Pilates Mat Work | Fitness Ep 10

🧘🏼 Carol Beringer's Amazing Movement Podcast | Ep. 10: Pilates Mat Work (38 min)

Get ready to demystify Pilates mat work and get all the kinks out of your body! In this comprehensive episode, Carol guides you through foundational mat exercises that will transform your understanding of functional movement. Learn why mat work is challenging (it's just you, space, and gravity!) and discover how these movements create strength, flexibility, and body awareness simultaneously.
From rolling down to articulate your spine, to mastering the famous "Hundreds," Carol breaks down each exercise with clear anatomical cues and modifications. Perfect for beginners who want to understand what mat work is meant to deliver, or anyone looking to improve their movement patterns and core strength.

This episode combines spinal mobility, core strengthening, and full-body integration in one complete workout that will leave you feeling amazing in your body and ready to handle whatever life throws at you.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Introduction: Building Your Wellness Community
00:19 - Understanding Mat Work vs. Equipment-Based Exercise
01:56 - Rolling Down: Articulating Your Spine
03:29 - Finding Neutral Spine & Your Four Natural Curves
05:43 - Roll Backs: Engaging All Four Abdominal Layers
08:16 - The Hundreds: Breath + Movement Integration
10:12 - Single Leg Circles with Modifications
14:05 - Rolling Like a Ball: Spinal Articulation
16:02 - The Fabulous Five: Advanced Abdominal Series
20:20 - Spine Stretch Forward: Seated Spinal Mobility
24:29 - Saw: Adding Rotation to Spinal Movement
27:06 - Swimming: Prone Back Extension
29:06 - Side Lying Series: Hip Socket Mobility
32:12 - Shoulder Bridge: Articulated Spinal Extension
33:29 - The Three "Wet Ones": Swimming, Mermaid & Seal

ABOUT CAROL BERINGER:
With 25+ years of experience, Carol combines expertise in brain-based functional movement, Pilates, and yoga to help clients achieve improved posture, pain relief, and lifelong wellness. Her compassionate approach has transformed lives of individuals aged 6 to 96.
TOOLS MENTIONED:

Quality exercise mat (3 yoga mats thick for hard surfaces)
Optional: Thera-band for assistance with leg circles

SERVICES OFFERED:

Private Sessions
Group Classes
Workshops & Retreats
Zoom Sessions

CONNECT WITH CAROL:

Website: https://carolberinger.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pilatesandmore110/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarolBeringerMethod
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-amazing-movement-podcast/id1801483560

Subscribe for weekly episodes to continue building your movement repertoire!
#PilatesMatWork #MatWork #FunctionalMovement #CarolBeringerMethod #AmazingMovement

Transcript

00:00 - Carol Beringer (Host)
Welcome to my weekly podcast. I'm building a community embracing wellness and joy as a lifestyle. Join me as I explore diverse self-care practices to live as well as we can for as long as we can. Let's embark on this vibrant journey together. Hi, carol Berenger here. 

00:19
Welcome to another episode of Amazing Movement so that you start feeling great in your body, so that you feel great in your daily life, so that it even helps with your stress and your emotional outlook. Anything that comes at you you can handle, because now you are moving forward with your life as well as having this amazing movement in your body. So I do have a Pilates studio and there's a lot of stuff about Pilates and functional movement. Now that's confusing and a lot of people say oh, you know, I've tried mat work at a gym or something that's so hard. Well, sure it is, because it's just you and space and gravity. And so when we use pieces of equipment to help us and they do help, because it's called a closing the kinetic chain you have something to hold onto, you have something to push against and pull against and leverage, and so we're gonna do some basic mat work. That will just get all the kinks out and it might demystify what the mat work is meant to deliver. All right, so let's just come down to a mat, and if you are working on a hard surface, you do want to have more than a yoga mat. This is, you can see, a nice mat. That's about three yoga mats. So if you're on a carpet, one or two yoga mats on top of each other. If you're on a hardwood floor, please invest in a really nice mat, and this is, you know, carpet one or two yoga mats on top of each other. If you're on a hardwood floor, please invest in a really nice mat. And this is, you know, it's a challenging mat to use for yoga because it's wobblier, and so it is a good balance challenge. 

