I have only recently started trying a few of Katy Bowman's "Alignment Snacks" downloads from her web site, restorativeexercise.com. These are 25-35 movement-focused classes offered for $5 each. Katy is teaching live in front of a live class (who you sometimes hear but never see).

After trying several of Katy upper-body focused classes (which I loved--and you can try her "Can't Get Enough of Shoulders" free on her web site), I decided to try several for lower body, as I wanted to work in particular on my psoas and hamstrings. I found Frankie Says: Relax the Psoas to be a bit more of a workout than some of her other snacks. You will need two blocks for this snack (Katy herself uses a block and a half dome interchangeably.)

After a brief (2 minutes) anatomy introduction using her skeleton, Katy begins lying on the back with one block under the head for support (you could easily use a firm pillow here instead) and a second block under the sacrum in what she calls the "toaster" position--I would call this the medium height. Here you basically just focus on relaxing the psoas in this position. Katy then transitions to kneeling for runner's lunge to focus more on stretching the psoas from this position. This first segment is about 11 minutes total.

Next, Katy discusses moving into an "inverted V" position. She differentiates this from downward dog in yoga because she says that her positioning is different to focus more on stretching the hamstrings. For her setup, she starts in plank with the hands directly under the shoulders, and instructs to then push back into an inverted V without changing the position of the hands/feet and without worrying whether the heels reach the floor--which is EXACTLY how I've always been taught to do down dog in yoga! Anyway, Katy moves been the inverted V position and back to the lunge position several times, eventually lifting the back knee in the lunge. This segment is pretty intense!

Katy ends by returning to the back and again lying with the block under the pelvis. There is a brief relaxation to finish, with the total time of this snack being 29.5 minutes. As the title of this snack would suggest, it mainly worked the psoas, both in stretching and releasing, and I thought it did a nice job with that. I would have liked more hamstring stretching (I choose the snack because customer service on Katy's web site suggested that it would be one of the best snacks for hamstrings), as I did not find the inverted Vs sufficient for this. Still, this was a nice snack overall, and I would recommend it.

Instructor Comments:
Katy is rather goofy, but I like her! She's not above giving mini-lectures about alignment or other issues she feels strongly about, and she tends to go off on little tangents at times, but I don't mind this myself; she is VERY low-key.

Beth C (aka toaster)