Mindful Mat

Good Morning, I'm Deborah Coleway and I have a lovely group of women with me today to go through a mat class together. So enjoy and if you feel like hopping in and joining us, please feel free. We're gonna step to the front of the mat so that if you reach out, you can take each other's hands or wrists. Separate your feet, parallel, hip width or maybe a little bit wider. We're gonna support each other in lowering down into the foot work.

So let your partner's there for you, is to keep you from falling backwards. So take a nice deep breath, begin to hinge at your hip, bend your knee, deepen the flex at your ankle and figure out how far away from each other you need to be. And you can talk to each other. And release your sacrum and your tail behind your heels, and then when you're ready, slowly let go of each other. Say bye for now and then roll onto your back into your foot work, bending the knees in toward the shoulders pilates feet.

Inhale, extend the legs, and exhale as you come back. Keep a bit of an awareness with the feeling of your hand on your head, literally holding your upper back up. Similarly to how your friend across the way was holding you up a moment ago. Breathing in as you extend, exhaling deep and into the flexion. Find an angle that works for you as we warm up this morning.

Good strong press, the back of the heel, guiding you up the backside of your body. And one more time, exhale deeply and then go to the bird on a perch. So legs and feet together, deep flexion, toes pointing down, inhale and exhale. And as you go we can pick up the pace a little bit. If you start to feel maybe that you get a little tired in the back, you start to maybe fall out of your position a little, you could recall and even reach with your hands as need be so that you can continue that feeling of having the partner, somebody in front of you, your flexor system, who's holding you up.

One more time in this position, really deep angle pointy feet. And now flex the toes back and press. And you could even imagine as you go that that person was there. And as you press into the space, what if their balls of the feet were there to meet you and push you back into your curl. There you go, couple more times, keeping the face nice and soft, keeping the jaw relaxed, the eyeballs easy, push into an imaginary friend, pull back one more time, exhaling in and then extend your legs up to an angle you can hold and point and flex and feel this.

As you flex your feet, imagine that you are rocking slightly back, and then as you point your feet you are rocking slightly forward. So you start to feel this little bit of movement in the pelvis. Flexing back you rock back, pointing you press forward. Flexing back, pointing forward. One more time and then ago ahead and bend the knees into the chest.

Rest your head down for just a second. Reach your arms down by your sides. We're gonna go into the hundred. Imagine your friend is there, okay. So reach your hands like somebody is pulling you up off the floor, lift your head, neck, and shoulders, extend your legs out to an angle you can handle, and begin to pump.

Inhaling and exhaling. Let the breath fill and lift and support you and as you exhale, soften your face. Not too much sound with the organs of sense up here, but more deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. And if you wanted to play now with flexing and pointing your feet a little bit as you do the hundred, you could play with lifting your legs up a little as you flex and pushing an imaginary something away as you point. And letting there be movement inside you, ongoingly, as you continue to pump and breathe so that you're never getting tight, you're never getting stuck, you're never getting hard.

And then bend the knees in and slide your legs along the mat. Reach your arms up overhead for the roll up. Good, so you know who's across the isle from you. Inhale, begin to lift up and then exhale and reach for your person. Push through the ball of the foot to help you get up.

Now what if you could flex the feet as you go back down, gradually letting go of your partner, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. And let's pick up the pace just a little bit. So breathing in, reach, push their feet away with your feet to help you come up and then flex back and feel them pressing you backwards as you roll back down. Couple more times, bring the arms overhead, inhale, imagine that their there for you. Somebody is there, you're reaching for them, they're reaching for you.

They're pulling you as you press through the ball of the foot to tilt your pelvis over your thighs and then flexing back to roll the pelvis down exhaling. And then just bring your arms down by your sides and bend your right knee up into your shoulder. Hold the shin, interlace your fingers all the way to the webbing, and just gently pull the leg into you and use the strength of your arms to help you get softer and softer and softer in the front of that hip. At the same time, you're lengthening down the front of your left thigh, pressing as much of the back of that leg down onto the floor as you can. Okay, so we're gonna do a one leg bent knee roll up.

Okay, so you're using the pressure of your shin into your palms, and the palms into the shin to press slightly forward, lift your head, and now your leg is helping to pull you up. Tilt forward, roll up, tilt the left hip down. Beautiful, come on all the way up and stay up now and hold your leg for the tree. So hook your elbow underneath of your thigh. Hold onto your wrist, and then tilt back just a little and start to extend the leg up and then let it flop.

Exhale, let if flop, flop, flop, flop, flop. And inhale, let it extend up. And exhale, let it flop, flop, flop, flop to let the fluids get into your joints. Two more times, inhale, let it up, and exhale, let it flop. And you're using your arms to hold your torso, to hold your legs, stay up and flex and point your ankle.