01:56
All right, so we're going to start on the floor and to roll down. So part of the problem with our bodies is that our spines are stuck especially in the thoracic area. So, to roll down, I want you to extend one leg and just hold on to the back of the other one, and if you've seen other episodes where you've met George, you'll know about your sitting bones. But everybody knows those are the bony protuberances at the bottom of your torso. So you're going to roll over your tailbone and just let this leg come with you and pull your abdominals back to articulate your spine down onto the mat. That'll already feel like a massage. 

02:33
So we're gonna bend our knees and what we're looking for, and let's do hips, knees and feet in alignment. And remember your hip sockets are on either side of your pubic bone, so our feet aren't wide in line with our pelvis or our shoulders, they're right in line hips, knees and feet. About your fist could pass between your knees. So we're going to lengthen down and many of you are going to have this because we have forward head hang in life. So it's the first thing we're going to work with is how do we get in touch with where our head is over our spine? So we want to find the four natural curves, which is behind the neck, through the ribcage. A small space should stay in your low back and then your sacrum and tailbone continue down and we'll have the pelvic floor staring between the legs. So I know a lot of times in fitness we sink the belly to protect the low back, which is great, but that's not how we want to walk around in life. We want to be over our pelvic floor. 

03:29
All right, let's start meeting both ends of our spine. So we're just going to nod the chin and you'll feel the pull there, because your head floats on your spine with soft tissue and that little pull is called the atlas, the first cervical vertebra, the one closest to your head, and it only goes back and forth like this. You know atlas? Okay, so that's atlas. So now, with your nose to the ceiling, make a circle about the size of an orange, go in one direction three to five times, and this really feels great. I mean, if you never take the time for this, do it now. Circle the other direction, and that one's called the axis. It lets your head turn on the top of your spine. I call it the Linda Blair. If you've ever seen the Exorcist, so that's the one that lets it turn. So that's the top of your spine. 

04:24
Now let's. So that's the top of your spine, now let's get in touch with the bottom of your spine. So make this kind of diamond shape and put it on your low belly Fingers, where mom said never touch in public. Your thumbs are just below your belly button. And then we're going to take the curve out of the back, which is a tuck, so the tailbone's pointing up towards the back of the knees and then roll the tailbone down and let the low back come up off the floor and then back and forth and even use a breath with it Inhale to get long exhale because we learned the importance of the breathing to strengthen abdominals at one point in this series and then come to neutral where your hands are parallel with the floor and the ceiling and that's a neutral pelvis. 

05:07
So your pelvic floor is facing the wall. Your low back has a tiny little arch in it and the curves of your spine are meant to absorb shock against gravity. Your ribcage should be on the mat and you should just be able to fit maybe a couple fingers under your low back. You don't want to be able to slide your whole hand because that means you're like this. So you want to have your ribcage settled and then your neck should have its natural curve. So if your chin is up, just kind of pull it back, like a cat has the scruff of your neck. How they would pull it back. 

05:43
Or I just always think nose goes back to the round part of your skull, alright, so now we're in neutral spine, so we're going to come up again the way we rolled down, take a hold of the back of the other leg, nod your chin and then push your leg into your hands to come on up. And for some of you it might have looked like this and that means the front muscle wanted to be the boss. So we want all the abdominals, the four layers, the rectus abdominis, the one on the front, the internal and external obliques, which helps you go sideways and bend, and then the one that wraps around the whole torso, the transverse abdominis, to be engaged. All right, so we're up, we're going to do a roll back, you're going to line your heels with your sitting bone so again, just your arm could fit between your legs so that engages the inner thighs. It means they're not flopping out or in. We're using the whole leg Hands behind the meaty part of your hamstrings and you're just going to tuck that tailbone under and go back until your arms are straight, exhale here and then inhale to float up and perch right on top of your sitz bones, reaching the crown of the head to the ceiling, so someone behind you with a spotlight would see space between each vertebra. Roll back over the sacrum and go back, pulling the abdominals in, and then float up on your inhale, find your perch on top of your sitzpans, big toes down on the floor or mat, because we have a tendency to roll out, and then because we want to engage this midline where balance comes from, and we're not really in touch with that. 

