Daily Mat

Hi, I'm blossom Laelani Crawford, and joining me is Julie and Jim and we're going to do a little warm up that in my ideal dream world, we'd all have an extra 20 minutes to do before we did any machine or a traditional plots work. So let's get started. Let's start. We're going to start with the cat. So let's get on all fours. Getting ready for the mini cat. So you're going to drop your head and round your spine. The knees are hip width apart, the hands are right underneath the shoulders, and we're in a rounded spine. Really try to let the head dangle.

You're going to reverse your lower spine only from the waistline down, sticking the booty out. And as you exhale, you're in a curl, zip tight jeans on belly button to the lowest part of the waistline. Let's just do that a couple more times. So from the waistline down, reverse your spine just a little bit and as you exhale, push the floor away. Find that curl and let's do that one more time. Start to reverse the lower spine. Continue reversing. When you get to the middle of your back or your bra strap, start to hiss to lift your head up. Sure.

Sit toward the heels. Hitting going. Sure lax. And let's just do that one more time with a rounded spine. Come up on all fours. Do that mini cat again. Reverse your lower spine. And then when you get to your bra strap here to continue reversing and really exhale his to lift the head pushed into the hand.

Nice. Open the back pushing. Push it into the hands and relax and just take a little moment. Good. Come up to sitting comfortably. And let's just do some breathing. So just sit, cross legged or whatever's comfortable. You can do both legs open. Um, ideally, just both like they're doing the same thing. Yeah. So a little take of a traditional sort of Cathy breathing.

We're going to do accordion breathing so you can put your hands on your ribcage. Inhale, breathing out to the sides. Inhale for five counts. Exhale. Inhale for six counts. Exhale for six right away to 18. Inhale for a feeling the ribs opening out to the sides.

And as you exhale, good place one hand on the front of your rib cage, and then one hand on the diagonal, opposite back. You're going to think of breathing into both of those hands. Inhale, eight counts. Exhale again, breathing into both of those hands. Big exhale, shh. Change of the diagonal. When you're ready, you can even change the sound of the breath. You can still do this. Inhale and exhale. You don't have to make the sounds so inhale, it's up to you.

Whatever works, and exhale. Ah, one more breath like that. Inhaling into that diagonal. Sometimes one diagonal is easier or harder than the other. An exhale. Wow. Well, your arms relaxed and just think of an umbrella opening and wrist.

Just breathe in. Inhale into the rib cage, all directions. Exhale. You can make a sound or not. I like to close my eyes so it can really envision the inhale breathing, opening up the rib cage back in all directions. An exhale. Nice. So when you're ready, you can put your hands on your tongue.

I just want to give the side. You have this right on the tummy. Inhale. Let the belly go and when you exhale, you're going to bring it in for five counts. Go. Sure. Keeping the belly in. Inhale. And when you exhale or you can do that same percussive breathing five times. Go.

Sure. Last one. Inhale. Exhale. Bring it in. Shh, shh. Shh. When your legs together, feet on the floor. Give me a big inhale. Sitting up as tall as you can and as you exhale, let's hum to lie down. Okay.

Mm. Nice. Low sound stuff right there. Come right back up. Make sure you scoot to the very front edge of your maths. Forgot to mention that part. Yes. Scoot to the front edge and really to the front edge, Jim. Even closer.

That's it. Inhale. And as you exhale, hum to lie down. Okay. Mm Curling. Look at the center line that the two legs are making and use that as your center to guide you all the way down till your head rest down. When your head touches down, just look to the right and look to the left. Easy head circles.

Hmm. And turn to the right jet, the chin up to the ceiling. Chin comes up, just a nice arch of the neck and come back to center. Look to the left, jutting the chin up to the ceiling, stretching and jaw muscles and come back to center. Staying there. Give me a big inhale. And as you exhale, lift your head up. Look right between your knees. Find that head lift you would do for your hundreds.

Send that energy all the way down to the naval, staying there. Count to five, two, one, two, three, four, five. Inhale, and as you exhale, lengthen away from the pelvis again. Please inhale, use the exhale to lift your head up. Think of looking right between your knees. Go to the your hundreds head lift position, counting to five. One, two, three, four, five. Inhale, stay. And as you exhale, lengthen away from your pelvis. Adding on. Inhale.

As you exhale, lift your head up, right arm riches back. Keep the head lifted. You inhale to reach back. Exhale, bring that arm down by your side. Other arm, big inhale to reach back. Feel that asymmetry, kicking it into the tummy and bring it down. Inhale, stay there. Exhale this time. Put a belt on as you lie back down again. Inhale, big exhale. Find your head lift. Go to, it's in the energy down to the naval. This time left arm reaches back. Inhale and bring the arm down. Other side, right arm reaches back and bring it down. Both arms reach back. Inhale, exhale, rest your head. Reach the arms back. Circle the arms out to the sides and down to the hips again. Inhale, reaching up. Reach back out to the sides and down to the hips. Last time, inhale, reach back.