And even here, feel the subtle rocking. I'm not saying big, but feel the potential. As you flex, there's a little bit of pelvic tilt. As you point, you come back up. See if you can really feel this in your pelvis more than your upper body.

Not that your upper body might not move, but don't just lean back. Use the flexing and the pointing to get that subtle space inside your hip, 'cause guess what? We're going into single leg circle. So now press through the ball of your foot, walk your hands back down, reach that leg so so high up to the ceiling, and take your arms down by your sides. Push your imaginary friend's foot up now with a pointed foot and cross over and around and back up to the top and reach it.

And keep the sense of width and openness through your chest. Inhaling and exhale, reach up one more time. And we'll go the other way. So take the leg out to the side, cross over. Now, as you cross over press down with the back of your left leg to free the movement of the cross and then last time, bend your knee in.

Give it a little stretch, slide that leg down onto the mat and we'll switch sides. So bend the left knee up, hold your shin. For now hold, yeah, hold with your hands at the same spot. Gently using the strength of your arms to weight the leg down. So you're being your own support.

If I was gonna partner, I would come over and just put a little bit more weight there, okay. And actually feel, as you bring that left knees in closer and closer and you can feel the connection into your center, it allows your right leg to know that it's coming out of your center as well instead of just being tight in the quad, right? So now you're gonna do the one legged bent knee roll up. Press your shin into your hands and pull back at the same time. Let that help lift your head.

Begin to tilt forward, exhale, stay there. Go ahead and hook your left arm underneath your thigh and hold your left wrist with your right hand and then start to extend the leg. In with the breath, and exhale, let it go. And let the breath, which is filling and opening your chest and your rib area make the work of the leg lighter. So the more you can get the chest to expand and the shoulders to open, and the thorax to lift, the freer the movement in the leg will feel.

Last time, come on up and stay up. And the flexing and the pointing and the flexing and the pointing. And let there be that subtle sense that as you dorsa flex your ankle, beautiful Martha, the tail curls a little and then as you press forward you feel movement. It's not to make you rock back and forth. It's just to continually feel that there's space.

There's space in the hips, there's space in the lower back. And now press that leg up toward the ceiling. Begin to walk away, we're gonna go into our single leg circle. Taking your arms down by your sides, open the chest, circle the leg across, down around, and reach it right up. That's it, so breathe in, lift the leg so much that it picks the whole weight of your pelvis up on that side.

One more time, and then reverse here as you cross over, pressing down with the standing leg to give you that openness in the hip here. Keep the foot strongly placed on the floor. One more time, bend your knee up into your shoulder, hold the shin, we've been here already, right? So you press the shin forward, you lift your head, tilt yourself, and come on up to sitting for rolling like a ball. So pull the pelvis toward the heels and then you can look and see your friend.

Right, so there you are and if you could reach, they would be helping you feel even here like you're not going to fall down. And wouldn't that feel good because when we get into position, we always feel like we're gonna fall backwards, right? So okay, so feel that ability to draw forward and get the weight over the base of your pelvis. Reach around and grab your legs. Here we go, push the floor away and roll back to your shoulders inhaling.

Exhale, come right back up. There you go. Inhaling, let the breath lift and support you and then roll up exhale. And suspend the pelvis. How long can you suspend that pelvis up.

Exhale come down. Hear your breath moving through your body. Three more times. In with the breath, exhale, come forward. Two more, let the breath fill, lift, and support you and exhale and just stay aware.

Stay aware of you, stay aware of the people in the room and then come back up, place your feet down. Now typically when we make this transition into the next series, it's to get away from the poles that are in the front, right? So what you're really doing though, if you wanna feel it, is you're lifting your hips. Go ahead, put your hands down. Push with your feet, you're actually pulling yourself back, so you don't wanna get stuck.

Continue to roll into it so that the weight of your legs is, we're gonna so into single leg stretch. Let's do that again. Okay, so what you wanna do is press down through your hands, press down through your feet, lift your pelvis, and yes you're pulling your hips back so that you can get into the position. But what you're really doing is taking your weight, the weight of these legs that tend to be heavy and yank on us, and you're encouraging them to know that they are integrated into your torso. So you pick your hips up, you pull back.

Don't lose that, immediately roll down bringing your right knee in towards your shoulder and be back into your upper body and then switch, and switch, and switch. And make sure that they outside hand goes all the way to the ankle to align the lower leg so that you don't cross the foot over. So that we're working the balance of the inner and the outer hip at the same time. One more big breath and now come into the doubles and let's try this for today. Do a few this way.

