Sarah's Go-To Mat

Let's do a math class with all of my favorite things. This is gonna be a sweet combination between rolling around and creative execution combined with some Pilates. So I hope you enjoy it. Let's get started. I would like to begin on my back.

Pretty much every day, I lie on my back in my studio and roll around, but the very first thing that I need to do is take time to breathe and settle in. So I'm gonna ask you to do the same thing. Will you just close your eyes, feel your body, feel your feet, your knees are bent comfortably, Feel your pelvis. Move it around a little bit. Breathe in and breathe out. Explore where your pelvis can go.

Explore, notice where it is. Iron out any kinks that need ironing. Since where your rib cage is and try to feel that it is grounded on the mat, your eyes are probably closed. If not, close them. Breathing in.

And breathing out, see if you can send more air into those back ribs, opening up the lungs, back and sideward, lateral posterior breath, breathing in, and breathing out. And then bring your attention to your shoulders and your arms. And if your shoulders tend to be forward, then allow your shoulders to open. Let your hands go wherever they need to be in order to allow your shoulder blades to be grounded. You might even take your arms overhead if that's better for you. Anywhere is fine.

Notice your head now and roll your head side to side. Notice if when you roll your head side to side, you feel a restriction in your neck or your shoulder. Try moving things around and see if it allows you to roll more freely. As you roll the other way, move things around if you need to. Now roll your head to one side.

It doesn't matter which side and continue by looking up and around. And then come back to where you came from. Roll your head the other way and continue by looking up and around and come back to where you came from. Roll again and look up. Push into the head a little bit, creating just a little bit of engagement in the back of the neck. We all need that. Come back through to center.

Roll your head the other way. Look up and push into the head. And come back to center. And now let's feel the head grounded. Eyes are up, not down toward your legs.

Feel your pelvis grounded. And I'd like you to think about pressing your head into the mat and your pelvis, your whole pelvis into the mat, so much that you can actually lighten your ribs a little bit, meaning they're not resting. And I'm moving my ribs side to side. So I'm using a little bit the back of my neck, helping my head be back where it belongs rather than forward, all this looking down when I'm teaching, come back through to center, relax your body. Let's do that one more time.

So I'm grounding through my pelvis, grounding through my head, I'm floating my whole rib cage, not just the top ribs, but the whole ribs. And I'm just sliding it side to side a little bit. So go with what feels good, warm up all the little parts, and then lower and relax for a moment. Alright. Let's lift the two legs up and put the heels together.

So it's like a little v position. Put your hands together. Ground through your low back. So your pelvis is gonna talk a little bit with your abdominals. And your head is still close to the floor if you can handle it, but it's light.

So I'm just, like, almost hovering it, but not quite. And then I'm just gonna begin rolling over to the side and to the other side. And I'm not really thinking about how I'm getting there. But what I'd like you to notice is that your upper arm and your upper leg will put on the brakes for you. So you're kinda waking up some muscles in your back body while you do this. Breathing and just finding this nice little movement.

So You can continue just doing this, but if you'd like to add on a little bit, I'll call this. Well, I don't need to call it anything. Roll over. Look behind you and come back through. So my body responds. Look. And come back. So eyes are important.

I'm looking, and my legs kinda go a little behind me too. So I'm using my back body. I'm not thinking about what I'm using. I'm just moving, but it feels good to me. I like to use the floor a lot to massage and work little muscles that I find hard to access sometimes when I'm doing traditional Pilates work.

So one more here. We'll come back through Hug your knees into your chest, put your feet down. Have your feet separated about hip width distance. Have your feet separated about hip width distance. Let's speak. Okay?

Relax everything, reach your arms up. So rather than twisting our lower body, like we usually do, well, let's twist our upper body. So take both hands over to one side and reach with the top arm as much as you can for that beautiful, thoracic mobility. Go the other way. Both arms over. Reach.

