 Hello beautiful souls. My name is Betty Kondo and I feel so honored to be spending part of your mother's day with you. Today, we are going to be doing a little stretching, a little strengthening, and most importantly, a little relaxing. So, go ahead and find a comfortable seated position on the floor. You may want to grab a block if you have it or a pillow or fold a blanket and stack it underneath you. For a little added relaxation, you may want to put on your favorite scent in a diffuser or throw on your favorite playlist. Go ahead and find a seated position on the floor. I'm going to sit up on the block. I find this is really helpful to kind of open everything up, add a little extra room for our legs and our muscles, but you may sit however feels most comfortable to you. We're going to begin with our eyes closed, sitting up nice and tall, feeling the muscles on either side of our spine, supporting our back, feeling energy out the crown of our head, feeling our sits bones heavy beneath us, stacking one vertebra on top of the other, closing down our eyes, can put your hands on your knees, can put one hand on your heart if you'd like, can put one hand on your belly if that feels good to you, feeling your inhales and your exhales. We'll spend a few minutes here just concentrating on our breath, hitting pause on whatever we were doing. As thoughts come to distract us, you can just gently push them away, set your to-do list to the side. This is time just for you. Focusing on your inhales and your exhales, inhale deeply through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Don't be afraid to make sound with your breath. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Again, deep inhale through your nose and exhale, let it all out. Find the furthest point of your breath. On your exhale, good. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. And as you sit here, just be aware if you're holding tension anywhere. As you inhale and exhale, you might be feeling a little tense in your shoulders, in your neck, even watching your fingers and your toes, maybe the bottoms of your feet. I often find I hold tension in my jaw so you can open your mouth and close it. You can give yourself a little massage on your jaw. Relaxing your forehead, you can use your fingertips and give your forehead a little massage. Making sure everything is nice and relaxed here. Inhaling and exhaling. And as we sit here, I'd just like to read you a little something since it is Mother's Day. On Mother's Day, I want us to celebrate not just mothers of the world, but also the women who have helped us become the strong and beautiful woman that we are. We have all mothered someone and have shown them love and support in their time of need. So let's thank and celebrate those women in our lives, too. So I'm wishing you a happy Mother's Day. Good. Keep inhaling and exhaling. That's your own pace, noticing if you're holding any tension, especially as you exhale. Good. And we'll just begin to do some head circles. So dropping our chin down to our chest, we'll begin to circle over to the right. So right ear over right shoulders. We inhale, chin up to the sky, exhale, left ear over left shoulder, and chin drops back down towards your chest. Good. Same direction. We'll do it again. Inhaling, relax your shoulders. Exhale, left ear over left shoulder. Chin comes down. Good. Reverse the direction of your circle. Inhale to the left. And exhale to the right. Chin back down towards your chest. Good. Again to the left. Inhale, sitting nice and tall, spine supported. Exhale, and down. Good. And then reaching our arms all the way up to the ceiling. And then let your arms just flow back down. Exhale. Inhale, reaching up to the sky. One more time. Palms, kiss at the top, and exhale. Just let your arms cascade back down to the floor. Good. We're gonna take our fingers and lace them, interlace them, placing our hand behind our neck. Now tip your head forward, let your elbows come in, towards each other, and just feel the weight of your neck and your arms stretching out the back of our neck. And then we're gonna do a couple more neck circles incorporating our arms. So inhale, open your elbows wide as you come around to the right. Chin up to the sky. Exhale, elbows nice and wide, and then curling back everything into the middle. Again to the right. Open those elbows, sitting nice and tall as you circle around to the right. Exhale to the left and back down to the center. Good. We'll reverse the circle. Inhale, sitting nice and tall. Exhale over to the right. Curling forward again. Inhale, you might feel a nice little stretch in your low back through this. Exhaling over to the right and reaching forward. Good. Now sitting up nice and tall, we're gonna reach our chin up to the sky, elbows wide. Inhale, and exhale curl forward. Elbows come in, everything curls. Finding a nice little C shape with your spine. Inhale, sitting nice and tall. Feel like the sun is shining down on your chest. Chin to the sky. Exhale, curl. One more time. Inhale, sitting nice and tall. Lifting. Exhale, curl forward. Good. Let your arms fall down. Feeling the weight of your head as you have the C shape with your body, and then stacking one vertebra on top of the other, sitting nice and tall. We're gonna right away move into some shoulder circles. So squeezing our shoulders up to our ears. Rolling them back and down. Inhale. Exhale, back and down. One more. Inhale. Back and down. Reversing the direction of our circles. So coming forward with our shoulders. