Class #2566

Rock and Roll Mat

55 min - Class
139 likes

Description

Get ready to rock and roll in this playful Mat workout with Sarah Bertucelli! She starts with a gentle warm up and then goes into more intense sequences that include many rolling transitions. She also includes fun variations like Boomerang to Standing, a Rocking Mermaid, and much more!
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Apr 12, 2016
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I feel super lucky to be here today with a whole group of my friends, um, and excited to teach a literally a rocking and rolling mat class. So make sure at home that you have plenty of padding for your back, especially if you feel like you have a sensitive spine. Uh, because I do want to play a lot with rocking and rolling and, and just kind of enjoy flowing, right? Yeah. So make sure you take care of yourself and that you have a good time. Okay. Um, and I think we should just go ahead and get started. So start standing on the back edge of your mat with your feet underneath your hips and stand nice and tall. Take a couple of breaths, enjoying the view. Perhaps inhale and exhale with the next inhale. Lift your arms high, opening your heart as you do. Actually look up and then take your arms down, roll down one vertebrae at a time.

Allow your head to dangle your arms to relax a little bit. Don't go to your maximum. Stay rounded through your low back here. Inhale, use an exhale to rural Baca. Nice. Don't shape your shoulders too much yet in hell. Reaching Tall. Exhale, arms down. Roll down one vertebra at a time. What I mean by not shaping your shoulders as I'm letting my shoulders dangle, I'm not plugging them back. I'm just letting them relax, letting my head relax and then roll up again.

Lifting Tall, opening your heart here and we're adding on now. So take the arms wide, roll down one vertebrae at a time. If you can find a connection to the floor, great. If you needed to hold onto your legs, that's fine too. Bend your knees deep. Let your your body rest on your legs and then straightened.

Keeping your head relaxed again. Bend your knees deep as deep as you feel comfortable and straight and find your breath. Going to cue breath a lot less today and just let you breathe and straighten and then roll up through your back with just slightly soft knees standing tall. Again, we're adding on after this one. We're reaching up good and rolling down one vertebrae at a time since the two have equal weight on your two legs. Bend your knees three times. Inhale, perhaps an exhale, had relaxed breathing and moving, starting with a nice, easy pace. And then this time soften your knees a bit more. And then take your hands to the mat and walk out to your hands and knees.

Keep your toes topped though. So you're in a stretch position for your feet and you're gonna make three circles around your wrist. So just kind of a circling into your hands three times in one direction and just feeling a nice little stretch through your wrists perhaps. And I'm just circling like, uh, from hand to hand and then reverse. So again, three circles, feeling the stretch there through my wrists and one more time like that. And then come back to a centered position.

Untuck your toes and do the same thing with your legs. So grounding your shinbones. Make three circles and just kind of sense what's going on in your hips. You can go as big as you want or as little as you want. And I'm not really shaping the back too much, just asking you to explore and then reverse for me.

I get this really nice opening, this nice stretch through one of my hips that I don't really get on the other side. Breathing and moving. And then you'll come back through to center and pause there. Go ahead and cross your legs behind you yet. I have to move my legs forward a little to make sure I'm not gonna roll back and then roll onto your bottom.

Scooch your body forward to the front part of your mat. Okay. And then hold on to your shins and pull your body up. So I want you to actually bend your knees and your hips a little bit more than you might normally and pull your body up here using your opera back and then round through the low back. Keep the connection on your Shin. So I'm just over my knees here, enjoying that little bit of a stretch and then pull forward, lifting the chest, opening the heart and rounding back. I'll use the exhale there and lifting up.

Good. And just one more time, we're gonna round back and then release the arms and see if you can make your way all the way down to the mat. I have a tightest low back, so it may or may not be a smooth ride, but there we go. Dry your feet close to your bottom and then place your arms down by your side and let's move right into our pelvic curls. Exhale, lift your hips articulating up into that high position. Lengthen a little more and then lower down. Yeah, feel the inner thighs engaged so your knees don't splay. Exhaling to peel up [inaudible] and lengthening down. Fill the backs of the legs, so there's that abdominal connection. First, the backs of the legs kick in and then think of lengthening more rather than lifting more, stay here, lift your arms up to the ceiling and then send your arms behind you and see if you can ground them. And then lower down, keeping the arms grounded if at all possible. Inhale here. Exhale, lift the hips up, articulating through the back, keeping the arms back there and lower down.

Now if you're on the able to keep your arms connected or grounded, just keep them floating. Perhaps one last time like that we lift up nice and high [inaudible] and then we lower all the way down. [inaudible] take your arms to a wide tee position, kind of pull your shoulder blades just a little bit underneath you so you have surface area for your whole arm and sway your legs toward me first. Just an easy spine twist here and then the other direction. So right now the palms are facing up and the arms are grounded because I'm on a high mat. This next exercise will feel just a little bit, um, look a little different on me than it will on the people, uh, for the people on the floor. So you may want to keep an eye on them.

