Spine Stretch Forward

Today, I'm going to teach a tutorial. So this is gonna be a really in depth, really detailed spine stretch forward. Okay, so spine stretch forward, you want to do on a tower map, you want to do it on a mat that has the two boxes, um, by the side. If you don't have that and you have to do it at home, then you want to think about your shoulders and about three inches wider than your shoulders is. Where are you going to put your feet? Okay. Joseph [inaudible] was an genius and he designed everything just right. So shorter people or taller people fit exactly right when they use these boxes. And you're going to put your heel right in the middle of the box, both length and width wise. Perfect. Good. The feet will end up wanting to be flexed where the toe reaches right up to the ceiling and not turning out or turning in, but just parallel and directly up to the ceiling. Perfect. However, this can be really hard if you have tight hamstrings, right?

So you can always bend your knees and lift your bottom forward a little bit. If you need to modify that so that you can sit up. If you were like hanging in your lower back or something like that, I'm just going to push you around. Okay. But you are flexible enough to do it with straight lights. Correct. Okay. So slide back to straight legs. Good. So your feet will be flexed. Good.

And you want to have energy going through the mat. So you want your spine statue, one vertebra at a time. Super important in spine stretch four. And you can just have your hands wherever right now. But I love thinking about my tailbone, like really going through the map.

And then I'm going to squeeze my seat to lift up off of it. Like I've got a bed of nails underneath me and I've got to really stay up elevated off of that. Okay, so that energy of the tailbone going through the mat. Now we're gonna have your spine, one vertebra at a time. Like I said, so I have this pole here so that you can feel the vertebra through your pelvis, and then your waistband, and then one bone. Let's get these going. Wonderful. So you're going to stay stacked up as if you're against a wall, right? Okay. And then we're going to have your arms up at shoulder height.

There you go. Good. Now I want you to pull into the pole with your powerhouse, but then see if you can squeeze up off your bottom and slide up the pole. That's right. Good, nice and relax. And I want you to do that a few times. Okay? So arms up at shoulder height, lifting up, you're gonna pull your belly into the bowl and try to slide up taller. And what you did beautifully and go ahead and relax is that you didn't push this forward. So to get up taller, you didn't just lift up your chest and lose contact through the upper back.

Okay? So that was great. Now I also want to draw attention right now to your hip bones, the front of your hip bones. We draw a straight line from one hip bone to the other, and we pull your belly behind that, right? But your hip bones are also directly over your sip bones, and they're going to stay there in this exercise. You're never going to tip them forward. Okay.

So we're going to keep your hipbones directly over your sip bones. So let's now pull back your toes so that the feet are flax. Good. Pull your belly into the pole. Grow Taller as you lift up off your seat and pushing your tailbone through the mat and roll just your head off of the pole and then your upper back and your middle back key pulling in your belly. Good. And Try to imagine that you can touch the crown of your head down to the mat.

Don't one, two, three. There you go. Good. And now roll back your pelvis. Good. And one bone at a time. Stacking the spine. So you're not just articulating rolling them up one at a time, but you're also making sure they're going up in a straight line. So no weaker or stronger sides. So we're going to pull into the pool, slide up the pole, out the crown of your head to the ceiling, taking a big breath and then exhale as you bring your head to your chest and curl off one vertebrae at a time. Nice. Nice. Nice.

So just still a little bit back here and taking a breath to come up. Good, good, good. And relax. Completely good. And now we're going to do a few more with me. Okay. So I want you to bring your arms up, shoulder height, beautiful. And I want you to really be aware of this relationship. In other words, as you go down, they don't go lower and they don't go higher either.

They stay at wherever your shoulders are and they're gonna stay reaching. I also want you to imagine an old fashioned magnet like in the cartoons and there was like that. And you want to energy out your fingertips and energy out your toes. So like when you're doing, everything is reaching. Okay? So let's go ahead and lift up off your seat and take a big breath as you pull in and up. And now exhale as you bring your head down. Good. The next bone, the next bone. Good.

And I'm really holding her back in the lower back so she can stretch that as she dives her head, trying to get down to the mat. Beautiful arm height. And now inhale the roll back up. Start a little more through here. Good, good. Stacking up your spine. Nice job. I love how you rolled up through here as women or just any day buddy in this profession nowadays and these times, this part of our back gets really lazy as we stay at computers. Lots of it's really important once you roll up to here to articulate each bone right here. Let's do another one. Taking a breath and then exhale, head rolls and next phone. Good lifting off your seat, even pushing your heels, energy out, your fingertips, energy out your heels, and then pulling back with your powerhouse. First stacking up your spine.

Good. Nice. And now the advanced breathing you're going to do to to finish off is you move with your breath. So you're going to inhale right now and you're going to exhale, go and down. And when you can't exhale any more than you're going to inhale to come back up. And when you can't inhale anymore, you're going to exhale to go down.

That's it. Exhale, squeeze out all that air, energy out your fingertips, energy hears. And then inhale to stack up your spine again and you're all done. Great job. Good.