Mat Mixer with a Band 2.0

Good morning. Thank you for joining me or good whatever time of the day it is wherever you are. Today we are going to use the band again. And once again, I have a pretty firm weighted band and it's rather long. So, hopefully you have something similar.

If not, you can modify as needed. And as always, please make sure and remember to take care of yourself. I'm going to play a bit with flexibility and some strength stuff that is a little bit outside of the Pilates box, but not really, less traditional Pilates exercises is I guess what I'm getting at and exploring how we can use the band to feel some stretch possibilities and also strengthening possibilities. So for the first few minutes, we're just going to lay our band down by our side. I'm gonna put it down where my feet are because we'll get it in a little bit and I'm gonna have you make your way to your back.

So, just ground your feet to your mat, hold onto the backs of your legs and just flex your spine. Let your shoulders actually round forward even a little bit. So I'm not necessarily actively lifting them up but I'm opening through my back body as I just slowly stretch my body down to the mat. I'm gonna bring my feet kind of close to my bottom and then find a comfortable position. I'm just centering myself on my mat as well.

And I just want you to lie here and find your breath. Take your arms wide to the side and with your arms wide to the side, think of stretching through the collarbones and the shoulder blades and just start by swaying your legs side to side. Let's check in with our bodies. Please make sure and breathe and just notice where you feel any sticky spots and see if you can, as you sway your legs side to side, loosen up some sticky spots in your hips or your back. Also pay attention to what you feel in your shoulders and your hands.

Come back to center with your legs and bring your attention to your collarbones and shoulder blades and try to spread. And then just roll your head side to side and notice what you feel in your neck, your shoulder, shoulders, biceps, wrists and then bring your head back to center. Slide one leg down and out to straight, shake it out for a moment. Release, grounding, bend the knee in, slide the other leg out, shake it out. Relax.

Bend the knee in, hug one knee into your chest holding tightly either on the shin or on the thigh, whichever suits you. to straight and yawn through the front of your hip here, breathing in and breathing out. (Sarah sighs) And then change legs. Draw the other leg in, slide the other leg long. Just notice what you feel.

I can feel just a few restrictions in my hips that I wanna soften and release before I set the intention to push myself a bit. Sweet combination of stretching and work today. And then bring that other leg in. Hug both knees into your chest, maybe even lift your head and try to make a forehead to knee connection and then relax your body down. Place your feet on the mat.

Settle with your feet together first and feel yourself organized. So, pelvis is neutral, ribcage is grounded, head is heavy but relaxed. Separate your knees and feet a bit and then send your arms down by your side. Palms up, if you tend to be tight through the chest, feel free to put palms down if that suits you. I'm gonna go with palms up today 'cause it feels right.

Inhale through your nose. Exhale, engage your abdominals and flatten your spine, your pelvis will respond. Put your pelvis back down, try again. Engage your abdominals to flatten your low spine and feel your pelvis relaxing, back down. Check in with your pelvis feel that you are fueling this (indistinct) but purely with your abdominals.

So since the fronts and the backs of your legs stay quite relaxed. And then do that just one more time and then we add on, moving through the pelvic curl, ground down through the feet, find the hamstrings and lift yourself up articulating to the height of your pelvic curl today in this moment. Inhale and exhale to peel down one vertebrae at a time. So at this moment I feel compelled to put my hands flat now, you may do that. You may keep your hands open if you'd prefer.

Peel up again. Feel the idea of scooping the pubic bone just a little bit higher and opening across the front of your hips. Inhale, use the exhale to lower down one lovely vertebra at a time and see if you can really feel the articulation abs and then one vertebrae at a time, lifts it's way away from the mat and then inhale and as you lower down, you're really trying to feel the back of the ribcage, those low ribs, the high part of the low back, the low back and lastly, the pelvis. Repeat. Inhale, exhale abs first.

Find the backs of the legs. Try to soften a bit through the front of the thigh and feel the back of the leg really supporting you here. Inhale and exhale to peel down. Another cue that works really nicely for me is on the way down, we're gonna peel up first. So feel this lifted position.

And on the way down, I sort of softened my sternum down a little bit to get that very first articulation through my upper back. And that really helps me a lot. One more pelvic curl, please. Exhale to peel up, holding that lifted position, stay open through your hips. Lift your heels, inhale, press your heels, exhale.

Repeat. Inhale, lift. Exhale, waking up the backs of the legs. And again, press just one more time. With flat feet, take a breath, soften the sternum down and articulate through your spine, one vertebra at a time.

Reach your hands to the ceiling. Inhale, open those arms wide, inhale to lift back up. Be curious about this, oftentimes we're just moving our hands and see if you can really feel that it's really opening through the chest and the shoulder blades. And that will bring you hopefully a little bit into your arms. You might feel your pecs tight, you might feel your biceps tight.

Take the arms wide and hold, sway your legs to the right once, use the exhale to drag that pelvis back. Sway your legs to the left, exhale to drag it back one more time, nice and passive and drag it back. And hopefully you have fewer kinks here. You feel a little looser. Come back to center.

Lift one leg to tabletop position, bring the other leg to join. Supporting this with your core with your abdominals. Continue. Inhale to twist, exhale to pull back. Focus on your opposing shoulder blades staying grounded, pull back.

Option one, stay like this with two straight arms. Option two, bend your elbows so your palms are facing one another and you'll have like a goalpost. Inhale to twist, exhale, pull back. One more time, inhale to twist, exhale to pull back. Option three, take your straight arms up.

