Just Move Mat

Hi everybody. Welcome to class. Let's just get started. If you've been to any of my previous classes, you know that I like to just take inventory. So another thing I like to do is think about how the hardest part is over. We're already here, so let's just move. This is the time where you put everything else aside.

You just check in and then I'll move you from here we go. Stand with your feet apart. Preferably no shoes on or socks, but on the firm surface, feet apart, meaning parallel. So the outside edges are straight ahead. Most of us don't want to do that. We either roll in or out, so you just want to feel the floor as much as possible. Let your arms just hang, shrug your shoulders, take a deep breath in and just see where you are by exhaling and drop them and just kind of see where does the tension go? Or does it just feel good or not good? Just notice. Inhale, shrug and exhale. Sort of setting an intention for yourself.

Inhale up and exhale. Let it go. And now we'll do what I always do. Take those arms up nice and high. Looking up just a little bit, just filling up the lungs. Give yourself some space. XL, I turn the hands down. You don't have to. Just bring them back down one more time. Inhale up and exhale. Can you be any taller, any longer? Right from the get go.

Changing it a little. Come back up. Inhale and keeping your body sort of flat to the front and the back. Start to bend those elbows nice and wide. Arching that upper back. Trying not to let go of the lower back. Inhale back up. We'll just stay here for three. Exhale, pulling it down and just sort of at the end there.

It's like you're pressing your elbows down, but your chest up. And one more time. Inhale and exhaling down. Oh, let's just stay here for one more. Inhale parcels, elbows toward the screen in front of you or forward. And then it just exhale, lift the arms, come down. Okay, so we'll from there, move onto your backs. Lying to, Oh by the way, I do have a TheraBand here. You may or may not need one. Sometimes I like an extra assist but it's not necessary to take class.

And I just put a pillow here cause you might decide it's actually a towel, but it might decide that you want a little more support for your head in certain exercises. For now I'm just going to put the tail away. Keep the TheraBand nearby and lie down on your backs with your knees bent and your feet flat. Feel again your feet. They're, they're the same position they were in before so they are pointed straight ahead. You feel the palms, hopefully the wrists and the whole upper arm on the, on the mat. Take a moment and just see are your shoulders popping forward. Try to blinks in them back out and we'll just go into that pelvic curl. It's an inhale, prepare, start the exhale and that matters. Start the excess.

So naturally those abdominals kick in and you can start to add in the tilt of the pelvis. I'm only going part way. Come on back down and we'll go again. Inhale, I'm just rolling to the waist. Start the XL getting kind of tapped into the position role. So you feel more of your low back pressed into the mat. Maybe your tailbone is off and then come back down in help prepare.

Start that Xcel will go up to the base of the shoulder blades. Exhale all the way up. Notice you're going to have to spread those collarbones out again and stay here for a second. Breathe her wherever you want. Imagine you're pulling your heels towards your butt and make sure that you have sort of biased or kept that bit of its posterior tilt or pelvic tilt so the front of your hips are stripped. You're still breathing, you're all right, arms are down. Inhale, we'll go back down on the exhale. So just trying to articulate one by one.

I like to just do a little bit of prep before we really get going. So here we go. A couple more. Inhale, prepare. Exhale, roll up sequentially. Start feeling those heels draw towards your glutes so you feel the backs of the legs. Inhale, they'll help you might cramp, but they'll help you in the long run. XL, roll down. Ooh, I'm a little wobbly today. How about you? Inhale, exhale. Up, we go standing into your feet. It's another way of kind of making sure you're using those hamstrings eyes basically straight up, maybe a little forward. Inhale, exhale, come down. Just finding where you are. Hopefully loosening up Xcel.

Next time you roll here it is. Try not to skip any parts. Something you want to check for is that your ribs haven't flared up, right? You won't feel much in your low back if if you're in a really straight line, front and back. Inhale, exhale, roll down. And one more time. Once you're at the bottom, take your inhale. Think of all those points if you can, and roll up on the exhale.

Another big point is that your knees are still pointed towards your toes, right? They're not turned out. Inhale and exhale, right is take the arms just straight up over your shoulders. Reach them out to a tee really far, really far before you set them on the ground. Reaching me them even further and then rest where they are. But do check that they're not way above your shoulders. They could be lower.

That wouldn't be a big deal, but aiming for the T. bring your knees up, bolt them together, and we're doing what we call the supine twist coming towards the front. We inhale to rotate. I lifted the hip. The knees are still totally allied. Exhale from the ribs area and bring it back. Other way. Inhale. You can use those arms. You want to keep the arms absolutely on the mat. Exhale, center. Keep alternating. Inhale, reach, reach, reach. It's sort of a sense of that top leg reaching further.