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, forward. Exhale. One more. Inhale. Good. Now we're going to incorporate our elbows. So tap your fingertips towards your elbows. We're going to bring our elbows together and then send them open and back behind us, circling our shoulders. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Just really releasing any tension in our shoulders. Inhale and exhale. Reverse the direction of the circle. Inhale, elbows come forward as we exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Eyes open or closed. Just sitting nice and tall. Good. Open your arms. We're going to stretch our arms. Lengthen them up and back. Reaching forward and up. Exhale, back behind you. One more time. Inhale. Exhale. We'll reverse the direction of our circle. Arms come up and over like we're swimming through a pool. Feel like you've got resistance. Exhale, forward. Inhale. Good. And then arms come back up. Hands come together. Lengthen even taller and then just tipping over to the right side, stretching the right side of our rib cage. Inhaling and exhale. Make sure you're not collapsing your elbow forward. Do you want to feel like that? Elbows lifting towards the ceiling, releasing the side of your neck, releasing your shoulder down. Inhale and exhale. If this feels good and you want to deepen the stretch a little bit more, you can reach your fingertips out to the side and then bend that elbow and come down a little deeper for a stretch. And any time you're ready to remove a pillow or a blanket or a block from underneath you, feel free to do that. And then inhale, coming back up to seated position. Exhale, arms down. Inhale. Reaching up. Palms come together. Exhaling over to the left side. Feeling that right elbow reaching towards the sky or the ceiling. You might be enjoying this inside or outside. Just taking inhales and exhales, being aware of your surroundings. And then inhale, reach your fingertips out a little further bending that elbow and deepen the stretch. Good. Coming back up as you inhale. Exhale, arms down. Good. I'm going to slip this block out from underneath me. We'll do one more. Inhale, reaching up. Exhaling over to the right. Inhale up. Palms come together. Exhale to the left. Just free flowing back and forth. Inhale. This time, we'll exhale over to the right and then rounding or caving our chest forward down and rolling up through the center. Good. Inhaling up. Exhale to the left. Inhale up. Exhale to the right. Inhale up. Exhale over to the left and then rounding forward. Just draping your neck and shoulders forward and then stacking one vertebra. On top of the other, rolling through. Roll your shoulders up and back. Just check out your posture. See if you're feeling a little bit more even, a little more lengthened through your spine. Feeling your sit-spons grounded. Feel like you've got a beautiful, stunning crown on your head. You're lengthening out the top of your head. Good. Now we're going to move into an all-force position. So we're going to stack our hands directly below our shoulders. We're going to stack our knees directly below our hips. We're going to pull our abs in towards our spine. So feel like our belly button is going to touch our spine. Inhale and exhale here. Ah, good. And then we're just going to warm up our spine a little bit. So inhale, drop your belly down towards the floor, reach your chin up to the sky, and then exhale, roll through your spine and make it curved like a scared cat. Inhale, rolling back to a cow pose. Inhale, and then exhale, articulating through your spine to cat. Good. Just warming our spine up here. Inhale to cow. Exhale, rolling through to cat. We'll do it a few more times. You can go at your own pace here. Sometimes I like to incorporate some circles with my spine. It feels really nice. Especially if you're doing this, maybe first thing in the morning, feeling a little stiff. So I'm in a circle to the right. Inhaling and exhaling. Big circles with your spine. I'm going to do three to the right. Inhale and exhale, and then I'm going to reverse my circle. So sending my rib cage the other way. Good. Nice and easy at your own pace. Good. And then back to neutral spine. So make sure those knees are hip-width apart, directly under your hip bones, your wrists are right underneath your shoulders, your fingers are spread out wide. We're going to stretch our left leg long behind us. Pull your abs into your spine here. Inhale and exhale. Feel like you've got energy out the bottom of your left foot. On your next inhale, we're going to lift our left leg up, float it off the floor, hip level. Inhale and exhale. Make sure you've not arched your back here. You really want to feel your abs engaged. Our core is strong. And then on our next inhale, we're going to float our opposite arm, our right arm up in line with your head. Inhale and exhale here. Just finding our balance. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Now we're going to curl into a ball. So inhale, reaching long through our fingers and our toes. Exhale, curl, elbow to knee. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale, curl. If this is too much for you, you can just drop your right hand down and then bring your knee to your nose. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale, curl. Feel like your abs are squeezing in. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale, curl. Inhale, lengthen. And then hand and knee come back to the ground. Just hit the reset button, realign your hands, spread your fingertips wide. Knees are directly below your hips. Inhale and exhale here. Pulling your abs in. Good. Reaching our right toes back this time. Just take a moment here to make sure your hips are level. You want to feel like you could set a T-cup right on top of your pelvis here. Inhale and exhale. And then inhale, lifting our right leg up. Parallel to the floor. Inhale and exhale. Check and make sure our abs are still pulled in. Good. And on your next inhale, reaching your left fingertips up and overhead. Inhale, exhale. And then lengthen even further in opposite directions. Inhale, exhale, curling into a little ball. Good. Inhale, lengthen. And exhale, curling into a little ball. Remember, if this is too much, you just drop your left hand down and bring your knee to your nose. Inhale, curl. Whoops, inhale. Lengthen. Exhale, curl. Inhale, lengthen. Pulling your abs in. Exhale, curl. This is our last one. Inhale, lengthen. And exhale down. Good. Taking our knees as wide as our mat or if you don't have a mat, just wider than your hips and then sit back as far as you can. Try and get your hips to your heels. This should feel nice and relaxing. And then we're going to reach our fingertips forward. Our forehand comes to the earth. Inhale and exhale here, just relaxing our spine, relaxing our shoulders. Good. Inhale and exhale. You can just gently rock your head side to side as if you're saying, no. I- ironing out any little wrinkles or tension that you're holding in your forehead. Inhale and exhale. Good. And then slowly rounding up, we're going to come to a seated position with our knees bent and our feet on the floor, sitting up nice and tall. So grab underneath your thighs, your quads here, your hamstrings, sitting up nice and tall, feeling lengthened out the crown of your head and then just gently curling back, holding on to the back of our legs. Inhale, rolling back up, nice and tall. Exhale, curling. Inhale, lengthen. Feel that widening across your chest, especially if you carry kids a lot or if you're nursing a baby or maybe if you just hug people a lot. You might need to practice opening your shoulders and stretching that opposite. Direction. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale. Good. Now we're going to add some arms. So we're going to inhale, open through our chest, reaching chin to the sky and exhale, grabbing, hold back as we curve onto the back of our legs. Inhale, chest comes forward and up. You can bend your elbows a little bit if you want like a cactus and then exhale, curve curving. Feet are firmly painted on the floor. Inhale, open your chest. Exhale, curving. Even if you sit at a desk a lot and you type, it's so important to have that opposite flexion on our spine. Curling forward. Last one, sitting tall, lifted, expanding our chest open to the sky. And then let your fingertips either rest on your knees or you can grab hold of the back of your leg and we're just going to slowly lower yourself down the floor. So inhale, exhale, curling, rounding through. If you want to challenge yourself, you can put your arms in front of you. Let go of your legs until your head reaches the floor. Good. And just bend your knees, feet are on the ground, arms are lengthened in front of you. We're going to do the Pilates Stomach Series. It's a series of five exercises. So I'll demonstrate and then we'll do it together. So first let's talk about our positioning. You want to have a beautiful little space behind your low back. Your belly button is pulling into your spine. So we're not curling. We're not arching. We've got a nice neutral spine here. Then we're going to bring our shoulder tips up to the edge of the ground. So you should be able to feel your little wings back there touching the ground. So you've got your abs pulled in, that nice little space, blow your low back and you're reaching your fingertips forward. Feel like you've got a nice big juicy orange right underneath your chin and you're squeezing it. Good. And then come back down to the floor. Inhale here and exhale, ab prep position. Reaching your fingertips forward and down towards your feet and rolling back down to the floor. Inhale, exhale, coming, curling up. Inhale at the top and exhale down. Good. Inhale, exhale, coming up, squeeze that orange with your chin. Inhale at the top and exhale back down. Good. Hug your knees into your chest. This should feel really nice on your low back. You can rock side to side if you want. You can do little circles with your knees if that feels good to you. Giving yourself some extra love today. Nice big cuddle. Good. Feet back down to the floor. We're going to begin with our first exercise, which is single leg stretch. So we're going to come to that ab prep position. We're going to extend our left leg long. You can have it up high if you need or if you want to challenge yourself, you can drop your leg down towards the floor. Then we're going to grab our right knee and pull it into our chest. Inhale, exhale switch the legs. So we start with our left hand on our knee, our right hand on our shin and then switch legs right hand to knee. Left hand to shin. So inhale, switch, exhale, switch. Inhale, switch, exhale, switch. That's exercise two. I mean exercise one. Exercise two. We're going to bring both knees in for