Class #314

Detailed Mat Flow

60 min - Class
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Description

This is a class that offers a lot of detail in the exercises but moves along well. In this class, you'll practice, standard intermediate Mat exercises mixed with a few variations added to help you understand the movement patterns better. Stretching is sprinkled throughout the class making for a well-balanced experience.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Nov 22, 2010
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Let's begin. Knees bent, feet flat. Andy, I can't start with the mat crooked though. That's the only problem I have. There you go. Thank you. All right, so give me Deborah, what she's saying. Okay, obsessing, of course I am Emily's ready that sit to a holding on underneath the back of the legs. Nothing. Nothing too surprising. We're just checking in. Inhale, exhale, let go of whatever you can. You're gonna find that you'll move easier, you'll move more freely, and that is the key. Inhale, lengthen. Try to do that without straining. But maybe you'll have to initially exhale, let go. And as you exhale, notice the chest falls or deflates or releases would be enough. Inhale, and on the exhale we move a roll and back.

Just allow your arms to extend. Going to say mid back, low back. Whatever you feel comfortable with. Check your shoulders. Inhale. Keep the curve of your spine, you exhale and come forward. I'm going to bring your attention to your feet, stacking your spine from where you are. Lift or flex the feet, I should say, and try to keep it balanced so that you're not supinate and you're turning the feet out or in nice and balance. Press the toes down. Exhale, push away from the ground as you roll back into the mat, trying to keep the toes down. It may not happen. Inhale, exhale, and you keep the curve as we come forward. Once shoulders are over hip, stack your spine grow long and you're still breathing in the lengthening. Inhale. Exhale, roll down.

Inhaling, hold. Exhale. Coming forward. Feel the abdominal sink. Find ease. You don't want to get to that place already where you're having to kind of heave yourself. Inhale, go on all the way down. Exhale, slide the feet in a little bit. Arms are down by your side. Inhale. Once the head touches, exhale, roll up through the spine so your pelvis is rolling up off the mat. Drawing your hips toward your heels. Be aware of your feet here.

Inhale and exhale again, the chest falls. It's the same action you've been doing except for we get to release it. Actually it's exactly the same. And inhale XL rolling into the sacrum, into the low, back into the middle back. Find all those places. A little bit of pressure through the triceps or back of the arm would be good.

Inhale and exhale. Down we come. Just making the body a little more supple, giving yourself two more. Inhale, finding your way through the midline of the body. Exhale as you roll up, you might find that reaching the arms and shoulders feels good. Inhale holding it there and exhale to come down. Sarah, you're slightly towed in. I don't know if you meant to do that. There you go. Last one like that. Inhale. That's better. Exhale we go. Rolling. Yup. Good. Slightly lower on the highest part of your ribs, Deborah. Just slightly.

Yep. Oh, beautiful. Correction and down. You come in the snap XL head, neck and shoulders. Come forward. Reach to the back of your legs. Walk your feet out a little bit. Inhale, we're going all the way back to the seated position. Exhaling up, lowing out. Keep pulling the abdominals in and back and then stack your spine. Arms reach forward. Inhale, rotate toward the front of the room here and your arms are just opposite your shoulders, right? Exhale would come down. It's about down the center. It's not too far forward. Inhale, hold coming straight up.

That same side again, equal weight on the hips. Exhale, easy. Neck and shoulders. Let's stack while rotated and then to the other side. Inhale, exhale down you go. Feel the hip bones pulling away so that one arms quite close to the thigh. Inhale and exhale up. We come.

Straighten out your spine and then center. Thanks Jim. I know I always do it that way. Here we go. Inhale, exhaling down from here. Let's change it a little. Just come across as the shoulder blades and up you come. When you get near the top, straighten your spine to the center.

Here's the breath toward the back. It's inhale, exhale down. We gone get to the shoulder. Blades are about. Come across on an inhale. Keep the shoulders square. Exhale up we come and let's just land in the center. Straight down the center. Inhale, exhale down. Good eyes out on that imaginary horizon. Then from here, both arms will reach up. See what you can do without moving your body. Exhale and bring it back. Meaning just the arms move. Let's do two more. Inhale, reach up, exhale and feel the contact of your low back easily. Maybe not easily, but definitely into the mat. Hold it there. Inhale, exhale. Up we come. So it's going to get harder, right? I try to challenge you guys know that and don't let me know that I did it.

In other words, go down again. In other words, on that last one, I don't want to see cause you don't need it. It might take longer. Here we go. Lauren. Arm up. Exhale. It'd be far better to lightly hold your legs, right. Inhale up and down. One more. And so with just as much precision, even if it doesn't look exactly the same, we start exhaling. We know it's hard, but we're all right and it might take a little longer and at least we've worked efficiently. Fantastic. I'm changing it. We're going down one more time. Here it comes. Hm. Draw the feet in a little bit.

Probably in. He'll pick the lane closest to the back, floated up it as the leg floats up, kinda chores your nose. Press the abs into the mat. You nailed down. Sorry if I didn't exhale. Same leg again. Exhale. Inhale. Yeah, arms are just easy. I like what you've got. It's good X here. That's three, right? Let's change legs. Make it to seamless transition. Exhale. Excellent. Excellent.

In X. Hey, the legs got helium in it. It's easy, huh? We know the truth. And then I'll put it down and go back to the first leg. [inaudible] [inaudible] you can support your head and make your heavier. Unfortunately. Switch and exhale. I'm alternating for two more. Oh boy, that's hard. Having the arms back. I'll keep them forward. One more time.

