Beginner Mat

Hi everyone. Um, does anyone have any injuries, problems, concerns that I should know about as the teacher? I am tired. Okay. Um, a second question. Are we all comfortable just finding a, a position where we can sit up comfortably or should we stand across like it and turn and face me perhaps? Um, I just want to spend a couple of moments talking about the uh, Palazzos breath as opposed to natural breath. So if you could just place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and just take a couple of natural deep breaths. Just breathing in. So feel what happens in the body and breathing out.

So generally in natural breath, as we inhale, our belly rises, our chest rises, and as we exhale, both of those places will, will drop a little bit. So in opposition to natural breath, what what we're trying to do in Palase is relax the chest and contract the abdominals and allow the breath to, to fill the ribs. So it's called post lateral breath and it's a side to side sort of feeling. So take your hands away from where they are and put them on your ribs, maybe even wrap your thumb around the back of you and allow your fingers to spread across the front and then pull your abdominals in or draw your navel backwards towards your spine so you feel a sense of contraction already in the center of your body. And with that, as you inhale, keep the abdominals engaged in. Try to allow the rib cage to expand outwards into your hands.

You'll feel your hands maybe going wider away from each other. And then as you exhale, deepen the abdominal contraction and let the rib cage slide down the front of the body. It's a core set like sensation. And if you finish the XL or blow all the air out of your body, you should feel a pretty firm abdominal contraction happening. Let's just do that a couple more times. So breathing in first, engage the abdominals, pull in and slightly upwards through the abdominal muscles and as you inhale, allow their rib cage to expand laterally. And as you exhale, feel just a sense of relaxing through the chest, allowing the ribs to slide towards one another, but also to slide down the body and finish the XLR.

He let all the air out of the body. And, and with that we, we engage or find an abdominal contraction happening pretty much on its own. Oh, the last thing I want to say about the politesse breath is it's not just a side to side movement of the ribs, but we also want to, I'm maybe just let your arms reach behind you. We also want to allow the ribs to expand in the back of us. So let's just do a couple more breaths. That same feeling of keeping the abdominals polled in and expanding through the rib cage can feel as you breathe into the ribs, the ribs in the back actually get larger or bigger and then exhale, feel not only the front of the ribs sliding down the front of the body, but the back of the ribs relaxing down the back as well.

So with all of that in mind, we're going to try to, the reason for that breadth, I guess I should say, is a employees. We're endeavoring to keep our abdominal muscles working throughout the class. That's that. That's obviously an ideal or perfect situation. So let's turn and lie down onto our backs. Just come all the way down onto your back.

Your f you want to position your feet so they're approximately in line with your sitting bones, the bones at the bottom of your hips. Stretch your arms along along your sides. The next thing I'd like to, in fact take the heels of your hands and put them on your hipbones run or thread your fingers just across your pelvis. Um, you'll hear a lot of talk about neutral spine position and what that position is is where the tailbone is relaxed downwards into the mat in the space between the three bony landmarks of pubic bone and your two front hip bones. That area of the body should be straight across or horizontal. So to find that press start to press the spine into the mat or feel the belly button travel through the mat into the ground, that's called a flat back or a Tuck from there. Allow the back to gently don't force anything but allow the tailbone to reach backwards so that you're feel the front of your hip bones higher than your pubic bone. That would be an what we would call an arch of, or an overarch of the lower back.

And then Kinda just shift back and through those two places, a flat spine and an arch spine, and settle yourself into what feels to you like a pretty comfortable neutral spine where the hipbones, the pubic bone are, are in a horizontal line. So calling that the neutral spine position. With that, let's bring our arms along. Our sides. Stretch your arms away from your ear so you feel your fingertips trying to reach down towards your heels. Taking a deep breath in. Keep the abdominals engaged in. Look for the expansion to the sides of the rib cage. As you exhale, use your breath and your abdominals to just press the spine flat.

You'll feel your pubic bone come a little higher than the front of your hip bones. Inhale, allow the tailbone to reach gently downwards into the mat, and as you exhale, do that same thing again. Try to find the flattening of the spine happening more from the abdominals or as much as possible from the abdominals. Then the legs, so we don't want to engage or tighten the glutes or the legs too much to find that position. Inhaling as you travel through neutral or fund tailbone down and exhale as you just breathe deeply. Remember to finish the XL or finish the breath. Blow all the air out of the body. Let's do that. It looks good, you guys. One more time. Exhale, flattening the spine as you feel your low back. Come into contact with the mat.

Also feel the front of the rib cage pressing downwards into the mat. And with that we're going to head into a pelvic curl. So starting in a neutral spine, your initial exhale as you press into a flat spine. That's pure abdominal work, as we've mentioned. From there. Allow your tailbone to leave the mat cert to curl slowly lifting the pelvis away from the Mat. As you lift your hips away from the Mat, the muscles of the legs are going to have to start engaging. We're going to find a straight line from the knees to the shoulders.

Take a breath in and as you exhale, just feel the chest fall between the arms. Feel each rib individually or the front of the rib cage knitting together to press the ribs into the mat. Work slowly through the low back and release all the way down. Continuing to work to your tailbone. Breathe in again. As you breathe out, coming through a flat spine, you notice that the pelvis is now in a tuck.

