All Fours Breathing Exploration
Creating awareness of a three-dimensional breath pattern.
Begin in an all fours position with your hands under your shoulders and knees under your hips. Allow the spine to remain long and quiet.
Inhale
Feel the ribs expand east to west, widening gently into the sides of the body. Imagine the sit bones broadening and moving away from one another as the breath fills the body.
Exhale
Imagine there is a small flame beneath your belly button and gently draw the abdominal wall away from the flame. Feel the sit bones subtly draw toward each other. The spine remains still — the movement comes from breath, deep support, and awareness rather than spinal motion.
This exercise helps develop:
• Three-dimensional breathing awareness
• Deep core connection
• Pelvic floor awareness
• Rib mobility and expansion
• Spinal stability with breath
Andrea Coleman - STOTT Pilates Instructor
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Helping you move better & feel stronger! STOTT Pilates Instructor, NASM CPT, TRX
Dynamic Body Centering
Many people have an altered sense of where the true center of their body is. By exploring and observing movement — particularly through the feet and ankles — we can improve proprioception, balance, and body awareness.
In this video:
1️⃣ Forward & Back Lean
Explores ankle plantar flexion and dorsiflexion while bringing awareness to how the body shifts through center.
2️⃣ Side-to-Side Shift
Creates awareness of inversion and eversion, helping the body organize balance laterally and reconnect to center.
3️⃣ Circular Movement Pattern
A full torso circle with the feet and ankles adapting to a more complex movement experience, integrating mobility, coordination, and dynamic centering.
The feet are constantly communicating with the rest of the body. Small shifts in awareness can create profound changes in alignment, stability, and movement efficiency. Give it a try and find your center!
Bear crawl with a kick + twist—training gait patterns, core control, and coordination in a fluid, cross-body rhythm. Pilates doesn’t have to be rigid; it can be fun, creative, and dynamic. I slowed it down here so you can see the pattern and try it with control.
Bear crawling trains gait patterns—the coordinated cross-body movement you use when walking and running—along with full-body coordination and core stability; it’s harder than it looks, and you can level it up by hovering your knees off the floor. Do you struggle with this? Did you crawl as a young child? Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
Looks simple, but these small rebounds create load through the body that can support bone health, tendon resilience, foot strength, and elastic recoil. If you want your workouts to feel good long-term, they should feel springy, fun, and a little bit playful!
When your instructor offers a modification, it’s not a sign you’re failing ✨
It’s an invitation to understand the exercise more clearly.
Modifications help remove what can get in the way:
• momentum
• compensation
• unnecessary tension
• loss of alignment
So you can actually feel the work as it’s intended.
It’s not about doing less.
It’s about getting more out of the movement you’re doing.
Sometimes the “simpler” option is where the real work lives 🤍
Try noticing next time you’re offered a modification—what changes in how the exercise feels? Save this as a reminder that smart movement is still strong movement.
In Pilates, progressions are earned through mastery ✨
As Joseph Pilates emphasized, quality of movement comes before complexity.
Before moving into larger extension exercises like Swan, we first need to understand how to create:
• thoracic extension
• scapular stability
• pelvic stability
• posterior chain activation
That’s why extension is often built progressively:
Breast Stroke Prep → Heel Squeeze Prone → Breast Stroke → Single Leg Extension → Swimming → Swan
Each exercise develops the control, endurance, coordination, and spinal organization needed for the next.
The goal isn’t the biggest backbend — it’s maintaining length, support, and control as extension demand increases. 🤍
This is one way we can work toward full spinal extension, but movement is never one-size-fits-all. That’s where the mind-body connection comes in. We all need to work within our own abilities while continuing to build strength, awareness, and control.
Spinal Rotation ✨
The goal of this exercise is to isolate rotation through the thoracic spine while keeping the pelvis stable and the hips stacked. Using a foam roller under the top leg helps inhibit rolling backward, reducing compensation through the lower back and allowing the movement to stay centered in the upper spine.
A simple prop can completely change the quality of the movement and improve true thoracic mobility 👏
Clam variation with the top leg on a foam roller ✨
Lie on your side and place a foam roller horizontally in front of you. Rest your top leg on the roller, then lift the top knee while maintaining gentle pressure into the roller.
This setup is an effective way to better isolate the glute med by reducing compensation through the lower back and helping keep the hip in a more ideal position throughout the movement.
Cue to try: keep your weight slightly forward rather than rocking back 👏
Clams are a common exercise… but they’re also commonly done wrong 👀
Can you spot which video is more effective?
In one clip, my weight shifts back, my pelvis loses its stacked position, and my abdominals aren’t engaged — making the exercise much less effective for targeting the glute med.
Small adjustments can completely change how an exercise feels and functions ✨
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