So I've got my fingers spread, and I'm reaching with both arms as much as I can. Boy, I hope you can feel that oblique engagement. Reach. Just rolling over to the side. Now my pelvis is staying grounded, so I'm rolling through my rib cage. Just letting my shoulders reach and breathing when it makes sense, please. Remember, a hint of a smile across the cheeks makes everything a little bit better. Gosh. It is just so beautiful today.

The sun is shining. Mhmm. One more time, please. That should feel like nice mobility, a little bit of work, and come back through. Send your arms by your side. Set yourself up for your pelvic curls.

So separate the feet about hip width distance. Let's take a breath together and curl yourself up. So find your height of your curl where does it need to be for you and then articulate down one vertebra at a time. Boy, people, I love the pelvic curl. If you haven't figured that out yet, curl up again, press as high as you can. So you're looking for a straight line across your body, inhale. Perhaps you'll use the exhale to roll down.

But I'm gonna try not to just continuously keep breath. You breathe. Please curl up again. I am going to my highest point. I am using my arms to help me. My abdominals are engaged.

As I go down, I am also allowing my pelvis to go beyond neutral so I'm extending my spine just a bit. And then using my core and my legs to lift up. Let's stay here. Lift your heels and press them down. So as you lift your heels, your body might lift higher as you press, try to keep that height. Wake up those hammy's people.

Yeah. My glutes are working too, but I'm trying to engage my hamstrings a bit more here, and then stay. Take a breath and roll yourself down one lovely vertebra at a time. Let's do that again. Curling up. Breathing and moving, my friends. Both legs are equally weighted.

Let's lift the heels. Push and engage. Lift and push. And a couple more like that, just feeling the footwork. The foot is moving, allowing you to engage the legs more, hopefully.

Let's stay down with the feet flat and then just take the pelvis side to side here. Feel free to do anything with your pelvis. I like to do all kinds of crazy things I'm doing circles now. I'm going the other way. I like to push up to one corner and the other corner making sure that all the muscles in the back of my leg are available for me. Center and curl down.

One vertebra at a time. Beautiful. Let's hug those knees into your chest. Take just a quick pause here. A breath. Set your legs at tabletop.

Reach the hands to the ceiling. We'll do a quick single leg stretch. So lift. Hold on to one leg, the other leg out, and let's change. Just breathe when it makes sense to you. I probably do this every single day of my life because it just makes me feel good and grounded.

Key grounding myself. So just moving the legs out and in. I'm breathing. I'm using my arms. Beautiful. We're gonna go ahead and add a twist, but just let the arms reach and reach I really like the reach with the arms because I like to see if I can lift myself that little bit more through the cross arm as I twist. Reach. And I'm not looking for perfection.

I'm enjoying the ride here. Enjoying the movement, the breath. One more time. 2 knees are into your chest and you're gonna rock and you're gonna roll and you're gonna rock and roll until you're sitting. So here, My feet have made their way to the mat.

My knees have opened. Some of you may choose to stay like this. If you feel confident, you'll come to a cross legged position. You're gonna roll back onto your tailbone, uncross the legs, and change. K. So roll back, uncross, and change.

Now if you need to, you'll put your fingertips down. Try not to need to. See if you can roll back, and change, lean forward, roll back, change. So I like to do this on a daily basis because I wanna feel how my hips are different on any given day. And oftentimes, one of my hips needs a little more attention than the other. So that's what we're working on right now.

One side always feels awkward, the other side feels okay. So whichever let's actually all be doing the same thing. So I've got my right leg in, my left leg on top. Okay? So with that shape, can you roll over to your right side feel your left foot flat. Good. We're gonna undo that. We're gonna change.

My left leg is close. My right foot is on top, and I'm rolling over a little bit. So my foot is flat if I can. So let's do that a few times. So just kinda keep going. And no hands if possible.

My arms are moving. I like to dance around and have fun with my arms, and I encourage you to be playful. Doesn't need to be too serious. Does it? Where do your arms wanna go? The one thing I would like you not to do is put your arms on the floor. So longevity here requires us to be able to get up without using our arms.

One more time, and I'm gonna face use. That means my right leg is in my left foot is forward. I'm gonna lean into that right leg. I'm a little bit more than a ninety degree bend, so I'm not, you know, if I was I could be at 90 or slightly less than, more than less than however you wanna look at it. But my knee is more bent than 90 degrees. Right?