They will not disappoint, I'm sure. Stay right here. Lift one leg to tabletop, followed by the other. Touch the heels, but open the knees. So sit here in this kind of tabletop position. Could rather comfortably turn the palms to face down and press down through both arms. Okay. So keeping the arms anchored, sway your legs toward me first and then back to center and sway your legs. The other ways to limit the range of motion for how so that you can keep your shoulder blade down, keep going, and then come back to center. Good. And then go the other way. Okay, now we add on.

So you come to me first and then you continue lowering the legs all the way to touch. So the one leg stays lifted, the one leg is down. Push down through your arm and your leg, and then bring yourself into a side position. So look at me. Hello. We're all here. Push down through your arm and your leg. Keep your head a little lower, Andrea. But lift your waist up more boys at hard. When you're dangling, maybe that's tomorrow's game.

Now you let your body come back down first, your upper body, and then your lower body follows. Okay, so we take the legs over first and then we lift, we push into the arm and the leg into the earth and reach up with the other arm and then rolling back through. And we're going to go just a little bit faster now that we know what we're doing. We push up good upper body leads. Lower body follows good and up. Upper body leads. Lower body follows a little faster. Legs up, upper body leads.

Lower body follows and up. Good. And continue on. Make sure you really ground your leg. Push down with your whole leg. Good. Have your palm facing down and see if you can flatten your wrists. Each time you do it, it's an opportunity to explore something different. Come back to me. Good. We'll stay in rhythm here one last time.

Beautiful. That should just feel nice. Surprisingly, things may wake up that you were not aware needed waking up. So from here, lift your arms up to the ceiling. Bring your legs together, hug your knees into your chest, lift your head and try to make a forehead to knee connection. And then from here we're going to rock and roll. I like to hold the backs of my legs to get the and going cause my spine is less flexible. But that's up to you. Rock and roll until we find balance. Beautiful.

Shins are parallel to the ceiling. Inhale here with an exhale. Peel down one vertebra at a time. Feel free to release your hands if that suits you. We're going to go right into our single leg stretch. Draw the leg closest to me in and reach out and switch and switch.

So reaching long through the feet first. Feel how that feels. Now flex the feet. Really pulling the toes back and switch and switch. Beautiful. Feel the ease of the movement, but the power from the core. Remember we do have fun doing this stuff right. Warming up nice and quickly.

Both legs are going to come in with flexed feet. Place your hands behind the head. Let's face me first as we go into our criss cross and switch. Bob, Bob, nice and slow. Feel that flexed foot. Push out through the heel. Just explore how it feels. A little different here, a little different. [inaudible] now pointing through the foot and we switch a little faster.

Wow. One more time. Each direction. Drop both legs and try to make a forehead to knee connection first and then find the shape that you can rock and roll up. Bend your knees a lot, pulling your feet close to you, holding onto your legs. Lift your heart here and then round.

Bringing your legs and feet together. Open your legs and feet. Lift. Pull it in and then feet together around. Just one more time in loosening everything up here and Rao. Good stretch. One leg straight. Stretch the other leg straight. Inhale here.

Exhale to peel back. Who won? Lovely vertebrata time. Good. Take your arms. Why? To a t lift your right leg up. Flex your ankle inward circles with rotation, so go into rotation and then circle around. That means I'm lifting my pelvis. Reach and circle a round. Inhale and exhale.

See if you can use a long breath there. One more full inhale followed by a full exhale. Reverse. Please inhale. Let's keep the pelvis still in the reverse just to feel the grounding. Feel the opposite leg, the opposite hamstring. Really well connected.

One more full breath here. Points your foot. Bring your hands to your leg, lift your body up and then try to find a rock and roll here. When you find yourself up, pull your in deep to your body, holding your foot, and then stretch your leg out to straight. Yeah, totally right. Come on. What do you mean totally? Pull your shoulders back a little if you can and open your heart.

Do it again in and reach up one more time please. And reach up. Good. Hold, hold. You can do it. Ah, I can't, but you can lower your leg down, round and row all the way back. I told you you have to have fun. We're rocking and rolling today, right. Take your arms to a wide tee. Lift your other leg up so that for me as my left leg, flex the foot, we are going into rotation.

We go over circular round and reach over. Circle around, Oh over circling around to see if you can use a long full breath here and we'll do one more full breath before we reverse directions. Finding out wonderful rotation and here we go. We reverse sense the opposing hamstring helping you to stabilize. So really anchor or ground that leg.

