Creative Imagery Mat

Hey everyone here for some mat work. So let's start on our hands and our knees. Just getting a nice sense of centering of your body weight, shoulders above risk, sneeze right below the hip bones and I'd like us all first just to Tuck the toes under, do what you can and round your spine first, just easy, no extra pushing. Let's just check in and see where you're sense of c curve is through your upper back, middle back, and especially the lumbar area, the lower back. Okay.

Release the tops of the feet and just settle back on tops of your feet and just gaze up in the wall to the wall in front of you so I know some of your knees aren't going to love this or the feet. You can just do cat cow to start and join me in just a moment. I'm going to rock through this place a few times. Tucking your toes down this re group again and focus more now on your lumbar spine rounding and contracting your glutes a little bit, a bit more hollowing of this space here, this stomach away from math idea. Let your head hang, just pulling up from your leg line up into your abdominals. And then again, take the feet out of it, settle back, and just come all the way and we'll just take it one more time.

Probably add a little to it. So down onto the hands and knees. Tuck your toes can start in your neutral and work down into that lumbar curve. Visualize rate here. I'm gonna do this little thing with my hand making kind of a circle shape or a big physio ball shape. Just visualize that we are that circle. Yes, a flow that's not going to stop or start hopefully too much.

Keep those toes bent like that. Everybody [inaudible] walk your hands closer to you and want you to make a fist. No. Push your arms more down into the mat and lift your knees just a little bit and these back down. If you don't like your feet like that, you can also try it here. What I want us to get the sense of pushing the arms to lift the hips and take it down. So my preference is the feed here. That's what I'll do twice more for us. Take a breath first and exhale. Push the arms, see if you can keep your hips tucked under, tilted under.

Lots of lifting the abdominals and down. And one more time. Regroup, press and Lyft. Just kind of waiver here. Just waiver. And then set the knees down. One more time, feet down. And then just come all the way up. Looking right out in the front to the wall in front of you.

Turn and look over one shoulder. Give your neck a stretch in intern. Look over the other shoulder. Okay, so I'm gonna turn to myself around and I'd like everyone to lie down on your backs. Let your legs feel comfortable for a moment. Just open and relaxed. Couple of deep breaths right now and just sense the spaces behind your back, your neck, your lumbar spine, your ribs. Hopefully you're really pretty close to your mat surface. If you sense a huge arch, take it up. Okay, Ben, Denise, step your heel in. Bend the other knee. Step your heel and take a little peak if you need to. Let's breathe in.

So I'm taking a nice pelvic curl here, still working on that same circular movement I had from my knees. We're going to focus on this position several times in class and rolling down. If you could get your sit bones to your heels, you'd have to be reaching in that directions. I want us all to do that and come to a level without fording the ribs, deep breath and again, ah, letting that mid body just melt or sink into the mat rolling up. Let's take a moment or two here.

Focus on where your knees are pointing and sense if there was a wall in front of your knees or a person spotting you or something else that you'd reach your knees into, something that'll come up in a little bit and use that as we roll down. So I'm thinking knees forward as well as sits bones forward all in the ideal to get more length in our back. Let's do it one more time and feel the wheels start [inaudible] all the way through. And I ask it now to, if before you do the knees, think about your chest, a vertebrae, your thoracic vertebra, and a pull it up toward your upper back more. Okay? Reach your knees more forward, sits bones more forward, and then let's take a little heel lift and lower eight times. Keep that focus of your knees reaching forward, sitz bones reaching forward and thoracic spine up your back, hoping to feel long. Four and three arms are pressing lightly in the mat.

Last one, breathing in and out. Pause. Inhale, and let's take ourself down. Knees forward, Sitz bones toward heels, all the way long. Once you're flat, just extend your legs again and just put them where they feel comfortable. Raise your arms, make a nice frame with your arms. I want this frame to stay just as it is right now. Pick up your head, round your neck, and move your sternum forward, reaching your arms vertically. So I really want us to mobilize the thoracic spine and come all the way down so the arms hopefully won't move. Pick up your head. Use the neck muscles, bend them forward. Started to articulate.