Inhale twist, without rolling over, exhale to pull back. Inhale to twist, exhale to pull back. Just one more time like that, twist, pull back, and last one, twist and pull back. Hug your knees deep into your chest, lift your head and chest here. I like to hold the backs of my legs, scooping the pelvis up and try to feel that beautiful rounded shape of your back.

See if you can get a little rock and a little roll going, massaging through your spine until you find yourself quite easily able to just roll yourself up to a sitting position, see if you can make a forehead to knee connection. open your legs, bottoms of the feet together sitting nice and tall. So find your band and for the rollbacks, I like to actually have my band doubled over. Just be mindful that your band is secure. Wrap the band around the bottoms of the feet and I would recommend keeping the band wide and your feet open flexed.

And then you're gonna hold on where it feels good to you when you straighten your legs. I'm gonna actually only straighten my legs a little bit. So my knees are slightly bent, I should say pretty bent actually. My heels are down, my ankles are flexed. Just to make sure you feel secure with your band here.

Inhale, sitting nice and tall. Let's bend the elbows and open the heart and then straighten the arms. That's why I like the tension there. Bend the elbows, open the heart and then straighten the arms. Now, let's round through the back first and then continue peeling back one vertebra at a time until you feel the top of the pelvis touchdown.

Take a breath there and round and roll yourself back up. Sit tall, bend your elbows. Please breath. Round your spine first. Go back.

Fill the top of the pelvis going down so the band is just assisting you here. Take a breath, round and roll up and bend the elbow. Repeat. So the idea here is that when you have all this tension, all this spring, I should say, that's not spring, it's a band. But when you have the resistance, that's the word I was looking for, round and roll up, you can actually create a little bit more feeling of stretch perhaps, especially if you're tight in the low back, like I am.

Round and roll back. This will be our last one here. So round and rolled back and feel that place where that low pelvis, where the high pelvis is down, low back is touching. We're gonna work this a little bit. So we're gonna exhale and lift up and inhale lower down, exhale, lift up.

Inhale, lower down, creating resistance. Lift up and down, use your breath, lift up. I just realized it would be useful for me to squeeze my knees together and use my inner thighs, you may consider that. And we lift up, allow your knees to open, sit nice and tall relaxing your hands for a moment. And then let's add on a little bit.

So, reorganize your knees together, slightly bent or a lot bent really and then round and roll yourself back. And we're gonna stay in that position, we're gonna use one arm and we're gonna bend as we rotate around and come back through. And we're gonna bend as we look around and come back through. And bend as we look around, so you're using your upper back, you're also using your abdominals and we're really warming up nicely here. Bend as we come around, chest is open.

And one more time, bend and we come around, round and roll up. Give your hands a little wiggle break, holding that band about shoulder width apart. Feel free to work with straight legs or slightly bent knees if your back is tight and round and roll yourself all the way back onto your back. Beautiful. Let's go ahead and lift two legs up, take the band now wide.

So, now when I say wide, I mean one layer and put the feet up in the band, stretch your legs till straight. If you can, if they need to be bent, that's okay. And then hold kind of low down, you don't wanna hold too high up. And I like to take a grip and then wrap my hands around. So my hands don't have to work quite so much.

And then we're going to bend the elbows down and try to feel how that feels right here. Do you feel grounded and open through your chest? Allow your arms to come up. So we just did this with our rotation. We did this position.

Now, hold this position with your arms down, the backs of your arms down and see if you can extend your elbows to straight and then put your... Basically you're hammering your fists down, the pinky's finger side of your fist down. And then bend and then come back up. Let's do that two more times. We're gonna come down, we're gonna straighten, we're gonna bend and we're gonna reach up.

We're gonna come down, we straighten, we bend and we come up. Now, we're gonna come down and straighten and hopefully we can hold that. Take your left leg away and slide it long on the floor. Now, if you need to lessen the arm works, simply bend your elbows, it's a little easier. Leg circles, we go across the body, we circle down, around, back to center.

Keep it nice and slow and methodical and don't make them very big. I want you to think about the support from your arms and your core here. My left arm is having a hard time keeping the support. Reverse the circles. Here we go, breathe my friends.

So you're stretching a bit, but you're also really working your upper back and your upper body. But we're gonna do three more in reverse direction. Again, be mindful also of your band. Make sure that you feel secure and hopefully it doesn't slip off of you. And then we come back to center, bend your elbows, give your arms a short break, we change legs.

Left leg goes up, right leg goes down, arms bend, we straighten and we go inward for a circle pause and another maybe, exhale. Good, so we're just making inward circles, just explore what you have. Beautiful. I believe we have one more and then we reverse and boy, do I feel my arms? It's a nice feeling.

Go the other way. Make sure you're breathing please. Good. So stretching and working simultaneously here's three and here's two and one more time. Perfect.

Bend the elbows, give your arms a bit of a break. Take that band and just place it to the side. Hug in your knees towards your chest, organize the pelvis, lift the head and chest set straight up for your single leg stretch. So watch, two hands are holding one arm, get a nice high curl. And let's change and change and change, find your breath.

Change and change. Good. So I feel some heat in my arms and my upper back and my triceps. It feels really good while I'm working my abs right now. Make sure you're breathing please. Good. Let's just do one more each side.

