Simple and Powerful Mat

Good morning or good whatever time of day it is for you. Here in California, it is morning time. Today we're going to have some fun do some very traditional mat work infused with a little bit of stretching and whatnot. I did say no props today but I have my trusty towel over here. This morning my low back is feeling just a little bit tight.

So I'm gonna make sure that I choose to take care of myself. I welcome you to take care of yourself and move today with the pleasure principle. Let's get started. So I would like you to begin today on your hands and knees. So with your hands underneath your shoulders, your knees underneath your hips, just be for a couple of moments and kind of animalistic.

Quadruped Mobilization

We're gonna round through the back drawing the belly in, allowing the shoulders to open, allowing the head to hang so a very relaxed stretch through the back body. And then come back through to center, hold your belly tight but pull your heart forward. Open your chest. Feel free to move around a little bit here. So I'm swaying my hips a little side to side that feels good round through the back again.

Cat Cow

Change your gaze. Do what your body needs. Just breathe my friends. Pleasure principle, power and pleasure together. Rounding up one more time here.

Just feel where you might need to loosen a little bit, ask that tissue to soften and then come back through to an extended position and feel your way here. Come back through to center and cross your legs behind you. See if you can roll comfortably over your legs to a seated position. And then here, I make like a diamond shape. So your feet are together, your hands, maybe on your legs somewhere.

Flexion and Extension w/ Legs Open Close

Pull your heart forward and then the knees come to neutral and you roll back. You can hold wherever you need to. And again, open and lean back and open and lean back. And one more time, we're gonna open and we're gonna lean back. Hold the lean back position so I'm rounded.

When I said lean, I'm gonna bring my feet just a little closer together and release my hands, engage the belly muscles and just take yourself back a little bit and take yourself back up sitting nice and tall trying to keep the legs like that. Inhale, exhale round the back first and then continue to take yourself back. Now, everybody is going to be at a different place here round and roll up. So if you can get your low back all the way down and still come up with ease, go for it. Round through your low back here.

Roll Back

Here we go. Rounding back, hold that position for just a moment and then round and roll back up. And I'm just sensing for my next one I'm gonna move forward just a little bit here. Round and roll yourself all the way down this time. So you're gonna roll back with control.

Use your hands to assist if needed, bring your feet a little closer to your bottom, place your arms down by your side and settle in. Feel your pelvis neutral. Feel your chest heavy. Feel your head heavy. Back of the head, back of the chest is what I mean.

Supine Spinal Rotation

Inhale, twist, exhale, pull back to center. Nice and easy like. My friends, find your breath, exhale to pull back to center. And just one more time, inhale and exhale pulling back to center. Now ground your feet in a way for you to do your pelvic curls.

Pelvic Curl

This time we add on we exhale, we rock. So it's the low spine down, the pelvis lifts it activate the backs of the legs and continue to peel up. So, if you're ready to go to your full curl, go for it. I like to go about halfway on the first one and then as I lengthen my spine and lower down, I feel that beautiful stretch through my low back and my pelvis comes home. Inhale, exhale, abs first, use the backs of the legs, curl yourself up and stay.

Bridge

Big deep breath all the way up. You use that whole exhale. Start to sense that opening across the front, so the hips inhale, exhale, lengthen your spine and lower down one vertebrae at a time. Let's do two more. Exhale to curl up, try to feel those inner thighs involved so the legs are spiraling in a little bit.

Inhale at the top, exhale lower down one vertebrae at a time. Since that you have equal weight on both of your legs exhale to peel up, finding that high position opening through the front of the hips. Inhale, use the exhale to peel down. Beautiful. Float the arms up to the ceiling, palms facing one another. Inhale, open your arms wide, exhale, lift back up.

Arms Open Close

Single Leg Toe Taps

Place that foot down, choose the other legs. So come to tabletop. So we're just gliding at the hip joint here. Inhale, you tap your foot down. Exhale, you lift it up.

Trying to keep your core stable, you're moving your hip joints. Little hip disassociation here. Good. One more time and then let's do an alternating move. So we keep one leg up and then we're gonna change simultaneously. Take a breath and change and change and change and feel the freedom in your hip joints.

Toe Taps

Hug your knees deep into your chest giving your low back a little stretch. Perhaps sway side to side. Be curious in these positions, these moments of stretch and get what you need, please. Come back to tabletop with two legs, reach your hands to the ceiling again, inhale, open wide. Exhale, hold.