I'm looking straight out the window right over my toes, trying to get more movement in my thoracic spine, RMC, reaching up lower. Three more with a little more flow to it and a whole one without going all the way down and to [inaudible] without coming all the way down. And three holding there. Now lower the arms. Gather your legs together. Bring your legs up for your 100 no arching of that back. You're flat right. And again, so if that wasn't available for you, bring your legs higher. Bend your knees to tabletop. You know your work arounds.

Visualize that wheel right here, still around in your lumbar spine, especially for someone lordotic like me. Kind of lives in that arch. I want to lengthen that arch out. Okay. Ah, increasing the lines from the tip of the toes. Tip of the head. Everybody pause. Just feel your position.

Raise your arms up, press and back down. [inaudible] two more. Ah, bring your knees in. Hug tightly. Lift your pelvis and lower your upper back down. Stretch your neck a little bit. Okay. Roll yourself up.

Reach your arms over your thighs, stretch. And at the same time we know pulling our abdominals back into our low back. Let's take a rollback from here. I'm going for three to four repetitions now. Do whatever works for your arm choreography.

Let's work on flow. Lift, stretch, rolling back. Visualize the wheel coming up. Oh, up over the wheel and back. I'm just going to take a full on one more time. All the way back. [inaudible] bring your thighs in. Everyone. Put your hands on your shins.

Pull and lift your head. Bend your upper spine towards your thighs. Lift your elbows out from underneath you there, away from you and then just pick up your pelvis a little more and down. Four more. Pickup your by contracting your abdominals and three more. Oh and down going deep in those abdominals.

Deep stretch in your lower back and your whole spine and last time. Now have the advantage of being up on the table. If you're on a raised wall unit mat, go ahead and reach your hands behind you to the polls if you want or if you have a chair behind you, something. I'm going to use the corners of the mat. Okay. I'm going to take my legs up over my hips, pull with the arms a little bit and then just pull your legs towards you. Just enough that you can unweight your pelvis and bring it down just enough, right? So I do need a little bit of leg toward torso to begin my pelvic tilt.

That's okay. Two more like that. Legs a little bit. You can use your arms pull and unweight your pelvis and lower. And one more time. Legs, a little pull with the arms and up. Okay, now bend your knees. I need to make a spacial adjustment. Change it on my mat. I'd like to do the full rollover with my arms straight. So I am going to pull my hands on the corners again and start the full movement, hopefully without that leg movement quite so soon. And I go pelvis, then up and over, flex the feet open. I'm not gonna put my toes on the mat because there's no mat right there for me to put them on rolling down.

I'm going to take my legs quite low and get that beautiful body stretch up over flex and open. As I roll down, I'm using my apparatus, I'm using my mat, I'm pulling. That's helping stabilizing me. Give me some leverage to do the full movement. Inhale is my last one in this direction. That's all I'm going to do in that direction today. Lower both legs. Hold your body long for just a moment.

Bring your arms down by your side if you need to. I'm going to keep mine up. It feels nice to open up the chest. Play with if you want. Let's raise our left leg today. Legs Circle, cross down around and lift. Cross down around. Yes, I'm doing the big hip twist today. My body asked me to, so I listened.

That was five, five the other way. It's our job as movers. Listen to what your body is asking for and give it what it's asking for. [inaudible] change legs. If you don't know where to get it, go learn about it. Go study. That's what we're doing here.

Cross and down around left cross. So with this big hip twist, I've definitely had my opposite leg, but active so that I can really get that twist. Ah, I feel so good. Five the other way. [inaudible] find your flow. Notice where it's not as fluid. You'll get to study that later. Let's keep moving.

That was five. Okay. Lower that second leg. Now. Bicycle both legs up into your torso. Release your hands. Bring your hands onto those shins. Pick up that head and chest again and just pull yourself into a little bowl again. Oh, holding that position and pause for a moment.

Rounding into this little ball. Let's work the ball from here. Everybody start rocking. So I want us to press the shins into the hands, but at the same time, for the hands against the shins, remember the ball is really okay to have some fun. Does not have to be a daunting exercise. Doesn't always have to start at the top and roll backward.