Two legs come in, use your hands to maybe reorganize that curl. Slip your hands behind your head please and rotate to one direction, straightening the opposing leg. And we change and we change. At any time my friends, I welcome you to use your arms to create a higher lift if you need that, otherwise your head is heavy in your hands and you find a nice little rotation. Do try to stay grounded through your low back and try not to use your shoulder blades as like a prop to lift up more, instead use your abs.

That's a that I see people do all the time. One more time on each side, please. Take both legs in, hands come to the backs of the legs. Scoop your pelvis up. So now see if you can get that same beautiful rocking and rolling, nice little release through the back.

Try not to swing the head or the feet around but just notice the stretch until you find yourself up. Here, put the feet down, see if you can touch your forehead to your knees, feel the stretch through the back of your neck, perhaps your low back, upper back, whatever it is, and then organize yourself here. So let's go ahead and scoot back a little bit so that the heels are maybe right around the front corners of your mat. Scoop any flesh out that needs scooping. Retrieve your band, let's double it over.

So it's just got a little bit of firmness. And the idea here is that we're not really stretching the band, we're just using it as a tool to feel the backs of the arms. So I'm about a little less than shoulder width and then I'm gonna pull out just enough to keep a resistance. Inhale here for spine stretch, we exhale. We peel forward, one vertebrae at a time, inhale here, exhale to peel yourself back up, one vertebra at a time.

Now, one thing I actually would like to do here, I'm gonna make a quick change, is open your hands up, wrap them around so that you can actually have your hands in external rotation, so your palms would be facing one another. So that gives you a little bit less having, you don't have to grip. And then you can get a little bit more neutral alignment with the arms instead of being in internal. So that works for me. Exhale to peel forward.

Don't overthink it. So basically my thumbs are up. Exhale to peel back up. Good. Inhale here, exhale to peel forward, keeping just a little resistance on the band with both arms and exhale to peel up. Let's add on, adding extension that is.

Exhale to peel forward, inhale. We're gonna find extension here, opening through the chest and taking those arms up by the ears, stretching long through the body, round down and then come back up, sitting tall, inhale. Exhale to peel forward, spine stretch, with extension lift and open through the heart and round yourself forward and all the way back up. Repeat. Exhale to peel forward.

Inhale, lift. Exhale, rounding. Just one more time please, sitting tall, inhale. Use the exhale to round down one vertebrae at a time, supporting with the abs, we find extension, we hold here and we're gonna do five pulses back, one, two, three, four, five. Hold that back.

Rotate as if you're in a cylinder. Pull back a little bit with the arm that you're rotating to to give yourself a little more, come back through to center. Rotate the other way as if you're in a cylinder, pull back with the arm that you're rotating to. Pull up I should say. Come back around, dive down, come all the way back up.

So uncoil the hands here and then just take as wide as you can. Lift one leg up, bring the other leg up and have your legs together. So we're gonna do our spine twist here but I just wanna little teeny bit of stretch on the band. And that stays the same as you rotate around one, two, sit tall and one, two, sit tall. So, as you practice this, think of widening through both the collarbones and the shoulder blades.

And your hands are not working very hard here. So, be aware of not trying to stretch the band so much but just keeping it as a reminder to keep the distance of your arms the same. What I start to feel actually is my shoulder's working a little bit here, the back shoulder and also the top of the shoulder. Just one more time, each side, (Sarah hums) Good. Rest that. Good. And put your band away, we'll give it a break for a few moments.

Scooch forward on your mat, so we can roll like a ball. So remember before you roll like a ball, fully commit to your abdominals. So you're gonna round back through your spine, you're gonna feel that commitment and then you're gonna just gently lift your feet up and try to keep the shape of your back the same. As you draw those legs in and try to deepen your ball and make sure you're fully committed to your abs. And then just gently hold on with your hands.

Inhale to roll back, away you go and exhale to find your balance. Again, inhale rolling back, exhale to find your balance. Go again, rolling like a ball. So see if you can really feel that it's not a leap of faith when you roll back, but that you're fully committed to your abs and that when you find your balance each time, hopefully you're doing so without really changing the shape of your body. Do it one more time for me, my friends.

And then balance on your tail, take your shins parallel to the ceiling for me. Inhale. With an exhale with or without the use of your hands, roll yourself back one, lovely vertebra at a time. Draw your knees in, place your feet down and let's return to our pelvic curls. So, find your positioning, separate your feet just a little bit.

And then when you're ready, you're gonna use your abdominals first. And then you're gonna curl yourself up, opening across the front of the hips. And then you use your abdominals to soften down and articulate through your back, one vertebrae at a time. Go again. Exhale, abdominals first, curling yourself up, opening across the front of the hips, inhale there, exhale to peel down, one vertebrae at a time.

Let's do it a little bit of shoulder bridge but a variation on the shoulder bridge today, please. So we're gonna peel up, holding this lifted position. Instead of staying with one leg, I'd like you to work with a marching. So ground down through one leg, lift the other leg to table top, put it down. And then change and put it down.

And change. So see if you can keep your pelvis nice and high, your abs nice and engaged and just change the legs at your pace. So maybe you're going at the same pace as me, maybe you're going a little slower, maybe you're going a little faster. It's really up to you. And one more time, please on each side, whichever pace you're working on or whichever leg you're on, hold here.