Feel the freedom and the ease. And last one here, hold points your foot. Bring your hand to the back of your leg and lift and hold that shape. Use your belly however your leg and see if you can get that kind of little teeter totter. Little teeter-totter to do. Shoulders are still pulling back. And once you're up, hug the knee in. Hold your foot if you can.

Nice big stretch sitting up tall here if we can. And we're going to straighten the leg. So I'm looking to try to be in a flat back here. Flattish I'm probably a little rounded, but I'm not collapsing so I'm working toward that flatter back and bend, but it doesn't need to be perfectly flat for me. I like the idea of lengthening the leg and feeling that stretch.

So now we give it a shot. Here we hold. Hold the leg if you can. Oh Gosh, I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. [inaudible] inhale, exhale to roll back again. Good. Bend your knees so they're close to your bottom. Revisit your pelvic curl, draw your belly nice and active and lower down. Again. Exhale to peel up. Hold the lifted position.

Bare down with the arms. Draw the ABS active. Lift the leg closest to me to tabletop. Flex the foot as you straighten the leg. Exhale pointing to reach down, flexing up, pointing to reach down and up. Feel as though you're pushing your leg through something. It's not just air here, right reach.

See if you can lift your pelvis just a little higher and this'll be the last one. Hold lifted position. Reached the heel up even higher and give me three circles inward. First, one, two, three, reverse and one and two and three points. Your foot. Place your foot down. Reconnect to your core. Lift your other leg up. Flex the ankle. And we reach and we plush.

So you're trying to go all the way to the floor, but I really want your hips to stay high. So work on that first. Feel the inner thighs reach one more time. I believe that's close to even stay here. We go inward three times over. One, two, three, reverse please. One and two and three. Hold points. Your foot. Place your foot down.

Lift your hips high and roll down through your back. Okay. Lift one leg to table top followed by the other. Stretch both legs straight to the ceiling. Take your hands to the backs of the legs and lift herself up nice and high.

Hold the leg closest to me for our hamstring. Pull here with a little pulse, both soft, soft. Well, I have to make sure and look around. A little hint of a smile. Gorgeous work. Good. I'm going to have to turn around so I can see Meredith's face sometime. Good arms by your side. Here we go a little faster. Yeah.

Yeah. Arms Up. Arms Open. Yeah. Hands behind your head.

Ad Rotation. Hold. Reach up and hold onto your foot. Bend your knee if you need to and lift yourself up a little higher. Good. Straighten through the leg. Feel that and switch sides. Reach up and grab your foot. I have to bend this side a little more. I'm pushing up through the heel. Feel that.

Use your hand to kind of help you rotate and lift just a little more. Good. Now we'll do pretty pointed feet and we switch sides without the hand reach, reach. Try to really anchor the leg down each time. Say, lifted and reach. Good.

One more time. Front and back. Both legs up. Hold the backs of the legs. Tabletop, rock and roll. Pull your legs. Actually put your feet down and bring your bottom two, your feet. That will scoot us forward a little bit and we hold here. Okay, how about you? Placed one foot on the front corner, the other foot on the front corner, and straighten your legs to match. Reach your arms straight out in front of you. Sitting nice and tall. Exhale forward for your spine stretch. Enjoy that beautiful round back position.

Inhale, exhale to stack your spine sitting nice and tall here. Very quickly we're going to add on here in reaching forward. Inhale here and sitting tall and exhale forward. Now this time let's go into back extension. Lift your heart open, feel your arms close by your ears and then round forward and all the way back up. Sitting tall, pulling the shoulders back where they belong. Exhale forward. Inhale, lifting arms narrow, and exhale, rounding forward.

Sit Tall in how? Exhale to peel forward here we add on, find that flat back position and then rotate to face me and reach and grab the foot on the diagonal. Much like if you were doing the saw here. So see if you can rotate around a little more. Right now we're endeavoring to be in a flat back. Can you then take your arm all the way back, turn the palm in.

So you're an internal rotation and round forward. So you're in your saw position basically. Now reach back up. Your hand is still holding your leg. Yes, you're reaching back with your other arm. Yes. Dig deep into your core and lift it up. Dig deep into your core and put it back down and fold. Yeah.

Okay. Dig deep into your core. Round back. Lift it up. If you can keep your elbow straight here. I think I cheated. It looks very nice. Thanks for looking at me, everyone with a smile and down. We'll do it one more time. Bend when you go deep into the stretch. And then last time here. So here we go. Up, up, up, up, up, around. You. Ready for it?