Tick Tock Table Top

So the legs stay glued together and you're twisting your spine. It's your upper spine that does the majority of the rotation. So, you want to really keep the anchor through the shoulder blade, in order to feel the stretch through the ribcage as well and exhale to pull back to center. Just one more time here. Come back to center, gently hug your knees into your chest.

Here, take tabletop again, hands to the ceiling. We're gonna inhale, take the arms behind you. Keep the ribcage down though. Exhale, lift the head and chest, feel the low back, grounding down. Inhale, reaching back.

Hundred Preparation

Hundred

Rocking Up to Sitting

Hamstring Stretch

Spine Stretch Forward

So, I wanna do this spine stretch here before we actively roll and do some other things. And hopefully you'll feel just a little looser second time around. Sitting nice and tall move your bottom forward in space. Put your feet on the mat with bent knees. Engage your abdominals and round yourself back.

Rolling Like A Ball

Exhale, balance and hold. Go again. Inhale, roll back. Exhale, balance and hold. Repeat. (Sarah sighs) Try to keep your knees glued together.

(Sarah sighs) Try to keep the shape of the legs the same, two more. (Sarah sighs) Try to use your arms a little less, one more. Balance on your tail. Take your shins parallel to the ceiling. Hold onto the backs of your legs.

Double Leg Stretch

We pull in, inhale back, exhale in. Try to feel your low back grounded the entire time and your belly engaged. I'm reaching my arms back, but keeping my chest lifted. One more time, please. Single leg stretch.

Single Leg Stretch

Find the energy here that suits you. You could go slower if you needed to. I'd be fine with that. One more time. Two legs in, we lift a little higher.

Yes, crisscross, hands go behind your head. You're gonna twist toward up and me and change and change. I always like to do this one just a little slower. Change and change, and change. And here's an add on my friends.

Criss Cross

Criss Cross Variation

Rocking Up to Sitting

Spine Stretch Forward to Flat Back

One more time. Think about the backs of your legs grounding down as you peel forward, inhale flat back chest, open, exhale, round down and all the way back up. Scoop forward on your mat so your heels stay where they are. We're moving to our open leg rocker, please. Tip back, support with your abdominals, lift one foot, lift the other.

Open Leg Rocker Prep

Now, if you're ready for the full open leg rocker, stretch your two legs to straight and continue on. You can also do the prep that we just did. Here we go. Inhale, rolling back. Exhale, find your balance.

Open Leg Rocker

Exhale, hold, bring your legs together. Bent or straight, you choose. Hold that shape, use your core. Reach your arms out in front of you and we're gonna roll down slowly. Slowly, Oh, that was not slow from your teacher.

Teaser 1

Knees to Chest Stretch

Bridge

Single Leg Knee to Chest

Bend and Stretch

Repeat that two more times, stretching up to straight and bend. Right now my foot is pointed. Stretch up to straight and hold, flex your ankle, feel the stretch, point your ankle. Good. Flex your ankle, keep the hamstring engaged, point the ankle. Now keep the ankle flexed, release your arms wide to the side, palms down today and let's do legs circles.

Flex and Point

Single Leg Circles

Point your foot, bend your knee and come into a beautiful spinal rotation spine twist. I like to bend my bottom knee. It makes it a little bit more pleasurable for me. So I welcome you to find your comfort to scratch your itches here. Come back through, hug two knees into your chest quickly, slide the other leg long on the mat.

Supine Spine Twist Stretch

Bend and Stretch

Flex and Point

Single Leg Circles

Nice little circle. And here we go. Point your foot, bend your knee and come into a deep spinal rotation. Again. I like to be bend my bottom leg. It creates a better sensation for me, it feels better.

Supine Spine Twist Stretch

Scissors

So I want you to feel that the bottom leg is endeavoring to be open across the front of the hip and grounded. So I'm pushing with my upper leg into my hands to create more resistance from the hamstring rather than pulling. So, just feel that and change. So I want you to go nice and slow, like that. Feel, release across the top hip, use the hamstring of the leg you're holding and then change when you're ready.

Release across the top hip and find the hamstring. Let's just do one more on each side like that. Feel that nice, slow release. I actually have to think about it or it doesn't work for me. And then one more time, sometimes it works but some days it doesn't.

Good. Let's bring two legs up. Lift your head and chest. And again, we rock, we roll until we find ourselves in a beautiful sitting position. Allow your legs to open, your head relaxes forward. Oh, I'm getting some crazy hair, I might have to adjust here.

Rocking Up to Sitting

Butterfly Stretch

Roll Up

So your legs can be straight or bent. You can use a towel or you cannot. Lift the head and chest that's the inhale and with the exhale we round and roll ourselves up. Check in with your legs. Try to keep them from rolling out.