Press your pelvis even higher. So, really press your pelvis up nice and high, use the backs of the legs, use your abs. Use your hands maybe even to help you lift up a little more and then see if you can hold that with support from your abs without your hands helping. So sway a little bit side to side, pelvis goes side to side. Feel that?

That should be easy enough to do there. If you're working so hard to lift and you don't have any wiggle room, you're probably going a little above and beyond what you have or where you should be. So hold center and then lower yourself down, one vertebrae at a time. Hopefully your band is within reach, if not go ahead and grab it. And then let's actually work a little bit of stretching here.

So you're gonna take your right leg, hold on not too close, but in a way that allows your leg to be straight and your hands to rest on the floor, not your hands but your elbows to rest on the floor. Let's bend that right knee and straighten the right knee. Use the band to create the pull down through your foot, inhale, bend and exhale to straighten. What I mean by the pull down through the foot is I don't want you to try really hard to pull your leg close to you. Instead, I want you to think about your neutral pelvis and I want you to think about your foot a little bit.

Slide the other leg just straight and that should increase a little bit of intensity here. So you have two straight legs. And let's just sway side to side with the leg. Sway side to side, see where you can go, see where you need a little more stretch. Where I know I need a little more stretch is across the body.

So I'm across the body, that's where I'm gonna stay. And I'm gonna pull a little more with my opposite hand to change my foot so I can feel the stretch radiate all the way down the outside of my leg. Please breathe. And then let's come back through to center. Let's change legs.

So just a nice little hamstring stretch there. Let's start with the knee bent, the other leg, the one that you put down stays bent for the first few breaths. Bend and straighten. So many of us feel like we are very flexible and some of us really are but there's also always somewhere else to go. So if you're patient and you're curious about a position, you may find that you wake up some little flexibility areas or some areas where there's tightness when you stay in a position that's somewhat familiar and not pushing kind of beyond what your breath allows you to be...

Where your breath allows you to be. So keep your leg straight now and then straighten to the other leg, we have two straight legs. And then go across and open. So some of you will feel equal stretch on both sides across and open. I find that it's that across that is always a little tighter for me.

So that's where I'm gonna stay today. I want you to stay where you need to stay. Maybe it'll change, maybe it's always the same place. Just be curious about the position. And I'm gonna use my other hand and the band to adjust the foot a little bit that gives me a little bit more resistance a little more stretch all the way up into my hip here, the outside of my hip, breathing in and breathing out.

Stretching is also part of the exercise, my friends like bending and strengthening. Beautiful. Let's go ahead and rest that. Let's put the band now just to the side. We're gonna lift the legs back up and we're gonna do a little rock and roll up to a sitting. And we're gonna start playing with using the band for some more traditional Pilates exercises now.

Let's first do some open leg rocker. So, I like to scooch, so I'm about in the middle of my mat. I'm gonna lean back, lift one leg up, lift the other leg up. So here, we're in a straight back position. Yeah, straight back.

So option one, you're going to round through your low back and roll yourself back. And then as you come up, you wanna straighten out your spine, use your arms a little bit to help you find your upper back to put on the brakes. Repeat. Inhale to round and roll back. So, you can stick with this as long as you'd like, you can always do the preparation if that suits you.

Or you can choose to do the pull open leg rocker if that's a better choice. But be mindful of keeping the shape of your body. So the distance between your legs and your body should stay the same as you straighten your legs. So your hands are just kind of holding it together a little bit but they're not the driving force. Inhale to round back.

And then as you come up, that was a little sloppy from your teacher here. You wanna keep the shape the same, the distance between the arms and the legs. Inhale to roll back and exhale. Use your upper back to put on the brakes. Repeat. Inhale to roll back, and exhale, straighten out.

Just one more, please. Inhale to roll back and exhale to straighten out. Bring your legs together, hold for a moment, bend your two knees, let your knees open and just relax for a moment forward. Retrieve your band. So, if you know that you're quite inflexible or not as strong in the abs as you'd like, I highly recommend using a doubled over band.

If you know that you're pretty good with the teaser, you may choose just to have a single band. But I'm gonna just show the doubled over version first. So I've doubled it over and I put it underneath my feet and I'm gonna hold rather close to my feet. And then I'm going to pitch my body... Oops, we don't wanna do that, we wanna keep the band on.

So let's flex the feet first, my bad on that, on the queuing there. So lean back a little bit and make sure you keep your feet flexed here, so you've got a good connection to your band or your band doesn't slip and slide too much. So be mindful of where your feet are and where you need to be. So here, just see if you can hold the shape here with... So basically we're in our same open leg rocker shape but the band is helping you hold your legs up.

Now, if you're less flexible, your legs are just simply a little bit lower and that's 100% fine. Wherever your legs are, I want you to keep them there. I want you to squeeze in your mind, your inner thighs and I want you to round through your low back only as far back as you know you have control. And then you're gonna roll yourself back up and you're gonna straighten out through your back. So some of you will have no problem going all the way down through the low back, putting actually maybe the shoulders and the head down.

And some of you will stick with this real small movement. Both are okay. I would use an exhale to go down and then I would take a quick inhale down there and I would use an exhale to come up. That would be my decision. Let's do two more whichever you're doing, so maybe you're going all the way down maybe, and then shoulders down.

And then as you lift back up, you round and roll using those abs, one more please. So it's a really nice little teaser preparation here. Rolling back and rolling back up. (Sarah groans) I got a little slow there, a little stuck. Good. See if you can just gently release the tension on your band and hold your shape for three, for two, and for one.

