Class #901

Fletcher Barre Work™

45 min - Class
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"Start with the breath and build from there." Jenna Zaffino is back on PA to teach a Fletcher Barre™ class. Have fun working on the vertical alignment of your spine using the breath to help you achieve length throughout. You'll transition from simple to complex movement patterns as class progresses and may even surprise yourself with how much fun it can be to work on balance. Though Jenna uses a ballet barre for this class, you can easily use a stable kitchen chair at home.
What You'll Need: Mat, Table Chair

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Hello, my name is Jenn is a fino and this is Fletcher bar work. And we will start facing inward towards each other. And Go ahead and take yourself out far enough away from the bar. So you're about at arms length with your feet, hip width, distance apart. And we're going to start in a stable position so that we just can find our breath to begin and then build on from there.

So I'd like you to take your hands and just place them gently on your sternum. We're going to start taking a breath in. And as you breathe in, just feel the way that the breath fills up the space underneath your hands and perhaps even lets your hands lift up. And as you exhale, feel the hand sliding down as the ribs return back into the center of the body. And we'll take an inhale through the nose. And as you exhale, will trash out through the mouth. Good. And breathe in. Feel the expansion of the ribs side to side. And exhale. Feel the weight of your hands pressing down and inhale and exhale. And as you start to deepen the breath, let's start to take the focus up. So as you inhale, look up and reach up with your chest. And as you exhale, returned back to center.

Sure. And once again, breathing in, look up, lift your chest up and exhale, return back to center. And this time we'll inhale, look up, reach a little further. And as you exhale, bring your sternum down. Start to come into a little bit of forward flection. And as you breathe in, fill up the lungs, feel your body growing, look up towards the ceiling and exhale, slide the sternum down. Feel the spine starting to bend forward. We'll do two more like this.

Breathing in and breathing out. Okay. The little simple, warm up for the spine, getting the body moving before we come towards the bar. And exhale. Good. From here, let's come back to center. Taking your hands to either side of your rib cage so you can feel the ribs in the front and the back of yourself. A little hug. And as you inhale this time, feel your ribs expanding into your hands. And as you exhale, actively draw the ribs towards your midline, away from your hands, away from your palms, and breathe in and expand and exhale.

So we're creating space in the upper body and starting to breathe into the space of the spine. So every inhalation creates a little more space between each vertebra and on the exhalation we start to lengthen even more. Good on your next breath and you're going to side bend in towards the bar. Breathe into your right side and exhale side vent as far as your body will take. Thank you.

And then breathe in further into your right side to come up and recover to center. Okay. And breathe into the left side and Ben away from the bar listening to the floor, keeping your head forward and breathe in and come back to center again into the Barbary. Then take your fluxion all the way over in this time. Let your right arm reach down towards the ground and take a breath in and come back to center. Actively breathe into the left side. And as you go over, reach the left arm all the way to the ground and breathe in and recover back to center. And let's breathe in to the front sides and back. As we inhale, reach the arms up and exhale, press down, lowering the focus. And as you breathe in, fill up the lungs, look up, reach up, and as you exhale, press down. Feel your shoulders sliding down into the back. Two more times, reach up and press getting fully oxygenated to start our work.

And exhale, press good. Recovering to center. We're going to bend the right knee, so just shift your weight in. Yeah, the outside knee. Shift your weight into that foot. Feel the weight ground down, and as you come back to center, straighten the leg and feel the three points on the bottom of your foot. Ground down. We'll try it to the inside leg. Bend down. Feel the big toe behind the fourth and fifth toes in the center of the heel. And as you come back to center, find those points strongly pressed into the floor. Inhale to the outside, shifting await. Exhale. Feel yourself, come back to midline with a nice engagement to both feet. Inhale the left and exhale back to the center. And then let's add a little arm work.

So as we go to the outside, we'll do the same arm reaching forward. And as we come back to center, we'll press the arm back and then we'll go to the inside reaching and press the arm back. Start to feel your chest opening. Inhale, stretch forward. Exhale, press. Always working for nice awareness of the bottoms of both feet. As you press one more each side, reach and press and you can reach for each other and press all the way back. Good. Now let's take the outside arm and leg and step a little further. Inhale, stretch out, lunge into that side. And as you exhale, draw the legs together, find your midline and they're going to come to touch. And then inhale, reach into the bar and exhale, come back to center. And we're going to keep the legs in parallel and inhale, stretch out and exhale to center. So just feel what it's like.