Try to maintain that tucked position as long as you can. When you feel like you can't tuck anymore, you should be in a straight line with your knees and your shoulders in alignment. Inhale, hold, and as you exhale, just start melting your spine using the front of the body more than the back of the body or the front of the body to manipulate the spine. As it travels back into the ground. I'm going to do that just a few more times. Please. Breathing in, breathing out as you first compress the lower back into the mat. Feel as you roll up and as you, especially as you find that upward position, the pubic bone is higher in space than the ribbons, so come down a little bit with your hips and try to push your pubic bone up in that way. We're going to probably find a stretch to the front of the legs.

Inhale and exhale as you come down slowly, slowly, there's five bones between the bottom of your ribs and and your pelvis. See if you can find those bones individually. Stu, two more pelvic curls for now excelling as you again contract. Feel the pubic bone as the highest point in space as your spine travels away from the Mat. Good at the top. That's Ma. That's really good. Rebecca, breathe in and as you breathe out, come down manipulating the spine, feeling that that sensation of the rib sliding together as you press the spine into the mat and this'll be our last one in. He'll prepare XL.

Visualize your spine as a string of parol so that each bone is an individual piece coming first away from the mat, breathing in at the top and then coming back down into a mat. So each bone of the spine is it one pearl in the strand coming down individually and look to try to create a little bit of space between the bones as you place the spine down. Quite nice work. Ladies. Bring your arms straight up over your shoulders, point your fingers towards the ceiling and then from here and you'll as you reach your fingertips up, you'll feel your shoulder blades slide away from the floor. Exhale without forcing or or shoving in any sense, just allow the Scapula, the shoulder blades, or the wing bones to slide gently back down into the mat. We need to do that a couple more times. Inhale, reach the fingers up towards the ceiling. Feed the abdominals, work in opposition or work towards the Mat. And exhale, just place or relax the shoulder blades back into the mat, underneath you in heel. One more time like so. Reaching the arms up, feeling the chest or the collar bones.

Go into a slightly round position and excelling as you just set the shoulder blades down from there. Breathe in as you separate your arms. Don't put them all the way down, but get a sense of reaching them away from one another as they traveled to the sides. And then exhale, deepen through the abdominals. Press the front of the ribcage down as the arms come back together. Breathe in as you stretch the arms. Feel that the ribcage moves in the direction that the arms are moving and exhale as the arms come back towards one another. Again, the ribcage will move in the direction as that the arms are moving.

Let's do that three more times. Reaching out. If you feel the fingertips reaching away or the arms reaching away, you should get a a, a, some sort of a stretch to the shoulders or through the chest. Exhale, the arms travel back towards one another. Two more times. Reaching out, seeing if you can look for a bigger stretch or a greater stretch and then feel the abdominals engaged. The rib cage and together the arms kind of floating back together with not a lot of excess tension in the neck or in the shoulders. Last one, it's actually stay out this time reached just a little wider and as you exhale, place the arms down onto the ground. I pick up your right leg. I'm going to hold it in what we call a tabletop position so that the the foot and the knee and the hip tr or create a 90 degree angle using your abdominal muscles.

Pick up your other leg and then glue the knees together so that your feet are just in front of your knees. Your knees are touching, your ankle bones are as close to touching as possible. Moving into the spine, twist supine. We're going to go to the back of the room for us. On the inhale, you'll pick up the back yet trout. Take the knees over towards the ocean and as you exhale, engage the opposite side of the waist field that the abdominal muscles pull the legs back through center. Breathe in as you travel the legs towards the Cadillac and breathe out as you deeply engage to the opposite side of your waist, bringing yourself back through center. So as you go through this movement and go ahead and continue, you want to feel that the knees don't shift up and down on one another. They stay right side by side. You also want to feel up the most minimal amount of tension if at all in the chest and the neck and in the leg muscles themselves.

Inhaling as you travel to the back and XLA as you look for for deep work in the abdominal muscles, bringing yourself back through center. Let's do that just a couple more times to each side as you shift from side to side. Note that the pelvis isn't shifting upwards towards the ribs on either side, but it just teeter totters over. Um, I like to visualize the legs moving like a windshield wiper travel straight across like they're pushing against a glass wall and they come back through center and then just reach around your legs, bring your knees into your chest and give you a needs, a hug. When you're ready, bring your legs back into a tabletop position. We're going to do what we call a single leg lift, so place your hands on your pelvis and kind of run your fingertips across your head, your abdominals at a specifically around the lower belly out area.

As you inhale, we're going to take one of our legs keeping the consistent angle in the knee and hip joint. We're going to just touch the ground with one set of toes. Now feel underneath your hands a sense of the belly drawing deeper or pulling away from the hands. As that leg comes back into the air, inhale the opposite set of toes dropped downwards and deeply pull back. Continue that movement please. Breathing in. As you relax the leg towards the floor and breathing out. As you visualize a fish hook between your belly and your thigh, the fish draws down towards the ground and that's what pulls the leg up into the air.

So as we use our breath and continue to focus in the muscles in the center of our body, we should with just this simple movement, be able to get a sense of a pretty strong contraction through the center of our bodies in healing as one leg goes down and exhaling as you pull deeply back in. Good. One more time on either side, please. Breathing in and breathing out. See how much deeper or how can you relax into the movement enough that you can create more work in, in your center. Reach your arms around your legs once again, and hug your knees into your chest. And with that, go ahead and place your feet back down onto the ground.

Moving into the chest lift. Take your hands, interlock your fingers together. Please see your hands behind your head. Hook your thumbs just at the base of your skull and let your hands kind of fan out around the back of your skull. Press your elbows first down towards the ground. And you may feel that as you, as you do that there's a little activity in the neck that's something that you want to avoid. Feeling. So in order to that, let the elbows just kind of float up towards the ceiling a little bit until you feel that upper neck tension go away. She'd see your elbows in your periphery. The chest lift exercise begins like so. Breathing into prepare.

