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Class 3 Lab
Welcome to class 3 lab. At this point I'd like to tell you that when I teach this class live, I leave it up to my students to figure out how they are going to balance their pelvis over their ribcage. I show them pictures of the muscles involved (as I have shown you), I help them understand what the muscles do and why, and from that they help me create suitable ways of stretching the muscles and reorganizing their bodies. If something is too short, something else must be too long. They take a look at their bodies and lengthen anything that seems shortened in an unbalanced way. I give you stretches because I am not in the room with you to coax you along, but please make sure you understand what each stretch is doing. Any one stretch will balance a number of things. Feel free to create you own stretches. Ask questions through e-mail when you don't understand something. I am not trying to teach you a series of stretches. I am trying to teach you how your body works. Let's begin
1. Assessment
Start
by simply standing with your arms at your side. Make sure your feet are a
hip's width apart and facing straight forward. Make sure your knees are
straight, but not locked. Just stand there and breath for about a minute.
How labored is your breath. How stable are you on your feet? How heavy do
you feel within gravity? Are you naturally balanced between the balls and
heels of your feet? Do you stand more on one foot than the other? Just
make a complete assessment of how your body feels before you begin
reorganizing it with stretches.
2. IT Band Release
Kneel
down and sit on your ankles. Place your right elbow in the crease of your
right upper thigh. Allow your elbow to sink into the tissue and perform a
"j" shaped stroke over and
over again until you have reached the top of the knee. Then start back at
the top and move a little bit over to the right of the path you followed
the first time. Continue doing this all over the front and sides of your
upper leg until you feel you have covered the whole area. Repeat this on
the opposite leg. Pay special attention to the IT band on the sides of
your legs. See it becoming unglued from the underlying tissue as you move
your elbow through it. And ,as always, do not
work near or around vericose veins without a doctor's approval.
3. Pelvic Thrust
Kneel
on the ground and sit back on your ankles. Brace yourself by placing your
hands behind you. Now thrust your pelvis upwards by contracting your
abdominal muscles. You are actually performing a posterior pelvic tilt.
You should be feeling this stretch on your quandriceps (the fronts of your
upper legs). Perform this stretch 2 times. Hold each stretch for a count
of 20.
4. Arch Stretch
This stretch will be difficult for some people. Many students will not be ready for it. If you experience pain, hold off on this one. Your time will come.
Lie on the
floor face down. Bend your knees and grab onto your ankles
with your hands. Gently raise your head off the floor and pull your knees
off the floor with your hand. You are arching your back and should feel a
pulling in the quads around the knees 
and a stretch deep within your
abdomen. Hold this stretch for a count of 10.Then slowly lower your knees
and then your head. Perform this stretch 3 times.
5. Modified Trikonasana
Spread
your feet 3 to 4 feet apart. Turn your right foot to a 90 degree angle
from your body and your left foot to a 60 degree angle from your body.
Spread your arms broadly out reaching away from the side of your body. Now
swing your pelvis
to
the left as you extend your upper body over your right leg. As you do
this, bring your right hand down and grab onto your right shin. You should
be feeling an intense stretch in your right hamstrings and inner thighs.
If you are not, it is most likely because you are not allowing your pelvis
to swing out to the left. The feeling you're going for is hard to describe.
It is as if you are swinging the sitbones to the left away from your right
leg and this is where the stretch comes from. Play with this stretch and
see what you can do. Repeat it on both sides twice. Hold each stretch for
a count of 30.
6. Hamstring Stretch
Clasp
your hands behind your back. Place your right foot about two feet in front
of the left foot. Bend forward feeling a stretch in the hamstrings of your
right leg. Once you feel this stretch hold it and see what you can do to
help it let go. This takes some mental focus. First you must realize that
you are holding onto it. Then you must take your own investment out of
holding it tense. You must let it go. You can hold this stretch for as
long as you want. If you can hold it for five minutes, however, you will
have made some big changes. All I ask is that you don't hurt yourselves by
overdoing it and that whatever you do on one leg you do equally on the
other so that you are symmetrical.
7. Gluteal Stretch
Kneel
down on the floor. Cross your right leg in front of your left. Straighten
the left leg out behind you. Come down on your elbows in front of you and,
keeping a relatively straight back, lower your body to the floor. This
should provide a stretch in your hamstrings and gluteal (your butt)
muscles. Sometimes people with tight hamstrings will feel it there before
they feel it in the gluteals. Be patient. It doesn't matter. This is a
great stretch for people who have suffered from sciatic pain caused by a
tight piriformis muscle
8. Side Stretch Rib Aligner
From
a standing position, Bring your hands over your hand and touch your palms
together. Reach your hands to the sky. Keeping your hands together and
continuing this reach, slowly bend to the right. You should feeling this
stretch all along
the left side of your body into your lower back. It is essential that you
continue to actively reach as you are stretching. Remember when waiting in
a stretch to breathe naturally. Allow your breath to help remove the
tension that is making the stretch difficult. Hold each stretch for a
relaxed count of 30. Perform it twice on each side. Then relax and feel
the increased blood flow to your lower back rush in.
9. Cobra
Lie
face down on the floor. Rest your forehead on the backs of your hands.
Slowly, vertebra by vertebra, raise your head and neck off the floor.
Continue systematically
arching your spine all the way down to the tailbone. As you are doing this
you may use your hands to help you raise your body upwards. When you have
reached the maximum arching of your spine, hold the stretch for a slow
count of 20. Remember to breath and feel the stretch deep within your
abdomen. After your count of 20 come down the opposite way you went up.
Start with you lower spine, vertebra by vertebra, and end by relaxing your
head and neck against the floor. Please be careful not to feel any pain in
performing this stretch. It should be relaxing. If you feel pain come slightly out of
the stretch to a point that feels more comfortable to you.
10. Assessment
Now
that you have spent time reorganizing your body, return to your origional
standing position and feel how these basic stretches have changed you. How
do your feet feel on the floor. How heavy do you feel? How does your
abdomen feel. How do your legs feel. Take a full assessment every day when
you are done and be witness to the changes you are affecting in your body.
Next week we will blast your rib cage open and realign your arms!