Rhythmic Meandering

Greetings friends. Welcome to this practice rhythmic meandering. It'll be helpful for you to have a blanket and a couple of blocks handy. And this particular flow brings in the classic Pilates mat exercises of hundreds, a little nod to the front core, as well as single a kicks, double a kicks, and swimming for the back core. So let's start standing, step to the front of the mat, bring the feet together, get yourself centered, draw the hands to the heart, and take a deep breath in.

As you exhale, just release your arms, pour your energy down into your feet and reach upwards, lifting through the heart, through the gaze, subtle backbend up through the chest, stretching it up through the roof. Into the sky, and then exhale, just soften the knees, pour your body down into a forward fold. We're going right into chondron on the scar. So we'll step that left foot back to a nice long lunge, lower the back knee down. And as you inhale reach forward and up, find that low lunge, a little variation will take a side bend, bring right hand to hip, left arm up and over, and open up through the obliques to the side waist.

As you exhale, sweep that arm forward and down, pivot the back shins, is where the blanket comes in. And then left hand down, right arm, right leg reaches long, opening up through the side. This little meandering through side bends. And then as you exhale shift back to the front of the mat and step to plank, up and over the blanket, lower the knees, lower the chest and hips. We always take a lunar vinyasa for chondrona and then let's find our cobra swan.

Pull the heart forward. We get to take two more of these, inhale pressing down through the palms, lift upward through the heart, exhale. And just working with the same rhythm, movement to breath, inhale to reach. Exhale, pull the heart forward and down, press to hands and knees, and then back to your downward dog. Take a deep breath in through the nose. Exhale through the mouth.

Step the left foot up and over your blanket. Lower the back knee down. And let's come up into that low lunge big inhale. Left hand to the hip side bend up and over from the right knee all the way up to the right fingertips. Take a deep inhale to prepare.

And then exhale sweep forward and down the back shin pivots, right palm plants, left arm and left leg extend long and even float. Full big inhale as you stretch the body long. And then exhale, return to the front of the mat, runner's lunge, and then step to your forward fold. Lift your head and your heart come all the way up to stand, stretch up to the sky, exhale, release your hands. And let's do it again.

Inhale reach forward enough. XL, soften the knees. Release it down. Step the right foot back to a low lunge. And inhale to rise.

Just feel this rhythm and flow. As you exhale side bend, left hand to hip or fingertips to the earth. Take a moment here, breathe in, sweep it forward and down, back shin pivots. Here we are in this beautiful supported side bend. Let's add a little elbow to knee to feel the front core engage and then extend into a slight back bend to feel the back core engage.

It's almost like cat cow on its side. So rounding flexing the spine and then extending through the back body one more. Extend and reach, take a deep inhale, exhale, return to the front of the mat, And then step back downward dog. Shift it forward to your plank. You can roll through the spine and ripple. And then lower the knees followed by chest and hips.

Inhale to your cobra slash swan, pull it forward. We get two more. Inhale feeling our back core engage. We get so excited about working our front core, but it's equally as important. To strengthen the back body all the way down to the glutes, supporting the lower spine, press back to downward facing dog.

Deep breathe in right here. And you can already feel the rhythm of your heart. Little heat in the body. Let's step the right foot forward up and over the blanket, lower the back knee in how to reach forward enough. And then take that side bend, right hand to hip, or right fingertips to the floor, deep inhale as you lengthen, and then circle forward and down, the back shin pivots, and we land in this little side plank, elbow to knee, inviting that cat cow action in the spine, exhale, and inhale.

Exhale, and inhale. One more. Stretch out to your full length, expand through the fingers, and then return to the front of the mat. This time, step into a forward fold. Inhale come all the way up, lift your head, your heart, your hands, exhale back to tadasana.

Let's bend our knees, come into chair pose, utkatasana. And as you exhale, just sweep the arms back inhale reach forward and up. Feel that pumping rhythm with the breath twice more. Little heat into the legs. One more.

Exhale. Now this time, pull the navel in. Open up your knees and sink down into a little squat here, a little malasana. Walk your fingertips forward. Relax your head down, gentle stretch to the low back and hips.

We'll be working with this shape and transition in some of our later practices. But for now, just hang out here. Slowly bring your hips to your blanket, and go ahead and center yourself so that you can lean back and find your, Navasana, a k a teaser in our Pilates mat repertoire. So knees can be bent or legs can be straight. You can keep your hands right behind your knees or you can float and just feel the difference between straightening the legs or bending the knees.

It just depends on how you're feeling. It might even feel better to keep your feet down, but take a couple breaths here. And then tuck the tail end or lower into what we call art in Avasana, a half boat pose. This is also the same position that we start to add a little pulsation, a little nod to breath of fire, come back up. And do an exercise that we call the hundreds. So let's get ready for that. Let's lower down.