So, try to keep them slightly turned in in your mind especially as you take the journey down to the mat and then take a look at them as you take the journey up and see if you can keep that engagement. That's why keeping the knees a little bent for some people will make it a little easier to keep the inner thighs in check. Round and roll back. And just one more of these, please. We're gonna lift the chest and we're gonna round and roll back up.

If you have the towel, go ahead and remove it. Take one more path down, please. Rolling back. Knees bent, knees straight, you choose. Hug your knees into your chest.

Good. (Sarah sighs) Stretch your two legs straight up to the ceiling. Take your arms wide to the side. Go palms down if you want ana actively push into the floor here. You can go palms up if you prefer but palms down is an interesting new challenge.

Tick Tock

We can make a circle here. Inhale, exhale the legs come around and back to center. Reverse. Inhale, exhale the legs come around and back to center. Reverse. Now, you may choose to keep just the pendulum or you may also choose to take a break.

Corkscrew

Bend one knee to the floor, bend the other knee. Bring your hands down by your side. Let's revisit our pelvic curl in preparation for the shoulder bridge. So pressing up, opening across the front of your hips, feel the backs of your legs. Use your arms don't be shy and then exhale to lengthen your spine as you lower down, one vertebra at a time.

Bridge

Single Leg Lower Lift

Change sides, support with your abdominals, reorganize your pelvis if needed, lift the other leg up, flex the ankle and we reach down point, flex up. Down and up. Breathe. So if you're using my breath it will be an exhale down, an inhale up. You choose though. And here's five and four, and three, and two, and one.

Place the foot down. Bring your hands underneath the small of your back and try to roll your shoulder blades together. Borrowing from yoga a little bit. You may widen your feet a little and you're gonna press yourself into a back bend. Now, I want you to support with your abdominals a bit but you really can press your pelvis high and you are in hyperextension of the spine meaning your back is an extension.

Shoulder Bridge

Knees Side to Side

Rocking Up to Sitting

Open Leg Rocker

So the next one we're gonna stay. Maybe the next one we're gonna stay in the rollover shape. Here we go. Inhale, you roll back, you take your arms down and you are in your rollover. Flex your ankles for me, take the toes in the direction of the floor and your back body.

Open Leg Rocker to Roll Over

Flex the ankles. Take the toes to the floor. Big stretch, and then roll yourself back up. Hard to do and talk. Here, I'm pointing my toes now.

And one more time and then we'll move into the true role over here. Inhale, use the exhale and roll back. (Sarah hums) Beautiful. Flex the feet, take the feet toward the floor if it suits you, don't if it doesn't. Breathe, and in one, two, three, we roll back up. Maybe with or without hands.

Good. Take the legs together, roll yourself down. Let's move into our more traditional rollover. So, arms are down by your side, legs go out to about 45 degrees. 60 is probably better. Inhale to 90.

Roll Over

Bring your legs to 90 degrees, I'm not gonna do this one. Use your exhale to roll over using your abs and a little help from your arms. And then when you're in that over position, flex your feet one time, separate your feet a little and then roll down with control. Now, if it's not comfortable return to your pelvic curl. The rest of us inhale to 90 degrees we're gonna exhale and roll over flex the feet, separate the feet, find the floor if it makes sense and then roll down with control.

Repeat, got to use those abdominals. Inhale to 90, exhale, rollover. (Sarah sighs) Flex the feet, separate the feet, touch the floor if it makes sense and with control, roll down. Good. Just one more roll over my friends. Inhale to 90, exhale roll over.

(Sarah sighs) It's very obvious how important the breadth is. It's interesting I find when I try to speak and perform. Some days, it's harder than others. Bend your knees and come into your chest. Sway side to side if you need that.

Knees to Chest Stretch

Rocking Up to Sitting

Quadruped Mobilization

Plank

Back Extension Prep

Try to get as much of your toe down as you can, the toe that you stand on, not your toenail. Feel the openness across the front of the hips, but ground down through all three points of your pelvis. Hollow up through your belly and really roll those rear underarms together and straighten your elbows. Inhale to back extension, only upper thoracic extension, exhale, look down. So as I go to the back extension, I'm opening my heart.

Back Extension

Inhale to back extension, stay. Can you point your toes? Can you take your arms overhead? Can you prepare for a little swimming here, one arm in the opposite leg and changing? And change.

