in your third trimester. You have that relaxed and surging through your body.

Be careful you don't lock out with your knees. Keep your hamstrings connected and XL press up. Inhale. So it's really good if you're dealing with cramping in your feet and your lower legs, which can happen in the third trimester or some water retention as well, just to keep that blood flow just to keep everything nice and supple. And I said healthy, but you're also strengthening those feet. You're strengthening those calves and the Tibialis anterior at the front of the Shin as well.

And press up. Yeah, and just let your body melt into that jump board. Give me two more and up last one and hold it at and slowly bend your knees to come in. I'd like you to roll onto one side and go ahead and sit yourself up. Now we're going to go into some single leg work and I'd like you to lower your spring and you have a choice. You can go down to like two springs where you can go down to one and a half spring for this single leg work whenever it feels more comfortable to you.

So wants you to lie on your side. Now I'm choosing to keep the jump board up because I'm going to take you into some lateral flection here. You could of course do lying side all the way down because it's not unsafe to be all the way down on the line side position. But lying here, bend your elbow, feels comfortable and bring your tell up on the bar just a little bit in front of the midway point and you're going to be internally rotated with that thigh and you're going to do a single leg extension here. So exhale, I want you to push out. Then inhale, keep that internal rotation as you draw in, Xcel out and keep that internal rotation. So just feel that femur spiraling inward. And what that does is it narrows the front of the Pelvis, but it widens the back of the pelvis and you can feel that here as you specially as you draw the carriage.

And give me two more XL and Helen and one more time, exhale and inhale. So we're going to move into external rotation on the heel. So you want to feel nice. Really Nice and open in the front of the pelvis and you're going to press out, exhale. And in Helen exhale and inhale, Dryden. Exhale. So it's keeping that beautiful work in that hip x. That feels really, really nice to just feel that opening that knee, reaching up toward the ceiling.

You're strengthening those legs. Yeah. I don't believe it's done much these days, but there was a period in the history of childbirth where lying side with your leg up in this position was the preferred way to give birth. Believe it or not. Exhale. Yeah, and bring it in. Hold it. Now you're going to come to a flat foot position. So what I mean by that is extend the leg out and your foot should be all the way flat. Push into the foot bar, and I want your heel to be in line with your body.

And now this is where I'm going to add the lateral flection. Now be nice to yourself because this movement is very small because look, I'm already up elevated, so I'm going to bring the arm up. I'm going to bend the knee and I'm only going to bend the knee as far as I can. Keep the heel down, taking my breath in. As I push out, I'm going to lift the upper body up into a teeny, tiny little, we'll say BB right here. Little lateral flections is gliding the rib cage down toward the hips.

Then inhale, bring it down, exos. It just think of it as really subtle and contained and that was hard. It's very tempting here to lift your head first, but make sure the head follows the movement of the rib cage and inhale so small, but definitely not short on work and Accela [inaudible] and give me two more here and XL up. It should feel really good. Just feel that strength and last one.

Now this time you're going to extend your bottom arm and the top hand on your head and inhale. Now we just can do four of these. You're going to slice that arm and rotate in. How about very small Xcel slicing? I'm in rotation also for the work in the hip. Abductors here an inhale, exhale, slicey arm and rotate. And in hell, if you feel the side of your neck, that's okay to a certain extent because you're holding your head up there and hold it there. And I was just going to finish a little tiny pulses. One, you're not going to extend your knee all the way to three, four, five, six, seven. Just get that extra little work in the hip abductors and extend all the way.

So let's go ahead and do the other side. So slowly sit yourself up and turn yourself around. We start with internal rotation, so getting your hips in line with your shoulders here. So make sure your hips aren't too far back or forward toe on the foot bar, just a little bit in front of that halfway position and press out. Exhale. So again, it's really important where you draw the kerogen in particular that you feel that femur internal rotation as you come in. That's going to be really, really important here. Exhale, inhale, and you're getting that deep crease in that hip.

