Transition Back to Mat Work

Hi, I'm Kathy Corey and I am here with Christie and Emily today doing the third phase of our transition program for [inaudible] cares, which is a breast cancer recovery awareness program. We want to think about this program as a transition from um, the breast cancer recovery program that we've been doing and into our mat work because this is going to be that transition from the recovery program into our classic Mat. However, what we're going to do today is also have these exercises apply to our bodies, uh, following the programs that we've been doing. As always, you want to check with your doctor for this or any exercise program before you begin. And also it's very important for all of us not to work the body to fatigue, but to honor our body and the program. Let's begin with our variation on the a hundred so we're going to lie down on the map and bend the knees. Feet will be flat. Roll down and take a nice deep breath.

Allow the body to just relax and sink into the map. We really want to have an awareness of how our body is working as we are moving so that we are allowing the movements to come from inside the body. So the first, uh, part of this will keep the feet flat. We're going to slide the hands long along the floor and lift the upper body, lifting the head, neck and shoulders. And from there we're going to do a first set of the hundred.

Inhaling for five and exhaling for five. Begin. Inhale, one, two, three. And keep the arms reaching nice and long. Inhale, one, two, three, four, five. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five. Inhale, one, two, three, four, five. Exhale, one, two, three, four, five. Now we're going to stretch that long and now we're going to lift the unaffected leg, the, uh, which is the unaffected side of the body, just up to tabletop. And we're going to allow the other side of the body to be our stabilizer.

Lift up again, reached towards the leg and lift the other leg up as well. Anchor and stabilize. Beautiful. And inhale, one, two, three, four, five. Exhale. One, two, three, four, five. Inhale, one, two, three, four, five, and let's go for one more set. Inhale, one, two, three, four, five. Exhale, one, two, three, four, five please both legs down, stretch them away from the body and bring the arms up over your head. Get a nice long stretch and now bring your arms out to the sides of the body. Then both needs, we're going to work on a single leg circle.

We're once again going to lift the unaffected leg straight to the ceiling. And now we, uh, as we remember, the unaffected leg is the side of the body that we, um, did not have the surgery or the cancer on. So we're working with the on one side of the body mobilization. On the opposite, we're going to do a very small circle coming around and lifting. Now remember your other side is your anchor circle five times.

So don't let that other hip move or the shoulders move. We had a nice stabilization through our core and once again now reverse it and go to the outside of the body going only as far as you can with that nice stabilization from the pelvis through the shoulder girdle and all the way through the spine as well. Finish your five and stretch like up. Bend the knee and let's do the other side. Now we're going to begin with our mobilization in to this side of the body and we're going around and again we're watching that the palace stay stable through the movement.

You're doing a full breath with each circle and the range of motion is only determined by the stabilization of the pelvic alignment. And lets go the opposite way for five around on one good and breathe. Shoulders are stable, hips are stable to keep them movement inside the body for the best work from your core alignment and now bend your knee and place your foot flat. Let's now lift the legs up to tabletop, starting with the unaffected leg and the other leg comes up to meet it. Now from here we'll take the unaffected leg down to the floor.

The knee stays bent and it goes to the side of the body and we roll it all the way over. So this leg is up and we're going, oh over to the floor. Let the other hip come up. Now bring the leg back into the center and roll through the hips. Let's go to the other side. Take the leg down and roll it over. Now your stabilization is through that shoulder girdle.

Bring the leg back up and bring it up to center one more time. Once again, now we're stabilizing the shoulders and allowing the legs to stretch over. Then roll back into the center and come back up one more time and take it all the way over and come down and up and comes up into the center. Nice deep breathing through the movement. We're going to repeat that exercise. This time we're going to do it with our legs straight.

The first one that we're going to do takes the leg down to the floor, allowing me hip to come up, and then we rolled through the tailbone and bring the leg back up into center. What we want. Other side. What we want to see here is that we're not using the muscles to do it, but we're really rolling through from the bones, allowing the muscles to activate from the inside of the body so that as we're doing the movement and come back up, beautiful. The movement itself activates the muscles as opposed to trying to force the movement. We let it flow through the body and we keep that movement in an organic way.