Let's leave this front leg up. Bring the other leg up. Let your head, neck and shoulders go down. Take your arms out to a low V. palms up toward the front of the room for spine twist. We go. Inhale. As we rotate, start the exhale and draw the legs back to center and to the back. So I've taken this new approach to teaching and that is, I think you can almost cue yourself better sometimes if you've been practicing a while. For example, right here, it's a warmup for the spine, so it's a, an introduction to your obliques. Hopefully not for the first time today, but maybe so if you know that, do you feel just a gentle sort of abdominal contraction that's creating that rotation or is something going on with the legs? It's not about the legs, so find a way in your own body to relax them. I'm just doing one more set here to the back and I'll, I guess I'll still cue, but you don't have to listen to me if you have a better one. All right, put your feet. Actually don't put them down just to keep them in the middle.

Inhale, arms are down to flip them over if they were still palmed up. Exhale, roll yourself forward. Jump just into the chest lift. Inhale, stretch your legs out. Exhale from right under the chest. Draw the legs back in. That's a blowing out and inhale head goes down. Exhale, curl up. Head, neck, shoulders. Let the chest collapse. Arms float. Let's think wrist ever so slightly above shoulders. What's the breath? Are we inhaling? Exhaling, I'm not sure. There must be an inhale. Exhale, scoop the belly and draw the light legs in and down. We go. On an inhale.

If that's too much to hold the legs, you can bring them closer. Exhale, head, neck, shoulders, up, email. Stretch the legs away. Keep them pretty light. Exhale, draw the knees and try to bring the knees in closer without tucking the tailbone. Head goes down and exhale. [inaudible]. Inhale, stretch away. Maybe you'll feel a little awareness to the back of the legs and exhale, bring it in and inhale down. Are we ready? [inaudible].

Here comes the exhale up. Stretch the legs out. Inhale, prepare and its exhale. Two, three, four, five in two, two, three, four, five. You're calm. And exhale three and inhale and four. Inhale, let it heat you up. Five, two, three, four. You know, if you want to get fancy, you go right ahead. Six, two, three. How would you get fancy? I don't know. You could raise the legs, you can reach the legs. Down three more sets. Three, four, five, two, three, four, five in two, three, four, five. Oh, if you choose something else, make sure that the low back doesn't change. This is it. Finish that exhale. If you have draw the knees in, hug them to your chest.

Yes. Stretch your leg closest to the front of the room or the window down to the mat. Hold on behind the other legs. So I'm just, I'm not quite at the knee. I'm sort of at the thigh with the knee, very bent and I'm going to suggest allowing that bent knee to kind of come a little bit to the side of the body so you can wow. Just ever so slightly off center.

Okay. And hold. Yeah, Android. Hold it. Then allow the foot to go to the ceiling. I'm still in a very bent knee. Grab onto the ankle or somewhere near it. I don't know why I feel like I like a flex foot, but you don't have to. Some of you may prefer to hold outside the foot and again, pulling straight down and I'm just outside my rib cage a little bit. Meanwhile, the other leg is reaching. So it's, I'm not attempting for a straight leg here at all on, uh, at least not, not on the top one.

Yeah. And then let's allow the light to float toward the ceiling. It doesn't have to go straight, but now we are going more for a hamstring stretch. Huh? Rotate the leg, the thigh bone, not from below the knee outwork. So the knee goes to the side and then rotate it inward a little.

You can actually physically use your hands to do that if it feels like your hip flexors working too much during your, put your lower leg, way down, way down, way down. There you go. And rotate out again and bring it back. All right, let's leave it there. Flex that foot. Let go of it. Arms down by your side. Press the back of the arms into the mat for leg circles coming toward the window. First it's inhale around, up. Pause, same direction. Exhale and inhale. Full circle and exhale.

So thanking to stir up that hip joint. Keep the hips themselves stable and use the leg like a mortar and pestle. That's it. We go the other way. Take it outside. Inhale around up. Exhale, kind of drop catch, you know, good and exhale. That's good. Very nice. Inhale, be mindful of that lower leg. You get one more breath cycle, meaning it's active, it's reaching and exhale from there. Pointed toes, bend that knee again and cross over the midline of your body. So enjoy a hipster edge. Sounds like the seven doors just came in.

I'm thinking if we rotate that free arm over Palma and sort of just reach along the floor on a diagonal line. Some of you may want to go high, some of you may like it lower. If you have room, a T position might be good. All right, bring it back. But you're still with that nice square yourself off. I'm just going to kind of show this one cause it's a little different than we sometimes do. I think just Jim, I gave this to you last time, so if you were just to hug your knee and close, sort of straight in and if your knee accommodates that, if it doesn't, you can hold behind. It'll still work. Just that fact. It'll work well properly. So the common stretch we do is the one where we turn out.

Right. That's not what I'm going for. Although it's gonna sound the same if you don't hear it. So we've pulled in, we're going to take this knee and push it towards the opposite shoulder and gently barely bring this foot in. That's right. And rather than holding at the foot, like I just said, let's hold above the ankle. So the whole thing is coming across and toward. Yup. They make us, uh, do you rotate onto your left hip? No. Try to keep your hips square.

Yup. Thank you. Got it. Do you feel it? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yes. You should try to have your head down. Is that, is that a big reach? A little bit, yeah. Let me do this for that. Yeah, exactly. Let's try that. Thank you.

Just for now, don't ever tell anyone I'm that nice to you. Just kidding. I'm going to go like this and I'm going to go with that. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. All right. Good. Everybody happy? It looks good, Deborah. All right. Carefully let yourself out of that. Right. We have the whole other side to go.