And it's interesting because internal rotation actually for some people I find feels really, really good in their hip joint because we're still used to working parallel or extending my rotation that when we balance it out with a little internal rotation, it's just a really nice compliment for that balance. And I love the weight. Just kind of lubricates and mobilizes my hip as well. Last one, and now going onto the heel, makes sure the Carey does all the way in, so you're safe getting that external rotation. So we're doing the opposite here. Exhale, keep the hips nice and square. Fill that continual opening. You just let that leg open as you pull the carriage in. Exhale in Helen [inaudible] XL, this feeling that bottom working here. Exhale.

Inhale, do three more and too. And last one for me please. And now we go into the flat foot position. So if take the foot parallel, go ahead and extend it all the way out and just take a little peek. Make sure that your heels in line with your sitz bone. This arm is going to come up. Bring the carriage in, bend the knee as much as you can.

Keeping it parallel to where the heel stays and tap to the bar. Then Xcel lift up and in Helen, so feel that beautiful gliding of the rib cage down toward the pelvis so you can enjoy the subtle quality of this movement. Kind of think of the concept of less is more here. Member, do not initiate from your head. Let the hedges lift as a result. The rib cage gliding down toward that pelvis.

It's just a gliding motion. Sliding motion. Last one. Exhale. Bring the bottom arm out top, pin on the head, bring it down four times with the rotation twists. Look toward the heel and in how back. Yeah, XL twist. So you're feeling that waste. You're feeling that outside of the hip. Two more. Yeah. And the last one.

Yeah, and come about halfway in. Bend your elbow and 10 little pulses. One, two, three, four. Fill that work. Keep the like parallel an eight and nine. Squeeze out on 10 slowly bring it in and come all the way. Now I want to do just a really short little hip work series.

So I want you to go to one and a half spring. I'm not going to lie to you. Getting into this position with the jump board isn't always so elegant or easy. So I want you to sit back on your carriage and lie back. Yeah, very easily. One foot into this drop at a time. Now you can do this if you're feeling particularly unstable in your pelvis, you can do this with the straps over the knees, wants you to keep your legs about hip distance apart in a slight bending your knee. Very short here. We're going to go down and up. Now, why didn't you legs to comedy? The belly, so the belly literally can go right in between. The thighs here is going to feel more comfortable for you.

So you're thinking about moving from the hip, from the hamstrings as you'd go down. But again, this is more about mobilizing those hips and opening that pelvis and feeling that stretch. And if you're really tight in your lower back as you bring your legs up into the angel, fill that lengthening through your lower spine here, which feels really fantastic. Now here you're going to do like a little what I call a mermaid, but we're going to do a baby mermaid. So we're going to bring the legs down, Ben Dinan, extend all the way. Just almost bring the legs down, bend in, and now I want you to add articulation of your feet. So watch my feet. I'm going to push through the balls, my feet, and then point, bring it up, flex, push through the balls of my feet. Think of a cat on your lap just needing and push through the balls of the feet and bring it in and it makes sure you don't go too low because you may lose the integrity of your torso position. You're controlling a center body, but just feel that pushing that stretch to the feet and bring it in one more time and push.

Now come in and flex your feet into a frog. You're going to XL excellently. Rotate. Let the carriage come in. Then inhale, spiral back to parallel at the carriage. Come out XL in oxy. I say internally, rotate externally, rotate income back to your frog. Your heels won't touch here. Then spiral and go back to the parallel.

So you're feeling a little bit of that work in the hip, but most more. Again, I'm just focusing on mobilizing your hips today. Press and excellently rotate. Bring it in and back to parallel. You might find that you want to do this for a while. It feels good and reach it.

This is your last one and extend. Hold it there. And like I said, just a nice short and sweet hip work series. Take your right foot out, place it on the foot bar, your left foot. Now might hear a little crash here. I'm just going to let them fall and I'm going to come out and we're done with our junk board and we're gonna move on to our seated abdominal series.