We'll keep going to shift both off. And then back onto midline. If you can feel the bottoms of your feet equally weighted in both positions and start to engage the inner thighs to come back to your center. One more, each direction. Reach and connect. Good. And using the breath to drive the movement in both directions. Excellent. Let's reach the arms up overhead and we'll round forward in four breaths. Taking three more breaths to come all the way down.

Reaching your hands just slightly in front of your toes, maybe about a foot or so. And then one more breath deep in the fold of your hips. Let your head be heavy as you breathe in, bend your knees and play and as you exhale, lift your hips towards the ceiling to straighten. Inhale to bend. Exhale to stretch up. Good. Inhale to bend. Engage your inner thighs and lift the legs to straight from the inner thigh connection. One more time. Bend and stretch.

Excellent. Rolling up. One breath to roll up. Just looking at your knees, finding that nice connection between the ankle bones and then roll up to set the knees over the ankles, pelvis over the knees, the rib cage over the pelvis, and then finally organizing the upper body. Some of us got up a little quicker than others. It's okay. And then we'll turn to face the bar. So our goal here is to try to really work on the vertical alignment of the spine, using the breath to encourage length throughout. And we're going to work from simple to complex to get that done.

So let's find those foot centers once again. And then we're accentuating the connection of the inner thighs at the very top of the thigh where the the two legs meet and then also above the knees. And then finally at the ankle bones is if you had three sets of magnets that were drawing them together. And from there that imaginary line pulls up through your center and it's an extension of your core all the way up through the soft palate, through the crown of the head and beyond. And let's practice maintaining that as we take our place. So we'll just bend, inhale, and straight and you can keep your hands on the bar and bent and engaged to stretch. Good. Inhale, bend. Exhale, stretch in hell bent and exhale, stretch. And from here, lift both heels. Inhale relevant, and exhale. Lower.

Inhale, lift and press the heels towards the ground and lift up. Reaching the crown of the head higher and lower. One more time, lift and lower. Let's alternate between the two. Inhale, bend, exhale, stretch. Getting even longer. Continue the length to reach and lower the heels and bend and stretch and lift and lower. And let's start to really change levels. Going a little deeper, going down, stretch and rise up even higher and lower. One more time bent and stretch and rise and lower. Little faster. Inhale, bend. Exhale all the way to relevant.

Stretch in hell bent. Stand up. Find it in hell. Bend easy for me to say. Inhale, bend and up a little faster in four and lift three and lift two and lift. Last one up to stay. Take one breath to find your balance here lengthened even further. We're going to lift your right arm up overhead into a high V. Exhale, place it back to the bar. Lift your left arm up overhead.

Place it all the way back, both arms, lift up overhead, grow taller, exhale, place back to the bar. Hold onto those magnets. Inhale, left arm. Exhale, place. Breathe in the right lengthens and place both arms together. Lift, hold, exhale, stay. Take a full breath to lower those heels all the way down to the floor and then reach your hands to the bar. Excellent. Good. All right, so let's take our feet again to that hip width distance. And we're going to take a moment for an exploration.

And this is just finding the support of the side that supports your body when one leg is working in the other, as you're standing support like. So from here, what I'd like you to do is actively hold your hands onto the bar and use your lats. Use your shoulder blades, pulling down into the back pockets to hold your body upright and strong. I can't do this without a bar. So what I'd like you to do is you're going to try not to shift your weight as you lift the leg up and then lower down. I think I shifted a little bit. So we're hip width, we're holding onto the bar. The knee comes up to a prance position and I just want you to hold that for a moments. Everybody try that. Lifting your let's go left leg altogether.

Good. Alright, so hold the position for a moment and just notice what's happening with your hips and notice what's happening to the right side of the body. We still, we want to feel that the alignment is happening all the way along the right, that there's no shifting of the hips off of midline and that the girdle or the sides of your body around your torso is equal in length from both sides. Now actively shift onto that right leg and feel that strength accentuate it from what we just did. So when we're standing, think about that same alignment and connect to midline with the whole right side, pulling into center and then the left leg also activating in. And then let's step down and do the other side. Great. So taking the arms in a strong stance in the upper body, we're going to lift the right leg up to our prance without shifting as much as you can. And let's try to hold it there. This is a really subtle but a nice way to find the support on the left side of the body. Doesn't look like much, but it's deep inside.