As you breathe out, feel the abdominals engaged. Feel the front of the ribs, draw down the body, lift the chest, letting the body come up off the mat so your gaze goes just over your knees. Breathe in as you intensify the feeling through your center. And as you exhale, lower your body down, but feel that you're working your way down. It's not just a relaxing down position. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. As you lift your head and chest. Feel pleased that your head stays very heavy in your hands, that the lift is being focused around the chest or the breastbone area.

Breathe in, intensify. Maybe you'll even lift a little higher. And as you exhale, feel a working contraction to lower your body down. As we go through this movement, we're going to do one more like this. We're looking for the pelvis to maintain a neutral position. So you don't want to see ya or you don't want to push the hips up as you lift your head and chest. Breathe in, hold and breathe out as you again, work your way down.

I'm going to ask you to challenge this position a little bit so we're gonna come up again on the exhale. As you inhale, reached your hands behind your thighs. Gently hold onto your legs and exhale deep. Engage the abs more to curl up a little bit higher. Try to find a position where your shoulder blades are well away from the ground. Just hang onto your legs here and note that your tailbone is down and that your low back is as flat as it can be or as relaxed. From there.

Let go of your legs. As you inhale, let the arms just float up into the air. The belly button pulls downwards and opposition and exhale. Push the arms down through space and see if you can't challenge the upper body curl. Inhale, allow the arms to float up. Feel the shoulders, reach away from the ears and as the arms have reached downwards, look for intensity in the work. Inhale, raise the arms up and exhale. It's almost as though you're pushing your abdominal muscles deeper as your arms reach down. Let's do two more like that. Inhale, raise up as the arms go overhead. Try not to let the body fall back. Exhale, arms down. Inhale, raise your arms up. This time rebend your hands out. Sorry, brewery. Bend your elbows.

Place your hands behind your head. Let your head rest into your hands and exhale to travel backwards to the map. Moving on from here. Breathe into prepare. As you breathe out, lifts your head and chest. We're going to do the same thing here as we reached in here. We're going to reach behind our thighs.

Gently Guide yourself up a little further. Note that you're in new neutral spine and when you let go, bring one hand on top of the other, pointing your hands and your highs directly over your knees. As you inhale, take your hands over towards your left knee. Try to reach up and over the outside of that knee and exhale as you come back. So now we're moving a chess live with a rotational component in. As you reach up and over and exhale as you travel back to center, try to find or imagine a goal or align just above your knees that you're not coming away from as your body travels back and forth.

Xcel as you come back to center. Inhaling as you go to one side, lovely XL. As you come back to center, let's do one more to the other side. Inhale, exhale. As you come back through center, inhale, separate the hands on. Raise them up over the head. [inaudible] bend your elbows. Place your hands behind your head and with that Xcel to lower your body back towards the ground should all these little basic movements should be pretty intense in our bodies. Let's do, I'm going to add on to that last one. Exhale. As you lift up, heading into the true chest lift with rotation, we reach again, the hands behind the thighs.

Use that as an opportunity not to just hold on for dear life, but to look for a really stable controlled position from that place. Raise your arms, reach them up, put them behind your head. As you exhale, we're going to do the same movement with the upper body we routed, rotate up and over to one side, chest lift with rotation. Inhale as you come to center, try to feel again the head is heavy in the hands. Inhale as you come through center and exhale as you reach up in across, you will want to look for a sense of not allowing the pelvis to move at all and and the feeling of going up and across. Inhale as you come to center and exhale, rotate up and across. Inhale as you come to center. Nice modification. Rebecca. One more time to eat, side up and across, back to center.

Last one to the other side I may have making made you go and even back to center and with that carefully or with work, lower your body down towards the ground. So just going to speak about that, that position a little bit more in depth. Let's pick up the leg closest to me, whatever leg that is, reach your arms just up over your shoulders. As you exhale, lift your head and chest up and then you're going to do turn towards the leg. Bring the, bring both hands behind the leg that you've lifted. Use your arms to curl yourself up a little higher.

Now what you want to look for here is that inside rib cage pulling downwards towards the rib on that side. The opposite rib cage is trying to come across, so it's a pretty significant twist up. When you're ready to bring one hand back behind the head. Bring the other hand back behind the head and we're just going to hold for three breasts here. Breathe in and breathe out. Just try to lift, intensify, breathe in and try to lift, intensify one more time, so come to center on the inhale. Exhale, lower the leg and the body. Go ahead and pick up the opposite leg. Arms are straight up towards the ceiling. Exhale as you lift up through the head and chest, turn towards the leg that's in the air.

Hold on just below the knee and the other hand goes just below that hand. Lift up, turn more twists. But don't lose that inside rib cage. Once you've found that position, bring one hand behind the head. Bring the other hand behind the head and just breathe in. How with every exhale, you deep in the abdominals, you just look for depth.

It's hard to hold. I realize. Look for a little bit of inner thigh on the leg that's in the air, pushing towards the opposite shoulder. This is our last breath. We're traveling back to center on the inhale. And with that exhale and just lower your body down. Let's, let's take a break there. Stretch one leg out. Uh, let's go left leg straight out on the mat. Bring your right hand and just cross it across the opposite leg and turn your body and turn your eyes away from the way there.