So we started long time ago holding on behind the thigh and just draw it and close and I started to kind of move it rather than straight in. I moved up just a little bit outside. Then we put the foot toward the ceiling and held onto the ankle or outside the foot. Huh? And then you paid attention to the leg that's on the ground so you're not turning the leg out. This looks great, man. I am going to just use my foot really actually be better. That's, you've got a great position reaching that. Your hamstring down. That's it. Yeah.

So you feel the back of that then we did. We held it actually forbid. Then we let go a little bit and we allowed the leg to come up. It doesn't have to be fully straight. There's no pain really. It's just kind of loosening up.

You might want to bend and straight and make it nice and easy and then it's about time. Let the hands go to the mat. All right. All right. Thank you. Sorry. Still holding on. Thank you. Manny. Turn the leg bone out and again were thinking, I almost want you to hold above your knee to think of us that the leg itself has relaxed. You turn it out and then you turn it in, turn it out and the arms are mostly there for support so that you don't have to do a bunch with the hip flexor before we head into leg circles. Yeah, it's just lubrication. That's the deal. That's all. That's for. All right, ready? Right. Flex the foot lightly. Arms are down. Cut. Crossing the midline. We go. Inhale RM and exhale pillows a bit large for you.

I'm going to change it. A little. Inhale and exhale and inhale to exhale. I think we have one more breath cycle. Not quite so high. Changing directions. [inaudible] and out and inhale around up. Give it a little pause.

Let me get you all together in. Oh, sorry. You inhale now, boom. And exhale. One more cycle. Inhale to exhale. Spin the knee pointed toe and crossover. Just the regular spinal rotation first.

Yeah, and the gum. You either got to make it really discrete or you have to spit it out. And I'm gonna say spit it out for today. Forever. Actually. Sorry honey, I'll leave it here for you. Yeah, yeah. Bring yourself back to squared hips. It would be awful. Right? Alright.

Find your hips leg comes in. Yup. And then it's, yup. Exactly. Exactly. So the the hand, okay, I'll back off the hand that of the knee that's bent is the one guiding it to the opposite shoulder. And then you just assist the ankle a little bit. That's all. Yeah. And then Sarah, just press your hip back into the mat a bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Wanting to go. How's that? A little more pure pharmas. Yeah. How's it going? He's got that.

Just go like, and the only thing I'm going to do a little bit is how's that do much. Okay. It's okay. She says alright. Had enough sort of, you could stay there all day. Stretch your leg back out, reach it out on the mat. I'm going to give it. It is. Think you need it. And from here, uh, following Wendy's lead.

Just reach your arms up above your chest. Yep. Feel the back side of the rib cage into the mat. And from there we do our roll ups. It's an inhale looking forward. Exhale, make it look simple as you come through, keeping your curve. Inhale, hugging the space and Xcel moving the pelvis as you rolled down lightly touching the back of the head, you can reach your arms back by your, keep the ribs down and inhale. Picking up the pace a little. Now that our hips and legs are slightly stretched out, hold, inhale, exhale. So just being mindful that the collarbones never changed though the spine is curved, the shoulders have no excuse for reaching forward.

There shouldn't be a sense of being crowded at all. And down we go. If you need more of a challenge and I'd like you to maybe try it is to keep your head framed with your arms initially. Keep folding over and then you'll have to lower your arms a slight bit so you don't get buried. Inhale and down. Okay, good. Good, good. Options for modification. You could bend the knees a little.

There comes a train case. Anyone's not hearing that. And Tom, we go, meaning you could bend the knees so it's easier to round to that low back. Lightly touch back ahead. And then when you come up you could start to straighten the legs for a little leverage. All right, gang to the shoulder blades to the shoulder blades. Stopping her right there and bend the knee a little when Nia, other Nia devil leg stretch. It's [inaudible] and around and two and around.

Exit Helen three and around ice forward ice for during. Yep. Good. And we'd reach, I'm going to change it a little. Now that you [inaudible] can you hear me do one more like that on the next one. Get there and hold it. Their eyes remain forward. That's all you're doing. Holding it there. And now exhale.

Close it up so you reach to the arms and legs up a little. Inhale, lower them a little. Your upper body. Thanks Jim is absolutely still. It's just the arms and legs. Uh huh. That's great. And let them open a little and exhale up and open. Fantastic. One more time and open. Bend the leg closest to the back. As you reach the lower the other leg down a bit and change.

Let's go kinda quick. Tonight we're going to go one, one light legs, but full extension and three, three [inaudible] focused press press last set here to bring both knees in from here, let your head roll down, bring the knees with you so you're kind of get a little tuck of the pelvis to roll up a bit. Meaning your hips lift maybe, and then chin toward. Just as you roll towards your knees, let the shins press away. Here's an option for you. We're going to let go. Keep the knee angle the same. So you just lower the toast to the map. Extend the let's say right leg out. Pick it up and uh, put it back down. Do it again. Same side, same side, right? Like out, up and down. Again, out, up, very light when it touches. One more time out, up, but foot down.

Let your head go down. Draw the knees into the chest. Same time. Hug it in, chin toward chest. As you press the shins into your hands, curl yourself up, arms go forward. Just reaching both feet. Lower down, left leg. Now reaches out, up and bring it back. Absolute stillness everywhere else out, up, good and out. One more. Go ahead and put it back down. Lower yourself down both feet simultaneously. If you can slide them in closer to you, then pick them up so you can bet where I'm going, right?

I'm only going to do four with using both legs. You don't have to touch the floor and you could alternate. You could just stick with alternating or two and two I should say. Here we go. Curl ourselves up again. Find the point of the exercise is not the legs, right? It's the abs. Can we think and do this? Here we go.