Good. Use that accentuation to pull yourself right onto midline and try to keep yourself active through the left side as you go through. Good. One more breath here. Excellent. And then we'll lower the right leg down beside the left and we'll come back together. So in the next few exercises that we do, let's try to maintain that sense of elongation through the standing side as the other side works without shifting the hips too much. So we will brush your right leg forward and I'm just going to keep my hands down and we're in parallel here.

We're going to flex the feet articulating through the toes and that end point. Inhale, exhale, flex, good. Breathe in, reach and flex. So you're always reaching through the ball of the foot or through the heel and you can incorporate more stretch as you go through that. Reach out of the leg and hold. Now let's externally rotate or turn out the leg and then roll your thighbone back in. Find that midline connection again. Inhale turnout.

Exhale, turn in two more times. Rotating to turn out and back to parallel. Standing even stronger on the left leg. That's about to work. Now we're going to do a single leg play. Inhale, bend. Just tap the heel to the floor. Exhale, straighten up and inhale.

Bend and lengthen from the center. Good bent and center. Keeping that lower foot, that working leg actively flexed. One more time. Inhale and stretch from here. Try Your Relevate. Inhale. Rise up. Easy for me to say. Exhale, lower the heel down. Keep going. Inhale, rise. Exhale. Lower. Two more times.

Lifting from deep inside and reaching the heel back to the floor. Lift and good alternating plea to touch and stretch. Rise up, grow taller, and then reach the heel down. Plea a touch and stretch. Rise up. By now, we're feeling our left leg, relatively active. Bend and stretch again, lengthening both sides equally.

One last time. Bend and stretch. Reach up to hold and stay. Let's point through the right foot, lengthening nice and long and then reached both arms up overhead and see if we can find a balance here just for a moment. And once you've caught that balance you can bring both legs back together and lower down. Excellent. All right, other side, find that midline. Once again, brush the left foot forward. Parallel, hips, nice and level good. Let's inhale here. Exhale, flex the foot, press through the ball on the point and flesh ball point ball, flex ball point and flex to stay. Add your plea, a bending down and stretch. Good and bent and stretch. So you could think of this as something that could easily be be related to the reformer. Single leg work. Good.

Lets Relevate rise up and lower here. Come and am lower. Good. Always stretching through the back line of the leg to maintain control alternating between the two. Plead a and stretch Relevate lift and lower and plead a and stretch. Relevate lift and lower twice more.

Should remember your breath can drive the movement, especially when you're lifting away from gravity. Use the inhale to grow and lower last time please. [inaudible] and stretch. Rise up and stay and hold point through that left foot nice and long. Find your balance if you can.

Lifting up as high as you can and bring the legs together. Magnets and lower the heels all the way down. Take the hands to the bar. Let's bend the knees, stretch out the CAS and then straighten two more times please. And stretch last one and stretch. All right, make sure. Yeah. Enough room to move your arms. So let me have you two step. Yeah, maybe a little bit back in a little.

And we're going to go into an exercise to work on the breath called Ron's clock. So if we have an inhale that breeds in this much and an exhale that breeds in this much, then the idea is that we divide that down to two. So we'll inhale halfway. Inhale all the way. Exhale, halfway. Exhale all the way. Just pushing the boundaries each time. So we can ask our body to take in more air and also exhale more air.

We're gonna Mimic the idea or the actual breath with movement of the arms as we go, so it'll be, yeah. Okay. Okay. We're going to do twos. We'll go to threes, fours, and so on and so forth. All right, let's begin to count breath. Okay.

Three. Okay. Four [inaudible]. This is where we can tell if you're counting. Five, six, seven last time, eight two, three, four, reach wider, fill up all away and eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two. Big Breath in. Reach the arms up overhead. Oh, that's nice. And XL, press all the way down. Let's take one more.

Fill up those lungs. Inhale, exhale all the way back down. Take a step back into the bar. Hands in the Var legs to parallel. Roll to the ball of the right foot. Inhale, roll to the tip to exhale. Road to the re-engage as you press the heel down, left ball and tow and fall and heel. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, exhale, left Anto and ball and now will double with the two count, breath, ball and toe. And exhale. Nice job.

Okay, so work every part of your foot through each articulation. Two more times, right and left ball, toe ball and heel. Well, toe adding on. We'll go. Ball toe. Exhale. Prance toe ball heel. Okay. We have in Hail and Exhale, Toe Ball, heel again.