As you breathe in, slide you feet down the mat, put your head down and stretch your hands overhead. So you're going back into your roll up position essentially. Circle the arms, lift the head and bend in. Try that one again. Using the feet on the mat as you go out to wake up the back of the leg, circling the arms to bend the upper spine so the belly pulls those legs back in.

One more time, literally put your feet to the ground as you slide out. I know the mat is sticky. And then circle around and exhale. And now having felt the back line of the leg and your abdominals, let's do the normal. So big inhale, reach up, circle, let the curling of the circling arms help you bring your legs back in.

Inhale, circle the arms, let it pick your up, yes, pick your upper back up even more. One more time, big inhale circle. Curl into it, now stay very curled in like you're rolling like a ball. Lift the tail, lift the upper back, beautiful. Start to extend your legs up for the scissor.

Reach up for that leg, and split tug as you know, lets go, but use the fact that you're pulling the one leg up to you to connect you higher up into your spine and your core muscles so that that leg that's going down, it doesn't pull off you. It emerges out of you, exactly. Okay, and now take both legs up to the ceiling. Hold your head, and now can we try this? Hold the sides of the mat.

Can you push the mat away from you and feel the back muscles coming up into your upper back to help you lower your legs? So lower your legs, pulling the mat, exhale, come back up. It helps, doesn't it? You can actually take your legs lower because as the weight of them starts to lower, the weight of your upper body is not being dragged upon. So the connection of the breath, another thing you can do is just put your hands under your sacrum and put your head down all together, you could try that.

That's it, put your hands under your sacrum and put your head down all together. Use your hands as if they were your muscles around your sacrum so that as your legs go down you're not just resting on your hands, you're pulling the weight of your pelvis up towards you. Okay, beautiful. Now go ahead and bend the knees, take your hands behind your head. We're gonna do a version of elbow to knee.

What I'd like you to do, come on up, is let's say you're gonna take your right elbow to your right knee, but now take your right hand and put it on the outside and press. Do you feel that? Yes, and then switch. So we'll just switch side to side, but you're gonna actually use the hand to cross over and press to the outside of the knee to fill that whole outside line. Can you feel the hip now supporting you?

Yes, and it makes it so that you can actually lift your body up a little more and rotate to the back just a little more. There you go, there you go. It's this one, so press into me. Press me hard with your leg. There, beautiful, okay, and then come up to sitting for spine stretch.

Yes, and when you arrive now for your spine stretch and you're sitting in your wide leg position, you have a better sense of this pelvic and hip complex that you're sitting up on too. Okay, so now take a deep breath in, lift your arms higher and higher and higher and imagine your buddy was there, but now what are they doing? They're picking you up. Okay, so can you be your own partner right now? And then exhale, curl over, curl over.

Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. And then inhale as you roll up, knowing that somebody is there to help pick you up, lift you so much up out of your lower back and hips that as you curl forward there's room in the front. Your pelvis can literally keep rolling up the back of you and see how far over you can go without strain. One or two more times. Over you go, exhale, relaxing the neck, feeling how the pelvis can actually keep rotating over your thigh bone and you can curl more and more deeply into yourself and then stay up this time.

Go ahead and bend your knees, take hold of the front of your ankles, and move forward for your open leg rocker. But let's take a second, extend your legs, and now feel how are you arms supporting the holding of the legs. How are you arms helping hold up the torso, the chest. Okay, so play with flexing and pointing and flexing and pointing. And feel how as you flex, oops, I wanna fall back now.

And as I point I'm gonna reach up through space and pull myself forward. So you know, whether you actually do that or not, but it's fun. Okay, so here we go. Inhale, roll back just to the shoulders, and then exhale, up you come. Reach into something, there's nothing but air but you know what it's like to have the sole of your foot press into something, there you go.

Couple more times, rolling back, letting the breath suspend you. Exhale, come right back up. And then last time, inhale and then come up and find your balance. Close the legs together and try to relax. Find somewhere where you can just be holding your legs and you're not stressed out, everybody's fine, right?

You're balanced on your sacrum, you're not heavy on your sacrum. If you were to let your hands go, you could, I'm not saying you should. And then deep, deep, deep external rotation of those hips. Not from the feet, from way up there at the sit bones. And I don't care if you hold your legs or not, but start to criss cross your legs a little if you can and feel very high up under right where your hamstrings and your glutes, that's the musculature that's gonna hold you up in your corkscrew.

Okay, so keep an eye on that. As you bring your legs together, put your hand down and you can either lie down or roll up into the jack knife for your corkscrew. You can just lie straight down or you can go up into the corkscrew position here. Okay, feel your arms on the floor and let the press of your arms open your chest and feel how as you inhale into that chest, your legs get lighter and lighter and lighter. That is beautiful.