Next part of this exercise, we're going to take your leg down now, stabilize across the shoulders and reach the other leg so you have toe over toe getting a beautiful long stretch. Take the leg back up and roll it back up into the center. Other side, take it down and all the way over. Beautiful. If you need to still keep your knees bent, that's fine as well, but at this point we want to start to work with lengthening those legs and getting a little bit more all the way through the body. Now this time we're going to go down and the leg will come down.

Let's add the arm movement to it so the arm will lift up off the floor. When you're in this position, we're going to rotate the hand goes and as we roll we're gonna roll across the shoulders to place hand over hand. So now we have foot over foot and him hand palm over palm. Once again, as we roll back, we're going to roll across the shoulder blades in through the center of the spine and then let the arm come up and open. So the arm goes all the way down to the floor. Top leg is going to lift and other leg lifts to come up.

And let's go to the other side. Leg comes down, top leg comes, oh over lift the arm and that roll across the shoulders. So you're really getting that long stretch. And now as we come back, once again, it's a roll of the spine and then just letting the arm follow the movement wants to shoulders down, the arm comes down, the leg comes up, the other leg comes up into the center and let's go ahead and bend the knees and place the feet flat. That looks great and I know it feels great for the whole body as well. We're going to do a rolling like a ball, but we're going to modify the movement just a little bit. So what we're gonna do is have you just roll the body up to sitting.

You can hold onto the back of the legs and come up. So from here we're going to keep one leg down. We're going to start with the unaffected leg. So we're going to hold it up once again. Now the opposite side of the body is our anchor.

And from this position as we roll down, the leg comes with the body as far as you can comfortably and back up. So we really want to get that mo movement going into the low part of the back, the low pelvis. Beautiful. Take the leg with you as far as you can come from a very nice and come back up one more time. Use your breath. Inhale, exhale, take a breath. Inhale and exhale. Use the power of that exhalation to help you come up. Let's go the other leg. And now once again, that position stays the same from the knee to the shoulder roll from the low part of the abdomen all the way down.

Use your breath. Inhale, exhale, and let it come all the way up. Beautiful. Two more times. Row and stretched to come down and rule to come up. And one more time. Rolling. Stretch. Reach it down and roll to come back up. Let's now just bring the legs so that they are hip distance apart and bring the knees up toward the shoulders. Toes are together and let's do one. Rolling.

Now that we have the back nice and warm, this is our classic rolling like a ball. So we're going to roll back and op using the breath. Inhale and exhale to come up and hold and roll back again. Inhale and exhale and hold. Now try and keep even weight on both of the arms so that we're not pulling with one side of the body. Keep that knee even and roll.

Affected arm and unaffected arm, working together through the shoulder girdle and that looks so good. Let's do it two more times. Back and up. And one more time, rural back and come up and hold. From there we're going to roll the body back down and we're going to do a prep for our single leg stretch. The arms are just going to be at the sides of the body and the we're working on the unaffected leg. Effective leg is our stabilizer. From here we pull in and we're going to stretch out so that the body is long and the leg comes straight and we're going to come and back in and stretch long all the way out and really get work to the shoulder girdles who are working the arms evenly.

Open those arms nice and long as we come through and inhale. Exhale, reach it long and back one more time and come in and calm back, rotating through that shoulder girdle and come in. Place the foot flat and let's do the other leg. Once again, let's remember we want to really work through that shoulder girdle. The leg comes in, we reached the arms down in reach and come in and stretch nice and low and round upward and concentrating on the evenness of the shoulder girdle. All the way through, pressing in and take it all the way out and stretch it in and for us to come out.