[inaudible] fantastic. Nice job. Organizing the hips as well. And Tow ball. Heel. One more time. Ball, toe and prince. Take the lake to passe toe beside the knee. Inhale, externally rotate. Exhale, parallel hips. Stay facing the bar so your square and then in. Engage the inner thigh on the way back in.

Breathe in, open the knee and cross. Let's do one more to open and stay standing taller and your exhale. Pulse the knee back. Start to get engaged to those outer thigh muscles. Those deep rotators. Growing taller as you pulse.

Good for the Ri to end stay. We're going to cross that leg. Ankle over knee, little piriformis stretch. You're welcome. Take a full breath to play. Yeah. Full breath to stand tall. Open up the left hip as you stand, fold in the hips. As you sit. Open up the left hip.

Press the right knee back. Be careful not to press too much into the left knee, but use those outer thigh muscles. Whew. And come up one more time. All the way up Paul. Say Inhale, ball, heel. Yeah. Fantastic. Here we go. Toe Ball and prance.

Bring it to the posse. [inaudible] open it up. Inhale and across. Press through the space. Think about the shape that you're making with that leg and actively taking the full shape through space and then pressing it back to the ends degree. Stay there and pulse.

Okay. Yes. Two more sets. Reaching back a little further. Standing up a little taller. Cross the ankle over the knee to stay full breath fold in the hips. Feel the hinge and deep in through your peer form of stretch and then stretch up. Open the knees, stand taller. This is a great place to just check back in with that standing leg.

Make sure all three points in the bottom of your foot are equally weighted and that you're bending right along mid line. If I don't do that, I'm going to fall like right now. One more time and Ben and come up. Good Pos. I left. Ball heel. Excellent. Lift your toes up. Rotate to turn out, lift your heels up, rotate to parallel from the top of your thigh. Lift your toes, rotate to turn out. Okay. Do heels rotate to parallel one last time. Lift your toes and rotate to turn out and stay. All right, so find yourself in that toaster plane so you're all in one long line with the heels in one long line with each other on the ground, and then actively drag your heels towards one another.

Two engages in her thighs. Once again, you can feel that engagement pulling right up through your center, growing even taller. And then on her inhale will lengthen up. Exhale, plea, a deep, Nice fold in the hips. Staying nice and tall. Full breath to come back up to the top. Okay. Full breadth to come down.

[inaudible] full breath to lift back up. By the end of these plays, you should be three inches taller. [inaudible] lengthen, then deepen [inaudible] all the way up to the top one last time. Inhale, grow. Exhale down to stay pulse deeper. [inaudible] just explore how low can you go without losing your alignment? Yeah. Full breath to stand all the way back up. Inhale, lengthen.

Exhale. Fully a this time use the outer thighs. Pulse the knees back, aiming the knees over the second and third toes more from those rotation muscles in the back of the thigh. Last set. Full breath to stand. There are those legs. Inhale, lengthen and plea. A two sets pulsing down. One, two, [inaudible]. Stay at your lowest point. Pulse back back to [inaudible]. Four three, two and eyes are closing. Tongues are sticking out. One last time. Inhale. Exhale, plea a all the way down. Hold that Pa.

Lift your right heel. Place it down, lift your left. Please sit down both at the same time. Find that balance and lower lift the left heel and the right both at the same time. Press down, Woo, deepen and stand all the way out. Let's take that right arm up and side. Bend over. Big stretch keeping us hips level and lift back to center.

Other side, just regrouping, remembering that we have the sides of the rib cage to breathe into. Once again, lifting up last time up and back to the bar. Alright. Clears on one leg into a lunch. So we're going to bend the right knee over and then engage those inner thighs to come back to center. Then to the left and stretch, please lay down hold. Exhale, lift the heel. Lower the heel deep in the lunge and press to the left. Lift the heel, feel that alignment of the legs and press over and lift last time down. And press. Let's bend the left leg. Coming all the way back to the center. Rotate your legs to parallel.

Excellent. And then we're going to turn around and we can actually face front face this way for a moment. Okay. Okay. Let's see how this works. We're going to take the hands onto the bar. Kind of folding across each other. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So you're criss crossed at the arms and we're gonna find turnout. Yeah, so get friendly as much as possible. You can have a soft bed. There you go.

It's going to be, it's going to be a postcard. All right. Yeah. Christmas card. So let's bring the heels together, the toes apart and engage the mid line. You're lifting up through center. We're going to laterally shift the hips to the right and side bend to the left, just in a safe zone. So not too far to push over your neighbor. Good. And then she'd come back to center. Engage your inner thighs.