Swimming Prep

Use your hands to push yourselves to your hands and knees and sit back in child's pose. So that was a nice, slow swimming. I did that purposefully. We'll come back to that and go a little faster a little later in the workout but I want you to remember that when you're swimming, if you move your arms and legs around quickly and you feel a little off, a little uncoordinated, the chances are that you've lost your way. And so you wanna return to the slower version.

Child's Pose

Plank w/Single Leg Pulses

Single Leg Kick

(Sarah sighs) The pumping should feel quite relaxed and easy actually, but it doesn't mean it's not challenging. Relaxing the pump will hopefully get you to work a little bit more through the backs of the legs and try to feel the opening across the front of your leg. One more full time here. Exhale all your air out, two straight legs. Undo the shape.

Look in the direction of me, clasp your fingers together and bring your hands as high up your back as you can with that clasped finger. Now, if you need to not clasp your fingers cause your shoulders, that's fine. But do try to take your elbows in the direction of the mat. Yeah. Bring your legs together and glue them together like a mermaid tail. We're gonna inhale here, extend the arms just straight, lift the legs, feel that shape.

Double Leg Kick

Rest, bring your hands underneath your shoulders, tuck your toes under, push yourselves to your hands and your knees with the toes tucked. So let's play a little bit with this shape. Pushing back toward the feet so that you can stretch maybe your ankles, the bottoms of your feet, and then come forward to your quadruped position again. Please repeat that. Sit back on your feet.

Ankle Stretch

But swaying side to side, perhaps you'll feel a little stretching through your ankles and toes, that's necessary. Hips and back are also tasked here too in a flexibility way. Come back to your knees, please. Come back to your hands and knees without the toes tucked. Good. Stay for just a moment, hollow the belly in again, slide one leg back.

Plank w/ Shoulder Taps

So you do have to shift a little bit your weight to one arm as you lift the other arm up. And shift and shift. Now, maybe you can shift a little less but don't try to do it without shifting at all. There's gotta be a little bit of a shift. And shift, two hands down, tip yourself forward, lower to the floor.

Send your arms this time straight out in front of you tuck your toes under and press into the pads of your toes so that you feel the pelvis grounded and the legs light. Yeah. So here let's go ahead and lift. Float your arms away from the floor. Now, if they need to be wider, it's fine. Your shoulders, that would be fine with me.

Swimming

Inhale, and exhale. (Sarah sighs) One more breath, please. Exhale all the air out, bring your hands downsides and rest for a moment. So I'm gonna just put my towel up here so that I rest my forehead without squishing my mic. I'm gonna have you bend one leg, reach around and hold on to the top of the foot, press down through the pelvis.

Prone Single Leg Quad Stretch

Wherever you happen to be, give it one more breath, and let's change sides. So as you change sides, just start with where your leg lands. Press down through the pelvis. The hip crease is what I like to think about and try to just to moan and feel something new and worthwhile. Maybe just holding your leg like that makes you feel something.

Can you all check in with your shoulder arm that you're holding. The tendency is to bring the shoulder down, you open through the chest and bend the elbow a little bit. It gives you a little bit of a chest opener here as well, which is a nice number. Give it two more breaths wherever you may be, stretching your quads and gently rest. I take that.

I'm gonna move my towel out of the way and let's go ahead and just roll onto our sides here. I'm just gonna move up. So you're gonna roll onto your side, first right side here. So you're resting in your long, straight arm. We've been doing this throughout these classes.

Double Leg Lift

Let's go with an option three, arm up to the ceiling and keep this idea of lifting, energizing up toward the ceiling. I guess this is what I wanna say. (Sarah laughs) Good. One more time we're gonna lift and hold to keep the energy up here. And then we're gonna use the hand to just sort of prop that arm right underneath. Now, if you want to challenge your shoulder a little bit take your arm as far an external rotation as you can, and then feel the support from the core.

Single Leg Kick

And you're following this movement with your breath. Take the leg back and hold. Now, look down at your hand the one that's supporting you and then press into the hand and press your elbow to straight and bend the elbow down. Good. Repeat, put your fingers down you could do that. Pressing up and lower down.

Single Arm Press

Seated Spinal Rotation

Let's see the other side, please. So you'll take your two straight legs out with you. You can have your head resting in your long, straight arm and having your bottom knee up a little bit. And we're on our side. Lift here, exhale to lift up, inhale and exhale, lift up and inhale down.

Double Leg Lift

So keep this energy up. This feeling of lifting toward the ceiling but place your hand and then just kind of prop yourself up onto your elbow. Once again, if you wanna challenge your shoulder a little bit here, you can take yourself to do the most external rotation you can manage still feeling okay on your shoulders and supporting with your core. And then you lift that leg up. Take the leg forward (Sarah hums) and back.