We're going to lower the legs. Reach the arm. Sorry. Stretch them out. Lift them up and bend. Lower down. Close to stretch them out. You don't have to go all the way straight or you can and down. Nice. Very good. Two more fabulous. One more. When you get there, we're going to bend the knees.

Hands come up behind your head for Chris cross. Go to the window first. It's one, one and two to feel the rib cage. Rotating the stillness in the hips. Yeah, gently pressing the back of your head into your hands. Do more sets reach. Keep reaching. One more set back to center.

Both knees bend. Let your feet remain. Their upper body goes down. Curl right back up. Extend your legs really already. Okay. Then the knees a little, I think, and then roll the pelvis up and down. Roll the pelvis up. Does not need to be big. Okay. You don't need to see anything, but you are in tempting to use the abdominals to pull the hips up. Literally you'll feel your low back roll into the mat if you can make, keep it a vertical move. That would be ideal, which would mean it'd be teeny tiny. My head just floating off the ground. You don't have to be real high with the upper body. Really.

You could even put your head down. Let's try five like that. Head down. Oh, it's not easier to, I would suggest leaving the elbows off the ground a little. If you're heads down, do more. One more. Right? Leave the legs there. If they're getting tired, you bend them or you can put them on the floor. Otherwise you curl head, neck and shoulders. Then press the back of your head into your hand and small. For now you're doing a little walking scissors, so it's just inhale, inhale, exhale, exhale. Looking straight ahead hopefully because your spine is doing that for you. Good.

Nice. Turning in and out. Can we go a little bigger and in, in out, L, in India, out last set. Unless it's in your back or if it's in your back or neck, you should take a break. There's no point in working that. Bend your knees and hug them to your chest. Whoa. I need some extension in my life, right? Yeah.

Sounds good. Right on. All right, so, Hmm. Any ideas? No, just kidding. Hold on behind your knees. Head up just for one more little flection to come up and we'll go from here. Separate the feet. I'm going to continue to hold on for a minute, a moment and I think this would be fine. You know, I, for some reason I think we're going to like it better if we go like that because anyway, w I'm about to do is go into thoracic extension and I want to avoid just quick look up here. I want to avoid that. Okay. I'm looking, you're looking for vertical rise front of the body, slightly lifting as a back of the body goes down. Okay, you've all done that with me yet. I think of it like the conveyor belt with of the skin going up down the back.

Here we go and I'm hooking the ankles just to help you squeeze the glutes so you don't arch your back. How about free breath? Inhale, exhale. Now inhale, just vertical rise to the spine. When you think you're there, start allowing the chest to rise a tiny bit more as you feel the shoulder blades be heavy and not a whole lot more effort other than [inaudible] to allow the eyes to gaze up and the back to be long and release. Okay, so here's one of those times you might do a better job of queuing yourself if the muscle focus is up here in between and around the shoulder blades, that's where you're trying to find a way to feel that. And it is by allowing the shoulders to fall. That's about it. And once they're down, they're down. Inhale, rise up through the chest. It's as if you're going to do a backbend with only your upper body.

Don't let yourself lean back. It looks good. And then exhale, release. Can we do one more? Inhale, rise up. Arms are helping to some extent. Let's start those live. Live. You need extra breath. Take them. Go ahead. That's fine. And release. Yes. Uncross the legs. Stretch them out just a little bit. Hands behind your head.

It's a little bit of a rotation with some extension. So we're coming toward the front of the room. We inhale [inaudible]. Exhale, hand. I'm gonna say push it. Push down a little tonight instead of rotate more to encourage a little extension here. That makes sense. Oh wow. It does. That is gorgeous. Wait a camera on this end. Where are you at? You exhaled already back to center. I'll figure it out.

That looks really pretty too. The hands are back. I'll get it right at you shop. It just was pretty head to see it. Inhale, rotate, exhale, hand. Use your assist and then it's, it's extension and it's on that lovely arc. Wow. I actually lost my train of thought again. Come back to center and someone on cue. Me. Here we go. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Inhale, exhale. I got it. I got it. And you'll kind of bring it back to straight. Exhale center. You can just bring the hand back and inhale. Easy. Shoulders don't have to work hard. Their arm to like XL assist the upper back arch and right shoulder down. Jim.

Yes. Inhale, straighten out your spine and hand returns and center. Can we do it again? Inhale, rotate and let your breath blend into what feels right. Exhale. Inhale and bring it home. Last time. Inhale, rotate. Exhale, assist. Get that little bit of an arc through that upper back. Beautiful. Bringing it back to a straight hand comes to head and center. Right. All right. Let's just keep the hands here. Stretch out the legs.

Sit and Topher this version of spine stretch. It's an inhale. Exhale. Let your chin look down. Let your chest kind of collapsed. But keep your back lengthening even though it's rounding forward. That was all exhale coming back. Inhale, hold. Exhale Rola. Get light on yourself. Create more space.

And can you be any taller without the shoulder? Yes. Exhale to around. Yes, yes. Oh, that's good. So at the bottom of that, there's no air left. You've, you've forced it out. Really. Inhale, exhale. And then you get to switch to the back of your body.

Rolling you up. Allow the elbows to be in a place where you can somewhat see them in front of you so that the shoulder blades can fall. Beautiful. I'll add the back extension to it. Um, inhale. Just a tiny X held around. Yes. From there you're going into extension. So they hips reach forward.

The tailbone kind of sticks out. Come into a long diagonal line. Yup. The little head comes up. Exhale. Extend your arm. Yes. Okay. So I think you might be more flexible. Are you okay with that? Oh, look at you Aaron. Inhale, return the arms. Exhale. You're going forward to roll up.

