New Year's Mat

Hi, I'm Christy Cooper White. We're here at the studio, put r o beach down in Carpenteria. Um, New Year started. I know you're motivated and you're ready to take care of yourselves, but I'll bet you're also noticing that you have no more time now than you had last week. So what I want to give you and what I want to give myself is a few exercises that we can do. If you can't get to the studio, if you can't get to the gym, what can you do to know that you're taking care of yourself, that you're giving yourself just a minute and you're working all parts of the body. So that's what we're going to do here. Stand with your feet slightly apart. Take a deep breath in. We're going to simulate somewhat what you would do in a reformer class just for a few minutes and exhale. Inhale, filling up. You've got to bring energy in, cultivate more, and let stress intention go or let energy out. Same thing, okay, from here we're thinking of posture. You're upright, right?

I'm going to turn sideways just so you can see what we're doing. As if your feet were on the foot bar on the heels, you've got some weight into your heels. We're just gonna hinge forward. Don't send the knees forward, send the hip slightly back. Keep your back aligned as it was, you just broke at the hip so to speak. You didn't round. Okay, that's how we do it. Then we just come back up.

Let's go. Inhale and exhale. Imagine stretching your waist. So in this position, you just gonna keep going. You get into work, the glutes, the bigger muscles of the body, quads, the legs, right? All the while maintaining the stability in the middle, which is really what we're interested in. That's how you work. Everything more efficiently. So that's to say that you're not wavering, you're not rounding, and then arching. You're strong, you're proud. Inhale and exhale. If you want to get a little more out of it, think of pressing the arms each direction as if they're going through a solid working resistance.

You can do so much without anything that you really have no excuse for doing nothing. I'm going to go for five more. Let's go [inaudible] XL inks and here's two kind of relaxed in the features three and on your next one we'll come up, we'll stay up. Stay connected, slightly float the heels is not very high. Same exercise, hinge and squeeze to come up. Can you feel the glutes in? There's some balance going on here. If you prefer, you can let the heels stay down. That's okay. Who would be okay to heat up a little too and Perez? Whoa. Don't look around. That's the one thing. Nice and long prs.

And if you're wobbling a lot, just that the heels down, right? You want to get the work, you don't have time. I'll give you another balance in a moment. Here we go. Let the heels come down. The next bit position is just a swivel. So you've turned the leg bones out a little.

Don't go crazy with turning the feet out. They're still somewhat more forward, but you have the sense of wraparound. Hopefully same exercise, keeping the heels down. This time we hinge, we squeeze, make the knees come together now. Now it's possible that if your knees are together, the heels can't be together. I'd rather you keep going. You get a full extension through the like even if it means the heels have to be apart, so there's your measure and Ben and squeeze tall. Think about your upper back right there.

It's like you're pressing your arm against an imaginary wall. Couple more. One more. Wow. Okay. Standing with the feet comfortably apart. Slight turnout would be okay. From here, we're going to roll down. I just have my hands on. My thighs were rolled down. [inaudible] almost. When you get to the knees, then extend your back.

That means kind of reached the tailbone out. Let your back come into nice long line. A little curve in the low back is fine. Just don't over-exaggerate. Okay. Sort of natural spot. All right. From here and this lean forward, I'm going to play with the back extensors. Make them work. Ads are lightly engaged.

We let both arms float up by the ears. Don't change your neck or back. Exhale, press the arms through the air until they come up behind you. Don't change your neck or back, lowered, you know, throw it forward. You don't round. Inhale, come forward and up. Exhale back. How about squat a little lower. As you let the arms come up, come up just a little bit. Stay in these bent and press the arms back.

Keep those arms quite close to you. Inhale and exhale. You can just keep the legs still two, that's probably even better so we don't lose any of it and trying to think and getting a lot going on here. A little shoulder action. Hopefully you can feel those upper back extensors if you're feeling a lot in your low back, either slightly tuck your pelvis, rounding the low back slightly or come out of it or come more upright. Last one here, hold their arms up. Neck is long. Just bring the arms back a little further to hinge forward. More. Three Oh, you thought this is going to be easy. Five, six. Keep those knees bent.

Seven there's eight. There's nine and 10. Let the arms come down. Put them above the knees, on the thighs, around your low back and release it. I've got a weight on my arms, weighed on my thighs around and release on this one. We'll roll all the way up and there we are. Okay. Stepping right foot slightly in front. Left leg is behind you on the ball of the foot.

Reach like you're pushing into the ground. Okay, so that this leg is tight or you're not just hanging out there. It's you're about to propel from that place. You're gonna lean forward a little most likely so that you don't have a crank in your low back, but it's long from there simply. In fact, put your hand on your thigh. Lift the thigh. Don't worry about the foot too. That's it. Three. Nothing else changes you. Now leaning forward. Five, six. That's what that like does.