Okay, we're moving onto a seated abdominal work series. I love this series. Now you could work on one spring or a half of spring, whatever you feel most comfortable with. But I want you to take your straps, put them all the way up to your elbow, and then you're going to slip your hands through. So you're holding just like that. So you can take your breath in. And we're going to move a little bit faster, a little bit more steady here. So I want you to roll into the posterior tilt and then roll out of it well into the posterior tilt and roll out four of these.

So again, we've done quite a few of these in our warm up so they should feel really familiar and comfortable. And then we're going to go from this curved position into a flat back position. So exhale, don't go very far, far and in hell that and exhale and inhale up. So this is an abdominal work in the sense that we normally think of it, it's abdominal work more in the sense of just controlling that torso. One more time, exhale.

And now I want you to back round your pelvis, bring your chin down towards your chest. Is very gently and extend. You're going to lose the slack on the strap, which is fine. Hinge. I call this through the pipe. I do a lot of different versions of this in my class, this and roll three. When you come into the extension of the diagonal, you lose tension in the strap, which is fine.

Hinge and roll slowly through your spine and reach the torso out on the diagonal. One more time. Hinz and bring the pelvis underneath you and roll all the way up. Now this next one started in the flat position. We're going to dip the elbow down. I'm Rick. I call this rock the baby. So rock and bring it up, which is very appropriate. Correct.

So you're going to dip your elbow down into rotation, slight hinge back and rock the baby. An app. I just have to say my son who's very excited to be a big brother, picks a many delicate things up in our house and rocks them and things rock and my baby. And the funniest thing he likes to rock is an egg. When we make breakfast in the morning. So here you go. You're rocking your babies. So elbow dips down and rotate, slight hinge back and up and slight hinge back elbow comes back to your feeling. A little bit of that rotation, that Nice, so bleak work.

And add two more. Exhale and up. One more time for me and exhale and hold it up. Now bring your hands together. You're in a prayer position here. XL, extend the arms up and inhale, bring them down XL. Extend the arms up, reaching, lifting through your body and bring them down. You can slightly press your hands together. So once you to fill the elevation through the pelvic floor, through the whole bodies, you lift up and then let it just slowly sink, not collapse or loser control to just fill the rising energy through the body. And then the descending energy through your body. One more time, open out to the side.

And Rice is a nice little gentle abdominal work series. So here we're going to move on to some full body work. So I want you to come to the edge of the carriage here and I want you to bring your foot bar down. Now you can work on one spring here or you can work on a half a spring here and you're just going to have to adjust to make sure what feels better for you. So you want to stand as close to the foot bars who can, you're going to roll down and place your hands on the edge of the carriage.

You're going to hinge out certain kind of a modified up stretch position. Well, you're in the obstruct position or you're just not up on the carriage. And then you're going to hinge in keeping the fat, the back flat, excuse me, XL forward and inhale, come back and flat back. So again, nice shoulder work. Nice, full body control forward and bring it back one more time and forward. Now you're going to roll through the spine and then roll back out. So now we're rolling, not flat back through the spine and dip the head down and read. So kind of like you're diving back down into a pool up from the pelvis. You're lifting up and then dive. So now to move on, you're going to look under your arm. You're going to roll up on the rotation, roll around to the other side and down, rolling upstream to feel beautiful hamstring stretch.

This is going to be our hamstring stretch for the day and rolled down so you still have that opens up the pelvis. Even if you sway a little bit from side to side, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. I don't really mind here. I just want you to feel that rolling through the pelvis, that stretching through the spine. I'm going to go the other way this way, so reach down around to the left and up and reach. You can see on my pelvis is kind of starting to rotate and turn a little bit naturally. I just want you to feel free here. You know, sometimes in pilates we get so caught up in our form, which is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination and that precision, but I think sometimes in the context of Prenatal PyLadies plots for birth preparation, we need to learn to just kind of let go a little bit at a certain point, come up and roll all the way up. We're going to continue with just a very little short add on to the sequence arm work with the back extension work and that will kind of wrap up the end of our class. You have two choices here.

