“Bike Power” article written for Saris, manufacturer for indoor and outdoors cycles.  You can print this for your own use.  All rights reserved, Kathleen Conklin.

Would you count the Stars over Prana del Mar in the early morning of the planet turning?  This sky over your immersion retreat into your conscious body through stretch and pilates disciplines. (4 seconds of film)

Stars

Merging your interior with your immediate exterior happens with intentional, intelligent
movement cadenced to the breath.

We live among others. Others with their own interior universe and exterior orbit.
Awareness of otherʼs consciousness, the collective, enriches your own tapestry, without dissolving it.

Breathe. Be aware. Be this alive.

Pull Your Head Back

Cue:               Pull Your Head Back

Corrective:      Not Your Face Up

Outcomes:     Better Breathing

.     .     .     .   Better Digestion

.     .     .     .   Better Posture

.     .      .    .   Better Looking

22,000- 26,000 times per day, you use your breathing muscles.

Improve the breathing for one human – you.  And then, one other.

~One Act of INSPiRATION~

Teach yourself.
Teach your book club.
Teach your soccer team.
Teach your business network.
Teach your classmates.
Teach your partner.
Teach your child.

Up to 30% of our children have asthma (World Health Org statistic)
How can they learn if they can’t breathe?

Ten Steps to Breathing to Breathing Deeply into Your Back

To use and improve the condition of the muscles which assist the human creature with aggressive, or forced inhalation; the inhale you need when you exercise.

1. Put your hands on your hips like someone scolding. Thumb to the back.

2. Now, flip the hands around so the thumb faces the navel.

3. The surface of the thumb and the index finger are along the ilium (hip bone).

4. Press the palms up flat against the back. (Good stretch for arms and shoulders if you keep them back.)

5. The baby finger will be on the 12th rib. (You have 12 on each side; this one is little.)

6. The longest or middle fingers will be touching each side of the spine.

7. Inhale into the palms. It might take practice to feel your back expanding.

8. Exhale from your abdominals. Feel your belly contract and flatten by exhaling. Exaggerate that on the longer exhales.

9. Once you get the feeling of the soft tissue of your back expanding, then keep the expansion of the back muscles into your hands, even during the exhale.

10. Now you are in place:

Inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts. Do that again.

Then inhale for 4 counts and exhale for 6. Do THAT again.

Then inhale for 4 and exhale for 8, 10, 12, each a progressively longer exhale.

Until you run out of air and MUST breathe.. . . Trigger your instinctive inhale.

Try it.  Right now.

Breathe to the lowest richest lobes of the lungs.
Stop starving your mind and body of breath.

Breathe.
Teach someone else breathe.
Be breathing.

I met John in 2001 at Gold’s Gym, where he ran every day, took my stretch class three times per week, and ate skinless chicken and broccoli every dinner.

He unfailingly supported the incessant early passion I had for teaching pilates; kindly amused at the near nightly perusal of architectural plans at the living room table to design the next incarnation of studio space.  For the first few years he made the foods that graced the buffet tables for each Gallery Night.

John was invaluable in helping me grow the business and the community of Body Conscious.

We married on Three Twenty Twenty-Three - so I could remember the date.   He, however, was far more savvy with numbers.  Though it was well  beneath his common sense skill and the talent of a man with a Masters in Finance, he patiently advised me on the more pragmatic aspects of running a business.  I am absolutely certain his fiscally conservative direction allows me to still be Body Conscious PilateSpa.

At all.   Much less in the tumult of politics and economy and guns which headline these days in our lives.

I honor who he was and what he offered and small white lights and pure silence grace the studio for this day.

~ Kathleen

Some have asked me what you can do for me.

I don’t know.

Help me stop asking Why.

Help me just accept what is.

Tell me to drink tea and take a bath.

Truly, I forget those things.

Your thoughts and words and tears and sadness and soup and wine and brownies and donations to Smile Train in his name are also helping  : )

AND, when you find the time,

Investigate WIPHL:

Wisconsin Initiative to Promote Healthy Lifestyles

They are providing information and tools to implement cost-effective Behavioral Screening and Intervention (BSI) programs.  These programs systematically address depression, alcohol, tobacco and other behavioural issues to high percentages of success.  Employers will benefit with cost savings; Insurers, Health Care Providers, other Advocates can do what’s right for the patient.  Highly encouraged by Noble Wray, Madison Police Chief as a method to provide education to reduce DUI.

If we are serious about health care and costs, rather than  interested in arguing, maligning and whining, everyone has to change.

Just  everyone.

http://www.wiphl.org/

The raw film clip below shows the classic pilates ‘knee floats’ and ‘pelvic lift’.

Yes, those are goosebumps.  It’s cold in the Baja desert by the Pacific in early morning in early June.  This was filmed June 2010, on my 48th birthday.    Tell me if it says anything to you.  Working on deleting the sound of the desert wind and adding voiceover to these clips.

In the meantime:

“Exhale to elongate middle spine to middle earth.  Inhale expanding cavern of ribs and thorax.  Exhale to hollow the abdominal fibers into middle spine.  Inhale expand the cavern.

For the first Abs Access Skill, Knee Float,  exhale to float the length and weight and breadth of the thigh to the sky.   Fully anchored, rotate the bone of the femur deeply back into the socket to float it from the earth.  Become even more grounded on the inhale to suspend the thigh back to the level surface.  Switch to float the other femur. Then add weight to the center-work by floating both femurs.

Second Abs Access Skill, bolt the length of the arms to the ground and get light in the pelvis, flexing the lumbar spine to lift the pelvic structure.  Exhale in order to move, before you lift. Inhale as you control the spine back to earth.”

Raw Abs Knee Elevations and Pelvic Lift

One Stretch for the Day

Single Parallel Leg Hamstring Stretch

With all stretching, breathe slowly, consciously, inhaling into your back and exhaling from your belly.  With hamstring stretches, keep the back flat (not arched).  Modify this stretch by standing and putting the stretching leg on a low bench or table or counter, and place hands next to the stretching leg.  If you cannot reach the leg while keeping your back flat, put your hands up against a wall or other stable surface for support.

Free the Hamstrings ~ Free the Spine ~ Free your Mind

I am surprised by that.  Surprised that it is true that I think everyone wants to be fixed and more surprised to find out everyone does not and finally surprised that I projected my inherent desire to be fixed, improved upon, made better, upon every other conscious human.

This is a woodpecker

It comes, perhaps, from being born into the need for surgery, not to survive necessarily, but to fit in the bell curve even remotely of acceptable appearance.