Got a little confused there in front of you all. So I'm leaning into my leg, and I wanna ground my leg. So my glute, my my back of my leg is really working. So I'm gonna keep that, try to lift the other foot up, swing it around. Whoops. Showing off for you, and I almost fell.

Swing it around. It's kind of like a mermaid shape. Swing it around, and this time, swing it around and keep it there. So I'm in a mermaid. My focus is on that front leg.

I'm gonna lean down, and I'm gonna see if I can touch my forehead to the floor without using my hands. I'm gonna push through my leg and press up, but keep the weight through the leg, so I'm on it. I'm gonna lean down and try to press my forward touch my forehead to the floor and press up lots of leg work here. You could modify that other leg in any way need be for you if your joints don't bend like this. Now let's do this again, and let's go down and see if we can tap same shoulder as leg to the floor. Whoo. And then come back up.

Now I know I can't do this one. Other shoulder. You'll try. Maybe you can do it. It's really hard for me that I'm working on it and do that again. So anybody feeling their leg working a little bit?

Mine's working. My whole body is working. Breathing and moving. So now we're gonna, without our hands, unravel this to the other side. Whoop. Take the leg forward.

Take the leg back. Take the leg forward. Take the leg back. So I'm trying to stay on my front leg as I swing my other leg around and forward. Now I'll place it down in a mermaid shape. Right?

So my leg is bent to where it's comfortable. If you can get to 90 degrees, that's more challenging for some or bend it a little bit more if needed. So, again, I'm grounding through my leg, and I'm going to kinda go down and see if I can touch my forehead to the floor and push through the leg, keep it weighted the whole time look. So arms are just kinda floating. You could put your hands if you wanted them to be somewhere on your pelvis and kinda stay there. I often ask my clients to do that, but I like to keep my arms just kinda playful a little bit, go with what feels good.

And there's always one side I feel I need to do a little more, so I tend to do more on one side. For me, it's this side. This is hard for me. Can actually feel my leg getting quite tired. So let's do one more here, and then we'll try touching the shoulder down.

So same shoulder as leg. You're gonna press and see if you can touch it down and Oh, I wanna do it for you guys, but I can't. And then the other one, and you'll try. Mhmm. So it doesn't matter if you do or don't, but you're just reaching in that direction. Right? And then the other direction, lots of things working in the body here.

And one more. Now we're gonna unravel this, oh, come around to a cross legged position. Next time, there's an add on to that, but for today, that's all we're going to do. So let's just take your 2 feet back on the mat, tip back around through your back, feel a ball shape, hug those legs in, tighten up the ball if you feel comfortable, and away we go, inhale. Breathing and rolling, it does not have to be perfect.

I actually like to just breathe sometimes and just roll. I also like to do a lot of playful rolling, so that's what's coming next. You can let go with your hands. You can take them overhead. And tap your arms are gonna go overhead.

They've kinda put on the brakes so you don't go on to your neck. And that is really beautiful for me. I'm not putting weight on my neck. My arms stop. Me from doing that if I go back that far.

So let's roll back gracefully. How about we just straighten the legs and roll ourselves back, lying flat on the back for just a moment here. Take a breath. Ground through both legs, flex both ankles, feel your 3 body weights, ribs, head, arms. Lift one leg up with a flexed ankle, put it down. Change. So long leg and marching really feel the rooting through the leg that's on the floor before you lift up. And notice that after you do a couple, you may find that you pretty quickly have more range.

One more, and then I'm gonna keep my right leg up. So left leg down, right leg up, strong, straight knee, flex ankle, 3 circles, 1, just little, and 2, and 3 go the other way. Find breath that suits you, and I'm keeping them little, just I wanna check it out today. Change. Lift up. Little circles.

Just wanna make sure I've got the mobility. It's easy enough for me to do. Go the other way. Bam. 1. And 2. And 3. Lower your legs down.