Exhale back to center or your knees still together. Inhale over. Exhale, come back. Now that you know the moves do a little like I want to say Cinco Benchley here. It's like the ribs pull back. The waist pulls back, the hips and the knees follow off the swaying almost like a Palm tree and exhale, the breath can seem like it's doing the movement [inaudible] last time to the back and bring it back. Center feeder down. All right, we're going to do just a couple of chest lifts and then move into the a hundred lace your fingers behind your head, right? Sort of at the occipital Ridge, so they become like a pillow. Lift your elbows a little so you have some room between your ears and shoulders.

Then just inhale, you're leaving your hips down. Nothing's happening, but your head, neck, and shoulders come up on X ham right here, curling up, looking somewhere near your knees. Inhale, hold, deepen the exhale, deepen the abs and come back down. Just a few. Just getting, making sure we've got that upper backwards warmed up. Exhale, curl as you are. [inaudible]. It's like those ribs. Slide toward the hips. Inhale, hold it there and XL length and yourself back down. Just two more. Inhale. Exhale. [inaudible], c'mon, c'mon. Inhale, hold it. Don't fall back on that.

Inhale and exhale down. I said two more, right? This is it. Exhale, curl at both sort of [inaudible] for fun. Reach forward, grab onto the legs, maybe inhale again and then exhale. Pull yourself higher. Oh, that's where we want to be. Then you're just going to let your arms go. Reach them forward. Stretch out your legs onto the mat, squeeze the legs together, and then bring your head, neck, shoulders, and arms back down. Let's go ahead and reach the arms overhead in this position. Again, try not to flare the ribs. You want to keep them as heavy down on the mat as possible, even if your arms are higher.

This is a beginning of an exercise called the a hundred it's inhale, lift your arms to above your chest, Xcel head, neck and shoulders. Curl up, reaching forward, reaching forward, reaching forward. Then just inhale, come back down all the way. Xcel somewhere down here. Arms come up. Inhale, exhale, curl head. No controllers forward like you're pushing against a solid inhale and exhale all the way back down. Now this time, imagine someone was pulling you wrists and then at the end, so you're getting really long, but you're going to hold the ribs and abs engaged. Then press your left foot down into the mat a little bit left leg if you can, and imagine picking up the right leg. Okay, but don't pick it up yet. Just engage what you would have to do to pick it up. All right, so now on this next one, we'll actually curl the body up. Inhale, exhale, curl up. But start thinking of lifting that right leg and then actually hover it.

Stay there, pump the arms, inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale and inhale. Keep reaching forward. Exhale, one more time here. Inhale and exhale. The foot goes down, push it into the mat, reach your arms back overhead. While you're back here, think about, I'm just going to lift the leg, but don't engage those muscles and meanwhile you're still squeezing, innercise together and release. Do it again. Just think about it cause you want to be activated before you go into your motion. That's why I'm doing that.

It's really hard to catch up once you get in an app. Crushed. So here we go. You're thinking about lifting that left light. You lift the arms up, exhale, curl over. And at the last moment actually lift that leg and inhale, two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three, four, five. In stay reaching forward out and in and out. Three, four, five less time out. Two, three, four, five. Lower the leg down, person into the mat, reach on back and Oh, does that feel good? Draw your knees to your chest. Do what you need to do to loosen that up. All right, and then you can hold on here. Ultimately we will, but for now, let's hold on.

Behind the knees. Heels are down, meaning they were just hanging. You don't need them real high. Curl your head, neck and shoulders up and keep this shape. So my elbows, now they're bent, but they're not going to change much at all. In fact, and I'm going to start a rocking motion. It's exhale in exhale, inhale, and you're looking for that smooth ride, right? Keep those heels down. If you can switch to hands on the knees and keep the shape, your feet can be touching. They don't have to touch. I'm just getting us rocking. Three on the third one.

We'll stay up to stay up on this one. And eventually you're going to, you know, next time you do this, you're going to bring it really close and the shape just gets harder to keep and it's worth it. All right, so now with that said, this might be a time you want your band. Okay? So if you have one, great, ultimately you don't use a band and a big towel could work. It's not the easiest. I would just make it a little smaller. Taking the Bay, your foot in the band. I'm going to go with the right foot first and then we'll just lie back. Elbows to the mat, like straight up from here. Just kinda tick it. And, and for those, if you're not using a band, it's not as easy to support. So you could either bend the lower leg, but whatever you do, you keep it active. All right, now hold it in center. We'll do the whole thing. You're going to reach the leg across the body. Keep the hips on the ground, exhale all the way around and stop in the middle. Inhale, reach over, exhale all the way around stuff, but in the middle, inhale and exhale and the idea is that you're stirring up the hip in a good way.