And then we're gonna point the feet, twist over to the right, keep those outer hips alive now. If you come down the right side, inhale, keep goin, circle across your sacrum and then exhale up the left side. Lifting the chest to lift the feet. Now, feel the connection to the outer hip, breathe in, come over to the left now. As you come down, what would it be like if you still had your hand over there left over from your elbow to knee?

So that the weight of the legs don't fall, they're actually being lifted as you take them over to the side. Reach the feet, breathe into the chest to keep the legs light, exhaling as you come up around and every time come back to that place where your arms are strong, your chest is lifted, your face is relaxed. Maybe do one more if you want to. At whatever level you do the exercise, it's the same thing, right? Okay, beautiful, now stay up there, enjoy this.

Take some breaths, feel the strength of your hands. What if your person was there and you were pulling back on them? How can that get you higher and higher and higher up into your upper back, freer in your chest for more breath, easier now to open up the hips and stay suspended and then roll yourself up into the soft. Just roll right down, separate the legs, and come into the position. Take your, ew, that's nice.

Take your arms straight up today. Be your own partner again. Lift yourself so much up that when you breath in, that air can just spiral right through your body. So you're gonna be a spiral that takes you up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up. And then sweep the right hand down, turn the palm, and then you don't have to touch your leg but you could and feel that connection up the whole side of your leg.

Inhale now, lift and lift and lift and lift and lift and lift and spiral and spiral and spiral. Sweep the back arm, take the palm, either do little finger to little toe, as we do Or take a second and feel that pressure for a moment. Feel how it helps lift you and gives you more access, right? So we'll keep going, over to the right. Exhale now, keep the sense of how strong your pelvis is that helps pick the weight of you up so that you can get the juice out of that twist.

And over to the left, turn twist, exhale. One more time each side. Let yourself be lifted, soft twist all the way out through the crown of your head. Exhale and continue that spiral, relaxing the neck, looking over your shoulder if possible. Now one more time, up to the left and exhale, keep twisting, keeping lifting from below.

Yeah, there you go, Mary, nicely done. Okay, so now you feel the outer and inner leg, right? You feel this power. We're gonna turn onto our belly in a minute, maybe less than a minute, and you wanna feel those muscles, okay? So see if you can bring your legs together and then spin around so your heads are facing in.

Okay, gently press your forehead to the mat, have your chin tucked up into your throat and place your hands next to your chest. Okay, tuck your toes under for a moment and press into the ball of your foot, lifting your knees and feel that push forward onto your arms. I would say not turned out, okay, and in the middle, there you go. Okay, so how about you don't have your heels together. And Martha, actually tuck your toes under.

So let's not put our heels together, alright? Press to the ball of the foot, lift the knee, drive yourself forward onto your arms. Can you feel that? You could almost be pulling yourself down the mat. And then slowly straighten the toes out and see if you can keep your feet off the mat.

We always say press the feet down. What does it do for you to keep your feet up a little? Strengthens those hips, right? So as you breathe in and you start to come forward in your swan, let your gaze lift, pull back through the hands if that helps you bring your chest forward, roll the shoulders into the back and keep being driven forward. Beautiful, and then exhale, pick yourself up and come back down.

Don't be so sure that you know how high you always come up. Breathe in, lift your gaze, start to let the breath literally lift those top couple of ribs, opening up the collar bones, rolling the shoulders back, feeling the power of the back of your arm, lifting you one teeny weeny weeny bit more (laughing) out of your ribs. Awesome in an exhale, come back down. Continuing to advance yourself, yes, pulling yourself toward your front. One more time, in with the breath.

Up you go, letting the strength of the pull off your feet not pull you down and backwards, but literally drive you forward so much that you could really lift your legs off the floor now and go into your little rocking. Keep your hands where they are, just push of off the floor. Let your legs fly, push the floor away, keep the inhale and the exhale going, there you go. And then catch yourself right up on your forearms. Make a good strong position here.

So you can have the knuckle sandwiches we call it or the forearms. And dig your way forward, pull yourself forward. Feel the pubic bone reaching, reaching, reaching up. And now start to kick. Right foot and left foot, and just feel the potential ease.

Kick and kick and kick and kick. And keep picking yourself up, pulling yourself forward. And kick, and kick, and kick, good. Now let those legs rest down for just a sec. Lift one, lift it up and stretch it behind you and definitely turn it internally, that's it.

And feel the, does that feel good on your thigh? Like when you take your leg and you lift it up and you pull it back. Gives you a little bit of room, right? And then try the other side. Pick the leg up, turn it in.