Come to rest. Gonna move my band out of the way and just put it into front and then I'm gonna have you... Oops, got stuck there. I'm gonna have you roll onto your side for me. Rest your head in your long straight arm and just find this nice sideline position for a moment here.

Feel that the bottom knee is facing up a little bit. Your arm is long by your side and just hold that for a few moments first, organizing all your pieces. And then as you're ready here, go ahead and lift the legs up for your side lift and lower them down. And lifting up and lowering down. And let's do three, and two.

And just one more time here and hold this lifted position. Now, notice where you are, how high you are. I want you to think of lifting higher from here five more times. We're gonna just go up five and four and three and two and one. Beautiful. Bend the bottom knee for me, keep the top leg straight and just find again that outer hip connection here.

See if you can turn the knee down, turn the knee up, until you feel something in the outer hip glute area holding you here. For me if I roll my knee down and relax my foot, that's where I feel most. And where I have my leg it's not too far behind me, it's got to be a little in front of me. Now we're gonna lift 10 times one, two, floating up three, try to relax the leg, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10. We're trying to get kind of quickly through this.

Forward, we lift, we lower and we go back. And we take it forward, we lift, we lower and we go back. And forward, lift, lower, go back. And forward, lift, lower, go back. Just one more time, please.

Forward, now we're gonna lift and lower and we're gonna tap the toe around. So, I really want you to feel that outer hip. So that hip harness is important when we do standing work. And I want you to see if by using that hip harness now, you're able to sense those muscles a little bit more when you're standing upright, which is where we're headed. So just go ahead and do this a couple more times, bouncing the foot around, I'm purposely not making it pretty.

I just wanna move my foot around and feel fatigue and then rest that. Give it a little pat if you need to, loosen up, come on up to a sitting position. Let's take just a hugging of that leg so you can feel the stretch on that side. You can try to arrange yourself so both sides of your pelvis are down. And then as you pull that leg into a stretch position, try to keep the pelvis grounded.

Remember to breathe. (Sarah sighs) Beautiful. (Sarah sighs) And for now, I'm just gonna keep my band where it is because we're going to repeat that same thing on the second side. So just slip your legs to the other side. Rather quickly, lie on your side here.

Feel your legs connected here. So you wanna turn that bottom knee up a little bit so that the knees are spacing forward, if at all possible. And then if you can, your arm is by your side, your hips are stacked, your shoulders are stacked. You're using your abdominals here. So from this point, we're gonna start at the bottom and we lift up and we lower down.

And just five there, just waking up those obliques. It's important to have the connection between the obliques, the inner thighs and the outer hip for our standing work. So on this one, lift and hold my friends. Stay here. So now, feel how high you are right now.

And I don't want you to lower down from here, I want you to try to lift up five times. A little higher five, and four and three and two and one. Bend the bottom knee, find that outer hip now. The bottom knee is bent at 90, 90, hip, knee, and see if you can find the outer hip harness on that straight leg. Just explore.

And if you've got it right away, great. If it takes a few moments, then sit with it until you feel it, then use that to lift the leg up. Up, and up and up. Good. Keep lifting.

So moving quickly is sometimes a good idea. If you're not feeling the right muscles, don't move quickly. I'm guessing that that is really close to 10, if it's not, do one more or one less. And then go ahead and swing the leg forward, lift and lower and swing the leg back. So try to feel that outer hip harness, those muscles in the outer hips supporting you here and up, down and back.

Just two more there. And up, down and back. And again, my leg is sloppy on purpose here. We take it forward and we tap, tap, tap. So I'm trying to keep my leg out of it and I'm trying to feel those muscles in my outer hip being challenged by this movement here.

Tapping all over the place and going where it's actually harder for me to feel it. And again, my pelvis is moving a little bit too. I'm doing that kind of on purpose to try to feel different tissue, different muscles. And then rest. Come on up to a sit, give yourself a short stretch there.

And then we're gonna play a little bit more with the band in a standing position, using our legs and also challenging our arms a little bit. Breathing in and breathing out. So, let's go ahead and get the band in one hand and just kinda flip yourself around to your hands and knees. So the band is available to you. I just put it in between my hands and then just round through your back for me, really letting your shoulders be free.

Don't worry too much about them. And then arch through your back, support with your abs but let your shoulders be free a little bit. Just find an arch, anything. Round again. So where do you wanna go?

I like to let my shoulders open, it feels really good and necessary for me and really letting my head hang is important. And then when I arch I'm supporting with my abs but I like to move my pelvis around, I like to move my shoulders around, it feels like a good idea. Beautiful. And then come back to center, tuck your toes under, retrieve your band, push yourself to your feet and dangle in a forward fold for just a moment. Shaking the head a little bit, relaxing the legs.

So knees can be very bent or slightly bent or straight, if you prefer. Whichever you choose though, support with your belly and roll up to a standing position. Beautiful. Let's do a little bit of shoulder work. So, if you are a BASI student, you will recognize this as our shoulder series.

I've taken my band and I folded it over and I'm gonna hold about a little wider than shoulder width. I'm gonna keep my feet narrow or further apart if needed. Slightly soft knees if needed. We're gonna take the arms up overhead here. Try to have your elbows straight but try to feel that little hint of external rotation, as you bend your elbows, feeling a bit of a shoulder stretch maybe.