Hold it, hold it. Hold it. Put it down. Take your arms in front of you. Exhale, peel forward. Find your flat back position and hold. Rotate to the other direction. [inaudible] take your hand around and hold onto your foot. If you can't reach your foot, you can hold your leg.

I think it's easier if you can hold your foot, but we have to do what we can do. Scoop your hand. I'm not sure which way I went. I might have gone that way. You can scoop open for the stretch or you can go down. Turn your hand back. Much like the saw and round forward. Allow your elbow to bend so you're in a big stretch.

Okay. And then you're going to round back here a little bit, right? Dig deep into your core and one side. So much harder than the other. Open your heart. Oh, I wish I could. Look at your faces. Smile for the camera. Good. And lower yourself down and fold forward.

Allow your elbow to bend in order to create more. Stretch there if you want. And then dig deep into your core and lift up. Hm Hm. We did three on the other side. We're going to round forward full down and we take deepen. Mm, mm rich. Look forward. Look Ma, no hands. Here we go.

I'll lower your leg down. Bring your feet together if you need to for rolling purposes. Scoot forward just a bit here for your open leg rocker. Option one, the knees are bent. This is an option to class, so I expect straight legs from every one of you. I'm just joking. Option to class. Here we go. You have no options ladies, except to have fun and do what I say and I'm totally joking around her.

Roll back and find your balance. Chest is open and again round to roll back. See, I knew I could get them to talk back to me if I tried a little bit. I had to talk back to them first. Here we go. They don't talk. Enroll very well. One more time. That was for me.

Balance on your tail and hold. Bring your knees together. We're going right into the rollover harms are here. Exhale to peel back. Roll over, knees in. Straighten your legs now flex your feet separate. Touch the ground behind you if that suits you, and then rolled down.

Classic roll over here. Feet together. Inhale. Exhale, rolling. Golfer. Flex the feet straight. Knees separate. Tap the floor behind you and roll down. Okay, and bring the feet together. Inhale. [inaudible] flex. Separate top and roll down. Just one more please.

[inaudible] good. Take your legs straight up to the ceiling. Reach your hands to the backs of your leg, keeping your legs straight, but as open as you need to see if you can rock and roll. Tap, tap, tap. Yeah. [inaudible] it's like I sing or I rat a tat. Tat. Are you ready for it? Talk your legs in and stand up.

Thank you. Standing nice and tall. I'm going to stand back just for so that I can be seen a little bit, but you stay at the front of your mat. You'll appreciate that. I think. Take your arms down here. Go ahead. Take your left leg is your standing leg. I'm going to cue right and left. It'll be easier. And then lift the other foot up. Okay.

Place the foot down so that the knee is straight with the heel lifted. So don't reach back for it. Just place it down and then bend your knees and come to the floor. Knee. Beautiful. And lift up. So if that's too much for you, you don't go all the way down. You just go to here. But we're going to do that in this group. Keeping your heart up. Whoa.

Harder to balance on this mat. I knew there was a reason I wanted to be on that short mat. I knew it. Good. Now go down and hold. Okay. You know, place your hands to the floor. Look at your knees and straight and both of them. Then the knees squatting deep and straight in both knees.

So here I'm staying rounded as I straightened, so I'm stretching. Yeah. And then bend the knees and hold here. Come up to about a 90 degree knee bend. Keeping your hand slightly planted but not weighted. Yeah, lift the other leg up so that back leg, reach it back hand. Pull it in, reach it back hand, pull it in and back and pull in and back. Stay here. Put your foot down. Look forward and stand tall and we'll do it again. We bend both knees.

Find the earth we lift back up tall and again, bending both knees, finding the ease of movement and lift back up. And we're down again here. Look at your knees. Stretch your legs to straight. Stretch and, and again, stretch and stretch and bend. Come about halfway up. So the front knee is about 90 degrees. Use Your hands, not at all if possible. Here we go. Pull, pull, pull in. Two more. Pull in. One more.

Pull in plants your foot. Look forward and stand tall. Let's do the second side. All right, so my left leg is burning a little bit. Let's step back into the leg, the other leg, if you will. And now feel that your right foot is your standard. Like you go ahead and step back. I'm just going to come right into the center here so I can see you better feel that the leg is not too far behind you, right? And we're upright here. I think we had arms up.

Didn't we have arms up every time and then we take arms down. Good. At least I have a bunch of very honest people to keep me honest. Good. Just notice that you have two legs. You have two sides here, right? Good. I think we need to do one more, although you might get a bonus one on this side. Here we go. Stay here. Put your hands down, straighten your legs and then so stay rounded through your core.