The knee goes one way is a better way to say that. And the eyes go the opposite direction. So you're just getting a nice stretch through the hip, most likely maybe through the spine. Come back through center. Stretch that leg down along the floor. Bring up the other leg. It's the opposite hand that holds onto the outside of that leg and then just not a ton of abdominal work, but out.

Definitely some just to support the spine as it moves through a rotation. Allow your eyes to travel in the opposite direction as your knee and then coming back through center and go ahead and stretch that leg down on the ground. Bring your arms straight up over your head. This we're going to play with the arm position a little bit. Reach your arms over your head without really thinking about what happens too much. They're not going to go down on the ground. They're gonna just hover. You'll feel that a natural inclination is for the rib cage, the bottom of the ribcage to float up off the floor, and then just bring your arms up over your shoulders. Again, inhale, stretch your arms over your head, but this time feel a definite focus on keeping the bottom rib connected to the mats. Beautiful. Bring your arms back as you exhale. One more time.

Feel the bottom of the ribcage. Work oppositionally from the fingertips as the arms travel over head. We're going to move on from here. As you inhale, heading into the roll up, we're going to bring the arms back up as the arms come up. Look forward. Allow the arms to come just near the thighs. Push down into the ground with your abdominals and curl through your spine to roll out.

You want to end in a position where your shoulders are just over your hips, your eyes are slightly down, but also slightly forward. Exhale as you tuck under with your pelvis or feel your hipbones go deeper into the hip sockets, your pubic bone, and push up towards the ceiling. Try to find one bone at a time. As you come down through your spine, the back of your head touches and your arms are traveling overhead. Inhale as you pick up your head and chest, arms, reach down towards your thighs, flatten your spine into the mat and Corolla. Stay at the top for just a moment.

Note that the shoulders are just over the hips and that the abdominals are supporting you, but there's also a sense of lifting up longer. Breathe in, relax the shoulders or pull the shoulder blades down towards the hips and roll yourself down. Again, the rollout. It's an exhale to manipulate. Articulate this spine down back of the head, touches the arms. Start traveling overhead. Breathe in the head, chest and arms come up. Start breathing out as you curl and again, look for a sense of supported round but long spine Mara. Bring your arms a little closer together and straighten them XLT roll down.

Again, couple of things that will help this and just continue to move. Breathe in, lift, breathe out, curl. If you put, engage the backs of your legs and push your legs down into the floor, that may allow you to have or feel a little bit more of a sense of support, especially as you go through the low back area. Inhale as you lift the head and chest, push down with the legs, squeeze the legs together. As you roll up a just one more for the day, Xcel come all the way down through your spine. Pelvis moves out from underneath your spine, comes down one bone at a time. Inhale, they arms the head, the chest lift up, and exhale as you roll all the way up. And with that, this time we're just going to stretch all the way forward, reaching for our feet and relaxing our bodies downwards. The more your abdominals are pulling in or or drawing backwards as your spine is being carried forwards, the more likely you are to get a bigger stretch in this position.

Okay? And with that, let's all roll up. Sit up as tall as you can. We're going to bring me, we're gonna keep the feet together. Now if there's any trouble at all, or if it's too challenging to sit straight with straight legs, it's worthwhile to bend the knees. And if that still doesn't feel good, it's worthwhile to separate the legs. If that still doesn't feel good, it's worthwhile to get something that you can sit on. Okay? So all of those things are choices. If we're happy with straight legs, go ahead and straighten. If you need to have bent knees bend, I'm going to bend for the first. For now, let's bring our hands behind our head again. Once again, the fingers are interlaced. Uh, let the head rest back into the hands. The elbows like the chest lift or slightly forward. And from that place, gently guide your uh, pole on your neck and guide the top of your head up towards the ceiling. You'll feel your spine perhaps grow in that direction. Breathe in here.

As you breathe out, you're going to turn towards me. Keep the elbows still. Feel the rotation happening through the waist in util as you come back to center. Okay, start your exhale. Engage through your side muscles, the sides of your abdominals or your oblique. As you turn, turn, turn, inhale. As you come back to center and exhale as you turn the opposite way. Note that if your feet are shifting off us, shifting back and forth, that generally is going to be coming from the pelvis. So we want to keep the legs rule still, the feet, the toes lined up.

Inhale as you come back through center, continue that movement. Look for a sense of upward movement, so as you're just turning your body, it's not just a twist, but also a sense of getting taller and taller or reaching the top of the head up towards the ceiling. Inhaling as you come back, let's do that one more time to either side, turning the body, keeping the head stable in the hands. Inhale as you come back through center one more time away and come back. Let's turn one more time towards me. Bring the handle that's furthest away from your legs across and hold onto the leg. Take your other hand and put it down on the mat somewhere that makes sense to or feels comfortable.

Use both arms to first help you pull up a little bit taller and then to help guide yourself a little deeper into that twist and then just gently unwind from there. Bring your opposite hand across to the opposite leg. The other hand will come on the mat somewhere behind you. There's no perfect place. So find something that works. Push up with the back arm and pulled gently with the arm that's attached to the thigh and just give yourself a nice, gentle but solid stretch and then come back to center.

We're going to move on to the spine, stretch forward, or for this exercise we're going to separate our legs. All the same rules apply as far as bent knees or straight leg. So if bed needs is a better position for you, it's worthwhile. Um, we, we don't want to lose the, the straightening of the lower back and sometimes if we're tied in our legs, that's going to cause us to kind of roll back a little bit. So if you're happy with straight legs, keep your leg straight. If you need to bend a little, please do reach your arm straight out in front of you first like we did on the mat earlier. Just reach your arms forward.