Reach up and come down. I'm gonna take my hands just a tiny bit wider 'cause that feels like a right choice. So I'm gonna go up. I want to feel external rotation, that means my elbows go forward, my hands go back. The band is endeavoring to go slightly behind my head, reach up and come down.

Continue on. I'm just gonna give you a side view so you can see that I'm not changing my back here. And as I pull my arms behind me, I'm thinking of spreading my collarbones and my shoulder blades. I'm not pinching them together. and come down.

And let's do that two more times. And here we go, feels nice. I actually took my thumbs and brought them with the rest of my fingers and that feels like a better choice today. So I invite you to try that if you want. And just one more like that, please.

So, we keep the back the same, we lift up, we bend, we feel that sensation of opening, beautiful. And up and around. Wonderful. So, open up your band so it is full length for me and hold as wide as you think you need in order to get your arms to go up overhead and then all the way behind you for a nice little stretch, stretching very little band. So go wide, wide, wide if you need to.

Up and around. And again, notice that the distance my hands are, my hands basically stay as I go behind me. So if you're tight in the shoulders you can stop overhead or you can continue going around. Or not, yeah. Pleasure principle.

It should feel good. Up and around. Good. Let's do that just one more time. Up and around, enjoy that stretch, enjoy that opening. So this one always feels a lot easier if I've done the first one.

Beautiful. So we gonna take the long length of the band and take it behind the back. I would like you to hold the edges and create like a little ball, maybe so it's a little easier to hold. And what you want is to be able to create a little bit of tension on the band, but not a ton. So when I take my arms out to the side, you can go palms up, but I'm gonna...

I feel more comfortable with my palms forward, that's what I like here. And I'm gonna ask you to keep your feet, not totally together, but be mindful of where your feet and your pelvis are as you twist around to one side, the opposing hip or that same side pelvis needs to stay anchored forward. Come back to center. And as you twist around that opposing hip or the same side hip needs to oppose the movement, is the queuing I wanna give. So we twist with the opposition.

We twist around with forward opposition and add a little pulse to this. (Sarah hums) Lead with your eye my friends. (Sarah hums) Good. And if you start to feel your band slipping, it means that your body has moved a little bit. So try not to let your band slip. Try to keep your shoulders spreading.

(Sarah hums) And one more time. (Sarah hums) Come back to center, keep this spreading energy and we do a side bend. So up and over stretching through the side, we're not gonna add the arms on. So you're keeping this imaginary pole on your torso or across your shoulders. Up and over then come back through.

And again, just a little side bend. So really, the challenge, one of the bigger challenges right now is keeping the arms in this position. You may start to feel your shoulders fatiguing a little bit and that's okay. Just one more here. I just wanted to look up there.

Go ahead and release this. So let's work a little bit our biceps. I'm gonna have you make sure that your band is wide and mine is a little sticky here. You have to put powder on it every now and again. And especially if it's humid at your house.

Hover your right foot and step firmly on it and then take your two hands and create a little ball. You got to tuck your fingers in this, especially if you have long fingernails you may want to avoid doing this. You tuck your fingers in and then you curl your knuckles will hold on to the... Will be in the band there. I'm gonna step my other foot forward but keep my right foot grounded.

So I mean this, slight forward lunge and then I'm gonna let my arms straighten behind me. So ultimately you want the band to be sort of pulling your arms, your shoulders a little bit open and down your back. Let's keep that shape as we do some bicep curls. And we straighten and again, bend. And straighten.

So if you want a little bit more resistance, you can just bend deeper into the stretch. But I caution you, you wanna make sure that you keep the foot really well grounded so you don't let the band slip up in a way. Nice. Bend and straighten. And a couple more, bend and straighten.

And one more, bend and straighten. Good. So you're gonna step back, change feet for me. Now I'm gonna release some of the tension, I should say, not the spring and I'm gonna take a hold so that it's coming out of my pinky finger side, that's the hold I prefer. Now I'm gonna step forward with my other foot and keep my back leg grounded. So I'm getting a little bit of a stretch here and now I'm leaning forward a little bit with my body and the action is to pull those straight arms out to the side and lower down.

So I'm getting a nice stretch through my back left leg and I'm also having to work my arms. Now, if this is too intense, you can just return to biceps. If you don't have a long enough band to do this shoulder movement, I should say, you can always change it. But I'm just asking you to do some slightly different things that we don't always get to do in Pilates. Let's do a few more here, lift.

Good. Nice and powerful. Remember, as you lift your arms up, you're trying to keep your shoulders from lifting up. So, it's really a deltoid movement not a neck upper trapezius movement. Good. And we'll do that just one more time please. Lift and hold (Sarah sighs) and lower down.

So go ahead and step back. Release that band my friends. Let's just go ahead and hold it in the hand, step to the back edge of your mat, take a roll down one vertebra at a time, just sort of see how your body feels. Remember to support with your abdominals, toss the band out in front of you, come to your hands and knees, return to your cat-cow rounding through your back and arching through your back and rounding through your back and arching through your back. And rounding through your back and arching.

Good. Let's come around into our side position, side sitting position. So we're in kind of like a mermaid here, although I'm gonna recommend your two knees being sort of forward for this for now so rather than having your legs so far back, be a little bit forward here. So you're gonna lean for me into the arm, though, there's only one arm you can really lean into first and feel the idea of of using the core on the side here to support this. So I'm leaning into my one arm here and I gonna look out at my hand and I want my hand to be facing straight forward. And then I'm gonna bend my elbow and I'm gonna try to put my elbow right in alignment with my hands staying open through here.