Open the arms out to a t and bring the arms up to the ceiling. Stay here, reach the arms up to the ceiling and release them down. One more time. Inhale, reach up, reaching out of the sockets. Protracting those shoulders and come on down. Let's open the arms. Inhale out to the T. [inaudible]. Exhale to close. So as you do, this is the check-in moment. Can you feel if both arms are moving at the same time?

Hopefully you can. And if you feel like one arm is arriving to the open position sooner. Think of making the faster arm. Follow the slow arm last time. [inaudible] then close from here, from the tummy. Extend those legs forward. Take a stretch from the arms over your head. Point the feet, lift the ribs, and as you exhale, bring the rib cage back down. Flex the fee and think of those little toes coming up to you.

You're reaching back. The ribs are down. The hands are somewhat off the ground. Say out loud. One. Bring in the arms up to the ceiling and say to to lift your head up. Three. See that next wrinkle of your shirt? You're going to come up to it. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Next spot. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. One more spot. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Now counting, slowly. Inhale. One, two, counting. Three, four. Kathy would say to me, inhale with the stomach in. Exhale with the stomach and keep counting. Five, six. Keep counting as you roll back. Seven eight you still keep counting whatever number you are and you just keep counting to ten one, two.

When your head touches down, you stopped counting to 10. Let's try that one more time. The arms reach back, say out loud, one arms up to the ceiling and to lift your head up. Three next wrinkle, four five six seven eight, nine 10. Next spot. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. One more. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 counting slowly. One, two, three, four, five. Keep going forward. Six. Keep going forward to seven, eight. Start to roll back. Nine, ten one, two, three. Stop right there. Both of you have you slide the heels in, cross your arms in front of you. You can keep the legs together and pulse.

So as you're pulsing, it's not the head pulsing. It's hopefully you can see my tummy really struggling hard and I'm bringing it in in and go to a different place cause that's getting tired and you pulse. And so I like to say that that initiation first part of coming in one more spot, either higher or lower, you press those thumbs forward and against the thumbs pressing forward. You curl the belly back. Inhale, and as you exhale, lie all the way down. Slide the heels in closer to you and just take a moment to breathe.

When you're ready, I'm going to bring your right knee into your chest. Hopefully no moving of the hips. Bring that left knee into your chest. Grab onto your shins. Give yourself a nice [inaudible]. Oh, let's circle the legs just a couple of times. The next exercise is another Kathi exercise.

When we just did was the green room and now we're going into another doozie known as the spine lift. Here we go across your feet or your ankles. Hands are down by your sides. Inhale, and as you exhale, you're trying not to hoist, but you're trying to do a deep inner curl. At the time. You do start to lift your spine up into the air, stay there. So ideally the heel aren't up high there, close to the bottom. Lots of eyes away from you. Inhale. And as you exhale, it's count as you come down and say three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Right, back, up again. Here we go.

Curling up. As you come down breasts, away from the chin, as you say, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine 10th, which is [inaudible] cross your legs. Believe it or not, it's a little different to the other side. Here we go. Curl and up. [inaudible] by the way, when you try this and you think, wow, my um, triceps are really burning, you're probably doing it right. Here we go. Three for. You can kind of pull on the feet.

The knees don't go too wide. Keep counting as you come down. Yes. And yes, there's one more to go. So let's go. Here we go. Curl heals closest to the bum. Inhale, let's x out to come down and say three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. How'd those knees and give yourself a nice pole with control. Lower the legs, down, feet together, but not the heels. So big toes, knuckle. Stay together. Heels slightly apart. Push down into the hands and no tucking.

Just a very simple lever up. Lift the hips, one inch off the ground. Feel both legs working and lengthen as you come down. Let's do that one more time. Inhale. As you exhale, push down into the feet. Do a little lift and come back down and separate the feet slightly. Full pelvic lift. Lift those hips up any way you wish. Curling levering.

And let's add a little Cathy grant bit. You're into Cathy slant board, pelvic lift. Put your hands on the tops of your thighs. I want to do this in a pelvic lift. And this sort of helps that. You're going to press down on the thighs. Press your hips up against it and hopefully you'll feel your tummy kick in your hamstrings. Kick in. Inhale as you exhale. Say three, four. Keep counting as you come down. Five, just like that spine lift, right? Seven, eight, nine, 10. Nice guys. So here we go. I'm gonna add, um, a little single leg extension.