There's that Ardenivasana, a k a hundreds position, and then come back up. One more time. Lower down. Exhale, come back up. And then let's lower all the way down, bend the knees, relax the head neck and shoulders down, take a little windshield wiper. So we're about to go into a classic Pilates Mad exercise called the hundreds.

It's very related to breath of fire. There's a pumping breath. We have five breaths in, five breaths out. You can syncopate it or you can take a smooth five count inhale, five count x tail. We'll be in a little bit of a c curve.

So let's come into it curling up. And if you feel like you're too far off your blanket, you can always scoot forward a bit. I want a little more support there. So curl up into that c curve. And then extend the arms down alongside the body.

Keep the knees bent 90 degree angle and just take a few pulses like you're bouncing basketballs. That was our rehearsal. Drop the knees and relax your head down, roll your head side to side. So when we come up for the full set, which is 10 sets with 10 breaths, Will it either keep the knees bent or you have the option to extend the legs long? So let's prepare for that. Arms reach over the head. Exhale, circle the arms wide.

Come up into your c curve. Look into the naval center. And then bend your elbows 90 degrees. Let's extend the arms and legs out. Keep the low back flat, pump the arms and inhale to four, five, exhale, two, three, four, five.

Keep your rhythm. And your cadence, four or five inhale. And exhale has a very powerful quality to it locking into the core. Stay with the rhythm exhale. Inhale to. Four, five, exhale.

You probably feel yourself getting nice and warm. Inhale, you can lower the legs. Exale. Some people like to wrap and turn out. Exale. Some people like to keep the knees bent. Two, three, four, five, exhale. We got three more sets. Pick your poison with the legs, exhale.

Inhale. If the neck is feeling it, exhale. Bend your knees. Take your hands behind your head and maybe one arm pulses. Inhale to you. Four five exhale. Swift. So lots of options, but we stay curled up.

Last set. Inhale. Two, three, four, five, exhale. Draw the knees in. Relax your head neck and shoulders down and release your head side to I've been teaching that for, I think, twenty five years and I still haven't figured out the most effective way to do it and talk at the same time, but maybe that's part of my task to learn in this lifetime. Let's rock it on up. And make your way back into chair pose.

And maybe you can do it with no hands if you have short legs. Maybe you use your hands in your blocks to meet back up here in our utkatasana. And sink down. We'll come back to that rhythmic sweep of the arms, inhale to reach the arms up. Exhale. And just check-in to that new found sense of heat and awareness in the core. The hundred serves as a really great warm up for the whole body. It's like jumping rope for your abs.

Come all the way up to standing and inhale, and then exhale tadasana. Release your hands to your hips, and let's move into our first standing sequence. So we'll take our left knee and lift it, eyes steady on one point, and we'll start to just drift our gaze down to the floor as we soften the standing leg and take our left leg back towards a bent knee warrior three. So feel this long line of energy from your head, to your hips, to your heel, and then extend your arms back, kinda like that high flying art of uttanasana that we did, feel the back core engage. You can straighten your leg for a moment, and then soften your knee come down to a runner's lunge.

Hang out here, lower, widen your right foot and lower the elbows. You can lower to your blocks or to your forearms. But coming into a dragon lunge to open the hips and the hip flexors. Let it tilt a little bit forward and back, feeling into your toes, and then go ahead and lower the back knee down, come up onto your fingertips, let your chest open. And notice your hands are inside of your front foot.

We'll start to shift our hips back. The back should pivot in just like we did earlier in the practice and hang out in this asymmetrical Arta Hanummanasen. So we get a nice stretch to the hamstring. You're welcome to use your blocks here under your hands to lift yourself up, but feel that whole left side of the body in a nice open position. And then shift it forward to your runner's lunge again.

Ground the left hand. Let's reach back and grab onto our back foot and give our quad a little hello there. Preparing for our single leg kicks, double leg kicks, bow, some of the fun stuff that's coming. We need open quads for that. Go ahead and release and make your way into forearm plank.

It just keeps getting better and better. So we find our forearm plank and Wag your tail a little bit. And I'd love for you to just practice rolling from one hip to the other. You can even touch down to your blanket if you like, or you can keep it a little higher. But this is a fantastic supporting exercise for your core, for your obliques, the sideways, inner thighs, and it creates stability through the whole torso center of the body. So coming back to the midline, shift the chest forward and then lower the hips down.

We find our sphinx pose. The palms are flat. We pull the heart open. The neck is long. So this very elegant posture here. And now let's see if we can awaken our hamstrings.