Inhale and exhale. You're not letting the hip rock around. It's like a separation if you will, between the leg and the hip. One moves the other doesn't. In XL, let's do a few the other way. Inhale out, let it come down. It's almost like a drop in a catch. Inhale and exhale and exhale.

You could change the breath salts. Quit saying it, but that's the idea is that you want to be in control even as you can almost let it drop and swing. Let's do one more here and go the other way. I'm sorry. Switch legs, right? Make sure it's the flatter the band is on your foot. The more you can kind of rely on it in a useful way and just feeling that sense as I'm pushing into something even as the hip stays weighted. All right, just a few side to side loosening up here and notice that you're not rocking around on the pelvis. Loosen it up and come to center. We'll cross the body first. Oh, what are your shoulders doing? Mine were kind of high. They don't need to be.

Keep them down. Cross the midline of the body and exhale down around. Stop on a dime. Same direction. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. It's like you're slicing through the air. Exhale. Just two more and we'll go the other way. One more other way. Check how much tensions in your upper body. It's kind of not necessary other way, but sometimes we have these patterns, don't we? When we're moving, thinking, doing, inhaling out, exhaling around. Somewhere in there. Inhale. Exhale.

How about one more? Hopefully feel a little bit looser there. You're going to keep that foot there. Put the other one back. I'm keeping my knees bent and just setting the heels on the ground. Oh, I wish I would've choked up on the band. But anyway, we're going to roll our head, neck and shoulders up, and we're going to come all the way up. All right. Now while here, you can straighten your legs. Um, sometimes a little hard on carpet, but the idea is that if you've still got the band or even if you don't, you can do the same exercise. When you roll back, you're starting this, it's an app exercise. You're starting it by rounding your back and then I bend my knees to make sure I keep my background it only to the shoulder blade to hold on the inhale, you're looking somewhere out over your toes. Start exhaling like you're trying to push your low back into the mat before you come forward and straighten the legs out. Inhale and exhale.

Essentially the legs are just giving you the leverage where you need it. Okay. Oops. Just to the shoulder blade. Inhale and act up. Rest the low back and you can start straightening your legs wherever you want there to help you get up. Inhale and exhale as you roll the hips back. Bend the knees or don't you don't. You can do it completely. Straight legged.

Collarbones are wide. Inhale, think of an exhale happening. Let it happen. The arms are staying straight by the way. Could have said that earlier probably. And let's do it again. Rolling back, making sure our backs are ready for what's coming. Great. All right. You can look out at the band and then hold onto your right shin or knee, knee or shin. All right, you could go hand over hand.

It's a little hard at first. The very first thing I'm doing, and you just pull it into your chest. All right? Now at the same time, I want you to elbows up. I don't want you to push it away, okay? But there's not going to be an emotion. Now are you going to keep the shape so it's just static. We're going to roll back and pick up that other leg and rock. Just rock. Try to keep that shape. One more time.

Stay up when you get there and just switch legs. So I'm just trying to get that sense of complete the energies all the same. Right? So picking up the foot, that's my cue to myself to, okay, I'm in the round back. My elbows are up, my shoulders are just where they need to be, which is down. And we're going to tip back since the leg reaching away from you too. You can hover it and rock for three. One exhale. Keep your shape. Oh, this side's harder for me to up on three switched back.

We're going to go down just slowly and stay there. So same idea though. Roll back, roll back, roll back and stop right there. Here it's like you could set a drink on your shin, right? It's not down here. It's not way up there. Try to line it up and then just switch. Now when you switch, you don't move your ever body. That's the hard part.

Let's go switch sewage. I am literally pressing my knee into my hands a little bit just to give me that sense of opposition and can we go a little quicker? Yes, we can. We go one, one, two, two. You can breathe however you want. I'm going in and out out. One more. Set in and out. Both knees in, head down and rest. Ooh, getting kicked up. All right.

Same idea kind of for now. You're holding on your knees. It's kind of closer to the shin. Pick your head up and push your knees into your hands and feel that same opposition that we did before. For the devil leg kick prep, we're going to just let go. Touch the feet down, bring it back up again. Test yourself. Don't go so low with the feet that your back moves any part of your back.