So then I'm gonna push back up and then we're gonna bend and push back up. Good. And bend. So the goal here is to try to be in this perfect external rotation position and just one more time and push back up. Good. Now just hold that for a moment. Take your arm long, take your top leg long, take your bottom leg at a 90, 90 degree.

And let's support with the waist, support with that outer hip. I like to flex my ankle here and see if you can just kind of for fun, find your balance. Hold yourself here, hold, hold, hold. So nothing is touching except my bottom leg and then hug it in and we'll change sides. So, we're building up for some things we're going to do next week and the week after, more traditional Pilates exercises.

So the knees are just kind of resting first, look out at your hand, open through your chest, and then here, try to feel that your shoulder feels supported hopefully, you're using your muscles. And then you're just gonna bend your arm and put it down. And you may find that one side is very different than the other. This side is quite a bit more challenging for me to find my alignment because it's a different shoulder. So as I put my arm down, it's very difficult for me to get my elbow to come right in alignment with my hand and press up.

So it's always interesting to allow yourself to notice the imbalances and then learn to work through them. But also just accept it and say, "okay, this one's different. Might have to do it a little differently on this side." And then one more time, we're gonna bend down and press back up and then keep the arms straight and hold this for a moment. So we're supporting with the waist, we're supporting with the arm but the chest is open. It shouldn't feel challenging on the shoulder really.

It should be challenging everywhere else. The other leg is long, and then you're just gonna try to find your balance here and see if you can hold this. And what's interesting is, you might find it very different on one side than the other. Good. But try it with a smile and with a sense of humor sometimes too. And then put the hand down, hug the knee in, come around to a seat, please.

Let's go ahead and take that band wide across the feet. I'm gonna do it. If you wanna really work your upper back more, you're gonna wanna double it over. If you don't feel like doubling it over, that's fine but we're gonna take it wide across the feet. And once again, we're gonna sit up nice and tall with flexed ankles, slightly bent knees, hold as close to the feet as you comfortably can and then feel yourself sitting up straight here.

We're gonna bend the elbows, we're gonna pull back, we're going to open the heart and look up and return. So you're gonna bend the elbows, pull back, open the heart and look up. So what I'm looking for is that you can really feel that middle upper back challenged here. Try to keep your elbows narrow. If your hands don't like holding this much of the band, if it's feels uncomfortable on your hands, just do it with one single layer and allow you to create the resistance on your own almost, so you can still work hard without a lot of resistance but sometimes it's nice to pull some resistance around.

Good. And then let's do that just one more time. Feel that upper back. Look up. Good. Release. Put the band down.

Now, we're gonna go ahead and take ourselves into a back support position. So I want you to take your fingers so that they're facing forward and lean back. Try to straighten your arms. We've done this before. Just sway a little bit side to side.

Sometimes our chest is tight because our back muscles are not as strong as they need to be. So I purposefully wanted to do that pulling exercise to wake up those middle back muscles a little bit here. That's the idea. So press into the hands, open through the heart, look up. This should feel kind of familiar.

Round through the back, allow the elbows to bend. Maybe you can come all the way down and then you're going to open through the chest and look up, it's a bit of a stretch. Round again, press into the hands and push up, open, feel the upper back and then round. We're just gonna do that one more time and then we go into our back support here. This is flection of the spine and then we extend, we open, we feel that.

I'm just shaking 'cause it feels like a good idea to me to just shake out my pelvis a little bit and then round and press up. Good. So give your hands just a little wiggle break and we'll go ahead and try our back support today. So once again you take your hands behind you, the fingers should be facing forward. It's dangerous to have them facing out for many of us, especially if you tend to dislocate your shoulder, it's a dangerous position. So I would be careful with that.

If this is too challenging with two straight legs, go ahead and bend one knee and press up like this. Otherwise you have two feet down, your chest is open. You first find those back muscles and then you just prop that pelvis up. I was not quite in the right position so make adjustments as needed and then lower down. There we go.

And you're gonna press up, use both arms, use your upper back, use your abs, use the backs of your legs and lower down. Three more just like that. And lift up, upper back, abs, backs of the legs and lower down. And again. Beautiful. This is one of my favorite challenging exercises.

It always feels really good and hard at the same time. Lift up and lower down. Beautiful. Cross your legs out in front of you. Come to your hands and knees. Come right out to a plank position, I know your arms say, "do I really have to do that?" But I'm gonna allow you to just bend your elbows and lower all the way to the floor there.

So resting on your belly for a few moments, go ahead and rest your forehead on your two hands and just kind of shake your legs out for a moment, try to feel the fronts of your legs relaxed. Your glutes are actually kind of relaxed here as well. We wanna focus on abdominals and hamstrings supporting you in the beginning. Okay. So let the legs settle on what feels like neutral. Let your arms reach straight overhead if you're able to and allow your legs to be long on a neutral alignment.

Okay. So with no resistance, we're just going to first lift one leg up and one arm and feel how that feels and then change. Now, if you don't like your head resting on the floor, put a towel underneath your forehead, change. As you lift and lower your arm and your leg, you wanna feel both sides of your chest weighted and you wanna feel both sides of your pelvis weighted. So those of us that are challenged in this cross patterning, will find that there's a little bit of wobbling around on the pelvis and the upper back or the chest and you wanna try to avoid that. Let's just do one more on each side, so we were just alternating.