Paying attention to our S our neck and spine as being part of the back. Alright, her neck, I should say, neck and head, part of the spine and down we go. Leave some space here. If you are really flexible, you want to have some space there. Then right into back extension. Inhale, your head will be last, but it does have to lift flexed feet from more hamstring. Exhale, extend your arms. The arms are very easy. Inhale, feel the shoulder blades pull further down your back as you replace the hands behind your head, fully laced and round to come up. All right, same thing, just as precise, maybe more so. We're going to go a tiny bit faster. Inhale, looking straight ahead. Do you see your elbows? Gym? Okay, good. Exhale down. Inhale, extend, grow. Give yourself traction. You can kind of pull on the ears.

A little arms extend in how refold the arms. Exhale down you go to terrible. Last one, get tall. Look over the horizon and down it is. Feel your back broaden, right? Kind of almost Cobra like without hunching the shoulders.

Inhale the back extension. Exhale, extend your arms when it feels right and hang out there. Let's do this. Allow the arms to come down toward wherever they fall. Once they're straightened, your collarbones are wide. Wherever they fall, guide yourself more forward. You might bend the elbows to do it, but I should actually say more up rather than forward. That's probably more to the point. Raise the arms back up if you want to put them back down. See if you can gently assist yourself deeper into the stretch.

Feel your neck is part of your spine. That's it. That's it. Arms up again. And Dan, let me do one more please. Up and down with the arms. Take just an inhale and allow yourself to round forward. Okay. Drawing the abdominals in and have a ruling up.

I'm actually going into a stretch, so if that, that stretch you would just, it feels better to you. I'm going to, you can go back to that, but otherwise we're just taking the back leg so I had to have it a little bit out, but I actually, I think everyone's probably a little different. It's probably a good idea to say square, but for me personally, I don't like it like that. So you can either be exactly square, which will adjust where your foot goes or you can allow that light to be slightly out and all. I'm more, what I'm really interested in at the moment is that you find a straight spine as you can the ball. Okay. Then without rounding at the low back hinge forward, you may be at your max stretch. That's fine. You can even bend this knee that a little bit. Do you want to, and then start working your way forward when you feel like you've gone as far as you can without too much strain. We'll let you, we'll ask you then to just relax and round over, but challenge it a little bit. You know, you may find you want the foot and a little closer closer to the foot is the more you'd end up with the hip stretch.

If wherever your leg ended up, whether it was right in front of you or slightly off to the side, aim your chest toward it. Okay, and walk in that direction and then let's just take a big inhale, exhale and hang out wherever it feels most comfortable. Yeah, there's no particular place you have to grab. You can hold your knee, you can hold the ground. You can just where it's allowing you to settle in. Some of us would feel this a little more through the back. Okay. It's all meant to be mild and then use your hands to help you back up and we'll just change life. Paul flex feet, draw the foot and close. If you're particularly flexible and you have another version, you go right ahead and sitting tall. Hinging forward. I like to assist myself. Some people may prefer to have arms up to add weight in it.

It's all whatever you need, right for your body. Knowing that the objective at the moment is some hamstring stretch, some hip, and eventually maybe even some back. Just finding that edge. That's also another good time to check your feet, that you're flexed, that you're evenly distributing that through the whole foot. Looks good from here, and then chest is aiming toward the Shanor, the knee, and feel free to round into it. Okay. Help yourself up.

[inaudible] out just for a moment and we're scooting forward a little for open leg rocker, or at least being aware of what's right behind you. Bring the feeding clothes. Let's play with it a little before you pick your feet up and you can do it one at a time. Just make sure you've plugged your arms back in. It's very tempting to start from where I am. That's why I mentioned it and I almost did, so it's just plug 'em in.

Then if you were to let go and you picked up one knee and nothing else moves, you don't have to lean back. He's cake. Okay. Then pick them up and if you're rounded, fine. Well, let's, let's see if we can come out of that. Even if you have to bend the knees to do it, to extend the spine like you did earlier. Right from there, it's a subtle thinking of the abdominals to roll back. Here it is. Inhale, roll back. Exhale up and try and roll back into extension and in how we go back.

Exhaling and extending and finding your way to making it easy or just letting it be easy. This is one of those ones we could S we can psych ourselves out on before we ever get going. And what's the worst that can happen, right? You can. You could not landed was that, Oh geez. Here we go. Leave that out. I know all that there.

Here's a cue for you. Suck the legs deeper into the hip socket and I'm serious. How would you do it? I don't know. Let go. That works, doesn't it? Kinda. Okay. Close the feet. Bend the knees. Just when you thought it was over. Arms line up with your shins. Roll that nice roll down to the shoulder blades.

Mo at max. Leave the legs where they were. Come right back up. Extend the arms if you want to. You don't have to do that part. And then down control things that help. If you're only doing a dominal work and you're just going to fall into this, think of a little bit inner thigh light, glute contraction, and if you want to try the arms up, you could also tip the feet down. That'll give you a little break if you need it. And down. Good, good, good.

It's even okay if the legs drift away from your little silly, Andy, you're doing it in a really tough spot. I'm going to leave my arms down, but you feel free to go ahead and then as you go down, Andy, I'd recommend pushing the legs away just a little. Just a little. That's plenty last time to come up. Cross the leg and back over the front. I mean over the other one. Put foot down. Turn towards me. Nope, keep feet there. Just turn onto your side towards me. Perfect.