07:20
Alright, so you might notice right now that you're going back further each time. While your arms aren't getting longer, your spine is loosening up and start to articulate. So now we're going to go one more time Exhale to go back and inhale to roll up, and it probably feels great. You can feel your spine coming apart, your rib cage moving every which way, take your arms out in front of you as if your arms are on top of a coffee table, and then just curl back so now we don't have the closed kinetic chain, it's going to be tougher and then push your arms forward and pull your abs back to roll you up. So by doing that, you're using your muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia to move your skeletons through space. I mean, right now I feel the arch of my foot, I feel my hamstrings, I feel my sit spins come together, I feel every part of my spine and I almost feel like I'm going to get a cramp right here because we have all this weight in the upper body. 

08:16
So now let's roll all the way down and if you're struggling, just hold on to your legs a side anywhere. Roll all the way down wide through the shoulders, long through the neck, and then we're going to take the arms long at the side and we're going to discover a dreaded exercise by many people called the hundreds. The hundreds is 10 breaths of an inhale for 5 counts, exhale for 5 counts, which adds up to 100. We're going to start where we nodded the head and we're going to bring the chin towards the chest and slide the arms forward until they levitate at shoulder height. Now what probably happened is you tucked your tailbone up, because we're used to doing that in fitness to protect the low back in a crunch. But what I want you to do is send that tailbone back down so you feel that you have that little space in your low back, because now we're holding the spine in neutral in an upper ab curl. You're going to push like you're pumping balls underwater and they're popping back up and you want to be you're not just shoulders down and neck up, pushing forward until the tips of your shoulder blades are all that's on the mat and you're gonna inhale through the nose and exhale through a soft jaw to allow tension to get out of those chewing muscles that are, for size, the strongest muscles in your body, next to your brain, that carry a lot of stress through the rest of the body. 

09:38
If you're successful with this and we've probably done at least five breaths, hover one shin in a tabletop position, bring the other one up and pull the knees together, and again that tailbone is down, reaching towards the far wall. Arms are super long. You're wide through the chest and that's got to be a hundred by now. So just hold on to the back of your legs, roll your spine down. Head comes down last, place your feet down on the mat, slide your legs out long and we're going to do a single leg circle. 

10:12
So there's going to be a couple of different ways to do this, because some of us have tighter hamstrings than others. So we're going to begin by pulling the right knee in towards the chest, but still keeping the neutral spine. Lengthen the leg up towards the ceiling so we're not letting that curve leave the back. You have to lengthen through your torso and then we're just going to cross over, push and pull around. Now, if you're struggling to have both legs straight, just bend the bottom leg in enough to get this leg as straight as possible. Now I'm magically going to get an aid from under my mat Many of you have these at home and it closes the kinetic chain because, remember, we talked about how mat works so difficult because it's just you, space and gravity when you put this on. 

10:59
You don't want to pull to have a lot, you just want to have tactile feedback where the end of your leg is and elbows on the mat. And then we're going to do the single leg circle here, cross over on the inhale and push, exhale, so we're using our breath to help our torso stay stable. You're going to cross over and push and pull around and again, if you have the ability, you straighten the bottom leg, but you don't want to jeopardize your neutral spine and we're using our breath. We're inhaling to push and exhaling to pull and we're not rocking all over the place so that torso stays stable. Finish at the top and then reach to the right, push, pull across with your inner thigh and come up to the ceiling. This leg bottom leg, the standing leg it's called is reaching long to stabilize us. And this is the working leg inhaling one-third, exhaling two-thirds, and we only want to do five of each of those. 