Just pull your right heel towards your butt. Tow is pointed, and then flex your heel. We'll draw it in. You can feel the hamstring squeeze and extend that right leg and set it down. Draw left heel in, flex, squeeze it in again, then extend and set it down. And just feel that point, flex, extend, set it down.

Point flex, extend. Kind of a little wake up, a little snap, for the back of the body. You can also flex point. Right? Just working with some articulation through the ankle, some precision, and engaging through the back core, single leg kicks. Now press into the palm, spin the elbows wide and turn your head towards your screen. Bring your hands behind your back.

One hand grabs the other elbows wide and bring the legs close together. Drop both heels in and notice if your hips hike up, try not to do that. Try to press the front of the pelvis down, and give me three little kicks here. One, two, three. It's just a little squeeze of the hamstrings. Extend. Reach your arms back your legs back.

Open up through the chest. I like to give my feet a little space here. For the SI joint, and then we turn our head the other way, bend the elbows, three little kicks, three, and then extend to open up the back hoars engage. The shoulders are opening. Turn your head. You get one, two, three little kicks, extend.

Turn your head. One, two, three little kicks, extend, and then reach your arms forward. Lots of strength for the back core. We're gonna go for a swim here. Arms and legs paddling. As you get nice and long through the neck, through the spine, moving from shoulders and hips, taking a little swim, get long and low and feel the back core engaged, breath in, breath out.

Release back to child's pose. And I always underestimate those exercises. They look really kind of mellow and simple, but they're actually quite technical and really amazing for strengthening the back core. Let's shift to hands and knees. Curl the toes under, press to your downward facing dog.

And then we've got an the nice little marker of the blanket here, we can come up on the toes, bend your knees, take a little hop or a step up and over your blanket in how to lift the heart. Exhale, release it down. Come all the way up inhale, exhale hands to the heart stepping forward. All of these particular exercises and postures have a lot of different rhythm qualities to them. Let's come into that standing balance on second side.

So we'll ground through our left foot, pick up the right knee, and the rhythm of these next couple of asanas that were floating together. We start to work our way back to warrior three. So soften the standing leg and extend your right leg. This is more of a sustained kind of quiet rhythm as we extend through the arms. Lift through the standing leg, lift through the back leg, focus. So it's a spacious rhythm here.

One more breath. And then we lower runner's lunge. And heel toe the left foot wide ground down into your dragon lunge, find a little rocking rhythm, feeling into your joints. So more of a cadence here. And then from here, back knee down, pivot the shin, shift back into that asymmetrical Hanuman, Artahanuman, to open the hamstrings, and then shift it forward.

To your quadricep opener, reaching back to take your foot and giving the quad a little breath of fresh air. This can even have a little pumping rhythm. We don't always have to hold our asanas in one spot and get stuck, but we can allow that internal pulsation to reflect itself out with the breath. So from here, we'll make our way to forearm plank. So we'll come down.

I like to take the foot wide and around. And then we go into our hip dips rolling from the edge of one foot to the edge of the other, side to side. And let this be a playful rhythm, arcing up and over the center of the mat, maybe touching down all the way to the blanket. And this is sort of an applied core work on top of our forearm plank. Lower the hips, find your sphinx.

We're po poised for one more round of single a kicks and double a kicks. We find that fast rhythm as we flex points, stretch release, flex point stretch. Like, you're playing the drums on your own butt, flex point stretch, flex point stretch, flex point stretch, saying the leg kicks, keeping the chest lifted, activating the hamstring, and let's go into double a kick, spread the elbows. Hands are gonna grab behind your back, elbows wide, press the elbows down. The back of the rotator cuff, gets a nice little stretch there.

Three kicks. One, two, three, and then three beats to sustained. Try those three kicks again. And lift and sustain. One more time each side. Three, two, one, lift and sustain. Other side, three, two, one, lift sustain.

Open up the arms. Go for a little swim. This has a quick cadence, a quick rhythm. Sometimes I wish I had little drums right up here under my hands and my feet, so I could just hear that. So feel that in the body as you get long and low.

Feeling it, and you can even slow it down a little and go for a bigger range, feeling the shoulders and the hips, very technical exercise. And then let's take a release into our wonderful, our friend child's pose. Take three good breaths here. Just relax into it. It's a nice counter stretch for the back body, the hips. Your back core has been working hard so far.

Let's shift it forward, hands and knees, and then lower down once again. Scoot yourself back so that you have a really nice support of both the lower ribs and your frontal hip points on your blanket. And then we'll reach out as if we're coming into bow pose because we will. But just feel this moment of, like, maybe I'll reach my feet, but I'm gonna hang out here and just go for a slow oppositional swim. And this doesn't have to be in for perfect. In fact, let it just be a curious exploration of bending one knee straightening the other leg and taking a little swim because we'll work with a kind of an asymmetrical bow. So the next time your left hand reaches back, see if you can grab onto that right foot.