Perfect. Okay. All right. Everyone's got the top leg? No, no. Yeah, the top leg on top and front. Tumbling in front. Yeah. For side Ben. So if you don't want to be on your arm, you could be here in the exercises. This one, right? Or you can be on your hand. Here's the deal though. Let's all start with the handle a little further away. Sarah's got a good idea. She's going to, the word is, it's okay. I've got sticky mounts around. Okay.

She's good. All right. From where you are, stretch your legs out a little bit. If you move over a little fear, we're going to come off your mat and I'd like to play with the safely is to press the rib closest to the floor. Oh, that one over there. I didn't sink. I just pushed it over there and then I lifted it. Oh away. Okay. Do that again. Again. I'll drop on it. It's, it's a conscious like, okay. Uh, now when you come away this time makes no extra pressure on your hand.

Like lighten up on the hand a lot. You can almost take it off almost. It's in, it's in mindful stuff, right? You could push or you could lift. There's a big difference right down. Let it one more of those and then this is where we want to come from. That's it. Ready? You can either keep doing that or we're up on an inhale.

Adjust your feet from length. All right, Andy, lower the hips of tiny. Yes. Good. From there. That thing again, only with much harder here. Lift up your arking over and then turning your head. Only your head. Then feel this change. Lower the hips. Reach the head along to that long line. Bend the knees, lightly touch. We'll go again. Okay. Hang on one second. Just be light on the hand. I just want to say for this group, because we all do this pretty easily, I don't know, but easily but well, but then what tends to happen is I don't know why we get this big move then we don't always come back. So I'm going to suggest tonight, wherever whatever you feel, focus on a big change coming back down cause you're all high.

But I feel like we kind of lose some of the energy here, so I want the sense of reaching that way, reaching that way. Boom. Ready? Uh, three more. Inhale lift cause we hit this so well and then we lived high. Pulling that lower shoulder towards you. Good. Now here's that part I'm talking about long, long, long, right and down. Maybe it doesn't feel different but it looks different to my eye maybe. Okay, good. And lift up and then get a little long anchor with the feet. And this is already at three but I do have plans for something else.

So hang on and back. Either just stay here and just do a little pulse or stack the feet and reach the top lane too. I'm only doing five. Nice and slow. Three, four and five. Top leg in front or yeah. And then come down. Draw the knees in. Yeah, it's a lot for the shoulder, right? So you be careful.

Oh is it feels like helium. Oh no, this is actually obviously not comfortable for me. So you could be here and [inaudible]. Oh that'd be fine. That'd be fine. Yeah. Really sad arm. It's almost hard just keeping it up there, isn't it?

I'll come back for side stuff later. Top leg in front hand is out a little play with it and I'm doing the same thing. Um, whether you're on the shoulder or not, you can still do this rib thing. So especially since you all don't have a mirror, feel it, press the ribs into that hand and then just feel them come away or you can even pull away if that is helpful and up. I'm exaggerating what I'm doing with my head just to show you the general direction around.

Lighten up on the hand and all I mean is it's not gonna look different. You're just not driving energy. And just where were we here and then we pulled away. All right. Stretch the legs out if you need to or adjust on this first one all you want and you stay together. Getting up. Here we go. Inhale, lift up. Oh, exhale. Go ahead. Lifting are feel the big arch. Yes. Inhale, come back to straight. Feel the difference and then down.

Good. Inhale to come up. Exhale. It's a big change in this part of it. If you're on your hand, feel that arm pit slide toward the waist and then go back to your long line. If you're on your elbow, you're not going to feel quite as much in terms of the range, but you'll probably feel the work equally as hard if not harder up. And then we lift away from that arm, put some weight in your feet, make them help you. And then our inner thighs help a lot right here. I believe we have one more for four.

Yeah. And it's all, Oh, Blake's pushed that hip up. Push that hip up and then back to that long line. Fabulous. And down we came. Yeah, pretty good leg. Right back up again. Of course that was too easy. Sorry guys. Sorry.

Either the little pulses. Okay. Or stack the feet. Actually they didn't have to stack it. You can just lift it, can't you? And then just chin slightly down is all I wanted to see. That's it. And we did five, three, four and five. Thank you. Andy. Put it down and either just draw the legs in holding the shin or you can stretch it out or you can whatever you need. Right.

The intent is to get a little stretch through the side to the lat. Yeah. All right. So assuming we're all about there, let's come down onto your forearms and abdominals. Yeah. All right. I learned some things this weekend and without going into too much detail right now cause it's still processing, I'm just gonna have you do this for today.

Let your elbows go a little more forward than normal. Okay. I would like you to try to feel, or at least imagine all of your hip on your hip, on hip, on pubic bone, on the mat. Sometimes I think we are trying to pull the hipbones off the mat today. I want you to fill them on all, all of them equally. In fact, sorry, go all the way to your forehead. That'd be easier to do this and still the same thing when she did feel them.

Yeah. Okay. Yes. Engage your abdominals a little, but not so much that it pulls the hipbones off. Okay. Then elongate. Allow, reach the legs out of the hip. Okay. To the point where as you start to lift them, you will feel a little more pressure on the hip bones. Then you do the pubic bone. Maybe not for everybody, but maybe.

And the point is, is that can you feel where the hip and the butt meet without a lot of pressure in your low back? So the leg lift is not high infection. You can come down a little Emily, you can come down a little with your feet. That is, yeah, everybody okay. Like that. Alright, so that's the feeling I want to try and recreate as we go into single leg kick. Nobody's low backs are okay, right? I mean not. Okay. Okay. No one's talking to me, so I'm gonna assume that a yes, help yourself up to your forearms now. Okay? Yeah.