[inaudible] remember, find your flow like a swing on a swing set, right? It doesn't start mid air or forward. It starts at the bottom and it goes from four and a Mac. Okay. You know what I mean? Okay, take a hand on his chin.

Now start it all the way up for this one for something different. Organize this. Sit Bone of mine with this hip. Hold on. Change legs and just feel what that is and see what that is on the other side. Want you to keep your left leg in today. Keep yourself square now to back. Keep bringing that link with us and we flow and we change and I'm not going to do too many. Just for more. Three, two, one. Pause with both knees in. Take a mem, a memory lane trip and feel the wheel. You're in that wheel house right there, right three times. Double leg stretch. Go stretching, stretch.

It's like you where you were at the a hundred stretch. Only your arms are behind your now stretch. I am going to do scissors today. I want the flexibility work. I'm going to put my hands way up on my ankle bone and I want to pick this leg up. Pick it up then maybe pull it towards you. We'll do a slow one on each live so you can feel.

And also the opposite leg is stretching. How good is your back there? Change. Pause. Feel it. Lift the leg. Rhythm. Pull. Pull. Ah, ah, ah. Like you're picking this leg up and putting it on the wall. US. Pick it up.

Put It on the wall behind him for more. Everybody. Four, three, two, one hands behind the head. Just hold this. Hook your elbows up. Lower the legs of the mat. Lower your sternum down. Bicycle the legs up. Do it again. Just up. Hold the upper body position. Lower your legs all the way to the mat and lower. One more time. Bicycle lift. Lift. Bend your knees tightly in.

Pick a side to rotate. Two and stretch the opposite leg. Now Open your elbows. Close your elbows. Open your elbows. What do I look like? A little butterfly. Butterfly Wings. Um, other side twist. First Elongates in.

Exhale, pick a pretty butterfly. They're all pretty in their own way. [inaudible] both knees in hand behind you. Rock on up. Okay. Spine stretch. Before you bend forward. Sit Tall. Take your air and we'll do three of them.

[inaudible] around. Leave your sits bones back there where they were. Don't shift off of them if you can and see if he can keep bending into yourself. Bend into yourself, contract into yourself today. Lift all the way up with the arms. Is it a little taller? Inhaling. So I'm going to go over and reaching for the rocks there on the shore, pulling my stomach back. But I do want to bend into myself. Right?

That contraction, the energy out here is reaching out. The energy within me is coming into me. That's my support. Okay. And all the way up. One more time. [inaudible] finding that balance, what you need to reach out and take out what you need to keep in and work in yours for the taking in there and roll all the way up. Okay.

Open the rocker time. I'm not going to move on the mat and I know there's plenty of mat behind me. It just feels like there's not balancing everyone balance with me. Let's try the hand position slightly different today. Everyone take your hands on the inside. Okay. And just play with it. If you're used to the other way, you've got to change it up sometimes to learn new things. Don't we? Inhaling, bend your knees, grow taller, up out of your body.

Two more times, extending the lines, but just like you found his spine stretch forward. You keep pulling within. Keep pulling inside. And one more time. Now I'm going back. I do have to look. Okay. Rocking whooo and up. Five Times I'm gonna press my calves against my hands. Lifting those hips.

Last two, I'm going to bring back a little Pat Guyton moment. Why does open leg rocker always have to be with the legs out? That way it can happen this way. Two or three times. It's hard to keep the legs in that same scissor split. It's fun and it's an open leg rocker change. Three times.

Pull those abdominals right into the center line of you so you stay in the center of your mat. Okay, both legs up. Now hold here for a sec everybody. Let's see if we can just walk our hands up and let your shoulders protrack for her for just a second. So you can feel how not so fantastic. That is for the alignment. Now if we extend the spine up the upper thoracic, I have to slide my hands a little bit back. That's okay. Still want my tummy down in and let go?