Feel the shoulders ground down and lift up taller. Inhale through center. Exhale ticket over to the left as your body, Ben's right, full breath to come back up through the center. Finding your alignment. Good again, up and over. Lift to center and up and stretch and lift to center. Let's take it up and over to the right to stay.

Now add pulses to the right. Press your hips. Okay, good. This is so cute. Two more sets. Getting deeper as you go. Excellent without losing that alignment and come back to center.

Find your midline. Find your connection front to back, side to side. So there's a tendency to pulse and start losing our our spine there. Try to keep it nice and vertical. Let's go to the left. Inhale up. Exhale, reach over. Side Bend. Good. Press the hips over. Okay, good. That's it. Each press goes a little deeper into this space. To the left. Your inner thighs are your anchor point.

Your foot centers are grounding. And the last one. Excellent. Come back to center and release the arms. Who in the bar? Let's take the legs to parallel. We'll take one roll down just to reach the spine forward. Reach the arms up and roll down into breath.

One more breath to come all the way down. Find a Relevate here. So lift your heels and then contract curling your tailbone under. So you find a small ball shape, accentuating your in. Advise. I will [inaudible] and then lift up and lower your heels. Okay.

Inhale, relevant. Exhale. Find the ball. Inhale, lift up from the creasing your hips. Get Taller and then lower the heels. Inhale, rise up. Contract and wrap your tailbone towards your heels. Good. Lift up, stretching deeper and lower. Last time. Nice and high. Good hamstring stretch deep contraction for the lower back.

Lift up and lower the heels rolling up in three breaths. [inaudible] good. Pacing yourself if you want to go faster. That's it. Excellent. Turning back to the bar. All right. We're going to put this all together in a movement pattern called the posse pattern. We've done a lot of foot work. We've done a lot of pos ses, the action of the pasta that comes from the back of the leg, so we want to feel that there's a snapping up, so there's a very dynamic lift and as we lower down, we're going to accentuate the first two foot centers. And then finally the third, so it'll look and sound like this.

My hands are on the bar. Okay, we'll go eight on the right, eight in the left, and then we'll go from there. All right, so starting nice and tall. My arms are out to the side. You're still holding onto the bar. Take one breath just to organize your spine, organize your in inner thigh connection and let's lift the right leg up. [inaudible] for sure.

[inaudible] [inaudible] to the left and lift. [inaudible] try to get your toe right next year. Knee heel pulls up to the sits phone and the less shifting, the better. Good. Eight on the right and lip ball. Heel up, ball here, ball here. Quick lift up bar here for okay.

And three ground through that. Left foot to the left and eight that's it. Keep lengthening through center. Finding your balance. Maybe even testing it by letting go of the bar. Four and three.

Okay. And to, all right, let's keep the nice dynamic. Four on the right. Lift and lower and three too. Yeah, four to the left and up. Okay. Two on the right and left on the left.

Oh. [inaudible] single alternating sides. Three, two and one and good. All right, that was nice. So to finish this pattern off, we're going to take the posse up. We'll shift the weight into a side lunge, press back to find the balance ball heel. Inhale, lift, chef, lift. However we're going to do that series one more time from the beginning.

Quicker with a little more dynamic. Eight, eight, four, four, two, two singles. And then into the lunges and we begin. Ready. Add up and down and two, ready for the left and lift. Good. Every breath brings you a little bit out of your hips. Even more up through the crown of the head to four on the right and up and down.

Fine. Every part of your foot on the way up and down. Oh, that was the left. Two, two on the right, and lift two on the left. Singles and right and left and right. Get ready for the lunge and going up and brush. Lift Ball, heel up and reach.

Pass a ball here and lift a little deeper. If you can. Up Ball, heel up and reach. Lift all heel. Two more. Last one up. Fall. He'll excellent. Lift your toes. Rotate back to parallel. Let's get some extension into the spine.

We're going to take a full breath to rise. Excuse me, rise up onto your relevant. Take a full breath. Using your hands to stabilize. Press your hips into the bar forward as if you're leaning into it. Good. Take a full breath to bring yourself back into alignment, vertical alignment, and then lower the heels down. Full breath to rise. Pressing the hips forward.