And here it is. So doing that specifically so that you are allowing the hip extensors, the glute max to work more efficiently. Here it is. It's going to go kick, kick and kick, kick straight and then change. Kick, kick straight and kick. Kick straight. Now if being on the forearms makes it more pressure into the low back, which it could easily, you can move forward, right and pulse, pulse, stretch, pulse, pulse, reach, pulse, pulse, reach. And what would be really nice for you, Aaron Lardy is to gently press your ribs into the Mac, believe it or not. And then shoulder blades down your back. A little. Huh? Is it okay?

It looks quite good, I must say. And we can all have a conversation about one of these days. Let's alternate now it's inhale two, three, four. Now exhale, two, three, four. If you didn't, if you weren't allowed or able to use your forearms, what would hold you up? Think about how would you do it with you? We're going to take your arms off. You're not going to, but you use your back muscles. Let's do one more set. Really get those hamstrings working. Finish the exhale here. Da da da.

And then all the way down, come down, turn your face to the front of the room for devil lay kick. Same rules. Give it a shot. I'm going to go kind of slow on this. Just so you can kind of feel, um, I'm, I'm doing it cause I always cue all the hipbones up and I don't want to do that anymore. I want to work the back neutral like we do on the other side. Yeah. 26 years later. All right. Hands are high in your back, as high as you can.

Does anyone want a bander towel or anything? Okay. Resting the elbows down as best you can. Nothing forced again with the hips or down. You feel them? Reach the legs. There's not going to be high. Yes, Sandy. Exactly. Are you ready? Egos. Kick the hips. One, two, three.

Extend and lengthen and switch. All right. Are you laughing? You're crying, Sarah. Okay. Seriously. I don't know if you're laughing. You're crying. Oh, she's laughing. She's laughing. Okay. Scared me. How are we doing Sarah? Okay, fair enough. That must've been a big cramp. Let's go one more per side and right here.

Make sure you feel those bones again or you know the approximate Lee last one. Duh, duh, duh and full stretch. Hold it there. Yes. Separate your hands. Bring them overhead. Just be mindful of someone right in front of you. Someone goes wide. Yep. And swimming from there. It's inhale two, three, four, five. And exhale. Emily, just pick your head up a little bit and not your back.

Just your head so slightly. Take your chin forward. Like you're going to look in at Mary. Yup. Good, good. Tiny bit more for you. Yeah. You've got lovely extension. There it is. There it is. How about one more breath cycle. Straighten your knees. I got the guys needed a little straighter knees and on this inhale Superman style. That's it. Interest. Good.

Carefully help yourself up into rest position. [inaudible] from here we'll draw the abdominals up and let's take a hip stretch again since that was tends to be the one requested. So a couple of ways we can do this. Um, first option that doesn't put pressure on that knee is the one we mentioned earlier where you could be here or even here. Okay. That's always there for you if you'd like it. Otherwise you want to do it slightly differently. You're right.

Let's say right knee forward, just draw the knee forward. I'm still on the knee. Oh, you're asking. You're doing sorry. Yeah. And then you want the hips to be square. Okay. The back leg is straight and kind of reaching behind you. You may decide since you'll be here for a bit to be on the fist or whatever feels good. If that's not enough of a stretch, you could draw the foot away from the hip a little bit and then re square the hips. But you might be fine. Yeah, be gentle with it. Whatever you do.

Well, let's come up on it a bit. If you're, um, on your back, just stay there. I won't be here that much longer. Yeah. How's that? So maybe now you're getting the front of the other leg. If it's straight to your low back, you've probably come up too high. And in which case you could come forward. That's another option. Let's try that and see if you like that better. Yeah, it's up to you.

Maybe you'll go to your forearms. Maybe I'll be happy where you are. I'm happy where I'm at. And then to explore. Right. That's half the reason for being here. Explore what you've got. What does he do you need? What would make it a more easeful package? You're walking around in, help yourself back up and do help yourself and then let's lift up enough to easily take that leg out or maybe and then the other knee forward or just switch legs if you're on your back.

Not really demonstrating the the other leg very well in that. I would like this like to be straight on you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean just sort of settle into it. Well, if we could just get Helen, Debra, and Jim to take the certification, we'd have all plots in chargers and I think they just walk in and go, yup. They didn't know at all. [inaudible] if you'd like, you can go forward onto your elbows or just leaning into it forward. It's again, it's meant to feel good and nourishing and important to your own body.

If it doesn't, we'll find a different stretch even if it's not involving the hip. Okay. We've still got a little bit of fun to do. Have I sufficiently made you think classes over? Sorry. All right. Help yourself up. There's not a whole lot more to do, but there is some, some coming to a release foot. Help yourself up to kneeling. I'm thinking Cy hands. If you don't want to do thigh hinge, what you could do is one more stretch and I'll be out of it in a minute, which will give you some bit of a stretch here. Okay?

That's if you don't want to be kneeling. Um, and hinges, if you do, we're going to reach the arms out in front today and the relationship to your arms to your body isn't going to change. So just give me one second. If I hinge back, I don't, well I might take the arms up, but for the most part they stay there. So here we are, everybody give yourself a little bit of a tucked position so that will mean the arms have to drop down. If you were straight ahead, they're going to drop a little. Okay, inhale, exhale, hinge back. It's taking the back of your leg closer to your calf. You stop when it feels right to stop. Inhale and exhale forward. And again, inhale, I actually read tuck a re length in my low back each time.

Hindering back inner thigh. A little awareness helps. Inhale and exhale. I'm, I'm doing four more and I will add an arm if you want. Otherwise you just don't inhale. Exhale, go back either. Just stay there on the inhale or inhale, arms up, exhale, arms down and come up exactly. Number two of those four I mentioned. Uh, exhale, hinge back. Either stay there or inhale up. Nice.

