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Class #3812

Efficiency

20 min - Class
199 likes

Description

Sarah invites you to embody the breath, center, and awareness you used in the previous classes to help you with efficiency in your movements. It's a little zestier and quicker than the previous workouts so she reminds you to breathe and take care of yourself.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Jul 01, 2019
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Transcript

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Let's embody breath center awareness and be efficient with our daily dose today. So this class is going to be a bit zesty and quick. Remember to breathe and have fun. Also take care of yourself. So we'll start with our feet underneath our hips and take just one big breath up, looking up, stretching up, but also grounding down. Send the arms down or roll forward. Feel your spine.

Feel where you are. Walk out to a quadruple ed position. Hands under any shoulders, knees underneath, hips round through your back. Stretch the back of your neck. Stretch your low back. Wiggle around if needed, and then find a neutral position. Cross your legs behind you. Simply roll over your legs and send the feet out in front of you with your arms forward. Sit Tall first round through your low back and move right into your roll up.

Now if like me, you have a tight back and you need a towel underneath your low back to help you get up, feel free to use yours. I was able to do that first one, so I'll continue just like this. Exhale to peel back, articulating through your spine, stretch the arms over head. Use the breath and take yourself back up. Each and every movement, very efficient, filled with breath, focusing on your center and quite aware of where you are in space. Good. Just one more like this. I seem to have worked my way back on my mat a little bit. I'm going to scoot forward just a bit more and roll back one last time.

That way my head will be connected here. Take your arms wide. Lift one leg up to tabletop. Bring the other leg up to join. Feel free to keep the knees glued together and bent. Or option two, we're going to take ourselves into a slightly bigger movement. Straightening the legs. Inhale to twists. Stretch to legs up. Just straight. Pull back to center. Bend your knees, twist, reach up to straight, back to center. Bend the knees, twist, reaching up back to center and make sure you're breathing.

Twist, reaching up, back to center and bend your knees. Reach your hands overhead. Take a big lift up, hands right behind those legs. Feel the stretch in your spine and get a little rocking and rolling, going iron out any kinks you might have in your low back or any tightness. I know on any given day I could roll a lot. Take your forehead to your knees, stretch here, and then sit tall.

Lean back again, rounding through the spine. Hug those legs in and we'll go right into our rolling like a ball. Here we go. Breathe. Whew. You know, Oh, used to feel bad when I didn't quite get the rolling the first time, but now I just consider it fun. Figuring out how to find my balance, how to find my center while rolling. One more time please. Pause here.

Your shins are parallel to the ceiling. Arms reach forward. We roll back and we juice it up. Double leg stretch. Hold the legs, reach back, pull. Calculate each movement. Notice where you are breathing deeply and two more here. Nice flow. Hold one leg in. Reach the other leg out. Where in our single leg stretch. Feel those knees grazing past one another.

Don't be shy to use your hands to help you lift a little higher. That may help you ground down through your low back and feel more centered here. One more time. Each side, please. Gently Pause Chris Cross. Wow.

The focus should be on staying lifted here as you pass through center and feeling that you're still lifting as you're twisting your spine. Also very controlled with your legs. One more time, each side here, and then come in. Two straight legs. Hold one leg up the other leg down. And let's change with no pulsing today. And just focus on feeling stretch and work and brash and ease and remembered joy. Caring for yourself. One more time. Each side. [inaudible] two legs in.

Take a quick little rock and a quick little roll all the way up. Straighten out your spine, open your legs, lift and open your heart. Ah, breathing in and breathing. Halfed good. Let's go ahead and separate the feet here. Open like rocker. You can choose to do a preparation with bent knees or you can go straight to the straight leg version. I'm going to do one prep and then decide [inaudible] so balance, straightening out your spine. Go ahead and straighten your legs.

If it suits you today, make sure you have enough room at the back edge of your mat to be able to move into the rollover because we're going to roll right to it. [inaudible] one more open like rocker. [inaudible]. Good. So from here, release your hands. Bring your legs together, your arms go down, your body goes over and we're in the rollover position. Flex your feet.