You'll feel your collarbones kind of curl inwards and then pull the shoulders back so that you feel the collarbones are, are a little bit longer. It's not a squeeze of the shoulders that would be coming too far back. Uh, go again. Rounding the children's forward and just more of a sense of relaxing or feeling the shoulder blades stable on the upper back where they belong. Let's move on from there. Breathe in. Keep the collarbones long throughout. Imagine that you're sitting up against the wall and as you start to exhale, take the top of your head away from that imaginary wall, round down one vertebrae at a time. Again, you can envision a string of pearls.

Once you start rounding forward, then start to lengthen your spine out your legs, taking a breath in there as you exhale, lift or draw your navel to your spine so that the abdominals are contracted. Slowly start to curl up. And as you raise your spine back up against that imaginary wall, look for a sense of height or, or getting taller or getting longer. Breathe in again and as you breathe out, start from the head. Feel as you start rounding down that the abdominals pull in opposition.

So there's just as much work as there is a stretch. Breathe in at the bottom and breathe out as you come back up. Well and just have a quick look up here for, for a moment. The reason why I had us do that shoulder thing is because there's a tendency as we go forward to want to curl our shoulder blades up into our ears, which sometimes feels like it's making us go further. But in reality it's just creating tension.

So what I want you to try to find in your body is as you round down this, uh, area, the upper back collarbone shoulder area doesn't change and we're just simply moving from the spine. So at that low position, you still have a sense of shoulders drying down rather than arms reaching forward. So with that information, let's do that a couple more times then you weren't doing a bad job, so you know, I just wanted to give you that information. Let's go. Inhale, sit tall, exhale, rounding down, starting from the head. So as your spine travels forward, there's definitely some space between the ears and the shoulders. There's a big sense of drawing the abdominals way back. Has the spine travels forward. Breathe in, breathe out as you feel that you're not only stacking but creating space between the bones in your body, sitting up nice and tall. The head comes up last, taking another breath. Exhale. Let the head move downwards. Remember, it's always fine to bend the knees. Always fine. Keep the space big space between the years in the shoulders, guys are doing a beautiful job. Breathe in, breathe out, lift up. Big Work are lots of work through the center of the body and we'll just do that one more time for the day. Breathing in, prepare.

Breathing out the head moves for the spine, travels forward. Got a nice space between the ears and the shoulders. Challenge yourself at that low position by deepening the abdominal muscles. Trying to go just a little further and with that scoop the abdominals in grow tall, all lift up and up and up. Good. Everyone did a really good job there.

Bring your legs together and bend your knees. I'm going to go into what we call rolling like a ball or a rocking movement. So let's actually start with the hands just behind the thighs today. Uh, use the backs of your arms, or sorry, use your arms to just guide your spine up a little bit straighter. First, walk your feet so that they're all the way together. And then with that, pull the rib cage and the abdomen backwards so that you feel just the lower back round. Again, we're not rounding through the collarbones or hunting the shoulders. Lean back from there.

You'll have to kind of slide up onto your toes and let your feet come a little closer to you. With that, see if you can use the muscles around the trunk to float the legs away from the floor and balance. The next movement that we're going to look for is a rocking movement. And it will go like this. We inhaled to roll back towards our shoulders and we exhale to come up and find balance. So here we go, all together, abs and it's like the feeling of pushing your stomach back. That's what's going to tip you off balance and then pulling your stomach in.

As you look for balance at the top, go again in Hilton. Move back and exhale to roll up imbalance. If you lose your balance, you'll, it doesn't matter, you just try again. Keep going. If you feel like you're shifting to one side or the other that that's common, so don't worry too much about it, but see about trying to be a little bit more straight along your mat if you can control it. Let's do that one more time as is and then we're going to challenge that exercise just a little bit more to go ahead and put your feet down. Scoot your feet even closer to your body and instead of holding on behind the legs, hold onto the ankle area. Pull again the abdominals deeply back towards the spine.

Use the contraction there to hover the feet up and scoot the knees up right up close to you. It's the exact same movement. Avoid kicking the feet or throwing yourself off balance with your neck. Let's move. It's an inhale to roll back and an exhale to come up in balance. Keep going in Hilton roll back. So the tighter that we make the ball, the more challenging the exercise becomes. Again, challenge your own body to to keep the shoulders relaxed, to keep the collarbones long. And let's just do two more. Breathing into, go back, breathing out to come up. One more time.

Breathing in to go back. No change in the space between the trunk and the size. From there, just bring the bottoms of the feet down. Allow the knees to stretch out to the sides and have a stretch forward. And as you stretch forward, just look for a sense of the knees pressing down towards the ground of the low lowest portion of the spine. Perhaps extending a little longer, a lifting up out of the pelvis so that we can perhaps create a little bit greater stretch there. Allow your neck to totally relax. You can maybe even turn it from one side and then the other, and then go ahead and roll yourself up.

We're going to move on to a modified saw the saw the exercise, the saw would look like this, and it happens generally with straight leg, so we have an element of a rotation and an element of a reach forward. We're trying as much as we can to extend rather than round forward over our legs. So with that, we're going to take the hamstrings out of that equation today by bending our knees so that we can perhaps get a little bit more mobility through our spine. I think I'm going to ask us to bring our hands behind our head just for space, space reasons, so with that, get the same sense that we did in the twist of lengthening upwards by gently pulling up on the head. Let's come in my direction first. On the inhale, rotate as you exhale, take that outside elbow and reach across towards the outer foot in healing as you lengthen the spine outward and upward, coming up it still in a twist and XLT. Use The obliques or the abdominal muscles to come back through center. Inhale, turn and exhale. Reach outwards and forwards over the outside leg.