11:55
I know we did a couple extras to go through the ability to have the bent bottom leg or the straight bottom leg and the aid of the band. So now you know how to use that. And then bring that knee in, give it a hug, place it on the mat and slide it along. And there's a reason why we're not just picking the leg up and putting it down, touching tactile feedback again, touching the back and sliding it along. Let your brain get a notice that we're using the back of the body as well. Slide the left leg in, hug it in, settle your tailbone and I'm going to go straight legs because I can, and so I'm long through the right side, pressing down into the mat and long pushing this leg up to the ceiling, while still anchoring the left side of the pelvis, wide through the chest, long through the neck. Arms are long and the arms are active too, because if you've watched other parts of this series, it's the steering wheel connection is now in this configuration Cross over, push and pull around. 

12:57
So you're going to inhale to push, exhale to pull. Everything is push and pull because we're using oppositional energy to lengthen, to strengthen all our muscles while decompressing the skeleton for flexibility. That's where flexibility comes from from a decompressed skeleton, using long, lean muscles, and then reach to the left, push and pull around. Inhaling and exhaling is important for core stability and strengthening the abdominals Last one in this direction and then bend that knee in and give it a hug and then we're going to use it, because we laid down by holding on to the back of the leg, to articulate the spine. So now let's do the reverse Nod the chin, come up into that upper ab curl, take an inhale and then exhale, push your leg into your hands and pull your abdominals back to come up. And I know that a lot of people might be struggling with this, but we're leading with the chin. So we want to articulate the spine. So you nod the chin, sink the belly and push the leg into the hands. 

14:05
We're going to do a really super fun exercise, now called rolling like a ball. So when we got started, we started with the roll backs. You're going to take the feet together. Just the inside is touching. Your knees are shoulder width, so you have this diamond shape. Let's take the hands behind the thighs, sit up on the sit bones, lift the crown of the head to the ceiling and create all that space in your vertebra so that you can articulate your spine by rolling back over the sitting bones until you feel that your your tailbone is is heavy into the mat. Then just pick up your heels. You'll feel your low belly and the hip socket area fire up and then keep pulling your belly button back towards your spine until your toes leave the mat. You're wide. Make sure your shoulder blades are down your back. You don't want to have your shoulders up by your ears and elbows are wide. So here's your steering wheel connection and now we're just going to keep pulling the belly back, back, back against the spine, until we've rolled down every vertebra. 

14:59
Lift the tailbone to the sun and then come back up. So just think of going down the center of your spine, pulling back with the inhale to lift the tailbone buns to the sun. Exhale up. We don't go to the shoulders. The head never touches the mat. We don't want to put load on the cervical spine. Let's do three more Inhale, lifts the tailbone, exhale the abdominals, come back to bring you up If this is no challenge. 

15:22
Put your hands on your shins and wish me luck that I don't bounce up also. Inhale tailbone up, exhale upper abs, help and on the way back, the belly takes you back the upper abs and then the low belly puts the brakes on the way up and some of you might feel this going on and again that's the outside muscles trying to be the boss. We're going to do something now called the Fabulous Five, which is a very challenging abdominal series. It's actually called the Ab Series. So we're gonna roll, having the knees touch after that last, rolling up from the rolling like a ball, roll down your spine, pulling the belly back and just settle into an upper ab curl. 

16:02
Send your tailbone long. You're going to have a tendency to want to curl up in a ball and have the bottom come up off the mat. Try to reach and you'll feel the abdominals come in. You're going to press out one leg and just put both hands on one shin and pull that shin down towards your shoulders and push this leg so long that it's going to touch the wall and then switch. And the perfect move is if the outside hand goes to the ankle and in so that we're keeping that leg. If you look at your thigh, you can't see your shin or your foot, because that's lengthening your psoas, which is a huge muscle pair that contributes to low back compression, and so this way we're retraining it to lengthen, to help us be through, and this is just called everything's logically called single leg stretch. 

16:52
Let's take the knees in, take the head down, empty the neck by just taking your head side to side, nod the chin and find your upper ab curl again. This is the double leg stretch. So less challenging will be legs straight up to the ceiling, arms out, circle around and catch the shins. More difficult is lower legs arms to ears, circle around, exhale, inhale, reach out, exhale, circle around. Two more Last one Bring the knees in, take the head down, take the head side to side as we advance. 