Tap the toes to the earth if you're able to and roll yourself down. Bring those feet together. Inhale, rollover, flex, separate. Feel the flow. Feel the efficiency of movement. Just a couple of each moves or a handful of each moves. If you want to be specific, they're flex, separate touch and we roll down.

Hug those knees deep into your chest. Take the hands behind the legs and feel that little rock and roll. That is one of my favorite things to do. If you haven't figured it out, that is my self care. In these classes, cross your legs in front of you. Scoot back a little bit and we're going to move through to the plank position. So if it's comfortable to roll over your legs, please do so. Now. If not, find another path. Two legs are straight. We have a nice powerful plank, very supported in the abs pushing through the feet.

Let's go ahead and 0.1 toe lift up to just three times externally rotate. Lift the leg higher. Woah, take one hand away. Put it down. Do it again. Ah, just for fun. Take one hand away. Good. Try the other side. So you're going to do three, two, and one externally. Rotate open the pelvis and just see if you can lean onto the arm without changing the other foot. Can you just lift the hand away? Try it again.

Two hands down. Lower yourselves all the way, all the way down to the mat. Revisit that idea of tractioning through your spine that I introduced in Matt Class A couple times ago. So you want to ground down through your pelvis here. Lighten the load on the legs, slight internal rotation maybe and pull forward and then release. Moving into a little back extension here. Just a small one. Inhale to upper back extension. Exhale to pull forward.

Feel that handle lower down. Just two more like that. Inhale and exhale to pull forward and lower down. And one more. Inhale and exhale to puff and lower down. Bring your hands underneath your shoulders. Tuck your toes under, push into your feet, lifting your legs. Hoist your belly up, pressing into your hands a little bit.

You'll just lift your hips up and then you're going to pull your heart up. Your head is still touching, and then you're going to feel power in your arms to push yourself all the way up. Good. You need to try it again. If you've never done that before. So let's lower down and give it a go. So you're going to Tuck your toes. You're going to push into the feet. Lift the knees. Don't think about the pushup. Think about polling now, the pelvis off the mat.

Use Your apps now pull the low ribs in, the heart off the mat and then the head, and then just give it a go hoop. There we go. Nice. Draw one knee in, draw the other knee in. Take just a short rest in child's pose. And then we're going to come around on our knees facing the front with your two knees underneath you and your arms wide. Inhale, reach up and over for a big side stretch and come back through. And again, up and over. Big sides stretch. I don't know why I wanted to look up there. Looking down feels better.

There we go. Let's do the other side. Look down and look down. Good. Make sure you're breathing please. And we look down good and we come back out. So let's go to the first side. Up and over. You cartwheel into your hand. If you feel comfortable holding yourself up on a straight arm, you take one foot forward, you take the other foot forward immediately. If that's too much, just put a knee down or put your elbow down.

But the rest of us will hold. Squeeze your thighs together. You can always work up to this. Reach your arm up high to the ceiling and then just take your arm overhead, stretching your side body, look down and take your arm back. So I'm not moving my pelvis. Really, I'm just thinking about my ribs while supporting. Does that make sense? Thinking about opening through the rib cage in the shoulder girdle.

Now come back through. Bring one day knee and bring the other knee in. Have a seat. Enjoy just a moment of pause sitting on your feet or however you need and then stand tall. Literally a moment of pause. My friends reach up and over. Put your hand down. Take the top leg forward and the bottom leg back. Maybe you're here, maybe you have a knee down. Maybe you have an elbow down.

Take care of yourself. So here, up and over, big stretch through the ribs and back through here. Get that hair out of my face. Big stretch to the ribs and back and through. Notice I'm not moving my pelvis purposely. I'm trying to stretch the rib cage and then one knee in, one knee down. Take a little seat. Very lax there for a moment.