Yep, that's our teaser. Might be the only one today. Actually. Let's just make it be the only one. Okay. Let's see what happens though. If we reach up more and more knowing as the only one, perhaps this is fine and all the way down. [inaudible]. All right, so let everybody bicycle your legs into your chest and up again over your hips. Let's roll ourself over. We're prepping for corkscrew.

I want to take you all the way over. Okay. Now again, I have the advantage of the table I'm going to hold. Go ahead and use it. You can. If you need to, keep your hands down. You can join me up here if you'd like. Coming down to the right side. I am going to go over, over, over, dropping those legs low and over, and he hit the center at the top left side. It's okay to use the arms. I'm using my apparatus, which is the mat, my body, which is another apparatus on this mat.

Okay, one more each side. Oh, getting a spine ready for that saw. Okay. Feeling just a little stickier in those segments than I thought I would, but that's okay. Yeah, we'll see what happens in the saw. Let's come back toward each other. Look toward me. I'll look toward you. I'm going to say to the outside of course.

And I'm gonna keep my backhand down today just for a moment and really work the opposite side, pulling that side back. Check that out on the other side. Hand down. Pull the opposite hip away from this front hand. Okay, now we'll do the real way with the arm off. Oh, he's a tricky exercise for this body. Still working on it doesn't keep me bored, that's for sure.

Always entertaining and to feel my way through this exercise. And Ah, okay. Now turn over onto your tummy. Woo. And let's do a little swan dive. Okay, so one day of today, before we do the full rocking, you can rock with me if you'd like. I am going to put our hand in my hands here to begin and study the length of the sternum and chest again. That's the, yeah, the chest spine right there, and then raise the legs. Libya, we're balancing earlier.

I think about the wheel in front of us can go around. Now it's behind me. I'm going to think about going up and over a wheel that way, and my legs up and over the wheel this way, and just generate first a little connection. Work the leg, lift the leg, lift the leg, lift the leg, lift two more legs and legs, and that's our swan dive today. Come up onto your elbows, lift your legs again. I really want your legs to be lifted and parallel. If you can. Kneecaps off the mat. Kick, kick, kick, kick. I've got my hands somewhat pushing down in the mat to help me lift my chest up, reaching my chest bone for whatever's in front of me. Four, three, two and one, and coming down. Okay, now let your face relax completely. Let your elbows relax. Completely. Gently raise those legs, but powerfully from the glutes you can do. Gentle and powered in the same thing.

And then three kicks, one, two, three. Release your hands if you need to. I'm going to today, but I do want to have explore that really long body turned to the other side. You all put your cheek down. I'm going to have your mind due to the microphone and kick two, three and stretch. No, as you were stretching your arms along, lift your heart, your chest up a little more, two more one each side and it's a kick, kick, kick, and a big reach. In fact, hold open your arms. Close your arms. Other side kick, kick, kick and explore that.

Lift and palms down. As you open and close, put your hands down in front of you. Push yourself up, round your spine. Look right back at the beginning of class. We're back at the beginning, rounded in. See if you feel any more pliable. I'm sure you do. Set your feet down. Wave to the train will come right up. Just like we did at the beginning. I'll have three or four of those coming down.

Start in a neutral, move into a round. Pick up your lowest abdominals, contract your glutes, shift that shaped back. Now a little different transition here. Slowly drag your fingers to your knees to come up. That'll happen again. That felt good here. You can lengthen a neutral, you can round and then contract does easy work.

The C curve work, that c curve work, that seeker and then all the way and okay, climb up high on your knees, move a little more forward. I do this a lot because it's good for me. It's good for lots of us to keep more flexibility occurring in our quads and Linkedin, our quads. Now at the beginning I was saying that the bridge, thinking about where your knees were pointing, well now our knees are pointing down into that map. They're going to stay there. So as you start leaning back, you don't have to go very far, but notice that the further you do go, the kneecaps kind of want to come up off the mat, reaching toward that mat and then pull yourself up. So we're basically just doing a pelvic curl all over again. Here's that wheel.

Here's the sternum going to the top of the upper back. Knees are reaching into this space that's in front of them. Okay. Let's do a couple like this. It's general. A little more work. I feel so good. One more time. [inaudible] now what I'm going to do here, everybody is c curve and then come back into that plank line.