17:28
We don't take a break between and then nod. This is called scissors Legs both go up to the ceiling. Lengthen that tailbone down into the mat so you have a neutral pelvis. You're going to slide your hands up as far up your leg I'll go this side so you can see better and you don't want to be in the knee pick because that will naturally make the knee bend because there's tendons back here. So, either below or above, push the leg into the hands and push this one away through the back of the leg and then push this one through the back as you pull this one in and again, it's right in line with your hip sockets through the back as you pull this one in and again, it's right in line with your hip sockets and we'll inhale to one side and you can take an extra little pull at the top, inhaling and exhaling, and just keep your breath flowing Again because the breath strengthens the abdominals, both legs up to the ceiling. Just take the head down, take it side to side. 

18:21
Now what we do to find the upper body connection, the steering wheel connections I call it breastbone, shoulder blades, bottom of the shoulder blades, in the back which holds up our head. Overlap your hands and put them around the round parts of your head and your thumbs are at the very bottom of the skull where you'll actually find two little nooks to hold your thumbs. Squeeze your inner thighs together, find your upper ab curl and then heels together, toes apart, so you can really feel like you're squeezing your inner thighs. Reach from your glute and hamstring connection on the inhale, exhale, empty all the air out to pull your legs back, inhale, squeezing the sit spoons together, finding the length through the hamstrings, and then, as you get better at this, you can lower the legs even further. Length through the hamstrings and then, as you get better at this, you can lower the legs even further. Push through the back of the legs to pull up, reach from the sits bones area, which will engage both the hamstrings and the glutes, but don't go anywhere where you feel it. Challenge your low back. Now. 

19:20
The first one we did was the single leg stretch. Now we're gonna add a twist to it. So overlap your hands, put the around the round part of your head, push your head against your hands, hands against your head to lengthen through the back of the neck and you're gonna twist opposite elbow to knee and look back at the opposite arm and then switch to the other side. Inhale to one side, exhale to the other, so you're not bringing your knee across the center, you're reaching your steering wheel connection towards the opposite leg. Let's just do one more to each side. Remember to inhale and exhale. Bring the knees in, lie the shoulders down and hug the knees into your shoulders, and a really nice stretch is to pull the knees over to one shoulder and then, like, make a U-shape to come over to the other shoulder and then back to center. And then let's hold onto the back of both legs, nod the chin, take a great big inhale, exhale, push the hamstrings into the hands to help you come up. 

20:20
Spine stretch forward. So our legs are underneath an imaginary coffee table. We're perched on those sitz bones. Back is against an imaginary wall. If you cannot sit in this 90 degree angle, pop your knees, that'll give you a break. Take your hands and just put them straight down in front of you, fingertips touching the mat, but lift your breastbone through that space. You're going to nod your chin to look at your fingertips, exhale, push the hands forward, pulling the abdominals Like somebody has a rope around your waist and they're pulling you. Your low back is super glued to the wall. 

20:54
And then inhale to stack that up and then, as you go, if you have the ability, to get the leg straighter. It might take time. Take and don't force past it. So always work with your body. Look down at your fingertips, exhale to push forward, inhale to stack up. Now I just have my heels at the edge of the mat. You can take them a little wider if that'll help you, because it'll open up the hip socket. 

21:19
And now what we're going to do is push the arms straight forward until they come up like they're on top of a coffee table. The feet are underneath and your back's against that imaginary wall. You're going to grow tall. On the inhale, nod your chin, slide the arms across the tabletop, exhaling, lift your ribs over the table and then inhale to sit over your sitz bones and stack your spine as if you were stacking poker chips or hockey pucks one on top of the other. And let's do three more Exhale to look down and push. 

21:49
So we exhale as we get smaller and we inhale to get big. And again, looking down your shirt, reaching out your head follows your spine. All right, this is a fun one. We're going to go forward. Take a hold of the shins, ankles, whatever you can get a hold of, and then keep pulling, like a hot poker is coming at your belly button. Keep pulling the abdominals back towards your spine, but push your legs forward with your arms so you'll feel the steering wheel connection. You'll feel your sitting bones. You've got the belly pulled up off the belly button. I mean the breastbone pulled up off the belly button, inhale, fill up the back of your lungs with air, exhale, squeeze all the air out, exhaling and pulling the bottom ribs towards each other and back towards your spine. Who knew you could move all your bones right? 

