Restorative Mat

Hi, everyone. i'm going to share with you just a short, very short, like 15 minutes worth of movement on the floor. All you need is your mat. There'll be a little bit of music as the background guide for us in a few minutes here but really, my approach for today's class is to let go of certain stresses that you might be holding onto in your body, focus on your breathing, but more importantly just be positive that you have a body to to work with, that you are in control of And that you can guide anytime you want, and i think it's important in our Pilates practice that, and I mentioned it in one of my recent classes, is just to let go of the strive for perfection, because it's not gonna happen. We can continue to work on our skills and elements that we want, a better teaser, a higher back extension, you know, things like that.

Flexibility, all these things are incredibly important, yes, but I would suggest and I'm saying this to myself, how much of the time am I spending on that heavy demand or am i really enjoying the movement itself and just being in the joy of movement? Pilates is body and mind and spirit, so i thought i would bring in the spirit today. So let's get started, lying on your back, and enjoy. ;et's let go, let's de-stress, let's just feel ourselves moving. There's no right or wrong, there's no "Oops, I didn't make it right, "oops, my leg wasn't in the right place," because it was in the right place, it will be because you're gonna be moving and just enjoying being positive in your body and that connection with yourself.

All right, so let's go ahead, take three deep breaths together, inhale through the nose. arms out to the side, take in the space that you are in right now. Visualize your whole body filling up with space and ease and positivity. (breathing deeply) And welcome yourself and thank yourself for doing this segment and come back to it several times because i think you're gonna have some fun. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and get started, everybody put your hands on your thighs, shoulders stay open, We're going to do a nice pelvic curl.

Take a deep breath. (soft music playing) And we're just going to fade into music. Roll yourself up into your bridge. And roll out of your bridge. Think of the links.

Just feel yourself moving. And rolling down. Let's try to restore some joy and some calm in your movements. So we're going to keep ourselves up. Gonna take my arms overhead and just enjoy the weight of the arms feeling the floor.

And just roll down, nice easy movement through the upper spine. Keep the arms up. Gonna go one more time up and down my spine. Deep breath, take in the space again and roll down. So once you get your hips all the way down, just open the arms out to the side again and we're gonna do a slight rotation so crossing one leg over the other leg.

Both arms will come up over the head, you can interlace your thumbs and just easily roll onto your side. Just roll onto your side. Go ahead and look up to your fingertips and stretch your chest muscles, your chin muscles and come back to your back, roll onto the other side. Cross the other leg on top. Keeping your thumbs up overhead, roll onto your side.

You can lift your head a little above your arms. Look up to the fingertips and feel that space about you and just take a breath. Maybe your back arches there, that's all right. Just roll onto your back. Let's tuck our knees into out chest.

Bring your head up, stretching your upper spine. Just do a little roll. Hips back a little bit, open the feet and just stretch your hands over your feet, and the skin on top of your feet. Deep breaths. I'm just gonna roll back over my spine, just as easy as i can go.

Take in a little bit of air here, open up your arms to the side, let's do a roll up. And again, hands on top of the feet. Let's do that roll one more time. Just as much effort as you need to make this movement happen. And roll up again.

Okay, hands behind the thighs and just bring yourself to a vertical sit. And then a little bit extra with your chest, your lungs, the heart lifting up. I'm gonna keep on going, it just feels right right now to go on back a little bit and come up and curl back one more time. Slide your heels in. Arms out, gonna do the rotation one more time.

Crossing our leg, looping to the fingertips up overhead. I'm looking to the fingers. Maybe arching through that upper back swan a little bit. Come up, and the other side. Taking in the space above you, with your arms, loop your fingers together gently.

Onto your side, look up to your hands. Arch your back just a little bit through your upper back. Tuck the knees in one more time. Press down on your legs slightly to open up your lumbar and some of the connective tissue. Picking up your head.

Feeling the flexibility you're gaining in your upper back. And roll all the way. Gonna stretch out over your legs. Bend one knee, and just hold behind that knee. Let's do a little hamstring stretching.

Just hold the legs. So it may look a little bit like your tree, you know how you go into your tree. The short box from your reformer. This is part of it and then come all the way up, you can go into a flat back position to your spine. And just notice how steady you can keep your leg and your back position.

And then once again, bend your elbows and come forward. And just enjoy the stretch, bend your knee. Both legs down and stretch forward. To the other side. We're pulling that left knee in, hands under`your ankle and just extend the knee.