Not Easy. One more time. C curve back into my plan. Klein. Hmm. All the way up. Oh, I need to get out of there. That's a burner. Good. Okay. Now we're really ready for bridge with some leg kicks and stuff. Okay. We've got those guys stretched out. We're ready. Bridge yourself up. I just kinda like the hands at the pelvis feels good to me to support that because also I don't want my, my back arch so much. I can really bring that up or back down. But then study hips at a hands, leg up five times. It's down and up and down.

Hips are not really resting in my hands at all. They look like it changed. Side leg is up and we're down and we're down and four and five and down. Okay. For everybody, just wiggle your spine down. Come down and toggle your knees side to side. Keep your legs going like that. A few more moments feel so good to toggle. Okay. Now organize your legs in parallel. I don't think I'm going to a hybrid.

Pretty sure I'm not, but I can pretend with this side cause that's the arm line I want to work on. And then I'm not going to pretend I'm going to do this side and I'm hooking my elbows up to the sky and I'm sending my sternum up or back toward my head up. And if I go into a bridge, I might start to put some weight on my hands and then that's it. And starting to put the weight on the hands and lift two or three more. This might be your version. It's mine today. Ah, it's gotta start somewhere, right? Let's come up for spine twist.

Okay. Plus if we did the full hybrid, you would have to turn your head and that's not real good legs together. Everybody. Let's flex our feet. So I'm going to turn to look at you for a moment. You can turn and look at me and let's make sure that this arm is really reaching out and this one is really reaching out. Now look toward your feet in front of them at the wall. Take a breath, turn away from each other and three pulses. We have our one little further, two and three and really use your whole trunk to turn one that's including your eyes two and three and reach for every wall, every wall with your heels, with your head, with your arms. One more each side and two, three and one, two and three. Now stay forward.

Lift your arms up. Let's do some shave because we're here and one stomach goes in three and four and last one five and down. Okay, let's turn to face each other. We won't do a ton on our side from low. We might go a little higher up on her other hand. Okay.

You know what I'm talking about? The lake slightly front. Less dude kicking up and down in turnout and lift and lower and lift and lower for more and something. Connie, easiest [inaudible]. Notice we aren't dropping our ribs down and that was our eight. Now everyone lower your whole body down. Stretch your long arm out. Stretch your legs out. Let's do our inner thigh work. Then the top leg.

Step that foot down. Now you can place your hand on your thigh and open that hip up. Let's do that today. Parallel your bottom leg and want you to flex your foot and pull that thigh up and down. Let's go for our eight. Whew. So we also energizing in both erections. Right out this arm, out the bottom heel, stomach to spine.

Three more here. Try not to move your ankle. It's your thigh. Last two. Okay, last one. Hold it there. Now extend your foot and point and flex it three or four more times keeping her thigh high. Okay? Yes. Now take this other hand out here. Just reach it. Takes out leg and do four circles. Go Up, back, down and down.

Four would have back down and down. And up and for the other way. You still reaching here? Four, three, two and last one. Lower your leg, stretch your arms long. Put your legs together and just everybody lift both eyes. Put your hand down, crawl yourself all the way up.

Spin your legs. Other sides, so not a whole lot while we're down there so we are up on her elbow. Returned out and it's a lift and lower lift and lower. Four more lift and three ribs. Arm dropped two and last one. No, we stretch your whole body. Nice and long. Inner thigh. Take that leg up. Put your hand in front of that side. Impress. Okay. Parallel bottom leg, flex foot. Exhale and raise your thigh. Lower.

Open your top shoulder. It's as important as the other one and three. Exhale four. We have four more and then we have our circles. Press. Okay. And per us three. Last one. Keep it up there. Point in flex a couple times while doing that.

Take the arm up and reach. Okay. We kept it in flexed angle. Four circles always go up higher. Okay, and up higher. That's where the good stuff is. Way Up there. Way Up there. I could get kinda naughty with that. Good stuff's up there and do and yeah, you got that up. Okay.

