What You Need to Know about the Seal
The preceding Side Kick exercises focused on strengthening your hips and powerfully stabilizing your spine against the force of one moving leg while lying on your side. The Seal follows those exercises by returning you to a seated, symmetrical, forward-facing position that aligns you upright in the waterfall of gravity, and flexes and massages your spine in much the same way as the Rolling Like a Ball exercise. The Seal releases the hips and hip joints after the powerful, stabilizing, and strengthening hip exercises that precede it.

The Seal is a demanding exercise, but because it is the last in the Pilates mat-work series, it is also a cool-down exercise. Because you perform it last, you’re able to approach the Seal calmly with the ease, strength, and mental focus built throughout your workout.

What Is the Seal?
To perform the Seal exercise, you sit facing forward on the mat, knees bent and open to the sides, heels together, gently pressing your inner thighs into your arms and vice versa, as you cup an ankle in each hand. You lift your heels and balance on your tailbone or sacrum, then inhale as you roll back to your shoulder blades, lifting your hips above your head, and suspending them in this position as you clap your heels together three times. You finish the Seal by exhaling and rolling back down your spine to return to the starting balance, and clap your heels again three times.

What the Seal Does
The Seal caps your workout with a calming, centering movement; its stretching and balancing action brings your body back to its forward orientation and prepares you to stand, sit, and move with coordination and control throughout the remainder of your day Here are some other benefits of the Seal:

• It increases blood flow along the spine.
• It strengthens your abdominal corset, enabling you to decompress and stabilize your spine, and to exhale effectively
• It strengthens your inner thighs, pelvic floor, deep hip rotators, and gluteal muscles.
• It stabilizes your shoulder girdle and integrates it into your core.
• It trains balance and coordination.
• It releases hip joint tension, and helps you learn to move the femur and pelvis independently of each other.
• The rolling motion of the Seal massages the spine to increase flexibility between the vertebrae, ribs, and back muscles, increasing your breathing capacity.

The Basic Seal Exercise
The Seal is a centering, calming exercise designed to wrap up your workout and prepare you to move out into the demands of your day. And, as you’ve found with most other exercises in the Pilates mat-work series, you can make the Seal a bit easier—or more challenging—to fit your current capabilities and fitness needs. The steps in the following section describe the basic intermediate Seal exercise. Later sections describe beginning and advanced modifications. Use these modifications as appropriate for your experience and fitness level. Keep the Seal safe, challenging, and fun.

Step by Step Through the Basic Seal
To transition from the Side Kicks to the Seal, pull your belly in as you inhale and scoop deeply to come to a sitting position, facing the front end of your mat. Exhale as you bend your knees to the sides, bringing your heels together, and curl your spine up and forward. Inhale as you slide your hands between your legs and under your heels to cup your outer ankles. Exhale to integrate your core, gently pressing your inner thighs to your arms and vice versa, as you balance on your tailbone, lifting your feet 3 or 4 inches from the mat. Then follow these steps:

1. Inhale and deeply scoop your abs as you roll backward (exactly in imitation of a wheel) onto the area between your shoulder blades. Your hips are curled up and over you and your feet are behind your head.

2. Continue to inhale as you suspend your movement there and gently clap your heels together three times, moving your entire leg freely in your hip joint.
3. Cinch your corset to expel the air, and to propel yourself forward to your starting position, balanced on your tailbone or sacrum.
4. Continue to exhale as you suspend your movement there and gently clap your heels together three times, once again, moving your entire
leg freely in your hip joint.

Repeat steps I through 4 six to eight times. With each rep, increase
your spinal flexibility, hip freedom, balance, control, and coordination.