Inhale, elongate or lift up through the chest. Beautiful Work and Xcel to come back through center. Again. Inhale, there's never any pulling or yanking the neck. The head actually even presses back a little into the hands as the movement comes from the spine. Inhale, lengthen upwards and exhale travel back to center and let's just do a couple more in each direction. Breathe in, breathe out. As you send your spine forward. Inhale, lengthen up and out and exhale to come back more. Instead of having your hands behind your neck, actually kind of put them right here behind your head.

Let your elbows come a little forward so there's a little bit more freedom in the neck. There I go again, reaching out. Beautiful. Lengthen up and out and travel back through center. Lovely. Last one. Other side. Inhale, elongate through the spine or look for as much length as you can and Xcel to come back on. With that, we'll just bring the bottoms out or we'll bring our knees back together. Stretch our legs out straight. One more time.

We'll just reach forward for a stretch. We're going to do a couple more roll-ups. Just to transition back to our backs. So let's do three. Rounding down through the spine. Feel a sense of rounding of the spine or the pubic bone and getting closer to the ceiling as you make it through your low back, back of the head touches, arms reach up, breathe in as your eyes, arms and eyes look forward. Chest and shoulders come up off the ground. Start excelling as you curl through the spine again.

Start looking for a sense of length or or longer positioned in your body. Breathe in and breathe out. As you round down, tucking the tailbone under again, look for that at the back of the legs, engaging a little bit. That may help you find more control through the low back area. Inhale to lift up if if you feel stuck or if you, if there's a place in your body and it generally happens around the low back that you just feel like you can't make through, go ahead and go one more time. It's helpful to take a towel and roll it up and put it just underneath back. No, it's not happening here. It's just information for those of us who may need it.

Let's just bring the arms along our sides again and bend the knees. Oh, we're going to head back into a couple of pelvic curls, so arms at our sides, taking a breath into prepare. As we exhale again, using the abdominals, it may feel a little less foreign as we do it more and more. Start to leave the floor or leave the mat with your hips as you roll up into the pelvic crow position. Look for a sense of the knees reaching out over your toes or creating length through the spine or moving forwards. That should help us engage the hamstrings, the back of the legs where we're looking for. Breathe in and breathe out.

The chest falls through the arms. The pubic bone presses back towards the front of the rib cage. You go down bone by bone through the spine. Finally arriving back into our neutral spine position two more times like so, and then we're going to add on another exercise. So exhale. What I'm talking about is a feeling of trying to stretch outwards in space.

Inhale, hold and XLC. You don't want to just make it about the blood at the top and that general, that will happen kind of automatically. Your glutes will contract so and it's not wrong for them to work by any means. Let's do one more, but if we can transfer energy into different muscles, they'll take some of the work out of the glutes and then we'll get a a better, more functional position. We're going to hold at the top. What I'd like for you to do is just draw your abdominals in and try to talk a little bit more. You won't see much in your body. Inhale, let that feeling relaxed. Exhale, draw the navel towards the spine and try to send the pubic bone upwards should get a good stretch as we're going to do that two more times.

As you do that note if the knees are wider than the hips treaded, reign that in a little bit. The knee should point just in front of the hips so that there's a pretty strong contraction of the inner thigh muscles as well. Inhale, release and exhale. Just look for a little bit of an additional Tuck. Breathe in there. As you breathe out, come just to the bottom of the ribcage. So round down, feeling the muscles along the spine. Come down equally on both sides. Pause as you reach your bottom ribs.

Inhale and exhale as you travel back up, looking for that good tuck at the top. Looking for the knees to be just in front of the hips. Moving onto the shoulder bridge prep. So what I'd like for you to do is put the majority of your body weight without shifting a great deal onto the left leg. Lift up onto the right toes.

We're going to be lifting that right leg off the floor, and we're just going to lift at an interest. So to begin, breathe in and breathe out without shifting the trunk. Try to just let the right foot float off the ground. Inhale, put the right toes down. Exhale, try to lift that right leg just a little and inhale to put it down. We're gonna do that one more time. Lift the right leg just a little. Everything else, these rules still in the body. Inhale, release, take a breath, and exhale. Start rounding down. So let's just go to the bottom of the ribs again.

Take a breath at the bottom of the ribs. Exhale to roll back up. So you'll feel that as you take one foot away, the the leg that's supporting has to work a I great. Deal harder. Keep the right leg on the mat, transfer some energy into that leg, float up onto the left toes. And with that, the legs being pulled, pulled up from the abs that we just hover the toes and put him down and hover the toes and put them down. And one more to go. Hover and put them down. Roll through the foot. Note that. Notice if one hip drop lower than the other in space. Take a breath.

Exhale, roll down to the bottom of the rib cage. Again, we're going to make that movement a little bit bigger because we can exhale to roll up fine. Again, pubic bone higher than the hip bones. We're keeping the weight on the left leg. This time, we're going to bring the leg all the way up. So it hinges at the hip. It's similar to the one where we started, uh, the, the single leg lift that we started with. So it's an XL to deeply engage the ABS. Pull the leg up so that the shin is parallel to the floor. Reach down, touch the ground. Exhale, pull the leg up parallel to the floor, and he'll reach down, touch the ground, and exhale, pull up.