Bend your two knees for me. Start with them together so you feel aligned. Separate your feet. Take a breath. Curl yourself up to your high bridge or or shoulder bridge position, rather. And we're gonna work on shoulder bridge.

Take your elbows down, hands up, you can spread the fingers or close them, push into the arms a little more, scoop the pelvis up a little higher, try to feel that your whole back of your arm is grounded, but your ribs are also tucked in. Here we go. Right leg goes up, flexed foot, point down, lift up. I'm asking you to use your arms more today. I want you to feel the back of your arm working a lot. Please breathe and move.

Last one here, hold, place it down, reorganize if you fell down a little, lift your other leg up flexing the ankle, point down, lift up, down, and up, couple more times, up, And one more here, foot goes down, widen your feet, lift yourself up nice and high, feel your arms, and feel your legs. And I'd like you to, like, march with your arms, right, marching with your arms. So I'm actually rotating into the arm that I'm standing on and looking that way and see how far you can go comfortably. Woo hoo. Hello. And over here. Now you could do that with straight arms as well and actually roll over your shoulder.

Get a really nice stretch through the shoulder there, or you can keep the bedtime position, whatever suits you. Last time here, roll yourself down. Take just a moment of pause. You're going to do what I would call a reverse crisscross. Very interesting idea here. Okay? So you're gonna lift, put your hands behind your head, and let your head rest in your hands, elbows are wide, lift your two legs to tabletop.

Let's hold our right leg in, send the other leg out toward the floor. Take the right leg across to tap the floor, keeping your upper body as is. Change. So you're just gonna try tapping like that first. Change. So your goal here is to move with your lower body into a crisscross type shape.

And just play with that. One more time. So we'll stay. Let's stay over this way so you guys can see me a little bit if you need to. We're gonna stay whichever side you're on.

It doesn't actually matter, and you're gonna roll all the way over. Notice the rib is lifted. The foot is lifted. Let's undo it and go the other way. So rolling all the way over and rolling all the way over, and all the way over.

And here, we'll stay, lift the leg up and down a few times using your inner thigh, If you feel comfortable and confident, stretch your arms straight, stack your two legs, hover your arm up, and lift and lower a few more times, both legs. Now unraveling this, you can put your arm back in the original position, or you can just let your arms be, if you prefer, top leg comes forward, flex your spine and round back and do the other way. So you can start or keep your arms behind, with your hands behind your head, or you can send your arms straight, lift and lower the leg a few times as using the inner thigh, using all the things. Think about it. And then if you can, you'll stack the leg.

We should all be able to do that. That rib lifted, maybe you'll lift your arm up, and you'll lift and lower your legs a few times. So using those obliques beautifully so. And one more time. So foot goes back to the floor.

Flex your spine. Come around. Knees in rock and roll. Oh, I am such a fan of rocking and rolling. We're up. We're heading into teaser.

Not teaser, but open like rocker. It is like a teaser shape, isn't it? So tip back onto your tailbone, see if you can stretch your legs to straight. Figure out where you can hold this powerfully and find your balance. Upper back is engaged. Here we go. Roll back. Rounding.

And straightening out. Let's repeat. Rounding. And, oh, straightening out. I'm gonna go forward just because of where we're headed and rounding.

And straighten one more here. Straighten bring your legs together. We're gonna roll back into the rollover. Are you ready? Inhale, exhale rolling over and stay. Try to feel that the back of your upper arm is grounded.

Really use it. Take your feet toward the floor if you can. And just lift up to about 90 degrees toward the floor, if you can. My toes are just relaxed, slightly pointed. I'm not flexed yet. Toward the floor.

And then now we're gonna go toward the floor. Here, here, flex the feet. Separate them and see if you can get the toes to ground down. Hard to talk here. And then slowly, we're gonna roll down just one time. Just one of those.

Nice beautiful stretch. Hug those two knees into your chest. Take a breath in. Take a breath out. Let's take those hands to the backs of the legs again and rock and roll.

My back feels nice and loose. That's wonderful. Let's go ahead and flip around to a quadruped position. You can get there however you'd like today. Hands are gonna be underneath your shoulders, knees are underneath your hips.