Sandy and down. And exhale. I'd recommend keeping your eyes forward. All their Andy's not is working out well for him. Um, but it's up to you. Just make sure your back doesn't change unless you're intentionally trying for back extension there. And I think only one more, right? Fabulous. Here it comes.

Yeah. And return. Come forward onto your hands and knees. Getting ready for a leg pull from coming to a plank position. Your feet are flexed. Remember the sensation you had in the sideband, reaching out of your head, reaching out of your feet, equal weight, disperse that energy from there. A Andy, walk your feet back a little bit. Yeah. From there, put your right foot and from there lifts up one out of five.

Let's make it kind of slow to kind of big three and four. Five and change reach long and hour. One, two, three. That's beautiful Mary. That must be five right? Coming up to an upstretched, lift your hips up, head goes down around your upper arms. Adjust your feet or hands for comfort. As you look at your feet there sits bones, distance apart or four or inches. Maybe feel the poems.

Oh by the way I am and trying to get my heels down, but they may not happen. Sorry. Straight back. Yes. Thank you. Straight back as what we're going for and I haven't quite queued that yet, but I'm trying. So now feel the palms from into the mat, not rolled out, not rolled in and then lift or push away from the ground without shrugging the shoulders. If you feel like you might have just sort of feel the shoulder blades pull towards your hips and yes, flat back. So it might feel like you have to slightly anteriorly tilt the pelvis.

I'm going to have you rise up, kind of keep an eye on your feet up on the toes and make sure you distribute your weight evenly and then gently guide yourself down. As your heels go down, the tailbone gently reaches up. If you're a real flexible, you're going to have to hold back because I do want the back foot and up again on those toes. Get as high as you can to on the balls of the feet I should say, and reaching down and again, wait up strong straight arms. Just bend the right knee, let the left heel go down and then up to tiptoes to switch the hips. Stay pretty square here, right? You don't want to shift from side to side. Let's go a little quicker now, but I will say if you want to be on your forums, you just stretch it out. If you don't want to be on your arms anymore, it'll work there too. Okay, so it's up on tiptoes. Let's let me start again cause I see something I didn't say you're up on tiptoes at one moment for both and let's go left heel down. It's down.

Both are up and then all right, and both and all left and up and right and gentle, right? No forcing it. Just going to see what you can do. Doing two more here. One and two then keep up high on the toes. Walk your hands back. Trying not to shift too much. Walk your hands back towards your feet. You're still high on the toes. Looking down. Press the heels to the ground if feel free to bend your knees.

That's okay cause we've just intensified the hamstring stretch. Then lift your dose, but keep the balls of the feet on the ground. That's right. Yeah. Can you lift all five toes and try and spread them out? I don't know. I'm trying all I set that up and then sit the toes down. [inaudible] shift your weight too. Well don't shift your weight actually, but make sure your hands are in front of you for balance.

Rise straight up on those toes. This could be done vertical if you don't want to hang upside down. By the way, you can do this standing. I mean reach the heels to the ground. Lift the toes. Try not to rock back and forth. Let your head hang. Lift the heels up. Are you rolling in? Are you rolling out? Watch that ankle line. Heels down. Toes up, toes down. Leave the heels down.

Sorry for the late call on that and inner thigh. Gently engaging. We're rolling up. Rolling up, stacking the hips over the feet. Let's, let's end up with the feet. Uh, the weight a little more forward in the feet. Then back on the heels. So 60% forward, right? That one we talked about. All right, from there. Let's try it again. You can be done with the calves if you're done with the calves. Otherwise meaning just stay there. We're almost done.

Or one more with the rise out. I know you're on your mat. It's going to be much harder when you're don't have your hands there and reach down or you could quickly step off if you want. Here we go. I'm doing two more this time. When you reached down, see about allowing your upper body to stay up there. It's an image. It's the idea that you're floating upward as you stretch downward. And one more time.

And then find yourself back on solid ground again like you did in that side bend. You're, you're lifting up off your feet, right? We're not just letting gravity work against us. We're going to resist against gravity. And then just take the arms forward, bring it down, keeping that lean again, forward and, and then if you'll just take a step forward into the mountain, go this way, facing this way. And then with that, inhaling up, grab onto your left wrist. You may decide you want to bend the knee a little. I don't know if you would, if you need to go a little wider with your feet, Mary, and you'll get a side stretch. Yeah, good, good. So reach over there.

I'm trying to feel it all down the side of your body and then help yourself up. Switch the hands. I'm thinking up before I go over and as I go up, I'm reaching into the opposite foot. Almost lost it again. If you feel it in your back, you're probably over rotating. So let's not do that and then help yourself up. And then the one, I like it. I'm maybe feed a little closer together. Last one, a little shoulder opener.

I'm just parallel comfortably placing fingers or, yeah, that's it. Bend the knees, changing forward. Flat back over. Then you can around reaching the arms up head. Just hang your head and you're good. Yup. That's it. Good. Keeping your arms like so. Or you could let them go and hang. You're just going to roll up. Roll up, roll up.

Let the hands go when it feels right. Let the arms continue up the front. Big deep breath in. Keeping your spine lifted in along. Let it come around there. Sorry, I need one more. Inhale up and.

Comments

Great class thanks. It was good to the the stretches throughout. I feel ready to face the day now!!
Watched this video before teaching 2 mat classes this morning. There were a lot of different moves I loved and tried to incorporate into the classes. Decided I needed to watch it again to absorb more!!!
Thanks for the inspiration :)
my first clase back after a while i love it!!!!
Welcome Back Jenny!! What kept you away?

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