Place that foot down. Take a moment to look for stability to look for alignment. Other side, we pull the leg up. It's like again, a feeling of a real or a level of some sort attached to the thigh and the belly button. So there's way more work in the abs than in the thigh of that moving leg. Place the foot down. Look for alignment. And with that roll yourself right back down onto your back, allowing the stretch to happen.

And then coming all the way down. We're going to turn towards me onto whatever side you'll end up. So as long as you're facing me, he'll be where I want you align your feet up, stretch out the bottom arm. Just place your head down on it. So it's a worthwhile to know that if your arm is way in front of you, your, your neck is going to be way in front of you and your spine will be out of alignment. So you want to position the arms so that the eyes can look straight ahead.

Let's take that free arm and put it just in front of the belly, kind of right underneath the ribs. We're going to go into, excuse me, a side exercise. And what we're looking for here is oh, bleak work. Um, so what I want you to feel in the beginning is just pull the, the abdominals pulling away from that arm that's working to support you from there. Feel the legs stretching away from you and the hover up off the ground with that. As you inhale, let them lower just a little bit, but reach them away from you. Every time the legs move. I want you to try to look for deeper muscles in the of your body. And they go down and Xcel, they stretch and lift. Inhale, they go down and exhale, they stretch away and left.

So note that although the legs are moving here, it's not a leg exercise. So we want to try to transfer as much energy into the middle of our body and, and you can even hold on and see or definitely feel it pulling away from your arm. Additional in addition to the muscle and the top of the waist that's working, we want to try to contract the muscle in the bottom of the waist as well. Two more. And last one with that, lower the legs down. Take the leg that was on top.

Start to stretch it backwards. So it's gonna, it's not going to go way back, but it's gonna go away from your eyes first. Take the arm, the free arm and reach forward. So it's just the toes and the fingers reaching away from one another. You should be able to find a good stretch in your body there. And then we're going to come back to center. Bend your knees so that your knees, your heels are lined up with your tailbone, your knees are stacked. One on top of the other. We're going to do, I'm a little bit of external rotation of the hip, so place your top hand on your pelvis.

Your hand is there just to feel that the pelvis is still in and you can run your fingers across your belly again so that if you feel your stomach pushing out, you'll be able to to know that that's happening and you can pull it in from there without moving the pelvis. I just want you to try to open the knee up as much as you can. You'll feel the outside of the hip working and then engage the inside of the leg and squeeze down. So we turn no movement in the body. Well, sorry, that's wrong. There is movement in the body, the legs moving, but the trunk from the shoulders to the pelvis is perfectly still and down. So the muscle that's working the hardest, the one that we feel the most is going to be our hip muscle, but it's also worthwhile to squeeze downwards. So we get the inner thigh muscle working as well. We'll just do four more.

Pull your abs away from the thighs. The thigh squeezes downward. So there's never a place that we can't at least look for some sort of contraction through the waist. Two more times opening and, and one open. And from there, just put your hand down on the Mat. Help yourself that turn so that you're looking down the length of your mat arms. They're going to be behind you. And to take the leg that was just on top and cross it over the the opposite knee. Now diff, a different bodies will feel this differently. So if you have, if it's a big stretch already, leave your foot away from you. A fair amount.

That bottom leg, if you need more of a stretch, starts to slide that leg a little closer to you. And then also you want to be pushing up with your arms. So you want to look for the flatus back that you can. And with that we just open up the back of the hip a little to have a couple of deep breaths and as you breathe, just see if you can get a sense of growing longer out of the low back and then slide the bottom leg away from you, uncross the legs and just spin yourself around to the opposite side of your mat. So you're still facing this direction, but you're going to be working your other side.

So we place the arm down. We placed the neck down looking for alignment through the spine from the top of the head to the tailbone. Legs are straight. They can be slightly in front of your, just out to your side. That freedom is going to come just in front of our belly. Relax the neck, take a breath, pulling the abdominals away from the arm. We just hover those legs up and then from there they lower just a little and they lift back up as they lower and lift. It's not just an up and down movement, but a movement in a, okay.

In the direction towards your toes or a lengthening contraction, so deeply engaging the abdominals each time and coming down. Eh, if you start to feel that top shoulder, the one that's, that that's attached to the hand that you're balancing will start to creep up. Gently pull the shoulder down in the back so there's not a lot of stress in the neck on that side. Just going to do that two more times. Exhale to lift. Using the breath to move the Lens and one more really nice work and then lower the legs down. Take the top leg, reach it first away from you and then slightly back. As you take your arm and reach in the opposite direction.

Just look for a stretch. It doesn't have to be a big movement, but the further the fingers and the feet move in opposition to one another, the more likely you'll be to find a, a pretty decent stretch there. Okay, and then go ahead and come back and bend the bottom. A bend both knees, the knees are going to be sacked. One right on top of the other one. Hip is also stacked one on top of the other hip. So we put our hand on our hip just so we could make sure that it wasn't moving in space as we went to external rotation. So it's a feeling of turning the knee up towards the ceiling without allowing the whole body to move back at all should be some pretty good work found there.