I like to tuck the toes for a little bit of extra foot stretch. Open your chest. Feel that your body, your shoulders are a little more over your hands rather than back here. And then feel that for a moment. Power, hover the knees if you can.

Good. Now, if you can march here, If you have room crawl around your space, try to keep your, knees close to the floor, and you feel how it's a beautiful cross patterning here. Right? Crawl around your space a little longer. And then settle yourself back to neutral, put your knees down, sit back on your feet, nice little toe stretch. I like to wobble a little bit side to side here, getting a little better released through my big toe, which tends to be a little bit tight. This next piece I really, really enjoy. So back to that same quadruped, hover your knees up. Okay? We're gonna take that left knee, and we're gonna scoop it through, sit on your seat, open your heart.

So I've got one foot flat. I'm sitting on my outside of my leg. My arm is straight. I'm lifting. The other arm comes around, and I'm doing a beautiful chest opener.

Look up. Come right back to quadruped, right? Here we are. Knees are lifted. Go the other way. Ah, yeah? So once you have the shape, you wanna make sure your shoulder is open here.

Once you feel like you have it, we're gonna move it a little faster and really work on getting that upper back to be involved and the eye gaze. Yes? Are you ready? Here we go. Back to quadruped. Here we go. Open. Change. Open.

Change hint of a smile makes everything better. Use your feet. Open your heart. Honestly, if there's one thing I do every day, it's probably this. I love the way this makes my body feel.

It's really working so many things. We can talk about that another day. Last one. And last one here. Back to quadruped.

Have a rest. Take a couple breaths in a child's pose, wear a rest pose, knees open, knees closed. It doesn't matter. Breathe in. Breathe out. I'm a big fan of having little spaces in between your workouts at times to massage, to release. Sometimes I like to just go for it and not really rest, but in my tender current age, I like to do a combination Let's work on some planking here. So if your wrists need a little shake, give it.

To yourself, put your hands underneath your shoulders. Slide one leg back. Keep your chest forward. Slide the other leg back. Be powerful in your core here.

Very powerful. Can you keep your feet flexed and just march your straight legs? Really try to feel that your legs stay straight. You're just changing, changing, changing, changing. Yes. Try that a little bit longer. Quick movements.

Breathing. Good. Lower the knees. Lower the elbows. So we're in an elbow plank position. Look at your hands here and see if you can flatten your wrists and your hands.

Really spreading your fingers and pushing through your first finger and your thumb. Lean a little bit more weight into your wrists and hands than your elbows. Think about that. Lean more weight into the wrists and the hands. Stay puffed up through the back of your chest.

Hollow your belly in. You could do this with knees bent. If you feel confident, send one leg back, send the other leg back. You're in an elbow plank. You could stay here. Okay? We're gonna add on.

You're gonna shift to one arm. Straighten the other arms. So you're bearing all the weight on the 1. You know, where we're going here, don't you shift to the other arm straighten? So I haven't lifted my arm up yet, but I'm just checking in to see if I can. In fact, bear all my weight on the one bent arm.

And here we go. Side plank from your elbow. Arm up. Feel it. Feel the power in your shoulder. Lots of external rotation.

Breathe for a moment. Smile. Have fun. Come right back around. Boom. Other side. Up.

Hold for a moment. Feel it. Feels nice. I was groaning there. What's that all about? Going right back around.

I'm just making this up right now. Are you ready? We're gonna crawl forward? We're gonna crawl back. Boy, do I like that? Crawl forward. Good. Now I'm where I need to be from a next move.

Lower yourself down. Take a little pause, resting your forehead. On your hands. Relax your feet. Shake out your hips. Breathe in.

And breathe out. I'm a big fan of doing all the shapes every day. What does that mean? Deep flexion, deep extension, side bending, rotation. Hopefully, that makes a little sense to you. We have just a couple more things to do before we finish today. Let's begin with our arms next to our shoulders, but elbows are bent. Right? So I'm looking at the mat.