Now take your legs together. Hold your balance for a moment. We'll hold, hold. Extend your ankles. Okay. And then set your hand down everybody. I'm up too. High kneeling. Lecky facing each other. Okay. I said there wasn't a lot low side, but there is going to be much more up here. Here we go. Taking your arms out. Reach for that wall. Each for this wall.

Taking yourself who over now for this first round, make a fist if you're okay with that. Take your arm, beautifully overhead and take a moment to take your pelvis underneath. You think of almost like you're doing pelvic curl bridgeline again on this thigh. Okay. As your down and just hold that. Now as you bring your hand behind your head, pick your thigh up, flex your foot. Breathe in. Here we go. Kick in front and to the side. Just three of them to the front, to the side, to the front, to the side. I want you to put your foot down. Lengthen.

Now we have to change this hand. Bottom hand, just changing bottom foot threads next to the other foot. Boom. Now you can stay here with your feet like this. I want to stack mine today. Little more balanced challenge hold. Now I want to push my solid arm down into the mat.

Lift my rib cage spine to the ceiling and turn to look at the bottom hand. This is absolutely about balance because I do feel like I'm about to tinker. Totter over. Squeeze the glutes low. Okay, I didn't fall all the way. Come all the way up for the other side. We go over on our fist arm as long.

Take a moment. This size should feel like that bridge line glute should be contracted. Now take the hand behind the head. Lift your thigh three times we kick and exhale kick. So that has to do with strength of your abs. Yes, but also your supporting hip.

How strong is it to allow you to kick that ball ready? Put the foot down, change your hand, stretch your arm, bottom leg threads or stack. Bottom angle shouldn't be resting on that mat. Now where your ribs are, where your chest ribs are, reach those arch to the ceiling and look down at your bottom hand. Whoa. Yeah. Squeeze those glutes. Lifting, lifting, lifting the feet down. Last. Okay. I'm almost fell off the table. They didn't. Let's come back to our hands and knees. Not for long in this position.

Step back into yes, our friend support and guys, I'm going to do my hands here today. I just feel more stable. Do flat hands if you'd like lifted leg and do three pulses of it and one, two, three, look forward please. And one, two. We're going to do it again. Who? One, two, three and one, two, three and down. Okay. Come down off your hands. Hold. Okay, let's put them on up. Stay facing this way. Turn and sit on your hips. Murmuring time. Okay. But you notice I didn't do the full hand in class with the arm pull in double leg kick, not feeling it with my shoulders these days. So I am not going to do that whole thing. We don't have to do that.

We can also just make the arm movement this way. Breathing and your legs are crossed. Her roll back. Here's that wheel again, Jane delay. Here we go. Reaching your hands towards your toes. Let's just lower the legs. Die Forward. Pick yourself up. Breathing in, rolling back. Feel your wheel. Roll through it. Legs overhead. Change them rolling up. Your hands will reach to your toes.

Just lower your legs. Dive and arm go up and left. Two more her rollover. Change the lights and a little last one. Think of boomerang would do that. Okay, everyone, hold for just a moment. Fold your legs. What do you think that's for? Take your hands on your feet. Okay.

Lift your feet up. Make your shape, your crab shape. So I want to have us do what we know to do. His knees out to elbows, elbows into knees. Look down, but see if you can really get more balanced in this position. And when we roll over our shoulders, here we go. Stretch your legs and up. Not coming to my head. That's usually not really available to me unless I have someone watching me, but I liked that little release moment. That's the fun part for me.

One more each side. Release Henry Ice. Okay, one more fun. Come around, make an elephant shape. Make your elephant. I had done this before, so a hand in a foot and a hand and a foot. I'm at the end. Turn around.

Lift your stomach to move your limbs. I'm gonna pass it one more time. Hopefully not falling off. Coming down here. Nice. Turn and face each other. Just cross your legs to let your heart rate settle. Nice class. You never know what you're going to get with me.

Matt's always about exploring movement on the ground. Have you felt any exercises that were tricky or not available? You have your apparatus that can help you with that. See you next time.