So we're going to go ahead and make our way back to our hands and knees for just a quick moment. I know your hands may be tired after that, so do just a couple of circles. Stretching your risks. The majority of the weight at this moment is actually on my legs. Go the other way. Stretch the wrists so often we don't spend enough time on the wrists and the hands and taking care of them. So now give it a go. You're going to turn one hand over.

I would keep the other hand flat and bear some weight on that flat hand to stretch the wrist. Oh yeah. Right. If you can straighten your elbow. Brilliant. If you can't, don't good change sides just to feel that little stretch in the rest there. Good. Bring your hands down. Stretch one leg back, stretch the other leg back. Lift your hips up high and walk yourself up to your feet or back to your feet. Roll up to a standing position. Just for a moment of standing here, feel open through your heart. Grounded, warm. I hope.

Roll down again and let's work just a little bit with stretching the body here. So we're going to walk out to a downward dog type position or pyramid in latise. Press your chest towards your a thighs are up, stretch really employees, and just bend one knee here and then bend the other knee. So stretching the backs of the legs. You can do this vigorously if you want to keep the flow and keep up the pace or you can go nice and slow if that's what you need today. Yeah, so hold one foot down, it doesn't matter which one to me.

Reach the other leg up. Try to keep the pelvis square flexed foot or pointed foot, your choice. Good. And then rotate the pelvis around or ab stack the pelvis if you will, and try lifting that leg up as high as you can. Just intensify the stretch and also feel the work in the leg that's lifted the glute. Working a little, perhaps try to tap into that and do some little pulses. Five, four, three, two and one.

Undo that. Nice. Walk your hands back. Hopefully you'll remember which leg you did. Roll Up. Sometimes right and left just confuses things. Just remember one leg and then the other leg. Roll yourself down again. [inaudible] breathing. Walk out.

Find that position up. Stretch where your chest is toward your thighs. Go ahead and lift the other leg first, squaring the pelvis, feel what that feels like. And then here rotate the leg, lift the pelvis. How high can you lift the pelvis? Go through a feeling of stretch and then notice what you feel working. And then perhaps you're going to do little lifts with that leg in the back.

Four, three, two and one. Gently placed the foot down here. Lower your knees down. Sit back and arrest. Pose for a short but much needed moments. Breathing in and breathing out.

Settle the body for a moment and then come back to your hands and knees for a quick moment. Slide one leg back, slide the other leg back. You can do one slow push up down, or five pushups. What do you think? I think I'm going to do five today. One. Okay. Feel those arms. Feel the core. And on this last one, come down slow. Untuck the toes.

Feel that slight internal rotation of the knees so you're not externally rotating. Place your hands outside of your shoulders and pull yourself forward with the inhale and then continue to go all the way up to that gorgeous swan position and then lower down elbows and then let the elbows bend fully. So again, feel yourself actually lifting your body and letting your elbows open as much as you can at that point. Pull forward as you continue to straighten the arms. Now let's play a little here. Keep the body in extension and we're going to just bend the elbows until maybe the forearms get close to coming down, but they don't need to come all the way down. Think of putting the elbows down.

Good. Two more like that. A little elbow bend. Good morning, triceps. And then here, one last lift and all the way down. Just release your legs for a moment. Go ahead and bend one knee, reach around and hold onto that foot. Rest your forehead on your other arm and take a stretch for your quad. Option one. Just keep your pelvis grounded and your head resting.

Option two, with your pelvis grounded, you can lift your head a little bit. You can lift your leg a little bit and you can pull yourself just into a bigger position just for fun. And then rest. I actually like option one better personally, change sides and take a couple breaths stretching to those quadriceps. Feel that beautiful stretch again. Option one, just keep your head resting, your leg bent and enjoy the stretch. If you want to take it a little bigger, you can kind of lift up. You can let the arm. Uh, I'm really pushing my foot to my arm and pulling simultaneously with my arm as I lift. But as I mentioned before, I actually like option one better and then gently release that. Good. Bring your hands underneath your shoulders.

Push again up to the hands and knees. Walk the legs forward so you're centered on your mat. Cross your legs behind you. Flip over your legs so that your feet are forward. Keeping the feet forward here or scooch forward rather is what I wanted to say.