Really feel that your front leg, your right leg is your standing leg and your back heel is staying lifted. Bend the knee one last time. Come up to 90 degree. Use Your hands, plant them here. Reach the leg back and in. So my other leg, the one that was behind is reaching back in, in [inaudible] and breathe and one more time. Brewery plants your foot. Look forward and stand tall. Reach your arms up again. That whole thing on the same side and we lift up good and try to keep your back heel lifted if you can. Most of the weight is on the front leg. Feel that. Stay here.

Straighten your legs and bend and straighten your legs and bend. One more time. Straighten. Bend about halfway 90 degrees. Use Your hands less if you can and go out in the end with that back leg. Good. Place your foot down. Look forward and stand tall.

You're going to want to step to the front. Have Your Mat. Separate your feet. Comfortable distance, maybe shoulder whip. Yeah, looking forward, we're going to try to find that deep squat and sit all the way down. You don't have to get back up right now, but maybe later. Yeah, so that doesn't work for you. You could get down a different way. That's fine. Right? Hug the knees in. We're going to just rock and roll here a little bit. [inaudible] Hey, now cross your legs. Yeah. Reach into your feet.

Lean back on cross change. Yeah. You know where we're headed? Reached back up. Cross. You need to get the pads of your feet down. Reach back. It's not pretty, but it's functional. And the idea here is that you can ground your front foot enough to be able to actually stand on it and get back up. Are you ready? Here we go. Up. Good. So your front leg is your, your pri at your major working leg if you will.

But both legs are there and just see if you can get yourself back down. If not, don't, yeah, just try the other side. This is a preparation for what's to come a little later, right? And we're up. Good. So again, you need to modify if you need to modify for you, maybe you stepped down in a different way. There we go. So hold the legs crossed. Come onto your hands and knees by rolling over the legs and you're in your plank care. Hold your plank position for a few moments, really opening through your chest and lengthening through your back body.

And then from here I want you to lift your hips up and go to a pyramid position. Dropping the heels down. Okay. We're going to play with like an undulation, so round through your low back, pulling yourself forward to plank. Yup. Opening into a long back here and then round through your low back, pulling yourself back to pyramid, straightening out. Do just that again. Rounding forward all the way to your plank and then rounding all the way back here. Now, second part, we bend the knees super deep so the knees are close to the mat, but not all the way down. Yeah, big stretch through the feet here. It's like a pelvic curl.

Tuck your pelvis through and find your plank round up to find your pyramid. Lower your heels first. Bend your knees, let your heels lift only as much as they need to. Tuck your pelvis through. Good. Round up. Just one more like that. Drop your heels, bend your knees and Tuck your pelvis through. Lower yourselves to the floor. So set your body so that um, your arms are, your elbows are in front of you a bit. And I want your wrist to be flat as well.

Okay. So here, what I'm looking for is a feeling of a back extension that you can manage on your own at some point, right? So if you're way up here and you can't hold yourself there, it's not going to work so well. So I'm looking for just a little support from the arms. So here, press into the wrist both sides of the risks equally and pull your body forward a little more and your shoulders onto your back body. Hover the legs up and we're in our single leg kick. Now we bend and bend and bend and bend.

The traditional breath is inhale and inhale and exhale. Exhale. But you can breathe however you'd like today holding this pace. Enjoy a look a round. I seem to always start singing when I do this exercise. Lift your right arm up, up, up.

A couple more like this. I know. Now it's silly. Put your hand down. Open your chest, lift the other arm. Oh, the hard side, right? [inaudible] put your arm down. Give me one more full round and rest. Look toward me. Take your hands to the small of your back.

Bring the hands high up your back and your elbows down. Squeeze your knees together here if possible. You inhale tobacco extension straightened in the arms, hovering the legs. Turn your head. Place your arms down. Bend your knees. Three nice and calculated.

Two and one lift. I don't. One, two, three lift and one, two, three left. Okay, I know too. Last one, two, three, lifting. Hold. Release your arms. Try to hold the height. Reach your arms over head. Bend your elbows, putting your hands underneath you. Tuck your toes. Now put your forehead down.

Lift your knees up. Draw your abs active. Lift your pelvis up. Keep your head down. Lift your chest up, your head still down. Yup. Put everything back down. Try again. Dig into your feet. Lift your knees up. You're not pushing into your head. You're pushing into your arms, right?

You're just keeping your head in that arrangement. Now lift your hips up. Now just lift your chest up. Now your head push up. Should we try it again? Lift your hips here. Bring your feet in and take a nice easy stretch. Bending one knee and switch.

And one more time. [inaudible] ground both of your feet so they're behind you, right? And then walk your hands back to your feet and you'll roll yourself all the way up to a standing position. Standing nice and tall. Left. Exhale to peel forward. Roll down one vertebrae at a time trying to keep your elbow straight.