Nice and easy. Beautiful. Coming back to center, you really need to use your center to work when you're working on the, we're about to add an arch now. Okay, so now we'll take a full breath. Rise up, hips shift forward as much as you're able and we're gonna use that breath to breathe into the chest, actively extending the spine, coming back to center and press off the bar and lower your heels. And let's try that again. Full breath to Relevate. Let's set the lower half engaged. As you press to the bar, we'll lift up to back bend, breathe in and out. This time everything comes back to center. Hips pull away from the bar, find your alignment and lower your heels down to the floor. Last time, really nice. Full breath to rise. Press the hips forward. Set the pelvis, lift up through the front of the body.

Grow and reach with hold for breath. Recover back to center, aligning the front and back together and lower all the way down through the heels. Very nice. All right, it's time to go for a run. So in any Fletcher bar class, the right of passage is the running pattern, especially when Ron was teaching. So from here we're going to take irrelevant positions. So a full breath to rise up onto the balls or the fee, and we'll be using the two count breath as we lower and lift.

So let's try the right heel first. Inhale, lower. Exhale, lift. Inhale, lower. Exhale left. We'll get there in a moment. Inhale, right. Exhale, lift. Inhale, left. Exhale, lit. Good. Keep going, right and left and up. So keeping the size of the pelvis, very active so this doesn't turn into any thing that came out of the seventies no ponies, I don't know. No chochise. Whatever. Last one. Good. Now lowering the right heel. Inhale down. Inhale up. Exhale down, left and lift. Right down and up. Left, down and left. There we go, right and up. Left and lift, right and lift.

Left and lift right and left. All right, you're going to continue with the pace. Want to accentuate when the legs come back together. So we're going to try to add a little snap of the legs towards midline and lower end lift. Lower end lift. Down and up, down and up, down and up. Down and up. Down and up. Down and up. In four, three, two, one and hold. Take a breath to rise up. A little taller. Lower the right heel down for eight, eight, seven, switch left up to the right for four too, right? Two on the right and one and two and left.

Keep going. Single theory. Go and right and left. Keep going. Good. Lifting up rather than lowering down, up and two, three, and four. Five, six, a little faster for the eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two an inhale. Up. Exhale, press down. Excellent. Let's take the right leg to passe. Parallel. Reach it back, get a little calf stretch, pressing your heel down. Good.

Just inhale, lift the back heel up. Exhale, press down deeper and breathe in. Lift and press down. And one more and porous. Good. Bring it back to PA. Stay align and lower. Left side lifts up. Reach it back. Lift the heel. Press and lower. Lift.

Up and lower last one up and good posse. Lift and place all the way down. Excellent. All right, let's turn and face each other once again and we're going to take this into the figure eight pattern. So my understanding or my first experience was this pattern was in a Martha Graham class and it was taken from a very guttural piece where the lead character had killed her husband and eaten his entry and trail. This is not that, but it is very juicy from the inside. So we want to think about it coming really, really visceral movement.

We'll start intern out with the heels together, toes apart, and then we'll open up the the outer outer hand to almost a hug, a tree position or second position of the arm and we'll point the right foot out to the side. Good. Yeah, or the outside leg and we'll lift up so that it's Hubbard. And the first action is to turn your hips towards the bar and internally rotate your back leg. Excellent. The second action is to bring the knee across the body. The third action is to open the hips back to face. Front and open the knee. And then the fourth action is to open.

So let's just try one time with a full breath for each. So rotate the hips. Inhale, exhale. Okay. Okay. Resist. Pull the knee across the body. Okay, open the knee. Open the hips.

Okay. Extend the leg out. Nice and long. Good. One more time. Full breath. Rotate in. Bring the knee across the body, standing tall and that supporting leg. Open the knee. Open the hips and reach the leg out and go a little faster. Inhale. Exhale, rotate in and cross.

Okay. Open the hip and read. Rotate in and cross. Okay, open and read. Good. And even less breath. Inhale, reach in and cross. Exhale, open and reach in and open. And the hips and press. Good.

Now start to feel where this is coming from. So there's rotation in the lower half of the body and the leg is like a nice streamer. Accentuating the movement of your pelvis. But adding a plea, AA of the supporting leg, bend and stretch. Extend. Very nice and bend and stretch. Good. Powerful from the hips and then and stretch. No.

As you come in, round your spine over and then open it up and round deep through the center and open and round and open and round and open and close the legs up and lower down. It feels really good to the hip. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. The moving one? Yeah, supporting one. Yeah. And we want to get some movement of the pelvis rotating around the femur head as opposed to just letting the leg shift from side to side so that you're actively working this leg free in the hip socket and then the hip socket over the closed chain or supporting leg on the opposite side. Really good. So we can make it a little meatier this time. Let's go to the other side.