And one more time for wrestled in and stretched to come out. Now let's repeat that. Uh, from here, let's both like up to tabletop and one leg is going to go out as the arms go back and just bend to come back in, out as the arms go back and bend to come in out and lengthen it back. And Ben to come in last one out. And now we're ready. We're going to keep the arms in the same position, but let's just switch the legs. So it's going to go reach and stretch and reach and stretch. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale.

Inhale and exhale last time and bring the legs down, head down as well. And Nice deep breathing. Take a moment to just relax the body and now we're going to circle the arms out and place the hands lightly behind the head. At this point, take a breath and make sure that we're getting a nice stretch across the shoulder girdle and let the muscles relax. From this position, we're going to lift the torso up and we're going to turn the torso to the side and come to the center and down. Lift the torso up. Turn the torso to the opposite side. Now we're working into the affected side of the body and come down.

We're going to lift the unaffected leg and come up again. Turn and stretch. Nice and long and comm. Center and down. Change sides up. Lift and turn the body to the affected side of the body, kind of into the center and calm down. Lift the unaffected leg. One more time. This time as you come up, the leg will go out.

So we're going to stretch it out and turn and come in out intern and come in. Very nice. Out and earn. Beautiful. And in one more time I'll intern come in and change legs and take it up and over. Tear and stretch. Beautiful. So you're getting up nice. Works with your own bleaks. Remembering to keep the arms open and wide so that as we're turning, we're still opening and stretching from the chest and the upper back and come back in one more time.

Okay. And now let's bring both legs up. Okay. And do the same movements. Switching the legs. So we were, now we're going to the bent knee to the bent knee and reach it around and stretch it. Come around beautiful and open across the shoulder girdle. Try not to let the elbows come in, but keep that chest open nice and wide.

Keep breathing with that movement. Come across and across and rich and good and come center and come down. Take a nice deep breath. And let's now, once again, we're going to roll up to sitting so you can hold behind the legs and just come up. Just stretch the legs out. So this is a variation on spine stretch forward.

So we're gonna start with our spine stretch forward, but we're also going to continue to work on opening the chest nice and evenly here. So from here we bring their arms different length in the torso, high and round the back and place the hands on the floor and really stretch the body over. Now keep navel to spine, very nice. And we keep reaching back as we're doing this and keep equal weight on both hips. Round the body up, bring the arms out, bring the elbows to the chest level in, squeeze lightly to the back, arms. Confront, round the back and stretch the body all the way over. And once again we are keeping both hips level, stretching the spine nice and long. Beautiful. Round two come up, pulling the ribs in, bring the arms out and we take them around and Perez it to the back. And let's just do that one more time. Take the arms nice and long and round it long.

Take it all the way down. Very nice. Rule the spine up and now open the chest, bring the arms up and calm down. We're now going to work on the saw and we're going to start with the effected arm on this exercise. So we're going to bring the arms out to the side. One arm comes all the way up working the effected arm first. It's going to go up and over. Flex your feet and get a nice long stretch.

Now the head she face down to the knee and stretch, stretching down front, reaching nice and long. Now turn the head so it faces the back arm and stretch front and back at the same time in opposition. Turn the head one more time. So you face the knee and stretch again three times to getting a long stretch over and round the back up. Bring the arm high toward the ear and open it out and down. Other arm comes up and length in the spine and stretch over.

Now concentrate on that back arm so that you're really reaching behind you and stretch a little bit further, both front and back. So we're emphasizing the movement in both directions. Turn the head so the interfaces, the knee and engaged goes to the back hand. Turn the head again. So we're facing the knee and stu rich getting a nice long reach in that position and lift up. So the arm stays by the ear. And Dan, let's do that one more time.

Really emphasizing the length thing and the lifting of the movement up and over. Stretch the gazes down to the knee and get a long beautiful stretch. Now turn the head and face the back arm. So we're reaching long and opposition. Turn the head one more time. Facing the knee. Good.

And come up round it up. Arm is high and center. Let's go up and reach to the opposite side. Both hips stay flat. Both hips are down and stretch it. Nice and long. Beautiful. So we're really thinking about going at opposition.