It's all going well. You're going to reach the legs out. Inhale, exhale, pull in. Let's go in here. It's helpful and so I'm reaching them straight and letting go and reaching as if there everything was trying to get me up off this table. If that's going well, you reach your arms back in your legs. Forward three, circle around, grab two, grab three, rest, head down. You might shake it side to side. Okay, we go one more in this series I want to do today and that is the crisscross. It's very much like the first one, so I'm going to get us into it by pressing both knees in as we crawl head, neck, and shoulders up. Take your hands behind your head and let the front leg or the, in my case, a left leg go forward as you rotate toward that knee, bringing that shoulder toward the knee for now and then just switch. Stay high as you go across the other side and switch and switch and the thing is you guys just stay, look like you're under control. Better be under control.

Don't let those hips roll side to side. Don't let the knees separate a lot. They come straight in little quicker, quicker, and exhale. Inhale and exhale can stay up. Stay up in out. One more set in, in and out and out. Both knees in arrest. Okay, let's get back into that rocking again. This time, this whole lower down on the shins were warm. Curl up, tuck the pelvis and start rocking.

If you have to kick once or twice just to get it going, that's fine, but then it doesn't change. Inhale, hips up. Inhale, hips down. Inhale, hips up and down the sides. Don't get any closer to you. One more time to stay up and, okay, spine stretch. One of my favorites. A lot of variations on the spine stretch. Um, I will give you at least two if this is too much to sit like this, and it was for me for years. So don't hesitate if you want to just bend your knees. Sometimes that's enough. And by what I'm going for is not so much pull in the legs a that it hurts or that forces you back into a rounded back. We want to stay upright.

All right, so we'll start like that and I'm going to have your hands behind your head. All right. It's all we're going to do is roll ourselves as if we're trying to put the top of our head in between our knees. Simple sort of. Not really. Okay. It's inhale. I think it's one of the hardest ones actually. As you exhale, it's like you're peeling your spine off a wall, you're going down, your elbows can be kind of wide. Go down as far as you can and then just inhale right back up and exhale.

I'm doing this with my arms. It's, I'll show you the another way in a second because it's helpful for me to just see where I am without the arms kind of flooding my shoulders around. Inhale and exhale. It's almost like you go up to go over. If I could do a somersault, I would, and then inhale with the same thing you're taking in all this air right here, right now. As you exhale, imagine the shape is squeezing the air out. The shape you're making is squeezing every ounce of air out, so you just flipped right back up on the inhale and exhale, get it out and then just naturally roll back up that imaginary wall. Let's do it a little more traditional. Your arms are straight ahead.

Now it's like they're on a table and you're pressing down to get up. You're flexing your feet, you're energized. It's the same thing on your arms will stay going forward. Inhale, Xcel. You roll your head down and you just reach those arms along the imaginary tabletop. They do lower a bit, but inhale, come up and exhale. I pushed down to go up to a room forward.

It's a lot of just choosing your energy where you place it. [inaudible] inhale, last one, exhale and then roll back up. Hopefully feeling taller. I'm going to keep you seated for one more. I just closed the legs. Open the arms out to a tee position. Hopefully shoulders are right over. Hips. Turn the whole arm over.

So palms are up and we're going to twist too to West to now the tendency here, it's really easy to throw the arms and think you're doing it, but this is really about the spine. So again, you could do it with your hands behind your head. You're ringing yourself out, so to speak. Last set. Either way with the arms is fine and okay, let's get off our hip flexors and lie down. Turn right around or make sure you can still see. I'm just going to get my dine of and out of the way. And you're on your hip, so we definitely want your hips down.

Your front of your hip bones are down and you're out elbows. But I'm going to have you take your elbows pretty far forward, so you're almost on your chest. You're almost on your desk sternum. Okay. And then you can put your hands however you want, but you want to feel like you could still push into them. From there, we're looking straight ahead, most likely, or slightly down, maybe nice long arc. Hover your thighs while keeping your legs straight. Oh, it might be barely. If that instantly threw you into low back, you lifted him too high. Okay, so they may still basically be touching. It's just the intent.

You're going to kick your right leg, kick, kick, straighten other side kick, kick, straighten, and you are strong in your upper body, like proud, like Sphinx, like Paul Paul, stretch, poor, poor push. So everything is working here and if you don't fill your hamstrings, try to lift those kneecaps up higher. Let's do two more. One, one, one, one. Here's two, two, two, two, two. Wow. Let your back come down. Hands by your shoulders. Press up and just stretch back. Let's just don't get easier. You can always just do a little bit better.

We're going to come down onto our side and go into what's called the sidekick. A little bit of a variation. I'll give honor, elbow and forearm and you want to, again, not just the elbow but disperse weight, disperse the energy through that lower arm, your shoulders right above your elbows best you can. Some people may need to move the elbow out a little bit more, but aim for right above and then your ribs are lifted. It's like a shape of a triangle of space here. So we're not chilling, watching TV. We're up. We're ready because we're not going to be here. Top leg reaches long lift it fronthand just supports you.