So like I took you by the heel and just pulled your leg backwards. There, you can feel that, right? Okay, and now let's just do a couple more quick kicks with that space, it's easier, right? And kick, and kick, that's it, kick. Look forward a little bit, Martha.

There's your buddy, she wants to see you. Okay, and now let's go ahead and go into the doubles. Okay, so your cheek is on the mat, take your hands way, way, way, way, way up. Tuck your toes under for a second even here. Tuck your toes, lift your kneecaps, push yourself forward and notice how the pushing forward of your body weight towards your upper back helps you to actually bring your hands up higher.

That was a lot, that was very, very good. Okay, feel the connection of that strength pulling you so far forward that the kick is actually free. So go ahead and kick three times. One, two, three, and then suspend up. Feel your hands lifting your arms to pick up your chest and then pull yourself forward as you kick.

One, two, three, now I don't care if you straighten your arms. What I care is that you find that strength in your upper back to open the chest and then pull yourself forward. Kick, kick, kick, couple more times. Don't even try to straighten your arms so quickly, but find the strength that opens the chest that would pull your belly forward that would free your hips and then as you turn your face, you're literally being drawn more forward. And you could get your knees off the floor.

Let's do it two more times. Inhale, get the whole leg off the ground now. And then as you kick, pick those knees up. Last time, inhale suspend, suspend. If your habit is to turn out, please turn in, feel the difference, feel how much freer your low back is and then release and push yourself back and sit back over you heels.

Okay, very nice. So as you sit back there, reach with your pelvis so you're not collapsing into the front of your hips, but you're reaching the pelvis back behind and we're gonna do neck pull now, so I want you to feel the relationship of your arms off your back. So you're stretching your arms, right, they're forward and you're getting all that length but the power of your pelvis to pull you back toward your feet has to be happening at the same time, right. So roll yourself up, cross your ankles if you can, sweep forward on the nice sticky mat. Alright, so let's say we're gonna do a couple of neck pulls where we don't hold our head just to get it warmed up.

So go ahead and lie down. Your feet are flat but your legs are slightly apart. Hold onto the sides of your mat again. Okay, can you feel that? If you grab your mat and you pull it, push it away from you, you feel the power coming up through the arms, it's not so difficult.

Alright, so being to come up, breathe in, lift your head, neck, and shoulders, flex the ankles and press the legs down. Try to roll up, keep comin, bend your elbows as you need to. There you go, there you go. And then release the top of your head towards you knees. Roll up to sitting, collapse your hands behind your head, and feel who would be my partner now?

Lift your elbows up and forward. See how much back strength it takes, how much somebody helping you would be holding you, right? So you're gonna tilt back, you're gonna feel the muscles of your upper back that you just found in your double leg kick holding you, holding you, holding you, gaze down, and then flexing those ankles, lay yourself back down. Alright, wanna try that again? Do you get what I'm saying with this connection of the arms into the upper back and how when you lean back you're not falling back.

You have muscle, arm, shoulder girdle connection. You're not falling back, you're held and then you have to control it down the front. Okay, so try it one more time. You can put your hands behind your head if you want. So breathing in as you start to come up, let the chest be buoyed up, come on up.

Let the chest be buoyed up and then exhale, curl into yourself and then roll back up and really feel back power, side chest power. You're partnering yourself, don't look up though. Because it throws your head back. Look down and lay yourself on down. Okay, let's just do one more time.

Breathing in and exhale, breathing out, roll up, feel literally the connection of your hand and your arm as if someone was lifting you and keeping you from falling. I've gotcha and all you have to do is flex your ankles, stretch your calves, draw the belly deep up the front of your spine. Feel how much further down the mat you got? That's good, so now lie down with yourself just like this. Put your arms down by your sides.

We're gonna roll up onto the shoulders again. Bend you knees into your chest and come up into your scissor. Okay, so roll up onto your shoulders if you want, otherwise you can just say and do a bridge. So stretch your legs up, hold your back, walk your hands as high away from your sacrum as you can and stay for a moment and breathe here. Who's supporting you now?

Your hand, your arm, the upper back. Breathe into that chest, lift the chest up toward the throat to free the movement of the leg. And as you start to split your legs, your leg doesn't fall and pull on you, it's emerging out of the breath and the lift of your upper spine, so that the opposite leg definitely has to work as a counterbalance, right. So you don't want it to fall, and you may feel now that it would be helpful to slide your hands a little closer to your sacrum, bringing the elbows in close, bringing the muscles of the back of the arm and the upper back and the chest into play, and splitting your legs off of that support. Keep allowing the leg that's coming closer and closer to the floor to come out of the open chest.