double leg stretch reaching our arms and legs out long. We're going to bring our arms around and then pull our knees into our chest. So reach everything out and long and then arms swing around, pull our knees into our chest. For double leg stretch. Then we're going to take our legs up to the sky. We're going to pull on our right leg, lower your left leg down for straight leg stretch one legged. Inhale and exhale switch. Inhale switch. Exhale switch. Pulling our abs in and switch. Exhale. Inhale switch. Exhale switch. Now we're going to do straight leg double leg stretch. Hands behind your head or you can put your hands beneath your bottom. We're going to zip up our legs together and drop our legs down, down, down and then zip them back up to the sky. Lowering your legs down, down, down and then zip them back up to the sky. Down, down, down and zip them up to the sky. Good. Our last exercise is crisscross. So we're going to bend our knees, put our hands behind our head and we're going to crisscross our opposite elbow to knee. So right knee to left elbow and switch. Left knee to right elbow and switch. Right knee to left elbow switch. Left knee to right elbow switch. Okay, go ahead and drop your head down. Give your arms and your legs a little relaxation. If at any point you feel like it's too much on your neck or your back, you can always drop your chest and your head down to the ground or put your hands beneath your bottom. So let's go for it. Pilates to mix series. So inhale. Exhale coming just to the tips of our shoulder blades. Bringing that right knee in towards our chest, our left leg extends. Ready, set, go. Inhale, exhale, switch. Inhale, exhale, switch. Inhale, exhale, switch. Inhale, exhale, switch. Inhale, exhale, switch. Exercise two. Knees bent, arms and legs go out, reach around, hug in. Out, around, hug in. Out, around. Inhale and exhale. Reach out. Inhale, exhale, around. Inhale, exhale, around. Legs come up. Grab that right leg. You're going to give it a little tug tug switch. Tug tug switch. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Switch. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale, switch. Hands behind our heads, squeezing our legs together. Drop them down, down, down and come back up. They don't have to go way down. We don't want to lose that space behind our low back. Pulling our abs in. Don't arch your back. Make sure you're breathing. Inhale. Exhale up. Inhale down. Exhale up. Last exercise, bending our knees crisscross. Right elbow to left knee and switch. Exhale. Switch. Inhale. Switch. Exhale. Switch. Inhale. Switch. Exhale. Switch. Great job everyone. Hug your knees into your chest. We did it. Good. Reach our arms and legs long on the floor. Inhale and exhale. Good. And then roll over on to your belly. We're going to do a little opposition stretch here. So relax your legs long on the floor. Chin comes down to the mat or the ground. Roll your shoulders down and back. We're going to do a little cobra here. So hands are at shoulder height. Palms on the floor. Inhale. And then exhale, reaching your chin forward and up. Feel like you're squeezing your shoulder blades together. Opposition to what we just did by finding a different shape. Inhale at the top and then exhale. Back down, relax. You can put your forehead to the ground or you can put your right ear or your left ear on the ground. Inhale and exhale. Good. Inhale. And then exhale. Reaching your chin forward and out in front of your chin to the sky. Shoulders roll down and back. Squeezing our shoulder blades together behind you. And then exhale. Lengthen chest and chin. Come forward and down. One more time. Inhale. Lengthen. Exhale. Reaching out the crown of your head. Your chin lifts up. Your shoulders circle down and back. Maybe a little bit higher this time. If you're super flexible in your back, you can push up even more, even straightening your elbows if you want. And then exhale. Reaching your chest and your chin forward and down. Good. Rolling over onto your back. Hugging your knees into your chest. We'll do a little hip stretch, a little spine stretch, and then we'll call it a day. So bend your knees, feet come onto the floor. We're going to lift our right leg up. We're going to externally rotate our leg so that our right foot is going to rest on the outside of our left knee. So this might feel like enough for you. You should feel it on the outside of your right hip. If you want, you can put a little pressure on your right leg. If you're ready to take a little bit of a deeper stretch, we're going to take our hands and thread either side of our left leg, lifting our left foot off the floor, and then hugging in towards our chest, this little package that we've created. My hands are resting on the outside of my left shin. You can also reach under your left hamstring, pulling towards your chest. Inhale and exhale. Make sure your neck is relaxed. Your shoulders are relaxed. Your jaw and your forehead are relaxed. Most of us hold a lot of tension and even emotions in our deep hip muscles. So it's so important to release those, relax those. Breathing in and out. Make sure you're flexing your right toes to protect your knee. One more deep inhale here. And then exhale, reaching our left foot back to the earth. Unfold your right leg, plant it back on the floor. Give your legs a little shake. So reaching our toes up to the sky and then feet come back to the floor. Good, inhale. Exhale, lifting