Find a place where you can balance on your tail. Use your core. Yeah. Let's see if we can first find balance keeping the spine long. This is much like open, like rocker, but of course we're going to move into the teaser today. Why not? You're welcome to keep your knees bent. If you're able to straighten your legs, go ahead and do it here. Oh, and then if you're able to take your arms up by your ears, go ahead and do this here and now. Keep the legs there as you roll down. If you have to. Hold on, if you need a towel, whatever you need to be comfortable here, do it, and then we're going to roll back up.

Keep those legs still and find that beautiful end shape and we roll down. Okay. Keep your eyes on your feet and then the change. Can we come up? Oh, teacher needs a little help on number two there. Ah, let's do one without me talking and see if maybe I'll be able to be efficient with my movements. Need a little help again. That's okay. Always okay. Hold it.

Yeah, hold it. Bend your legs, take a forward fold and feel a nice little release through your neck, through your hips, and through your back. Okay, so I'm gonna face the front. Now you can face whatever direction makes sense. And I'm going to assume kind of a pseudo mermaid position. So I've got two feet down and I've got my knees Kinda like this. Yeah, hard to explain. So just take a look and then I want to rotate around. Put my two hands on the floor, ground down through this leg, right and pull forward to get a little stretched both through my hip and through my back. Now if you choose to go deeper and deeper into this, you can bend the elbows and bring the forehead, the face toward the ground, and then you can pull yourself up and forward and then all the way to extension or you can just think about pulling forward and back, giving you an opportunity to play with what works for you. For me right now, in this moment, this stretch I'm getting in my head feels like a good idea. So that's where I want to be today. Tomorrow I might change my mind.

Good. So undo that. Just kinda roll back onto your bottom and sway your legs side to side a couple of times. Easy like that. Yeah. And then we'll change sides. So changing the look here, it's a little different than our classic mermaid. So I've kind of got my legs not very separated at the moment. I want to ground down through this leg here, the one that's connected to the mat, and then I'm gonna bring my two hands around and this side is always a little tighter for me, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do this today.

I'm pulling forward with my hands and kind of resisting with my leg and I'm getting a lovely stretch through my hip and in through my waist. So you can choose to kind of go down and up with your body. I don't care what the hands are doing or how you do it. Let the pleasure principle guide you. It should feel good or you can just play with that feeling of traction pulling forward and receiving a little stretch.

I'm kind of using the floor as a little bit of a massage tool, which actually I'm going to do a class later with all rolling and massaging. It will be wonderful. And then gently roll yourself onto your bottom. Just take a little hips sway side to side. Good. Find yourself once again in a cross legged position. Hands to the earth, feet to the earth, and walk yourself back to your feet. Dangle.

Release your head, release your arms, take a breath and roll yourself up to standing. Nice and slow, controlled, efficient movement. And then when you feel yourself standing tall, feel your heart lifted, your jaw soft, your head stacked on your shoulders as it should be. One final exhale together. Ah, thanks so much for playing.

The Daily Dose: with Sarah Bertucelli

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Efficiency, Flow, Full-Body

Jul 01, 2019
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20 min
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Comments

Maryam
1 person likes this.
Thank you! It was quick and awesome.
2 people like this.
Level 2 territory especially with the prone to push up exercise. For any true beginners here I'll admit to being a nearly daily practitioner of 8 years who still can't do it though Sarah's instructions and encouragement gave me the best results so far!  
1 person likes this.
This is fun and I liked your style a lot...thank you Sarah
1 person likes this.
Fantastic workout .stiff low back for me today so tricky in parts. Thanks sarah
1 person likes this.
Adding this one to my "under 30" rotation.
Lisa V
1 person likes this.
Liked the pace and the flow of this a lot! Thanks!
Have taken this several times since the challenge and definitely a favourite....fast efficient and fun! 
1 person likes this.
Lovely variations on our regular exercises. Thanks Sarah. 
Thanks Caroline B !
That was lovely, thank you.
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