Kick forward one, one sweep of back kick two, two strong back there. Just remember what you felt in that last exercise. It's still the same contraction, only like stay straight, right? We're doing two more after that one and here comes to keep it back there for just a second. It's still as high as it was, but not higher to keep it back there. Rotate your chest forward. Maybe reach that top arm and see if you can find a spiral line or stretch through your whole body. Breathe however you want, reaching for it. And other side.

Okay, so lower knee if I didn't say so. It's just in a 90 degree about angle every looking for I am, it's like a geometric one 90 triangle, 90 lift that leg and off we go kick forward and back. I do flex the foot going forward. You don't have to at point of going back. It's pretty standard and I can, I can, you can breathe really however you want to keep it as consistent as possible. Doing two more here when back to hold it back there, check out the Eaton, roll back with it.

Your hips are almost going forward and then you actually turn the chest forward, reach that top arm looking for that love at least hopefully and release it. We're going face down, flip on down. Does it matter which way you're facing? As long as you can turn your head. If he wants to see and we're reaching arms all the way out, just strict. Your legs are straight, you are going to swim. But before we do that, we're going to press the palms, press the tops of the feet into the mat and pull the belly up. It's like Spiderman on a building. You're pushing, you're holding, and the belly comes up. Try to keep that sense as you lift the right arm, that left leg and maybe your gaze forward.

And then just bring the leg and arm down and switch side. So the left arm, right leg, they lift, the knee is straight, right? Prove it to yourself. Look if you have to, and then right arm, left leg, nothing going on in the middle. You're not rotating, you're so you're working opposition. Now hover both. You don't have to be high and then right arm, left leg. Then just switch and switch and switch and faster. And you can breathe however you want. How about inhale and exhale?

You're still nice and stable in the middle and one more breath cycle that you choose. Stretch everything long and low and release it down. Hands by your shoulders. Press yourself back up, rest position back. And we've got the grand finale, which is the teaser prep. This is one of those ones that you probably would do one a TheraBand on. Um, if you don't have one or you don't want to do this one well done on everything else cause we covered the whole body. This is just a little party trick.

I'm going to do a single leg. This is just getting us really ready to go for the full deal. Plus sometimes I think when you, you don't have the full exercise that you're working on making everything perfect. You can work deeper on the more basic versions. So I took the TheraBand and wrapped it around my right foot and the knees are bent and totally together. We sit up nice and tall and then we do that kind of tuck like we did earlier in class. Float that right calf and foot up, grab on so you have help, right?

Or if you don't want so much help hold lower but keep your arms straight. We are rolling all the way down to the back of the head. The knees don't come apart and then roll back up, which is to say they don't. You don't just keep the legs touching and keep them together completely and down. This is a single leg teaser with assist up up, up, up, up at the top though. Here's some part, pull that band and extend your chest a little and then re round to go down and straighten the arms. So again, working that opposition coming up when you get there, pull and it's like you're lengthening out the back.

You're still in a bit of a tucked pelvis but it looks like we're flat and down. One more pop up. Oh it gets harder at the top from the news. That tension doesn't it? So I'll give you that. Watch your chin. You don't want to look too high and we come down, leave the leg there but the other foot and put the needs together. So now the right foot's on the floor.

Make sure that the band is secure and hold it enough that you can keep your arm straight until that part at the top. We are inhaling to go up. If you can, you can exhale too. It's just the challenge later is an inhale and oops. Broke my own rule and let my knee slide. Inhale coming up. It's piece by piece and Oh you can almost drag that heel towards your glutes or think to push down. Exhale and inhale ruling. Huh? Oh Ben in the elbows. I guess we have to do more. Stay here. Do it again. Just bend the elbow. Since I didn't do two on the other side. One more here.

I said long wouldn't cheat you on that roll down and the last one with the combination in Hill Rola. Okay. And exhale. Extend. That's fine. Keep the knees together Christie and all the way down when you get down, just let the leg float up, release the van and we are going to finish with yet one more roll but have fun with it. Just rock and get it going. Rock and get it going. Feel good about the time you took for yourself?

How about one more to keep us sitting and if it's comfortable for you, just stay sitting and, uh, face front. Um, otherwise, just stand up here. We're just in a couple more deep breaths altogether. We inhale filling up, maybe even shrug again and exhale. Does it feel any different? And inhale and exhale. That's enough, isn't it? Some days that's a lot. So keep practicing, come back again. I'll keep bringing you more. Thanks for being here.