22:40
Inhale and exhale because there's all types of muscles between your rib cage that we never give a thought to either and then bring those legs together, put your hands under your thighs, walk your feet in, like we did for the rolling like a ball exercise. Sit up nice and tall, roll back over your sitz bones towards the tailbone, pulling the belly back and lengthening your spine so we never collapse. We're always lifting against gravity. Pick up your heels again, pull your toes a little further back towards you so that the just weight is on the toes, and then when you come up, you're just gonna balance. Here this is called open leg balance. You're going to press your leg up to the ceiling and press your hamstrings into your hands. You'll feel your belly pull away from your thigh there's so much going on and then push your kneecap up to the ceiling. As you pull the foot down, reach through the back of the leg to straighten, and if you don't straighten and it shakes, that's also a good sign and it means you're waking things up. So pushing through the back of the leg and then kneecap goes up towards the ceiling as you bring that leg down. So we're not just flying through space, we are using body control. That's what functional movement is Alright. 

23:53
Now let's send the legs back out again and wide. We're going to add to the spine stretch, into something called sol. So again, if you need to pop your knees to sit up on top of your sitz bones, you will. Eventually we have to work with the body and the rule of thumb is in 10 times you'll feel a difference, 20 times you'll see a difference, and 30 times you'll have a whole new mind-body connection. And then, when you get to that far or that level, then you go 10, 20, 30 more. So if you ever read a book on making and breaking new habits, it's that, and this saying applies to all functional movements. 

24:29
So you wanna work with the body and sequence it? Okay, slide the arms out like we did for the spine stretch forward and we're gonna add a twist to it. So if you're a golfer or a tennis player, baseball, anything that needs torsion and torso control during a sport, this is the place. All right, so hands on and press like you're feeling pressing your into the table as you lift the breastbone through there. Slide your hands along the table until just your thumbs are on the edge of the table. We have a tendency to want to do this because we think it's more and more is better. But nope, body control is the way to go. 

25:06
Okay, we're gonna lift the breastbone, we're gonna turn towards the center, have the hand in the center and reach the other arm back as far as we can without losing integrity, and then thumb up in the front, thumb down in the back, follow the arm with your head, lengthening everything apart, and then push with the back arm to pull you up through the center. And then lift and turn the other way and exhale all the air out because we're getting smaller. Remember, we exhale to get small and we inhale to float up. And then let's go a little further. Try to maybe get to your big toe and again, hot poker's coming at your belly button. The low back's glued to the wall. Pull your arms apart, push with the back arm to float you up through the center, lift and twist and turn. Go to the big toe and just go to where you can go. 

25:56
We're going to go to the middle toe on the next one, and you can see that my arms aren't really changing shape. It's my torso that's doing the movement and my arms are following my torso, and that's what's called moving from your center or core Whatever you want to call it, but I like the center. It's like more global, and also the center line of your body, from your nose to your breastbone, to your belly button, to your feet. The center line is where balance comes from. All right, now we're going to go over onto our bellies, so just flip on over forehead on the mat. I always like to take my feet out to the sides of the mat and wobble back and forth to make sure that I'm centered. So, again, this is called proprioception. Where am I in time and space? Now? I'm gonna bring my legs together and wobble my hips to get the inner thighs as close. Bring your hands right next to your ears Elbows are pointing back and then, here, pull your belly away from your shirt and that's going to take your spine into neutral while you're on your belly, which is called prone. 

27:06
So you'll watch. If I pull my belly away from my shirt, you can see where my shoulder blades come down, my back, my glute and hamstrings connect and then I'm just going to hover my breastbone and I'm going to watch a bug walk out to the end of my mat and jump over to the far wall and lift my breastbone. So I'm not going with my chin, I'm not lifting my head, I'm lifting my breastbone. So this is your steering wheel connection going into upper back extension. So we're working from the bottom of the shoulder blades the pelvis is still in neutral, with the belly pulled away from the shirt and lift the breastbone and just drag the nose and chin forward as your breastbone lifts you up and then bring chin, nose and forehead back to the mat One more time and then push the breastbone forward to come down. 