Side Leg Kicks

Single Arm Press

Find a seat on both sides of your pelvis and then find the position that suits you and enjoy the stretch for a couple of breaths. Beautiful, beautiful work. Breathing in (Sarah sighs) and breathing out. (Sarah sighs) So, a little work, prepping the Boomerang which is one of my all time favorite exercises. And I have intentions of building size completely next week.

Seated Spinal Rotation

Boomerang Prep

I want you to really hold like the two insides of the knees together or the inner thighs and have that right foot just hovering a little bit off the other foot. Two straight legs, if you can. So, if you can sit up straight wonderful. If you find that this is difficult to do it's a good thing that we're gonna go into flection anyway. So we're flexing the spine, you're keeping your legs active.

You're gonna roll back until you feel that you can lift the legs up and then you're gonna come back in. Now, many of you are not gonna feel that you can do that without changing your spine. So that's what we're practicing here. You're gonna roll back. You can put your fingertips down on the floor and you're gonna dig deep into your core and you're gonna lift your legs up and lower them down without changing your spine.

So you have to figure out where you can do that my friends. And lower down, and one more time use your inner thighs, lift and lower down and all the way back up. Let's change legs. So, we're gonna take now the other leg on top. So my left leg is on top, my two legs are turned out.

I'm looking at this actively squeezing my inner thighs and actively using that top leg. So that quad is working, the inner thigh is working, my feet are pointed. So here, we're gonna round back and we're gonna put the fingertips down. On the first one I didn't do that, but put the fingertips down right away and feel the core and just float the legs up. Now, yes, you can push into your fingers if you need to.

Ideally you can do it without it but if you need to do it and do that again. So this is waking up the psoas, the hip flexors while supporting with the back. One more time. Good. And then sit tall.

Let's repeat, on the other side. So try again. You're gonna squeeze your thighs together. You're gonna straighten your two legs, feel the rotation. You're gonna round back, feel it.

You're gonna put your fingertips down and you're gonna float. Good. And you're gonna float again, maybe with no hands this time and you're gonna float again. You're watching it and let's change sides. Yes, squeeze the legs together. I feel my left leg is my weaker leg and I'm wanting to hook with my foot.

So I'm asking you to try to really pay attention to that and don't allow it to happen. We're gonna round back, put your fingertips down and hover. Maybe with no hands. Maybe you need to use hands, you decide. And one more time.

Roll up, find a position that's comfortable for you to kind of rest in a little bit, perhaps sway side to side. So, the Boomerang requires you to be able to roll on your back. And we've already practiced rolling from teaser or open leg rocker to the roll-over. So choose which leg you want up it doesn't really matter. Although it's important that you probably switch.

Rest

Boomerang

Put your fingertips down if you need to. And you're just gonna roll over, switch which leg is crossed. Keep the turnout, keep the inner thighs and you're gonna roll yourself up. Find balance, control the legs down and reach forward. Good. Inhale.

Exhale, little rolling back. And change. Feel your inner thighs, feel your abs. And you're gonna roll yourself up. (Sarah yells) Find the control.

Lower your legs. Let's just do one more, please. Just one more. Roll yourself back, find the pleasure principle. Find the ease simultaneously.

Rolling over, switch which leg is crossed and then you're gonna roll yourself up. Find your balance, control the legs down uncross your legs and just relax for a moment in a nice little forward fold here. (Sarah sighs) Even let your belly relax, I think that's important sometimes. So, let's move ourselves back just a little bit and finish with some extension. You're gonna cross your legs out in front of you.

Rest

Transition to Mat

Swan

The rest of us can pull forward as you straighten the arms, stretching across the front of the body and then lower down. Let's do that two more times. Full back extension here. Inhale. And exhale forward.

Try not to push yourself back but to pull forward with your upper back and down and just one more time, please. Inhale upper back and exhale forward. And up. Beautiful. (Sarah sighs) Breathing in and breathing out.

Rocking Hips Side to Side

Child's Pose

Quadruped Mobilization

Find a center position, tuck your toes under, push yourselves to your feet. Walk your feet toward your hands or your hands toward your feet and be in a forward fold for a breath. I like to cross my arms and hold my elbows and keep my knees quite bent. Nod your chin, relax your head, feel. (Sarah sighs) And then, when you're ready, go ahead and release your arms and slowly find your way up to a standing position.

Forward Fold

Breathing w/ Arms