There you go, and then if you wanted to try taking it into the bicycle where you would start to bend your knee, you have to let your pelvis tilt even more over your hands, not allowing it to pull you off your chest. So as your hand tilts, as your pelvis tilts more over your hands to get your feet closer and closer to the floor, you have to balance that out with a bigger chest and more breath and stronger upper back, okay? So let's go ahead and bend the knees in towards the chest and roll down, release your hands. Bring the feet to the mat and have your hands just resting by your sides. So the feet are a little bit apart, hip width apart, heels pressing into the floor.

Take a nice, deep breath. You feel good though, right? That was hard but now you feel good, you feel connected. You feel your feet, you feel your hands, you feel all the connections into your body. So we're gonna roll up into our shoulder bridge, tilt the tail, curl up, roll up.

Keep breathing higher and higher and higher into that chest. Pressing through your feet, see if you can use the power of the push off your legs to drive you higher and higher up onto your upper back and see if maybe you wanna walk your hands under. You can either clasp your hands and press through the back of your arms and feel the shoulders opening that way, or if you have the range you can take your hands and place them under your pelvis. Okay, I think you have to really be under if you're gonna do the under, not to the side. There you go, and really get the pelvis to lift.

So you can do what Jackie's doing and just clasp your hands. But feel that leftover from double leg kick, right? So as you lie there, feel the back of you, feel the feet pulling toward the pelvis, yes Mary, and feel the chest opening so the back of you is actually contracting and picking up the front of you and your breath pulls all that apart in a good way, okay? Do you wanna try a little bit of a kick? You don't have to, slide your foot down the mat and then as you kick up, let the force of that kick actually help lift you higher, which is gonna free the hip on the other side, which then allows you to have more power through your foot that stays on the ground.

One more time, pull it down and then bend the knee and bring your foot back. So slide the foot down the mat, find the back of the leg, kick it up, exhale, you can flex down, there you go, point up, flex down, let the kick really lift your pelvis every single time, and then one more, bring it down, drag that heel, and then release your hands, reach up toward the ceiling, begin to roll down, reaching your sacrum closer and closer to your heels. Right when it touches, lift your head, roll up, finally you get to see your friend again, roll forward, slide your legs out and arrive up. There's your buddy like, yay, here we are, finally again. And then sit up, flex the feet, take your arms out to the side for spine twist, okay?

If you're worried about hitting each other you oughta take a little. Take a big breath in and we're gonna twist to the right. Keep twisting, come back to the center. And then to the left, twist, come back to the center. Good, now as you go to the right, keep the ribs going, keep the chest opening, there you go.

As you go to the left feel how that left shoulder blade keeps comin around, keeps comin around, and that whole outer hip strength. Can you remember it? So when you go and twist to the side, the whole outer hip strength is there pushing and lifting and okay, so that you can get even more rotation without feelin like you have to fall down into your lower back or your quads. Feels marvelous, yes? Good, are we even?

Okay, so now we're gonna go into the jack knife. Okay, scoot forward a little if you feel like you're gonna be off your mat. Point your toes, imagine reaching forward for your buddy, okay, and then go ahead and put your hands down and then start to roll back. Push off your arms to open the hips to roll over, and then lift yourself right up into your jack knife stand on the ceiling. Now you really feel that open chest, strong arms, lifted hips.

Come on back down, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. Open the hips any amount you can and then roll over again, inhale, and reach for the ceiling. And then keep the breath suspended, as you exhale control the squeezing out of that exhale as you lay your spine down. One more time, inhale, roll over, stand on the ceiling, lift up, stay for a second, and just enjoy this power. Enjoy the power of being able to open and lift and expand yourself up, and then hold the feet up as you lay down.

Hold them and roll yourself down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Bend your knees into your chest and come onto your right side for the leg kicks, side kicks. Okay, so go ahead and line yourself up with the back of your mat. So on the right side. Just turn, yeah, there you go.

We can be, yeah, yeah. Okay, good, so the hand that's under your head, that arm is very strong helping to hold up the side of your chest. Bring your legs forward, take the top leg up. You can have your hand in front of your chest, you can have your hand at your head, whatever you like. And then kick it to the front.

Kick it to the back. Good, and as you come to the front let your front pull your leg. And as you go to the back, feel all that work you just did, yes. So as you come to the front, don't pull away from it. Good, here we go.

Now go to the back. Stay in the back. Instead of falling forward, lift up into all that beautiful extension that you've been working on this whole time. And then here we go, flex it front, one more time. And back, really now the one more time.