This gets harder to do as we age, so we should all do that. If you're leaning a lot, that's probably too much. Do you want to feel that resistance? All right, there we go. Hold it up and just pulse. Pulse, pulse to it ever. You want with your arms to balance long. Keep that hip pointed forward.

Let's go. Four, three, two, and one. Bring Yourself Upright. Relax the arms, other foot behind you. Get to where you feel the glute, where the leg meets a subtle hinge is fine, and then from there lift. I'm trying to stay parallel, so knee pointed straight to the floor, basically not out to the side. Lift and lift, touchdown lift, touch down, lift, touchdown. Feel free to hold a wall or anything a friend. Hold it up. If it's crunching in your low back, maybe don't lift the foot off the floor and just tighten the clues or perhaps you need to hinge a little bit. Perhaps your foot snuff back enough. Let's go.

10 little pulses. One, two, three, four, keeping it up. Six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. Don't you feel better already? You've done the legs a little bit. We've done the back. That's good stuff. Let's do the part you really want, which is your abdominals lying down completely or not completely. Knees are bent. Hands behind your head. Press your head back into the ground, letting your elbows be off the mat. From here. You're going to press that area right in the middle of the chest down.

That's what it's going to lift you up. You don't change your neck much at all, and then from there, reach around, grab the legs, take an inhale here. Use the arms a little to come. Not necessarily higher, but more forward towards your thighs. Let go. Reach them up. The arms go up, put them behind your head and come down. Here's a breath pattern. Inhale. [inaudible]. Yeah, you don't want to Tuck the pelvis if you can help it in how? Reach to your legs. Exhale. Pull yourself cement. The ABS pushed down there. Inhale, arms up. Eyes are still forward.

Put your hands behind your head and exhale down. Inhale, when you get there, start exhaling. Inhale, reach to the legs. Exhale. Hallington be careful. The shoulders aren't of, it's, it just isn't worth. It doesn't help. Keep them down and relaxed. Arms Up. Put them behind your head and down you go. One more we can do for of anything. Here we go. Are you reaching with your head?

Maybe press it backwards in reach with the spine. In health of the legs. Exhale, blow out all your air. Prove it. Are you sure? Mic, make a scene. Arms Up. Stay up here. Rotate to your left. Come higher as you come through the middle. Rotate to your right, blow out your ear. Inhale as you come higher and XLT your left. Elbows don't need to change. Inhale, exhale right in. Everything else is still the legs. Don't move. The hips don't move. That's where you get that rotation.

Keep going in hell and no Xcel left. Inhale as you come through the middle of out losing any height. Exhale, one more per side. It doesn't take long, does it? And then from there, relax your way down. Okay, grab holder one leg. Sit yourself up, stretch yourself out nice and long. And we go into just a saw, a rotation. You can do this with bent knees.

Really important that your back is straight. So from here, rotate to the front. Exhale, reaching forward. You keep that opposite hip down. Oh, that feels good. You can even have the backhand on the ground for a moment. Sit Up and come back to the center in how rotate the other way. Exhale, reaching out long. Both sit bones are equally weighted.

Inhale, sit up and then home two more and reach. Inhale up. I know I said two more, but let's do it again. You could do that anywhere. Anytime. You gotta admit, even though it may not be in as much as you wanted to do, it's something and hopefully this is it. Hopefully you already feel the desire perhaps to do a little bit more, even though we're going to stop after this next exercise.

Fingertips face your heels, lift your hips up off the ground. Make sure you're out of your shoulders so you're not sinking, right. You're lifted. You can tuck your hips or not. I don't see any reason you need to really bend your elbows. Keep him down. Back Straight. Ben Straight. No, no big deal.

Work in the triceps. [inaudible] trying to keep the chest somewhat open. A little stretch to the front. Oh yeah, it feels good. You can stop anytime you want. Almost done though. How about 10 more? One, two, three, four fingers. Space in heels. Six, seven and eight and nine and up and 10 and have a seat sitting. However you're most comfortable, cross-legged stretched out, but so that your spine can be upright and easy because here comes the best part. If you don't have any time, which sometimes feels like we don't, we can take these long breaths and that can be a vacation in and of itself for the body, certainly for the mine. So let's do that.

Take a deep breath in or a long breath and just let go and feel the lightness that you might have created and even a short amount of time inside while the rest of you becomes kind of heavy. Yeah, and one more, and we'll get back to what we're doing, but make it a good one. Inhale [inaudible] and with the [inaudible] feel good for even a few minutes for yourself. That's a good start.