Just feeling that. Good. That's the pattern for swimming. So go ahead and bring your hands underneath your shoulders. If your band is within view, you can just go ahead and... Actually let's set it up.

So go ahead and come on up to a child's pose and let's get your band. So what I want you to be mindful of when we use the band, one, you don't want to have it doubled over, just singled over. And you can hold and that's fine. Or you can wrap the hands around one time so you've got a hook without having to hold, that's what I recommend. So let's just take that position, come through to a plank position again.

So put your hands down, this actually feels quite nice to me. Put one foot back the other foot back, feel your plank and then just lower yourself to your floor. Good. Keep your hands connected, bring them overhead. Now, I just do not like you to be this narrow, just go wider, it's fine. No problem whatsoever.

So set yourself up again, try to straighten your elbows, but go wider if you need to and then press down through your pelvis, support with your abs. And so you're gonna ground down for me through the one arm as you lift up through the other arm and the leg and then you're gonna change. So just grounding a little bit creates just a little bit of resistance. And grounding. Now, if you've got the wrap like I do, you don't really need to push down with your arm.

You're just stretching the spring or the... I keep calling it spring because of Pilates but you're stretching the band, you're stretching the resistance a little bit. So hopefully you're changing each time and maybe you can really feel that there's one side that's a lot more challenging than the other for you. There is for me, that's for sure. And then pause for a moment.

Go ahead and just sort of shake your legs out, let your arms come to a restful position, whatever you want. So for me, my elbows are bent and then I'm gonna go back out to straight arms. And now we're gonna try to find a bigger back extension here. So engage your belly first, press down through your pelvis. If you'd like to tuck your toes under, that offers a really nice opening across the front of the hips, I invite you to do that.

You can also keep your feet flat if you want. So supporting with your core, you're going to lift your arms, both arms away from the floor and then you're gonna find your back extension. And then you're gonna do a little pull with the arms and then lower down. And we're gonna lift up again, and this time when you pull with the arms, allow them to bend, see if you can come behind the head a little bit, straighten and down. Let's just do that two more times.

And we're gonna lift, the hands come behind the head, the elbows forward and straighten and down. You don't need to be pulling the band very much, it's just exploring the movement really. One more time, lift and I'm creating a little resistance, my arms are coming behind the head. And reach out and down. Go ahead and rest the band for me, just throw it to the side so it's out of the way.

Put your hands underneath your shoulders, tuck your toes if that suits you, push with your abs, supporting you to a child's pose. Keeping the feet tapped gives you a nice stretch through the foot, toe, ankle, always a welcome piece for me. (Sarah sighs) And then come to your hands and knees, walk forward a little bit. And what I really would like to do is kind of finish in the same way that we began with this idea of an exploratory stretch. So take your feet out in front of you and roll yourself back however it best suits you.

You can use your hands or not use your hands, feel yourself flat on your back finish the same way we started, with this calming relaxing exploratory stretch. Arms are wide, think of spreading through your collarbones and your shoulder blades, allow your legs to sway side to side. Notice how you feel. Do you feel looser? Do you feel like you still have some kinks that need to be worked out?

Come back through to center. Go ahead and roll your head side to side. What do you notice? Do you feel your shoulders looser more open, do you feel the same things? Lift your right leg up, hug it deep into your chest, slide the other leg long.

Feel the opening across the front of the hip. Move that leg wherever it needs to be for you. (Sarah sighs) Change legs. Feel again, that nice stretch somewhere. So I feel it in my hips mostly, a little bit in my low back on the side of the leg that I've got hugging in.

But really it's your body and it's your opportunity to feel and then bring your two legs up for a moment. (Sarah sighs) So, put one foot down, cross the... How about we put the left foot down, cross the right leg over, open the arms wide to the side and then sway the legs with that cross-legged shape side to side. Most of us are gonna feel more sensation when we go in the direction of the left, with the left foot down. So my left foot is down and then my other foot makes its way to the floor.

You can use your hand on your thigh to sort of push up and out and create a little stretch across through the hip, the waist, breathing in and breathing out. Come back through to center, change legs. So we'll cross the other leg over and sway side to side. So you may find that you feel it very differently on your two sides. Be open to that and be okay with it.

So, most of us are gonna feel more stretch when we... The right foot is on the floor right now, so when we take the legs in the direction of the right, that's where we feel the most stretch most of us. So you can linger there or go where you need to go. You can use your hand on your thigh to push away and create a little more stretch, a little more opening through the hip, up into the waist perhaps, the chest, breathing in (Sarah sighs) and breathing out. (Sarah sighs) Bring the legs back through, hug two knees into your chest.

Maybe you can make a forehead to knee connection (Sarah sighs) and then take that rock and that roll up to a sitting position (Sarah sighs) and have a comfortable seat. And let's just take three breaths together. Wherever you are comfortable sitting, just sit up straight without effort. Breathing in through the nose, have the breath go up all the way up to your brain, down through your heart, into your belly, into your gut and exhale out your mouth. Feel that again, it's a big circular breath.

Up, down and out. One more time. (Sarah sighs) Thank you so very much for playing. I hope you have a wonderful day. Please join me next week, we are going to do a nice, powerful mat flow with no special props.

I'll see you then.