So when you're ready to walk those feet back together and just extend your right leg along the floor. I always call this a three legged pelvic lift. It's just a single leg pelvic lift. You're going to push it down into the left leg and you're going to just spiral. That's all it is and you're going to push down to that left leg as much as you can. So the hips twist and on the next exhale, come on down. Just a little spiral. One more time, same side.

Push into the floor and don't think about it. It's just easy. You're going to push into the floor, stretch the front of the hip, maybe get a nice stretch in that back end, rural on down. Change sides please. Sliding the leg in and slide the other leg out. Push down for the right leg. It's a one legged pelvic lift, not a three legged pelvic lift. I don't know where I came up with the three legs and roll on down.

I was teaching it three legged pelvic lift for a long time to my mat class. No wonder they didn't get it pushed down to the floor. One more time. Get that nice spiral. Inhale. Keep that lengthen your spine as you slowly roll down to the floor. Great. So now we're going to do a little crossover. Okay.

So we just did a little change of Rooney and we're going to do Cathy grants crossovers. She called them the k s g crossover for Kathleen Stanford grant because there were other cross sub crossovers, but this was her crossover. So here we go. Um, there are many ways to do it, but we're just gonna do one. So you're gonna start with the knees together, arms down by your sides. Let's all go and just let our legs fall over to the right as you circle the arms out to the sides and along the floor as the knees go over, hook the thumbs, reach out of the waistline and had that reach take you to roll onto your right side. When you exhale, look up to the hands. Try not to stick your booty out. Kathy would say, don't give me tits and ass. That's tits and ass.

No tits and ass. Bring your head back to center. Start to open the arms, and as you exhale after you get that shoulder down, come back breastbone to pubic ball and let's do that to the other side. The legs fall over on the C arm. Circle around the time is kind of up to you. It should feel good and stretchy, high. And when you're ready, reach and roll. Keeping your torso centered.

Look up toward the hand and it's tricky to get your head center here where your head back to center. Start to open the arms again. When that shoulder touches down, exhale coming back from breastbone to pubic bone. Let's go to the other side again. The legs go to the riders you reach. Hold the thumb. Let's add a little variation that I've been playing around with the head.

Does the same thing. Go to stretch those jaw muscles. Bring the head back to center, start to circle, are the arms out to the sides and extend that top leg. Go to a nice diagonal of the body, roll onto your back. Rub onto that left leg with both hands and let's point and flex the foot a few times. Yes.

Good. I want to give you a good view of my big foot. And then when you're ready, you're going to circle the foot any old way. Circle in the other direction and then we're going to do my misery foot circle. You're going to point the foot, grab onto something with the toes and the ball of the foot pulling that curl down to the floor and you're going to think of drawing a circle on the wall behind you with curled toes. If it makes your eyebrow co raise or your lip curl or your foot cramp, you're probably doing it right. So here's the thing, I you as you circle, you're trying not to twist the foot. You trying to keep the little tail and big toe on the same plane as you circle flex to come out of it. Give it a little shake. Let's do that to the other side.

Leg comes down, legs go over to the left, circling the arms, stretching, reaching. Hook the thumbs. When you're ready, take the head back. Try not to arch the back. No. TNA. We're in the head. Back to center. Start to open the arms. Extend that top leg. Feel that diagonal line from the right leg all the way to the right hand and roll onto your back. Flex and point the right foot holding onto that leg with both hands.

Yes. Circle the foot [inaudible] circle in the other direction. Point the foot. Grab on with curl toes and pull as you pull down in this position and try to keep the little till and big toe on the same plane as opposed to the twist, which is what most people want to do. And then a circle on the wall behind you with curled toes. The misery foot circle. It's called that for a reason. Flex the foot. Shake it out. All right, let's all face in toward each other.

Guys, let's pretend we just finished that. So let's lie back onto our backs. You're going to hug the knees into your chest, grabbing onto the backs of your size, lift your head up and press yourself up. Oh, Julie face. Jim, if you don't mind, that's okay. Now we're balancing. So here we are. The elbows are bent. Yeah. And we're not putting in the feet down. We're lengthening, we're breathing, and in this position, the tiniest rocking. That's it.

So when I do this, I like to think of zipping. That's how long it takes me to zip and come back. Just one more little zip and come back, head those knees and pull really tight. Put the feet on the floor, transfer your weight into the feet if you can, and go into a nice squat. Now, if this squat doesn't work for you, you can go right into a pike. But ideally squat if you can. And from here, you're just trying to relax the front of the ankles, breathe and slowly come up to standing. As you come to standing, get the heels down. As soon as you can use the quads and come all the way up to standing.

And in theory, you would cross your arms and go down into the hundreds or footwork or Cadillac mania whenever you want. Nice and warm. That's it.