So [inaudible] an idea in Pele's that's worthwhile to mention is we can just move the leg up and down and not really feel a lot or we can use our mind to think about the contraction of the muscle that we're endeavoring to work and with that mental connection, get a little bit more out of the work itself. So we work the outside of the leg as it rolls up and the inside of the leg as it squeezes down. We'll just do four more out again, there's always some abdominal work to be found. Yeah, and he was three in town unless too. That's our last one. Thank you. Your very best one. Squeeze the leg as it comes down. And then with that, put your hand down in front of you, is help yourself up to sitting so that you're looking down the length of your mat. The arms are behind you.

The leg that was on top reaches across the opposite leg. Again, if, if it works better for you with your foot farther away, and that's already a stretch, that's where you should be. If you need a bigger stretch, start to guide that leg towards you. But most importantly, look for a straight back or, or lengthen through the spine. Just notice here if, if you're shifting off to one side and try to sit evenly on both hips. All right, so I'm going to ask for you now to come onto your abdominal.

So you're gonna lie down on your friends. We're going to do just a little bit of back extension. So starting with, um, I'm just, can I have you put your elbows just underneath your shoulders so your, the, the point of your elbow and your shoulder are straight up from one another and then just get a sense of trying to pull the abdominals away from the floor. And from there energize the legs and I don't mean squeeze the button lift, I just mean what do I mean lift the kneecaps off the floor so you feel the muscles in the backs of the legs, the hamstrings specifically engage from there. Slide one arm out in front of you so your body will lower down on that side. Slide the other arm out in front of you so your body is much lower than it was, but your shoulders are still very much down the back.

I'm going to take a breath in and do a swimming prep exercise, so you'll lift your left arm and your right leg and you'll reach them away from one another. Inhale. As the the limbs come down, the hand comes down, the foot comes down. Xcel change sides. If you feel any tension at all in your lower back, it's worthwhile to perhaps lower down a little or definitely to look for a little bit of a deeper add contraction. You also want to feel that the legs aren't real wide apart. So even if they don't lift as much, try to keep them in within the frame of your body. Good, nice work reaching long through the body, through the spine. Let's do one more on each side.

Okay. And then make sure that you're even, I'm not sure that you are, so if you're not, do one more and then relax all the way down and would just place your forehead on the mat. Moving onto what we call basic back extension. So I'm gonna ask for you to bring your arms along your sides right next to your thighs and a press your palms into the size of your thighs. Your pinky fingers will be on tops and your thumbs will point towards the ground. From there, before we get started, we're going to lift or pull in the abdominal muscles away from the Mat. Maybe you'll feel your pubic bone or your pelvis getting a little heavy or inhale. As you exhale, start to slide the arms down towards the knees, allowing the head and chest to just float up off the mat. It's not a big movement, but it should feel pretty intense in the upper back.

Breathe in and breathe out like the chest lift. We're looking for a lengthening contraction downwards, so there's work happening in both directions. Breathe in again, breathe out. As you slide the shoulder blades down. That's what's gonna. Move the arms and then just hover the body hold as you inhale and excelling as you low down, lower down. So when you're at the top here and see if your arms are behind your body and if they are, go ahead and move. Again, you want to keep your arms pretty close next to your side so they don't really lift above your pelvis too much.

And then the rear underarms roll forward or you're, you're trying to turn your armpits forward a little bit and that's going to be create a little bit more work there and then go ahead and release down using the abdominal muscles in both directions. So again, start to get the a sense of shoulders reaching away from the ears, sliding the harms downwards, down the size of the size, and then just a slight rotation inwards perhaps of the the rear underarms. And we see that that helps us create some intensity in the upper back. Let's do that two more times. Breathing in, slide the arms down the sides of the thighs. It's not really a a squeeze the shoulder blades together, sort of a feeling, but more of a trying to roll the arm bones in the, in the shoulder socket. Lovely. Good. So when you, I don't remember how many I've told you to do.

Sorry about that. So bring your hands into your shoulders. We're going to move this. I help yourself up onto your knees round your spine. So using your abdominal muscles to just press up. You're going to round all the way.

So you're just going to pull up from your center, pressing up into the back, let the head reach all the way down and then just release that and come back to a straight spine. It's not a specific exercise. This one. It's just more of a stretch. So we deepen the ABS, bring the pubic bone or the pelvis forward towards the Chin as a chin drops down and we just look between our thighs. Inhale to come back through center. We're going to do that one more time for the day. So it's your last chance to get as much intensity.

Number one through your habs and the biggest stretch that you find in your body. With that, take a breath, feel the back of the body, expand the ribs, expand, and as you start exhaling, start to pull back like you're being pulled around your waist. Feel the abdominals engaged. We're heading back towards our feet and ended up sitting on our feet. And then with you can stretch your arms out in front of you, lowering down onto your forehead. We're all going to be down onto her foreheads.

If that's not a comfortable position for your arms, you can bring them down along your sides. I'd just like for you to stay there. And here's a really good place again to, to feel the movement or the the con, the opening of the back as, as we breathe laterally. So take a big breath, feel the back of the body, expand. Feel the belly. Pull up away from the thighs, even though it's kind of resting on the thighs. And exhale, just allow the body to contract or feel the ribcage. Come together and inhale again. Feel the back of the body expand and exhale. Just use the breath to, to let any tension in your body. Go to relax, a little heavier into your hips. We're going to do that one more time for the day.

Breathing in big and with your exhale, try to get a sense of allowing the work that you've done today to to into your body and kind of become a part of, of your body and its processes. And with that, when you're ready, take one more breath and start to roll yourself up as you exhale, coming all the way up. That's all for today. Nice work. You guys eat a really good.