Bend your elbows and pull yourself forward. Gaining some suppleness and flexibility in your hamstrings. And just breathe in. Upright your spine, arms are straight, back is tall. And one more time bending the elbows and bring yourself forward.

And then putting the leg down. Stretching over both legs. All right, rolling up. Let's take your hands behind you, fingertips facing out. Elbows in, and then just press into your hands, lift your hips, stretching into your long back.

Push up. Do that again, just bring your hips down. If you need to reposition your hands, just feel the contact against the floor. Eyes looking at the wall in front of you, maybe up the wall just a little bit, take two breaths. (breathing deeply) And just come down.

Gonna turn and face one side, soles of feet together and then just an easy side bend stretch. The hand that's on the mat, let's just bend that elbow and bring that elbow down. And extend. Two more times, elbow down. And extend.

And one more time down. And extend up and over to the other side. So again, this class is just nice and easy. Enjoy some simple movements. Bending and extend one more time with this arm down.

And I'm gonna bring us back in the first side and add a little bit of a spinal twist with it, so a rotation. So elbow down and just let yourself drop over that thigh. And come back out to the sides. See if you can open yourself maybe a little bit more. And again, and rotate over that leg.

Lift out to the side once again, and down over your leg and then the transition to get us to the other side, you actually get to lift up and over all the way, placing that hand on the floor, and down to the aide. And then turn over your leg and see if you can make a nice C-curve shaped spine. Feel that stretch in your back. Return to your side bend and up and over your leg. Enjoying some of the simple movements that you can do.

Last one, over your leg. And then same thing, your transition. You'll come around. We're gonna do a body tossing over the top and push off that bottom hand, up and over. And push off, and coming up and over.

Just one more each side, tossing up and over and tossing up and over. Now I want you to take yourself to a seated tall position. If you want to scoop back a little bit on your mat, open the legs to a comfortable position for you and hold out, hang out there and just walk your fingertips forward. Let's see how far you can kinda somewhat comfortably come out here. Take some deep breaths.

and think about maybe when you're in legs and straps or some other exercises that you're looking to gain more flexibility, this is an easy stretch you can do to promote some of that. Just let the bones of your upper body get heavy towards your arms, and let your head get heavy. Deep breath in. Now just roll yourself up and walk your hands back. We're gonna do that series one more time.

Just walk your fingertips forward. You may be able to go a little bit further the second round. Just get kinda heavy in your bones. Almost like you're inhaling into your legs. And one more.

Walk those hands in. Okay, take your legs to one side, this right or left side. Then tuck your feet, I'm gonna go into a side bend stretch so if you wanna go down on your elbow today, that's fine, you can stay up on your hand. Just gonna lengthen into my legs, taking the space above me with this arm. Kinda lift my inside hip a lot.

Just hang the head. Come down. Just look toward the arms, get ready to do one more repetition. Use it as a big breath, use it as a yawn maybe. Open the spaces.

So good, stretch your skin. And come down. Let's just do the other side, it's just an easy transition, flip around. Right, press into the arms. Press into the legs.

Take in that space, take in the breath. And down. One more time. The turn-around to our stomach is really easy. If it's okay for your knees, just bend one knee.

Reach back with your hand, hold your ankle. Give your thigh a stretch. I'm gonna lift my head a little bit. Feel the effort you're putting into your thigh muscle to get long, your shoulders to square. Your abdominals to stay long.

And we'll do the other side. And flex the ankle. Lift your leg, lift your chest. Maybe play with the breath here so that every breath in fills you up and maybe makes the shape a little bigger. Your breath is really governing your movements.

And the swan. Do what works for you with your arm positions and your leg positions. Nice breath in. And we'll go for two more. Nice, easy swan and lift.

And lower. And one more time and easy, eyes, nose, chin, chest. Energy down the legs. Out the chest, out the fingers, out the head. And as we come all the way down, I'm gonna bring you right up into hands and knees here guys.

And just feel yourself solid over your wrists and your knees, tuck your toes, and let's just rock our body weight forward and back a couple times. Easy. So i snuck in your flexion ,your extension, your side bend and your rotation. All preperatory movement skills for every exercise in Pilates. In life, just calm down sometimes.

Get down to the floor. Put on some music, move, stretch. Just be in it and it'll be all good and right and positive. Thank you so much, I'll see you next time.