28:02
Let's do some side lying kicks which also open up your hip sockets. So you're going to come on your mat on your side, lining up your spine with the back edge of the mat. You can either lie out on your arm, you can come up on a bit of a side plank and you can also rest your head in your hands. I'm going to come up here because I have a wrist injury, so lying into my hands is not available to me. So I'm going to push my legs so long that it comes up to hip height and then I'm going to push my foot forward, keeping my spine neutral, and I'm going to point my foot and take it back. And I'm just going to flex and bring it forward and I'm going to point and take it back so I'm not sagging into my shoulder, I'm lifted here. I've got a lat connection. I'm pressing through the side of my arm, which is also when we get to side planks. You'll have the secret already in your toolbox Now. 

29:06
We're going to just turn the knee up towards the ceiling and take the leg up and then flex to bring it back down. So we're going to reach so long that the leg floats up with a soft point and then flex to come down. As I go up, I'll feel different things in the sides of my torso working. And then we're just going to reach the legs matching, reach the top leg so long that it's floating and then just draw like you have a pencil on your heel and you're writing on a receding piece of paper, and just keep your breath flowing. Whenever we hold our breath, it makes our spine freeze up. And just keep your breath flowing. Whenever we hold our breath, it makes our spine freeze up and then we'll just go to the other side. So there's a very long series of sideline kicks and we can get to those eventually. 

29:56
So find your neutral spine and then hinge at the hips to bring the feet forward so that you have good balance the elbow, if you're in my position, is right under your neutral spine and then hinge at the hips to bring the feet forward so that you have good balance. The elbow, if you're in my position, is right under your armpit and you're reaching through a long arm and pressing into the mat. So this is your steering wheel configuration Push through the top leg till it comes up to hip height, bring the leg forward, point the toe and take it back. So when we go forward we're lengthening the hamstring, and when we go back we're lengthening the quads. And again, bring it forward, point the toe to go back. 

30:32
So pointing and flexing also is a nerve glide. We could do a lot of talk about that too. Then we're gonna bring the legs together and we're going to rotate the knee to the ceiling, which literally you're turning your femur in the hip socket, and then soft point up and flex down, like you're going to dust the wall on the far side and then point up and then scrape the ceiling on the way down, two more out, two more and one more, and then reach through your heel. So when you reach through your heel and the feet are matchy-matchy, that means your pelvis is also in alignment. And then you're writing on that receding piece of paper. So your leg just, you're just decompressing everything Hip, socket, knee, ankle, and then back the other way, and every time we point and flex, we're working the whole foot. 

31:24
Okay, what should we do next? Let's come onto the back for a shoulder bridge. So we're going to lengthen out, just like we did at the very beginning, where we knotted the chin and we knew where the top of the spine was, and we're going to rock the pelvis back and forth a couple times to find the length there, find the natural curves, neck, the rib cage. You've got that small space in your low back, all right. So we're going to press the curve out of the low back, tipping the tailbone up towards the back of the knees, all of this with intention. This is going to articulate the spine and pull those bones apart in your vertebra so that you can access all the muscles around them for control and then keep the big toe pressing down into the mat. Your hamstrings could take a beating right now because they're not used to working this way and you're doing a lot of hamstring and glute connection. 

32:12
We're going to add a fancy arm movement on the next one. Take the curve out of the back, tip the tailbone up towards the back of the knees, press the hip sockets to the ceiling. That's your inhale, exhale. Take your arms to the ceiling, inhale, take them back behind you, push the wrists that way and then exhale. Roll down one bone at a time and keep that tailbone up. Try and get through your waist. You're going to feel a lot of glute action and then let the tailbone go down into the mat. Straight arms come down by your side. 