Front, and back. Now, I wanna go into bicycle, okay, because it just goes along with what we're doing, right? So keeping the leg to the back, kick it to the front, okay, and now bend the knee up into the shoulder, you can grab your leg if you want to and start to pull your leg back. Pressing the foot into the hand and the hand into the foot, open the chest, roll the chest open. Use the extension in your upper back so that when you let go of your foot it doesn't pop away and then extend that leg.

Reach your arm to the front. Beautiful, you're not gonna hit the wall. And then kick forward. Catch the leg, bend the knee into the shoulder, keep it level, use the pressure of your shin on your hand and your hand on your shin to open the hip. Open the chest, roll the shoulder back, and extend the leg.

Beautiful, one more time in this direction. Kick it, grab it if you like, bend it in, open the chest, use the whole back of you, extend the leg, and now reverse it. Bend the knee keeping it high, pull the foot into you, and then feel the whole curl of the front of your body drawing that knee in and then extending the leg forward. Sweep it to the back, bend it, arch your back. Imagine the back of your skull lifting to try and hear what your big toe has to say.

And then curl it in and extend it forward one more time. Sweep it to the back, open the chest, open the hip, keep breathing big, and release it to the front, take your hand down to the floor, close your leg, and now turn out and do the kicks to the side and feel how free your leg is. Up and pull down, nice, right? And up, that's it, and feeling still the strength across your sacrum, reverse the foot now. Heel up, toes down.

If I had my hand, if I had my hand on your sacrum, or if there was a wall there, do you feel how the kick doesn't throw you down but the sacrum lifts and pulls your chest forward and every time you get your chest more up it frees the movement in your hip. Okay, that was about 12 of those. Turn onto your belly for a quick grasshopper. Again, use the, you can use your mat, like you can pull on it a little or you can just put your forehead on your hands, but pull your body weight forward. Try and actually, if you need to tuck your toes under that's great.

Pull your body weight forward so that your legs are free and you can lift them up and start to clap your heels. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. It's the same thing, you're trying to stretch and open and lengthen yourself forward and as you lift your legs, the lift of the leg drives you even more onto your upper body. So now when you roll to the other side, your legs are not heavy, they're not pulling you down. Roll to the side you didn't do yet.

And feel how your upper body and your lungs and your breath are all holding you up, yes? Take the top leg up and here we go. Kick to the front, and to the back. And keep having this idea that whatever you're doing with your legs, it doesn't pull on you or drag on you, it's a force of power, power source. And it actually gives you more energy, more breath, more vitality up into your torso.

There you go, one more time. In with the breath and now stay to the back and we'll go ahead into our bicycle. So kick your leg forward, grab your ankle, draw the knee into the chest and then feel that level, level hip, level knee. And now all from the chest, enjoy this. Enjoy it, it's so gorgeous.

Release the foot, extend the arm forward and then kick it to the front. Take ahold, bend your knee up into your shoulder. Stay light, stay open, open the chest, breathe deep, exhale, release it, kick it to the front, take a hold, bend it in, start to take it back, feel hand to foot, foot to hand, the other underneath arm as well and then release it and reverse it. Circle that arm overhead, grab ahold of your ankle, and then start to curl your entire body forward to bring the leg into you, and then extend that leg out of that deep flexor system. Bend it, curl it through, feel the connection of your leg.

You're like a sea creature right now, all of you, so beautiful. Take it back, last one, feel the belly and the front of the spine coming in to bring that leg into you. So beautiful, and then close it, turn out, don't lose what you have now, and take the leg up to the side. So it's not just a leg, right? It's a piece of seaweed.

Just one kick, you don't have to do a double. So you just come up, and you release it higher and higher into the front of your body and then reverse direction. Heel and then toes down, that's it. Don't put the emergence break on your hip. Feel the awww, feel the tug of the other end of the seaweed coming up through your torso with your breath.

There you go, last time and then come to sit. Okay, yeah, so there you are sitting on your mat and you can say hi to your friend again. We're gonna do the teaser, okay? So kinda like we went into jack knife, right? Put the hands down, point your toes, start to draw yourself back enough so that you can open the chest and take the weight of your legs and then arrive with your legs at 45 degrees and your arms parallel to your legs.

Sorry, and then keeping your legs still, just lower down to your shoulder blades and when a breath and exhale come back up. You can always hold your leg if you want to. And then roll down inhaling and exhale, come back up. Soften your knees just a little and then roll back down. And where's your friend?

Pulling you, pulling you, pulling you, pulling you. Right, grab me, let me lift you. Now take both arms up to your head and just lie back down, everything flat out. Okay, there there, flex your feet for a sec. Point your feet as you lift and roll up.

Reach up, come up, be up, one more time. Lift the arms to the ceiling, open yourself back down, just open it out, lay back down. Last time, I promise. Inhale, come up, stay up, bend the knees into the chest and come on to your forearms for the can can. Okay, outer inner hips.