Turn your head facing that back hand. Turn it again. Facing the knee and round to come up and come in to center. Very nice. Let's do some extension exercises. Um, extending our is so important in this program because we really need to keep opening the chest, but we also really need to strengthen our back muscles. So let's go ahead and light prone on the map. And just in a comfortable position opening the shoulders.

We're going to start on the elbows and the leg position should be, you said that the low back is very comfortable in this position, so the legs are slightly wider than the hips and we're going to stretch from here, pressing equally into both hands and now come up thinking about lengthening from the back muscles. So we're actively working all the way through at the top of the movement. Inhale, lift a little bit longer and as you exhale, think about drawing the body lightly away from your mat so that we're not collapsing down, but we're keeping those back muscles active through the movement. And again, press lengthen and lift, but lift from the back. Keep the pelvis relaxed and down. Lift only as high as you can without feeling any compression in the low back and then bend the arms to come down.

If you are feeling that you can't straighten your arms, moving them away from the bodies they were in front of the shoulders just a little bit more. Remember, we want to honor the body and you want to let the muscles activate through the movement. We don't want to too tense. The muscles are overly contract them. Let's go again and for us and lengthen and it is a lengthening. Don't think about going up. Think about lengthening the spine out so we're not going back. Put all the way out and come down all the way down.

This time we're going to stay on the elbows, so come up to the elbow and this is a, this is a real challenge. From here, we're going to take the affected arm and it's going to slide away from the body without changing the shoulder girdle. It lifts up and come down. Now use that arm as your stabilizer. Don't change the shoulders. Don't change the pelvis. Let the other other arm slide and float up only as high as you can. Go after Billy and come down and again, yeah, reach it long and up and come down. One more time. Reach it out, reach it long. Very nice and calm down.

And now coming down again. [inaudible] uh, lightly on the elbows. We're going to slide one arm out and the opposite legs. Again, starting on the effected side arm and like out and up and come down. Arm and leg out and up and come down. Think about reaching and oppositions. You really getting a long stretch. Armen, they up good and down and one more time. Arm and leg lift and come down.

And now just relaxed. Takes a couple of nice deep breaths and really feel the length of the back, the activation of those back muscles. Then we're going to stretch back and sit down on the heels. [inaudible] three breaths here and roll the spine up to city. From here we'll bring the legs around and we're going to work on our bridging. So once again, we want to be in touch with all of the, the movements now coming from our pelvic alignment.

So you're going to roll back and knees and feet are hip distance apart and start by lengthening from the tailbone and the pubic bone all the way down toward the heels. And from there. Just think about working from the bones, not the muscles, but just re just a small curl of the pelvis and down. Do you not think about shortening the space between the pelvis and the naval, but think about keeping everything nice and long and not over contracting muscles, but letting them activate. As we move, place your hands on your thighs. Begin to roll up. Let the hands slide down the thighs, but we'll keep reaching the hands because we want to keep the shoulder girdle open in the movement. Now we let the hands come all the way up to the ceiling and again, open wide across the shoulders. Hold that movement, hold the hands to the ceiling and begin to articulate the spine down.

One Vertebra at a time. Place the hands back on the thighs. Roll the spine so you're rolling up slowly curling, keeping that upper body activated. Let the hands go all the way up to the ceiling. Drop the shoulders into the mat to keep them nice and wide.

Keep the hands lengthening to the ceilings of pull away as you begin to articulate your spine down one vertebra. At a time. Slowly rolling and then place the hands on to the thighs. One more time. Articulate the spine, coming all the way up, feeling the activation across the shoulder girdle. Keep breathing with the movement and let the arms float to the ceiling, but drop them down toward the mat. Fingers still reaching high and articulate the spine down.

Ruling down one vertebra at a time and place the hands back on the eyes. We're going to add to that movement now for more stabilization. Roll Up. Same physician. Have the hands rolling. One Vertebra at a time. Let the hands go up to the ceiling now stay there.