And then draw the right hand down, lift up through the quads. We have that beautiful back bend and quad opening. And then let's pour this on its side. Roll on to your left side. And you might roll even towards your back.

Some of us might roll on the all the way onto the back and tuck the foot under the body coming into this, like, whoa. It's almost like I'm giving myself a time massage here. But many of us will stay on our side and enjoy this really nice shoulder and quadrice up opener. It's a nice counter stretch in line with everything we've been doing. So wherever you are, whether you're flat on your back or on your side, come on back to center, roll the hips and ribs onto the blanket, and then go for a little exploratory swim again.

Just feeling into the intelligence of the back body. We tend to kinda get a little bit numb back there sometimes. And the next time your right hand reaches back, grab your left foot, left hand comes to the mat, start to roll, pour it over onto your side. And you again might tuck that foot. Watch out for your battery pack. Come onto your back or stay on your side.

And there's something really nice about the body weight compression onto your own ribs or your own wrist. But if it doesn't feel quite like that to you, stay on the side and enjoy. And let's roll out of that. Coming back to center, pressing yourself up. Take a couple cat cows. You can adjust your knees to your blanket and very simple.

Cat cow movements, inhaling to arch, exhaling to round, inhaling to arch, noticing how you feel with these different rhythmic pulses that we've been experiencing in this practice from the hundreds to Trajan Amaskar, to our single kicks, our double leg kicks, round and roll through the head and tail, kind of rinsing it all off. And then as you're ready, let's go ahead and take our blocks and set up for a supported baddha konasana. So you can take your blocks and one's gonna be right under your thoracic spine right between the shoulder blades. The other one's gonna go behind your head. Some of you might like to have each block taller, right, taller. So set it up how you like depending on your neck, your spine will swivel around.

And then when you recline back, bring the soles of the feet together, find your spot where that block may meets your thoracic spine. So it's right at my shoulder blades, right behind heart center, And then the lower block should comfortably catch your head. If your head's kinda hanging back and your neck is a little tweaked out, you wanna turn the block higher to give you more support in your neck. So wherever that is for you, and then draw your feet closer to your hips. Souls of the feet together and let your arms open nice and wide. And relax.

Breathe. Integrate. And wherever you are in this practice, any of these asanas, exercises, flows that were sort of shuffling the deck on and fusing together, it might be something that's familiar to you or it might be all new. And just coming back to that Niyama awareness of Santosha. We call it this beautiful word Santosha of contentment of acceptance.

Like, this is where I'm at today, and it's just right. I'm allowing yourself to have beginner's mind and just be a student and enjoy. Let's take about five more slow deep breaths here. And then let your next breath be a little deeper than the last. I can say how out of your mouth.

Use your hands to draw the outer knees into the midline. Tip over to your right side, pour yourself off the blocks, and then press yourself up to seated right on top of your blanket. Let's bring the hands to the knees and take a couple simple, sufi rolls, the rib cage, circling over the hips, creating that really nice dynamic flow to bring some different circulation into the low back, the area that you were just working with considerable amount of attention, take it the other direction, rotating and rolling through the spine. Feeling that massage on your digestive organs, let that filter up to the shoulders roll the shoulders up back and down, and then back forward and up, down again, and then let that travel up to the neck, taking a couple simple rules of the head in one direction, all the way around exploring your range of motion through your neck, and then take it the other direction. Noticing how you feel.

One more circle this direction. And sitting up nice and tall, circle the arms out, and up, take a full body breath in. And then exhale draw down the midline. And let's prepare for a nice Javasana. A little bit different.

We'll take our blocks and let our our calves be supported so our feet can just float. So take your, and you would kinda have to approximate where we land, but rest your calves on your blocks and then lift and tuck the pelvis center, just kinda come down one piece at a time here rolling through the back and find yourself situated. So everything feels good. One block under each calf. And press against the calves lift and tuck the pelvis a little bit here, turn the palms to face up, and then allow your eyes to close and rest here in this place of Santosha and meandering, let your breath just travel through all the kind of hidden corners inside the body and the mind and gently caress the inner body with your inhale, and relax the outer body with your exhale.

Deep in your breath, feel your chest expand as you exhale, send a little movement to your fingers and your toes. Reach your arms over your head, reawaken. And as you exhale, draw one knee to the chest followed by the other, roll on to your side. Or rock up through the midline. And then set yourself up, back in your comfortable seated position, bring your hands together at your heart, Thank you so much for joining me today.

I'll see you in the next one. Excellent work. Excellent practice. Namaste.