I'm gonna think first about engaging my abdominals and pulling my bottom ribs in, I'm gonna engage my legs so they're powerful. I like to tuck my toes here and push my feet into the mat. It limits how high I lift, but it keeps my legs involved in a different way. So try that on if it suits you. I'm gonna inhale, and I'm gonna find my thoracic, my extension with no assist from the arms, and lower down. So yours might be smaller. I'm gonna lift, and then I'm gonna go a little higher.

So I am using my low back, but I started with my upper back. No arms. Right? Do that again. Now how high can I go using my arms? I'm pulling forward and deciding if I wanna go to straight. I don't wanna go to straight with my feet like this.

Personally, you could. Lower down, but I like the way it feels when my feet are like that. In how up, now I'm pulling forward just a bit more. Just trying to create a little bit more space, a little wiggle room with my arms, with my gaze, with my head, maybe, And lower down one more time, please. Here we are. Little wiggle room.

Try looking around. Make sure any big shape that you make, you have a little wiggle room. Lower down. Shake everything out for a moment. Breathing in and breathing out. Bend one knee reach around.

Hold on to the top of the foot. Take a breath or 2 in that quadriceps stretch. Remember, if you press your pelvis firmly into the mat and then flex your foot and lift your knee up, you might find you get a bigger stretch there. You do you. Change sides, please. So if this is enough for you, then you'll stick with just doing single legs again. Press your pelvis into the mat, lift your knee up, flex your ankle, see where you can go.

If you feel comfortable, you're gonna bend both legs and reach around. Hold on. I like the feet flex these days. You're welcome to do what you wanna do, though. Push the feet or the legs into the arms slightly soften your elbows roll your shoulders together, see how big of a shape you can make. Hard to talk there.

Breathing in and breathing out. Again, I like to look around a little bit. I like to move and roll and see where my body wants to go. I'm gonna keep my hands connected and do that 2 more times. Moaning again for you. One more time, please. Just breathe in and breathe out.

Feel where you wanna go. It doesn't need to be perfect. Let it be. And then let's rest that. Bring your hands underneath your shoulders.

Push yourselves to your hands and your knees. Bring your legs underneath you and sit in a rest pose, please. Arms can go where you want them to go. You can keep them out in front of you. You could send them by your feet. Please breathe in and breathe out.

And use this shape as an opportunity. I like to really work on the flexion of my spine here because that's tricky for me. And I like to use this as an opportunity to breathe into my back, because I can feel my belly on the front of my legs. So I'm trying to not push my belly into my legs. I'm hollowing it inward a little bit and trying to expand my ribs on the backside.

I do like to have my head actually grounded, and I'll curl it in a little bit more. I didn't do that because it was making it hard for me to talk, but I do like to create as much flexion as I can here. And then slowly bring yourself up. Alright. Let's make our way to a standing position. Come to our hands and knees, tuck your toes, push your hips up high, maybe walk your feet in so they're underneath you.

Actually gonna turn around so that I can see you when I roll up. Relax your head, neck, and shoulders. Be in a deep forward fold. Shake it out. Bend your knees. Do anything that you need here.

I'm a fan of shaking things out. In case you haven't noticed, I love it. Now let's bring everything together here. So begin to lengthen your legs a little, not fully. Hollow your belly inward.

Plug your shoulders and roll yourselves up to a standing position. Feel your legs involved. When you stand tall with your eyes open, look up. Open your palms. Take your arms up. Look at them.

Take your arms down. Stay lifted. And let's roll down again together. Head. Neck, shoulders. Bend your knees. Keep your shoulders plugged. Let's stay a little more in control here, so not a full release.

So I'm not going all the way to the floor on purpose. Plug the shoulders if they fell to the ground and roll yourself back up. Inhale arms tall. Just one more of those, please. Arms down and roll down. Enjoy.

This is your practice, your opportunity to move. Inhale down there. And exhale to round up. And standing for a moment with your head stacked over your shoulders, your ribs stacked over your pelvis, palms open, hint of a smile across your cheeks. Thank you all so very much for playing.

I hope to see you soon.