Keep it nice and stable. Feel the stabilization across the shoulder blades and lift your heels up and down. Lift your heels up and down. Lift your heels up, stabilized to the shoulder, stabilized to the pelvis. Lift them up and down. One more time. Lift up. Good work. Heels down and ruled down. Away from the hands. Beautiful.

Articulate the spine and come down all the way. Release the hands down as well. Let's do a nice long stretch for in our straight leg stretch here. We're going to take one leg up, bend it in and extended, and we're going to hold that leg up high and get a nice long stretch around the unaffected leg. First stabilizing through the shoulders and either straight leg or bent leg down, head down their leg, up, head up and reached to the leg. And once again, we want to have that feeling of evenness on the body so that we're going to a long day those tighter muscles and create stabilization where we need it to support the body in this position. And now let's begin a leg walk.

So when they comes up, as the other leg comes down and we're still going to hold them good and hold it up and change it and hold it up and change. Hold it up and change. Hold it up and change and stretch. Nice deep breathing and stretch and breathe. Stretch it and breathe and stretch.

Bring both legs up and from there, lower them slowly down. Bend the knees when you need to bring your legs in front of you and let's roll the spine back. Okay. How we doing? We're good. Okay, let's do spine to us. Let's begin again with the chest opening.

So we're going to place the hands right on top of the shoulders and the elbows are nice and high. In this position we're going to twist toward the unaffected side of the body, so we're going to lengthen up and turn the body. Now take an inhale, exhale and turn a little bit more. Keep those elbows back and come back into the center. Let's go to the other side, length in the spine and turn the body.

Inhale and exhale and get that little bit extra twist right there. Take your time with that movement. Come back into the center and again, lift the spine long and then turn and stretch. Inhale, exhale, turn just that little bit more. Use the breath to increase the flexibility of the movement and back into the center. And one more time.

Lengthen it up and turn the body. Take a nice breath and exhale. As we come even more around keeping out elbows back. Both hips are flat and come back into the center. Let's repeat it. Arms out, palms down, and turn.

Take your breath. Inhale. Exhale, turn just a little more. The arms don't move. They s they move only with the turn of the body and come back into the center. Lengthen upward and turn and use your breath to increase the flexibility and range of motion and come back into the center. One more each side length and turn the body.

Okay. And up and reach with the breath to turn a little more and center. And one more time coming up and around. Beautiful. And lengthen. Entering just a little bit more and come back into the center and bring the arms down.

And just go ahead and stretch the back kind of all the way over. Okay. And will the spine out. Now let's work on our side leg work. And we're going to do this on the elbow. So we'll start with the um, arm on the unaffected side of the body.

Okay. And from here we are going to bend the bottom leg and have the top lay come nice and straight. Now keep this movement, uh, lifted away from the Mat. So you're up nice and long and we're going, the arm can be down in the front and we're going to let the leg lift and lower. You can also bring your arm out, lift and lower. We'll just lift and lower, come up and lower.

Keep lifting off of that arm and up and lift. Now make sure that we have that nice straight line out of the hip and the leg is straight as well. Use your breath. Inhaling up and exhaling down, and last one. Now let's hold the arm and leg out and let's work on a circle. Using that again, holding the hip, still holding the shoulder still as we circle around and now reverse it.

Circle Nice deep breathing. Use your breath with the circle. Great. No. This time we're going to bring the arm to the front and the leg to the back and then we're going to walk it so it goes front and back.

And we're going to keep that arm and the leg on the same plane so that as we're doing the movement, we're not letting the arm go up or down and we're going to keep that hip steady as well and bring the legs in and just bring them around. Get a nice little stretch, come up and onto the other side. So now if in fact you're still having difficulty on this side, you can use a pillow to help support you, but when leg is bent and the other leg is going to be long and straight, we're going to start with our 10 leg lifts. Now when we take the leg up and as it comes down each time, think about stretching it long out of the hip up and reach the arm once again can be out or supporting you on to your mat. Lift and lower and up halfway there. Keep breathing, lifting lower.