32:42
Let's do a swimming. We're going to finish with three exercises and they're all the wet ones. We're going to swim, we're going to be a mermaid and then we're going to be a seal. So come back over onto and rolling over is pretty important. Okay, let's try this, because getting up and down out of a chair and rolling over are the skills that we lose. They're the first ones we gain as babies, but they're what we lose first as we age. So let's take the the direction that you're going to go in, take that arm overhead and then bring the opposite knee in and roll in the direction that you're going to turn over and come on to your belly, and you'd be surprised how many people cannot accomplish that. All right, so we're going to swim Arms out, long Legs long. 

33:29
Wobble the hips side to side to bring the legs close together, top of the feet, pressing into the mat. If you can do that, sometimes people get cramps in their feet, so it's okay to tuck the toes under a little bit till you get better at this and then just drag your nose and chin along and lift your breastbone so you can see between your hands and my mat's sticky, so they're not coming back. But usually your hands will slide back a little bit. Press the hands down into the mat, lifting the breastbone, and then reach one leg long, the other leg long, and then push the arms. And then reach one leg long, the other leg long, and then push the arms and then start flipping pancakes off your hamstrings, inhaling and exhaling, just gazing at the end of your mat. You're not using your chin. You're using your breastbone to lift that head and then swim like the sharks are going to get your toes this is really difficult and then splash down. 

34:18
Come on up for a mermaid, so you can press up onto all fours and then just round your spine up into a cat and go into almost a cow. You don't want to let your belly sag, you just want to lengthen your spine out. All right, a mermaid looks like this. We're going to sit in what's called the Z stretch, which is a really important stretch for a lot of hip opening. One hand on either knee and the knees should be lined up with each other, which means your pelvis will be in line with each other. You're going to take one arm out and then the other Thumbs in your periphery and, like you're going to touch the opposite walls, you're going to go over like an airplane until the elbow touches the mat, if you can, and then reach that top arm long, but everything is long from your fingertip down to your hip socket. 

35:07
Head is reaching long right in line with the spine. Reach this arm to the ceiling and reach it to the ceiling to float you up, to take a hold of the other knee and go the other direction, but keep lengthening up and then reach out like you're going to touch the opposite walls. Lift the breastbone to float over and reach super long and then reach to the sky. We're just going to do three. Last one lift the breastbone, make the arms as long as they can be, keep them long, so the minute that we bend the elbow or the wrist or whatever, it becomes an arm movement not the whole body, and we want the whole body and then just rainbow around and grab this leg wherever you can and lift your chest for a counter stretch and then we'll just flip the legs to the other side. So make sure the knees are matching. That means your pelvis is in alignment, arms out to the side, thumbs in the periphery, and then we go over and lengthen and then reach to the sky to pull yourself back through center and lift, and again Using your breath, using your breath, and an important part to find is this reaching here through T, we always want to find a little bit of a home base or a start-stop position. 

36:35
That might have been our last one, but let's go one more time out and then we'll come around and do that counter stretch. But just think you can reach from your tailbone through your shoulder blades, through your neck, to the crown of your head and then come on up and rainbow around, lift your chest through there and we'll finish with the last wet one, called the seal. So we did the rolling like a ball and the open leg balance. We're going to start again with the feet touching the knee, shoulder width apart, and we're going to take our hands together like this, because we're grateful that we've had this time together. We're going to take the hands and dive them through and cup your ankles. You're going to pull yourself back over your sitting bones with the length of your spine so the breastbone is lifted, and keep going back until you're balanced and your feet are off the mat and then you're going to open from the hip sockets to clap like a seal. 

37:24
One, two, three and then the rolling like a ball. Pull your belly to your spine, buns to the sun, come on up and put the brakes on with your low belly I know I'm making this look easy, it's not and then roll down. Buns to the sun, come on up and remember when you go back, it's only to the shoulder blades. We don't put any tension on the weight on the neck or the head and it's called loaded flexion. We're in flexion and we're loaded without damaging anything. And again, remember, this looks easy. If you're watching me, I can remember the day that I was successful at doing this, and very advanced would be to be able to pause back here and clap three times and then come up. We are finished. So that got all the kinks out of your body. Thanks for joining me. Remember to subscribe. Tell all your friends and also sign up your pets. Whatever. Join me next time.