Walk yourself out to your plank position. [inaudible] stay here for a moment. Really ground yourself by lifting up actually. So it's like you want to levitate out of your arms a little bit, right? And then just draw your right knee in toward your nose. Hen reached back, not up, but just back and in toward your nose and reach and in. And one more time and in and stay here and let your leg kind of dangle.

So it's like my thigh bone is just perfectly, hopefully perpendicular and the leg is going to sway side to side. Boop, swing and swing has the legs swings. Try not to let the body swing [inaudible] and press your leg back. Lower yourselves to the floor. All right, we will try it again. So your toes are tucked, your hands are close to you, right underneath your shoulders. Push into your feet and lift your knees. Keep her forehead, just resting. Lift your pelvis to slightly right, lift your chest and the head floats up and we press all the way back up. Good hips are high and stretch and stretch. So I'm bending one knee. I didn't say that. I assumed you could all read my mind and switch. Okay, we just have to do that same other thing on the other side. That same other thing. Come back through to play inquisition in hold.

Here we are. So again, we're going to swing the knee in and just swing it straight back. You can look at the knee, little flection through the back and pulling in. Good. Next time it stays in, feel it dangling and just let it pendulum side to side bar. So the ease of the leg causing a little instability in your core, trying to keep your pelvis from wobbling too much and one more. Place your foot down and lower yourselves all the way to the floor.

Push yourselves to your hands and knees using your abdominals to support and sit back and arrest pose or a child's pose for just a couple moments here, meaning in and breathing out. Come back to your hands and knees and walk your body forward a little. Cross your legs behind you and we roll over the feet. Send the legs out in front of us. Take your hands. Actually, let's come down to the elbow plank position here first. Okay, so place your elbows down. Now to get a more extreme chest opener, you're going to bring your body a little bit further away. If that's feeling like too much, you just bring your body a little closer in.

So that's up to you. I'm going to go with extreme today cause that feels good. Yeah, right. Okay. So stay here for many of us. This is a big chest opener. Bring your head back a little and lift your heart more and you should feel even more good now. Round through your low back. Look in the direction of your feet. Okay. Stay rounded through your back. Open through your chest. Push equally to your, through your two hands and two wrists to press up.

Open your heart here, round through your low back. Find both elbows, meeting the mat at the same time. Open your heart here, round through your low back. Push equally to go up. So you feel how there's this little thing that wants to happen. Try really hard to manage it. Just try. I mean I'm not expecting perfection, but we're going to try, right? Perfection, open heart.

Good. And I'm not really focusing on my abs here. I'm actually focusing on opening my chest and my belly might even be hanging out. I'm pregnant. No, I'm not. Here we go round. Now I'm focusing on flection with my core and I'm pushing up and just come into a nice forward fold here. You can relax your legs a little bit. Let your forehead rest towards your knees. Okay.

And then come around so that you're facing me. Yeah. So how about um, we can all face it. If we all face the same direction, I think it will be easier. So if everybody mirrors me, that's probably a good idea. Today. Um, that way if I can cue the opposite right and left, that'd be great. Or I can only keep one right and left and we'll get it. Yeah, so you're going to hold this here like so. Okay. Now for some people this, this is a better, but for me this bothers my knee a little bit. So I like to Tuck my foot under if that's doable for you, give it a shot. If it doesn't work, don't do it. Do a works here. Okay. So do your best to ground both sides of your pelvis.

And then what I want you to do is kind of glue this piece together and you're going to start rocking a little [inaudible]. I told you we were going to rock and roll literally, right? We're going to rock over onto the hip so you can keep your foot somewhat connected to your thigh. And I should not feel bad. It should feel kinda good. It might feel a little bit like being on the foam roll on your glute. Okay, now watch what my arm is doing. I'm going to reach out. I'm going to bend my elbow, pull it right underneath me.

I'm not collapsing in my shoulder. Thank you Andrea. So much happier. And then I'm pushing up some actually using my tricep here, right? So I'm over my hand and then I push up, right? So it's not about bending the elbow to maximum, it's about finding that right. So your tricep might start to wake up a little bit. It's not a bad thing. Good.

So one of my least favorite things is when we do the side exercises and everybody hangs out in their arm and their shoulder. This gives you that sensation of levitation right here. Stay. Push your arm to straight. Hold it right here. Just be here like I have barely any weight here. Yeah, ground your leg, your bottom leg. Reach the other leg out. Good morning, glute. Good evening glute. Ready for wine, glute shoulder down and back. Swing it forward. Don't let the weight grow.

Try even just holding with you know the cup of your finger. Beautiful. Push down with your other leg too. Especially when you go back. See if you can feel that anchor. My friends, we have two sides. We have two legs. It's going to feel different, right? Yeah. And that's what's cool about this. One more gets even better.