I'd like to sit with my bottom on my heels with my knees open here. It feels really comfortable, but this is where you can bring your moon box or your yoga break in and if you need a little more space, you just place it right into your pelvis. You sit really gently like that, so since I have it there, I'll just enjoy it. Now you can go to one spray or you can stay on the half the spring depending on what your strength and energy level is. At this moment. So we're going to start here. Taking your breath in.

Just want you to gently pull the arms back, bring them forward XL. So I'm just do a few reps add again now come forward just very gently and just give me a few tricep kickbacks. One, it's filling that back extension work. Oh extent. Yeah, just to get that little extra work here. Okay.

Bringing those arm muscles to that fatigue that they need to be for strengthening. Okay. And last one, lot of times we don't equate upper body work with being necessary necessary for pregnancy or for labor, but it certainly certainly is just having that control, that calm and your upper body. Go ahead and turn around to the other side. I actually, if you were on a full spring, I want you to come down to a half a spring and then plus the upper body work for strength for when you're carrying and you're for your newborn. It's become really important as well. So here, I want you to bring your arms out to the side and I want you to bend your left elbow and bring your ribs over to the left side and then switch to the right x cell switch. So it was just kind of moving back and forth.

And then even if you're on the yoga break or if you're sitting down on your body, you can feel you're just kind of adjusting over the pelvis. They're just moving back and forth. Just feeling that gliding from side to side, which feels so good. One more time each way. Okay, bring the arms here, bring them forward and take them out. Inhale, exhale. Bring them forward. Take them out. Inhale, exhale. Bring them forward. And now inhale, give me a few more and inhale. [inaudible] feeling nice and tall. Just slicing the arms in front of you, slicing the back to the side two more and open last one and bring the arms back.

And I want to do a really lovely version of the bicep curls. You can go to one and a half spring or you can go to one spring and I want you to extend your arms behind you and then bicep curl in if you need to move forward to get a little bit more um, range of motion with the shops. You absolutely can or you can just work with where you're at. But why I love this version of biceps is because of course it opens up the chest, which is really nice. Just make sure you're not splaying your body too far forward, keeping your postural control during in this gorgeous kneeling position, which is so healthy for our hips and our pelvis.

Just a few more here ladies. Just feeling that expansion of your chest. Yeah, the control of your body. Last one here and exhale all the way and slip your straps back onto your handles there and we're going to finish with a little back extension. Come down to your half spring please. Coming forward. Knees are open sitting back on your heels. You can certainly keep using the yoga brick here, but it might be a little bit more comfortable to get rid of it.

You're going to come down and I want you to reach arms out to the side. Now exhale, I want you to come up with your body's your being, your arms to the side. Then inhale, reach and back out. And I'm not moving very far with my body, but I'm still feeling that beautiful sense of back extension. So I'm modifying my pulling shops too. Indexed l reach I head, neck and chest and reaching.

Last to reach out, head, neck and chest, and then reached forward from the weights. Feeling that control through the body. Last one and reaching forward. Arms come down. Take your chops here. Now go ahead and sit on your bottom, straddling the carrots here. Reach your arms forward and just rest your head down and your breathing here. After this class, you'll feel obviously fatigued in your arms and your shoulders and your upper body. You should feel open through your hips, mobilized through your spine, rolling up from the please. Nice and gentle wants you to bring your toes back a little bit and push up into a hierarch.

We talk a lot about kind of trusting your own body and believing your own body and appreciating your own strength. That's really a huge goal of this prenatal series that I'm doing here at plot is anytime, and I hope that you feel accomplished and strong and wonderful after each class slowly come out of it and really that you embrace PyLadies as a tool to embrace your own inner strength and that you'd translate that into all the things that you in your life, but particularly labor and birth and motherhood. So that was a fun class. I loved it. I feel great in my shoulders as well, and great in my spine and my hips, and I hope that you do too. Thank you so much for joining me today.