Welcome to the beginning of your new relationship with your body! You will become a movement expert in your own right and will better understand why it moves (or in some cases does not move) as it should.  You must be patient, this experience will be like learning a new language. Together, we will start to get our spines moving better then we will coordinate this movement with our breathing and make progress toward a living our best life.

Our movement experience in Step 2 will start to introduce the importance of working on our balance.  The exercises we will be covering in today’s session will focus on the health of our hips from a joint perspective. From here, we will follow up with exercises that will work to balance out the muscles that support your hip mobility and low back strength.

Building on the low back strengthening work we introduced in Step 2, we progress in this lesson to nutritious movement for the shoulders.  We will start to integrate upper and lower body movements that will provide us with more quality execution of our activities of daily living.  Get ready to start to feel stronger and longer!

This lesson will start to focus on the flow of our movements.  If you think about the first 3 lessons as learning the ‘pieces’ of good spinal movement and joint range of motion, we are going to start to put those pieces together as we work toward integration and flow of these movements.

The fluid movement that we highlighted in Step 4 will continue in Step 5.  We add on many more functional movements for our hips, low back, shoulders and neck.  Jana will start to educate on how all of these movements start to plug into our standing and seated posture.  By committing to a regular practice of the Pilates Mat Foundations series, your quality of life will improve!!

WE DO!! Neutral Spine is the position where the spine’s natural curves are optimized.  The reality is that our life (old sports injuries, sitting at a desk for decades, having babies for some of us) has taken a toll on the actual position of our spine.  When our posture is compromised, our body is so smart, it adjusts and we carry on. This video will explain how to find neutral spine and why it is important, it will also talk about considerations for neutral spine if you have a disc issue.  Happy learning!

​If you only decided to watch one Educate Me video - this is the one I would recommend.  We are an under-oxygenated society. Our trillions of cells are like little gas tanks with their low fuel light perpetually on!  We have literally forgotten how to breathe and our diaphragm muscle, which is our main muscle of respiration is often very weak and underutilized.  When we are properly oxygenated, we have energy, our body’s systems work more efficiently and we can LIVE! Spend time with this video, it is a game changer!

Our pelvis….where the heck is it and why do we need to be able to move it like a clock??  To make things really simple all you really need to know for this video is where your hip bones are (fancy name is the ASIS) and where your tail bone is (fancy name is sacrum).  Because of our poor posture from so much sitting out pelvis it often tipped too far forward or sits too far back. This video will teach you why we need our pelvis to sit in its neutral position and then pelvic clock exercise sequence is the ‘how’ to get it there!

Did you know that short hamstrings (the muscles that live at the back of your legs in between the back on your knee and your butt) can wreak havoc on our posture and cause low back, hip and knee issues?  Even though the hamstring muscle is not basic at all, this video will give you a good idea if this area could be causing you trouble and what you can do about it.

​Calling all people with shoulder, elbow and wrist issues…...is that you?  It is most of us!! Our rib cage plays a HUGE role in how our shoulder, elbow and wrist move (or in some cases don’t move).  Our rib cage can ‘cheat’ for a lack of movement in our shoulder which then places unnecessary stress and tension in your back - it’s ALL CONNECTED!!  Learn…..and be amazed…..the more you know!

​Chances are we do not remember learning to walk, right? BUT the truth is that very for of us actually walk correctly.  Over time we get ‘stuff’ - plantar fasciitis, hammer toes, bunions, fallen arches, achilles issues, unexplained knee and hip discomfort….why??  This video will help you to discover some of the most basic mistakes you could be making over your thousands of steps a day, millions of steps in a year!  Learning these basic changes will leave you “walking on air!”

​Many people believe that the 6 pack (whether you see yours or not) make up our abs.  This is what the fitness industry has taught us. The 6 pack or Rectus Abs are only a small part of our core, so why the heck do we chase the goal of a 6 pack when in reality it is probably the least functional of all the abdominal muscles???  This video will explain the parts of our core - the floor, the ceiling and the cylinder. Become core savvy, your perspective on core strength will shift and so will your back pain, hip tightness, pelvic floor disorganiztion…...this list goes on and on.