The exercise I show here is really good for strengthening your abdominal muscles as well as the muscles of your arms, your legs, your neck and your trunk. If practised at your appropriate level you can help relieve pain in your lower back, your upper back and your neck. This can also be especially good for enhancing the health of your internal organs, especially with respect to absorbing food and eliminating waste.
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In this exercise I move actively, from the core, with natural breathing, and with a fluid figure 8 pattern.
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Here I show a progression of the exercise from the simple easy to complex hard versions. The exercise is simplest with the head on the floor, the knees bent while moving through only a small range of motion quite slowly. The exercise becomes more challenging and potentially dangerous for those not suited to it when the head is off the floor, the legs are straight and there is a large range of motion with speed.
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It is important for most people to complete the exercise by hugging the knees to the chest and pressing the head on the top of the hips into the floor while trying to lift the label on the collarbone away from the floor. This can help to relieve lower back and neck pain that is either pre-existing or may have inadvertently manifested to over doing the exercise.
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The exercise can also be done with complex breathing patterns but for most people this is unnecessary and too advanced.