our left leg up. Externally rotate our knee, keeping that foot nice and flexed, crossing over our right knee. And then if this is enough for you, stay here or if you're ready for more, you can thread either side of your right leg, reach through, pulling everything in towards you. Inhaling and exhaling. Inhaling and exhaling. Deep inhale. And exhale all the way out. One side is always tighter than the other. So don't be surprised if you feel like one hip is really tight and the other one's not so tight. That's totally normal. Inhale and exhale, good. Lowering our right foot back towards the earth. Extending that left leg out. Shake your legs out one more time. And then hug your knees into your chest. Give yourself a big squeeze. Good, we're going to keep our right knee bent. We're going to send our left leg out long. Against the floor. Inhale here. And then if your back is healthy, we're going to do a supine twist. So we're going to take our left hand to our right knee and we're going to pull it across our chest, bringing our left knee, our right knee over to the left side. If you're okay here, then we'll reach our right arm up to the sky and let it float over to the right. Maybe sending your gaze over to the right as well. For a gentle little twist here on our spine. Inhaling and exhaling. Really concentrate on relaxing your shoulders. That right knee might not be on the ground and that's okay. The goal here is for a relaxed, healthy spine. Inhale and exhale. Good. Inhale, bringing everything back to the center. Hug that right knee into your chest. Bring your left knee into your chest. Hit reset. Realign your back and your spine. Sending our right leg long this time. Pulling our left knee into our chest. Stretching that hip flexor. And then sending our left knee across over towards the right. Right hand guides it. And then maybe reaching our left arm up to the sky. Letting it fall open to the left. And if you're ready for a little more, you can send your gaze over to the left side. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Good. Releasing all the tension from the top of your spine. All the way down to your sacrum. Inhale and exhale. Good. Inhaling back to the center. So taking that right hand to your left knee. Pulling it back to the center. Easy does it. Both knees come in. Bring your head up towards your knees. Rounding, curling everything in. And then exhale. Reaching your fingers and your toes out. Long on the floor in opposite directions. Finding a star pose. Just really nice and relaxed here. Inhale and exhale. Relaxing every muscle of your body. Good. And then curling over to one side or the other. Begin to push yourself back up to that seated position that you started in. So you might want to grab that pillow again or a block or maybe just want to sit here on the floor. Good. Inhale and exhale. Checking to see if your posture is any better now. Hopefully it is. Feeling your sit bones grounded into the earth. Your spine is lifted and supported. You've got energy out the top of your head. Inhaling and exhaling. Just close your eyes. Good. And then sending your legs out long in front of you. Reaching up to the sky. Flexing your toes back towards your face. Exhale, reach forward. As far as you can, you can put your hands on the ground. If you want, you can grab a pillow or a block in front of you to rest your head on. Stretching those hamstrings. Nice little gentle stretch here. One more deep inhale. And exhale. Good. Rounding back up to your spine. Shake your legs out. Good. And then bending or crossing your legs. Finding a comfortable seated position on the floor. For some of you, you might feel more comfortable sitting on your heels. So whatever feels good to you today, just make your way to that position. Inhaling and exhaling. Nice and easy through your shoulders and your chest. Nice and easy through your neck. Tipping your head side to side. Making sure there's no tension. Feeling strong and supported. Hopefully your breath feels more connected to your body and your posture feels a little bit more upright and steady. Thank you for joining me. We'll take our last few breaths here together. We'll inhale, reach our fingertips up to the sky. Palms touch at the top. And then exhale, let your arms just float back down. Good. Inhale, reach our fingertips up. And exhale, let your arms float back down. Last one, we'll inhale, hold at the top and then sigh it all out. Inhale, reach up, lift up. Both sides of your body are reaching towards the sky. Hold your breath at the top. And then exhale, sigh it out. Good. Give your arms a shake. Give your shoulders a shake. Make sure you're not holding any tension. Little massage anywhere you feel like you need it. Squeeze your shoulders, your arms, little extra love to yourself. And then just sitting nice and tall, closing down our eyes, checking back in with our breath. We pour ourselves out day in and day out. But it's so important to fill yourself up as well. Self-care is so important. We can't pour out unless we first spin poured into. So just take a couple of moments here with your eyes closed. Feel extra grateful today, grateful that you took time for yourself to move your body, maybe to try something new. You can be thankful for the people in your life, the little blessings that maybe call you mama. Sitting nice and tall. Inhale and exhale. I wish you a happy Mother's Day. I wish you a beautiful blessed day. Thank you for joining me.