So we're gonna go right left, right kick in. So we go to the right, to the left, to the right, extend and bend, and seaweed creature from the depth. So inhale, two, three, release and come back to center. Two roll, two, three, extend, come back to center. Feel the relationship of the strength of your arms, holding your chest up to get the breath the fill to free the movement of the legs.

And one more set, two, three, let it fly, and one, two, three, let it fly. Okay, flip onto your belly. Heads facing into the center. Bend your knees, take hold of the tops of your ankles, flex your feet, and try very much not to turn out. So keeping your thighs down, press your feet back and back, and back, and back, and lift your chest and your shoulders off the mat.

And then once your chest is up, go ahead and point you feet and start to lift your thighs up, turning internally so that the inner thigh is getting up faster and faster, and faster, and faster, and faster, and faster. And keep lifting, keep lifting, keep lifting, keep lifting, keep lifting. And if there's a little bit of rock that wants to happen on that breath, that's great. And then keep the suspension, let go and come into your swimming. Release, reach your arms forward, and paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle.

Take one more deep breath, bring your hands under your chest, tuck your toes under, and let's press up for the leg pull. So up you come, awesome. And now stay for a moment and get your bearings. We're gonna lift the right leg, point the foot, reach it behind you like you did when you were laying on your belly, and then push off the ball of the other foot to send you forward to put that foot back down. Switch sides, inhale, lift the leg, reach back and then lift up and forward to put the foot down, gorgeous.

One more time, lift, shift back, let that leg drive you forward over your arms, put the foot down. Last time, lift, shift, let it drive you forward, and then just go ahead and tuck your head in and walk back as if you were coming out of a push up. So you're gonna walk back up and then we're gonna improvise now for the last few minutes. So roll up to stand, make a nice big circle. Circle your arms overhead, and let's just try this.

We're gonna improvise. Okay. Okay, so maybe four more things. Okay, so come in with a big circle and then we're gonna walk out into our plank, okay. So curl forward, walk it out and then from your front plank, take your right arm and bring it to the center of your chest and shift, I'm sorry, on the mat.

That was really great. (laughing) Bring your hand under your chest, okay, and then feel the strength of the arm connecting into the shoulder. Come onto that side so that your rolling to the little toe side of your right foot. Your left foot's in the front, gorgeous. And then reaching arm away from arm, so much like somebody's picking that arm up and gonna shift you back now to the center.

Take a moment to readjust. Take your left hand on the mat toward the center of your chest and then pivot up. Be on the little toe side of your left foot, reaching the right arm up and up and up, and then curl back toward the center. Go ahead and replace your feet. And then just carefully, just lower your knees down and come to sitting and I wanna do a funny little combination of twist one and seal.

Okay, so let's face this way, okay. And what you're gonna do is be on your right hip, okay. So have your left foot on the floor on top, okay. Remember all the twisting we've done, remembering all the side hip work that we've done. So as you begin to come up, what if you remember how this hand could of pushed that hip, right?

So come on back down again and now bring your arm a little more directly under your shoulder, like on the mat though. And then start to come up and curl into it. Push off the left foot, the right arm. Make sure that you're not pulling off your arm, but you're way over that arm and then start to come down, bending your knee in, come to the center, stick your hands and do the seal. Roll back, roll up, and now cross your other leg over.

So now cross your right foot over. Put your left hand down, come up into your twist one. There you go, lift your hips higher and higher. Walk your feet in a little closer so that you're not so far away from yourself. And then as you curl in, bend the knee, curl the tail through, grab yourself inside and go back into your seal.

There you go, seal up, seal forward and then twist toward me. Come up into the twist one. That's it, so we just keep taking it side to side. And then come up and curl, hands inside, there you go. And rock, and roll, and clap if you want and then go the other way.

Keep going, we all have it now. So push off the front foot, lift the back hip, curl through, and roll back, and roll forward, and switch the other side. Should we do one more each way? Okay, so bend that knee through. Curl into yourself, and roll back, and roll forward.

And you have to have a brain so you can remember which foot to crossover. And then come up, push off. There you go, there you go, there you go. And last time, curl in and let's do two or three seals. So roll back, roll forward, and give it a little clap and roll back, roll forward, and hold inside your ankle.

I think it feels better. Roll back, roll forward, and clap your whole leg in. Are we ready to stand up next time? So roll back and come right up to standing. Take a nice deep breath.

And actually, what you really gotta do is turn around and come back to your original partner and thank them and thank you. Okay, fabulous. Thank you. Great job everybody. (applauding) Thanks, guys.