Nice stabilization in the hips, in the pelvis. In the shoulders. And once again, don't the arm sink, but keep that body lifting away from the mat to more lift and down last time. Now that leg circle with that nice stabilization. So we're coming to circle a little round on one on two and three, four and five. Good. Stabilize your hip a little bit more and reverse it stabilized. Good and make that leg come long out of that hip.

Really reach it around four and five. Now that walking the arms, doing through a full range of motion, front and back, and the leg is going through a full range of motion. Front and back. We breathe with air movement. Very nice. Get a long stretch and one more time. Very nice. And bend the legs in. Bring the knees around and come up to sitting.

Now I did say it's a transition program, so we're going to work on a teaser transition. So let's begin. We're going to sit down and then I want you to roll back and just really think about bringing the tailbone toward the heels so that you're getting a little bit of a stretch in the low back. From there, we're still going to be holding onto the legs and one leg is going to extend up and then it just bends back down. Other legs stretches up and Ben down. Exhale and lengthen that leg up and down and lengthen it up and come down.

Now let's go ahead and support the legs, but lift them off of the Mat. One leg up, support it a their leg up. Support it. Bend both together and now let's bend both legs and keep them up. Now take the affected arm and lifted off and reach it to the toes. Reach that arm to the toes and bend.

One more time. Take it up now this time, reach the arm, reach the other arm and bend and that is a beautiful, beautiful teaser coming from inside the body, not from the outside, and it really looks great. We're going to finish our program with the mermaid. We start on the unaffected side. So we're leaning on that elbow once again. And the other arm can be up from here. We're just going to do a hip lift.

So it's the idea here is to really stretch the hips away from the, so we don't want to put too much pressure into the arm or elbow and we just come up good on that side of the body and down. If you can, the other arm can come up with it. So we're lifting here. Good. And now just press the hips, beautiful down and put some up and down. Exhale up, beautiful and down and exhale to come up and inhale to take it down. Come up and hold in that position. And from there we're going to come around and down and all the way through.

Now we reaching the arm up and stretch it high to the ceiling. And again it comes down around in, through and reaches up high to the ceiling and around, down in, through and up. Length in it, all the way up to the ceiling. Now press the hips down, bring the legs around. So we'll go to the other side. Now once again, really get that nice support on the body and let's do that hip lift. So we're going to press the hips up and the hit comes down, hip comes up, exhale and inhale to come down. Exhale three and inhale to come down to to go and down last time and bring the hips down. Good.

Try and come up very straight and that movement come up. And now take that arm around and through. Stretch across the back. Keep the hips where they are. Good and oh, open high to the ceiling and exhale around in, down. Beautiful. Really breathed into your back and open high and one more time around and down and open it up, linked in it and come down.

Let's go back to the first side and we're going to repeat the same movement pattern, but we're going to do it on a straight arm this time. So the legs are here, arm is out. And from here again, lift the hip and 4s the hip down and lift the hip and press the hip down. Just one more time. Lift the hip and come down, lift the hip and rotate down and around and come back up and rotate around and up. Last one, rotate up and down. One more side, one more arm, around and over, and for rest to come up three times. Exhaling.

Inhale, prs that hip down and take it all the way up. Very nice and sit straight down. Last time up to come down, up and hold, and we rotate. One, stretch it through. Open. Inhale. Okay.

An exhale, down, long exhalation and come back up. And actually I'll take it down. Lift it long. Come down with your hips. Bring your legs to the front. Sit Nice and tall. Round the back over and just walk down the legs. Take a long, deep breath here. Inhale, exhale.

Roll your spine up to sitting. Bring the legs together and bend the knees in. Hug the knees, lengthen the spine, lift the arms, and then float up. Let them float, float, float, float. An exhale. Thank you for joining me today. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you.