Reach back and hold here. Okay. We come around putting both hands underneath your shoulders. Anchor your leg, really anchor your bottom leg, the other legs floating. It can react. Try to square your shoulders so your other leg reacts as much as possible. Lower your forehead to the mat, bending your elbows, lift up, and then extend your back. Keeping the other leg lifting as you do. Good. Yeah. All right. Round coming down. Much like we do on the one two chair here, right? Lift and open. Reach, reach, reach, reach, God.

And see how much more energy lengthening you can get from that back leg to help you ring out your spine. Good. One more time and Tuck your leg in. Just a quick little rotation and counter stretch there. I meant to go this way first, but you can go both ways, right? Alright, so we switched to the other side and remember here that you want to feel this grounding of that leg in front of you, which is sometimes a little bit difficult to do. And notice here, I'm not so committed to this hip being grounded. I want this leg to be grounded. So just kind of pay attention to that feeling here and again, talking the leg and a little bit, we'll be helpful, especially considering we're going to roll and rock. Yeah.

So hug the leg with your hand, hug the other leg with your foot and just kind of roll over and check it out. So remember, it's not about for me, bending the elbow as much as possible, but sort of finding that control. Right. Nice. Kind of keeping the shape, feeling that good. I like it. Love what I see. Also notice the elbow path if you will. So the hand goes down. The elbow should come right in front of the wrist, if you will.

And I know on this side, for me it's much harder for me to find the right alignment. And here we go. We're going to stay here, right? Press the arm up, stay floating. If you will, use your belly. Use everything. Stir the leg out. Ground the other leg, placed your hand behind your head and we kick a little. So how little can you use your kickstand? How much can you levitate and that rusted root levitate your soul. Maybe we need that to play.

I used that a lot. Good. So we're flexing forward. Just breathing when it makes sense. Pointing back. Now hold the leg back for me here and stay dry. Your belly in reach and then rotate around. Feel the grounding of the leg that's down.

Put your hands down and try to spiel that wonderful ringing out of your spine and reach your leg longer and then bend your elbows. You're kind of rounding forward, folding your elbows can come in or out. That doesn't matter to me. Here. Mine are just coming in because I want to make a connection. I'm coming to extension now, but if you were to go out, that would be fine with me around and push up.

Okay. And reach and we're rounding down by really anchoring the leg that's down. It gives you something to to twist from really good. And then we lifted me hold and we reach and we reach and I didn't add on there. Did I? Good. Bring your leg in. Sit for just a moment.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. So this would be the way we were twisted. You're going to want to maybe do a little counter twist, which should feel nice. All right my friends. Let's swivel around and come to our hands and knees again. Okay, so swivel around here.

You're on your hands and knees and will you turn around and face me? Hi. No, I just like to be able to, oh no face center. I'm sorry. Face Center. There we go. Now it's clear. It's clear. They know what she wants. What does she want? Help me. All right, Tuck your toes under. Hover your knees. Be here. So my knees are hovering, my belly is active. I'm around and good. Yeah. Okay.

So now we're going to keep that arrangement and pull one knee in and put it back down. Pull the other knee in and put it back down and pull in and pull in hen. Pull in one more time. Pull in now walk the foot in. Walk the other foot in. Lock the other foot in your hands or between your hands, right? I'm sorry.

Your feet are between your hands together. If possible. Bend is deep as you can kind of folding over. Wow. When you have the res Mat you can pull down. That's really nice. I'm sorry that you can't do that. Look forward and then stand nice and tall. Good.

We're going to go down through that again. So you're bending, lifting your heart as much as you can. Squeeze your knees together if it suits you and the, just see if you can find that same position. And then we're going to bend really deep and just come to a seat on our bottoms. Yeah, take your legs crossed out in front of you. Yeah, yeah. You're ready for it. Okay.

So you're gonna want to scoot forward a little bit to make sure we have enough room, but we're also just going to kind of make sure that we don't hit each other when we roll up. So we'll just play. So squeeze those legs together here. Not the feet, but the thighs. So let them the top leg. Hover a little. Yeah. And then here we go. We're going to round however the legs stop and come back up. Stay with the same leg on top. We're going to round.

If you have to put your hands down to hover your legs. Go for it. But I'm looking for flection. Hover and come back up one more time. Please. Squeeze those thighs together. Don't hook the feet. My friends don't hook the feet. Are you ready for your boomerang rollover? Pap Switch, which leg is crossed and then rolling up balanced. Whoa. On your tail. Hold here.