All right, so Tom, do or point the outer leg out and then open that outer arm out to second position. Feel strong in the supporting leg. We'll do two slow here. So lift up that leg and turn your hips towards the bar. Internally rotate. Bring the knee across in the next breath. Okay. Open the hips. Open the knee.

Okay. Extend all the way out. Good. And rotate the hips. Okay, bring it open hips. Open the knee and extend the leg. Good. Full Brock to come across hips than knee, hips the knee than leg. Good hips then knee and knee. And extend. One more time. Hip and knee.

Beautiful and open. Now inhale, everything comes in, rotate over and open and in and out. We have another teacher who says I'm shy. No, I'm not shy. As you come across open as you go in adding a plea a on the next one. Here we go. Bending the inside leg and extend and bend and extent and bent and extend. Let the leg move freely and the hip, adding the upper body and the arm round the spine and open the body.

Reach and open. Woo and more. Reach and open and bring the legs back together. Excellent. Turning into the bar for one last stretch. Let's take the hands about shoulder with distance apart and step back until your hips are at a 90 degree angle. So you're making a flat back position. Good. And we'll take the legs together here.

And what I'd like you to do is find the longest line of your spine that you have. So you feel that your sits bones are reaching an opposition of the crown of your head and you feel that the sides of the body are stretching actively. And from here we'll take a full breath and come into flection from the tailbone first round and wrap the tailbone and then articulate through the spine so that every part is involved in this stretch, not one more than the other. And then from the tailbone, reached the hips back, find a flat back position and find that long line supported at 90 degrees at the hip. And again, full breadth to round up opening the back, feeling the work we've just done in full breath to extend from the tailbone all the way out, making sure the front of the rib cage is connected to the back of the body. One more time round.

And Marie from here, extend the spine. So lift your tail, start to articulate into almost a baby swan, but a nice long line. That's it. And then we're going to reconnect as we come back to center. So think about lengthening the distance from the pubic bone through the chest, through the breast bone, reaching out nice and long. Go ahead and then reconnect everything back to stable. One more time. Lengthen and stretch and reconnect. Back to stable will round the spine, tailbone reaching towards the ground and slowly roll up through the spine.

Releasing your hands. Good. We'll turn to face each other one last time and taking the hands onto the chest one last time. So let's breathe in and feel where the breath takes us into extension and exhale back to center. And then inhale here and exhale round forward. And just notice if you have more motion here. Inhale and exhale, reach to the ceiling. Inhale and exhale, reach back to come forward. Let's release the arms and breathe in. Stretch opening the body and then let the spine bend as you come forward from here, open the body away from the bar into your lateral flection.

Take it up to the ceiling, into your extension. Take it over to the bar, into your other side and down towards the floor and then over to the bar. Okay. Up towards the ceiling. Reached to the sky over away from the bar and bringing it forward.

Okay. And Rolling up to articulate through your spine. My net. Nice. Long line. Let's take one breath altogether. Inhale up and exhale all the way out. Yeah. [inaudible] thank you. Yeah, you did great.

Comments

HI Jenna, great class ! love it Today i watched , tomorrow I'll do it !
Thanks Corinne - Let me know how you feel after finish!
1 person likes this.
Thanks Jenna! The energy, flow and cuing of this class was so inspiring!
3 people like this.
Thank you...nice & methodical...grabbing some pieces to use in my barre sessions, like the passé series, single leg plies, corkscrew hip opener...to name a few Thank you!
1 person likes this.
Beautiful class and instruction, loved it! Thank you.
Hi Bonnie, Jennifer and Kerry. I'm so glad you enjoyed the class - it was a lot of fun to teach - I'm already planning new "tools of torture" at the barre... stay tuned :).
1 person likes this.
Loved the class, can't wait to see how I feel tomorrow, and then try it again!
2 people like this.
Thanks for helping me "wake up" my balance. I always love how something so challenging can feel so accessible when presented well.
1 person likes this.
Hi jenna, I just did your class, love it , feel great. it helps me to come out of the box of the repertoire, I'm use to follow my cards to much when doing barre work, so this is a nice variation, thanks so much :)
1 person likes this.
Great class Jenna! I especially liked the passé series. I feel much taller now:)
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