Integrating Pelvic Floor, Hips, + Abdominals:

THE BLENDING OF YOGA + FELDENKRAIS®

A 10 week series with Sarah Baumert
March 4th - May 13th, 2024
Mondays 6pm - 7:15pm CST
Live classes will be taught on zoom*

All lessons are recorded. Registering for the series gives you access to the recorded lessons indefinitely.

Unwind, Realign, and Rediscover Power in Your Pelvic Floor, Psoas, and Beyond

This 10-week series blends the mindful movement of yoga with the gentle awareness of the Feldenkrais Method.

We move beyond isolated exercises, treating your body as a connected system. While the focus starts with your pelvic floor, hips, and core, expect a full-body experience that integrates seamlessly. We will start by learning pelvic floor mapping, an essential tool for accessing pelvic floor healing, strength, and recovery. Each class will use pelvic floor mapping as an entry point for a well rounded practice. 

This practice is enriched with the joy of mindful exploration. Learn new ways to move with ease and grace, while reducing stress and finding deep relaxation through gentle Feldenkrais movements. Deepen your yoga practice with a new awareness of the pelvic floor, reconnect to your body's wisdom, and build self-compassion. Empower yourself with tools for confident and joyful movement in everyday life – no prior experience necessary, just an open mind and a willingness to explore.

These classes will work with the body as a whole functioning system, not a collection of parts. While the access point of our learning will start with the pelvic floor, hips, and abdominal complex, you will still experience a well rounded practice. 

*This series will require a mini 8 or 10 inch pilates stability ball. which can be found at Target or on Amazon.

Scholarships are available for this series. Please contact Sarah directly at sarah@body-matter.com for scholarship inquires. No questions asked.

If you cannot attend all of the live classes, each class will be recorded and the videos will be available for those attending the series. Space will be limited so that I can manage watching everyone, sign up early to hold your spot! There will be time for questions and community discussion after the livestream class, as well as an option to engage with Sarah and the other students in the class through the online comments following each lesson.

Live classes and recordings will be accessed via the BODY MATTER studio platform using Marvelous software. Once you have purchased the series, you will have access to the livestream classes and recordings.

How to use the Marvelous software for livestream and recorded classes.

Seeking a more dynamic challenge?

Join us for a unique 10-week experience that blends two powerful movement modalities. Transform your core from the inside out, building strength and flexibility. Alleviate chronic pain related to pelvic floor dysfunction or tight psoas, and find renewed confidence and ease in your movements.

Starting with Pelvic Floor Mapping:

Pelvic floor mapping is an essential tool for facilitating pelvic floor awareness, healing, recovery, and strength. Most of us are significantly disconnected from this area of our body. When prompted them to contract, lengthen, or engage the pelvic floor, most of us only have a vague or ambiguous sense of it’s structure. This results in a lack of proprioception and an inability to effectively control this essential group of muscles. Sue to this lack of awareness, strengthening the pelvic floor becomes a challenging task. To begin strengthening the pelvic floor we will start by mapping it with these simple steps.

The brain has to recognize these muscles: It's like showing your brain a picture of the team so it knows who they are.

Learn to feel the inner and outer sense of these muscles: Give them attention, both inside and out, so you know where they are and what they feel like.

Use them: Once you're aware, you will be able to access the pelvic floor to strengthen it.

This will be the foundation of our classes in this series. From there we will connect this area of the body to the neighboring joints and muscles and our attention will open up to how this area relates to the wholeness of our selves.

A multi-pronged approach to pelvic floor and abdominal health: 

A secret to this method is to reduce the force we create in our muscles in order to maximize the amount of information we have available for feedback. This means practicing intelligently and reducing the effort to get more refined sensations.

It may seem paradoxical to relax a muscle in order for it to become stronger. However, if a muscle is ALWAYS contracted it has less ability to contract any further and less ability to move through its dynamic range of actions. A habitually contracted muscle is a weak muscle!  We will practice learning how to relax the pelvic floor and deep abdominal muscles in order to engage them when necessary. This will not be a practice of isolating the pelvic floor muscles with exercises like kegels. These sessions will support you to become aware of and relax compulsive muscular tension in the pelvis and abdominals, so that you can then learn to integrate them into functional everyday movements. 

The pelvic floor muscles are within a whole system of synergistic muscles that do not work alone. They relate with and coordinate with the deep abdominal muscles, the hip muscles, the deep muscles of the spine and the breathing apparatus. Using simple movements, imagery, breathing practices, and feedback from props, these lessons will support the organization of this complex system that is so important for our health. 

The whole pelvic floor and abdominal system is very responsive to stress. While we all have voluntary control over this area, it also can respond to stress in a more unconscious way, similar to how the breath might react and tense when you are stressed. The pelvic floor, abdominals, and back, being a part of the breathing system, will also tighten when you are stressed. This can become a steady state or a habit leading to pain, discomfort, or challenges in feeling sensation and strength in this area. Sitting for long periods of time can also change the dynamics of the pelvic floor system. More pressure on the abdomen and the lack of needing to employ the abdominal muscles in sitting can change the feeling in the pelvic floor and increase tension. This series of lessons will help you discover strength and find harmony with the pelvic floor and deep abdominals to counteract these types of habits that result from stress. This will be a multi-disciplinary Feldenkrais approach to pelvic floor and abdominal health. Each lesson will be accessible for all abilities.

This series is inspired by teachings of my trainers and mentors, Aliza Stewart, Jill Miller, Barbara Benagh, Nick Strauss-Klein, Deborah Bowes, Lauren Ohayon and the pioneering research and teachings of Judy Pippen and Barbara Bell. For those looking for a series of lessons focusing exclusively on the pelvic floor, Deborah Bowes audio lesson set called Pelvic Health and Awareness for Women and Men is a great resource that is accessible for everyone.

About this format: The Blending of Yoga + Feldenkrais

Each session seamlessly blends traditional yoga postures with the gentle introspection of Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement. Sarah's dynamic teaching adapts to the changing seasons and the needs of each student, creating a truly unique experience.

Different than exercise, these classes are an interdisciplinary adventure. Imagine weaving together yoga, Feldenkrais, joint-specific training, self-massage, mindful breathing, playful movement puzzles, and a deeply compassionate approach to self-care. This unique exploration empowers you to discover a profound sense of ease and comfort within yourself.

Kindness towards ourselves is not always soft and easy. It can demand courage to move into the quiet corners of our hearts and bodies, facing the resistance we feel within. This practice welcomes you, inviting patience, awareness, and a spirit of slow, mindful exploration.

Listen to podcast Episode 88 to hear more about this topic, or scroll down to read more about how the Feldenkrais method approaches pelvic floor health:

About Sarah: Sarah Baumert is known for her thorough and diverse instruction and her dedication to holding space for individual personal discovery. She facilitates whole body alignment in her students as a way for them to access balance, strength, mobility and physical clarity. Through sensory rich movement experiments, she guides students in cultivating mindfulness and deepening their learning process.

 Her experience includes working with people suffering from chronic pain, injury, illness, and other forms of dis-ease. She works with a variety of populations including athletes, seniors, artists, dancers, children, and those recovering from injury, using pain management, and alignment.
 Sarah is a certified Yoga Therapist, an Authorized Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® Teacher and Feldenkrais Functional Integration® Practitioner. Her objective is to acquire the most effective skills for helping her students live with less pain and more pleasure in their bodies.