We're going to skip the stretch today because of where we're going. Okay. Lower your legs down and fold. Deep forward. Fold and roll back. Just one more like that. Up and over. Switch and [inaudible]. Find your teaser. Keep the arms up lower and reach forward.

And we roll back and we roll up and over switch and we roll up. Bend your knees and come up to standing. Come back down, roll back, keep going. Switch. Now, if this doesn't work for you, guess what? Bend your knees. Come up to standing. Don't do it.

You can keep the boomerang just as it is. Switch, bend and come up. Try not to use your hands. Good. And back down. Last time I'm meaning for this to be fun, right? One more time up. Good. And come back down and we roll over. Finishing the boomerang switch. Which leg is crossed? Roll up and hold your teaser with the cross leg and stay there.

Squeeze the legs together. Open your arms wide for me. Lift your legs up three times a one, two, three fold forward. Inhale here, exhale to peel back. Cool. Switch which leg is crossed and roll up to that teaser position. Feel open the arms wide and we lift three, two, and one.

Lower the legs down and let's speak, but we're not done. Scoot your body back just a little bit please. Okay. Rollover your legs, stretch one leg back the other leg back. Be in your plan, care, dry your belly. Very, very active. Bend your elbows all the way down. Bend one knee, reach back and hold onto the top of that foot. He may stay here if you choose. Then the other knee holding both legs or switching if you choose. So those of us that are moving on to rocking or holding two legs, try bending your elbows a little bit and opening your heart more.

Now lifting up to your extended position. Really pushing into the feet, breathing there and lower down. So inhaling to lift. Stay here for a full breath. Yeah, and lower down. One more time. Inhaling to lift. Okay.

If you choose to rock here, go for it. Pause. Stretch your legs long. Lower your body down with your arms by your side. Just look in one direction. See if you can really let your ear rest. I've chosen not to let my ear rest, so I don't squish the microphone on this side.

But really those of you doing the class, let your ear rest and lift up and turn the other side. So let the other ear really rest your arms relaxed. Your shoulders relaxed. Bring your hands under your shoulders. Tuck your toes under, look down. Okay. Feel the power in your legs first. Lift your pelvis, keep your head low, lift your heart, press up.

Good. Walk one foot in, right underneath, behind your hand. Walk the other foot in, right behind your hand. Sit into a deep squat type position. If you need to use your hands behind you. Go for it. So I'm looking for this feeling of just a little stretch and ease here.

So I want you to play with like a circle, kind of just ease around in a circle and figure out where you enjoy. Just a little stretch, maybe in your back, maybe in your hips. I have to say I am at a huge advantage. Having this raised mat I get to hold onto things. Feels really nice. Lucky me, Mike. A little frog here. I can hop too. That's fun. Um, find ease in this position. And if this position is not easy, your bottom is down. Your legs are in and we already practiced that, right? Okay. So from here you may choose to lift your hips up first.

If that's better for you or you may choose to lift your heart up first and stand up. And we're going to finish here with your feet underneath your hips. Lift your body up tall, opening through your heart as you do, and just roll down one vertebrae at a time. Head no, soften your knees a little bit. Let your head dangle. Okay, inhale here. Exhale to stack your spine. One Vertebrae at a time. Good.

I really liked taking my arms over head. You can keep yours down if that doesn't feel good. Be careful here that you're not doing this so, but that you're lifting through the back body, opening the heart, but not so much the low back. And then the arms come down and let's just do one more together. Here. Rolling down. Feel the softness of your legs. They can be bent for all I care.

I prefer my knees to be a little bit bent in. This just feels easier in my back in a good way and round and roll up. And this time when you come to standing, let's take three breaths together. Feeling open through the heart length through your spine. [inaudible] hopefully it worked and satisfied body. Yay.

Thanks for playing ladies. And thanks for playing at home.

Comments

3 people like this.
What a great way to start the day! Thank you Sarah!
3 people like this.
Joyful and hardworking class. Thank you. The rocking mermaid really rocks. You offered great cues for my best effort to raise from prone to plank Sarah. (That is still a work very much in progress.)
2 people like this.
Fun class. So positive. Thank you.
2 people like this.
Loved this class, great energiser for first thing in the morning!
1 person likes this.
Fun job, I would've been fine with different variations . thank you very much.
2 people like this.
Such a great class..so many different variations of some fabulous exercises. Love the wound chair move and the rocking mermaid!!
Thanks for the feed back! Love that each of you enjoyed the variations and specifically the rocking and rolling element. Hopefully there will be more to come.
1 person likes this.
Thank you for an awesome class!!!
Fantastic mat class...nice variations
2 people like this.
love the joy and fun intertwined with a kick ass class !! my kind of teaching Sarah...thank you x
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