Integrating Pelvic Floor, Hips, + Abdominals:

THE BLENDING OF YOGA + FELDENKRAIS®

A 10 lesson series with Sarah Baumert

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

This 10-lesson 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.

Seeking a more dynamic challenge?

Join us for a unique 10-lesson 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:

What You’ll Discover In This Online Series:

Movement:
10 Yoga + Feldenkrais classes

Lessons Included in This Series:

1. Pelvic Floor Mapping + Hip Internal Rotation
2. The Balance of Hip Internal & External Rotation
3. Introducing the Psoas with More Hip Rotations
4. Diaphragm + Psoas Connections
5. Side Bending + Psoas Connections
6. A Softer Psoas with Pelvic Tilting
7. Sensing the Right + Left Sides, Abdominal & Hip Strength
8. Right & Left Halves with Side Bending
9: Foot and Pelvic Floor Connections
10: Deconstructed Pigeon Pose

Educational Talks:

• Pre lesson Anatomy lessons

• The philosophical framework for Feldenkrais

Connection:
• Optional 10 minute consultation with Sarah
• Online forum to connect and ask questions if you are doing the recordings   

• Email support


Ways to keep practicing:

• Stream recordings indefinitely   

Once you have purchased the course, you will have immediate access to the class recordings.

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

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.

What people are saying about Sarah's teaching and this course:

This is a non-judgemental, non-corrective, and liberating way to experience your body in motion. You will experience learning at your pace where noticing what makes you feel good is a priority. Notice what you are curious about, and recognize that experiencing pleasure and enjoyment in your body are measures of freedom. The lessons will be suitable for all levels, and will include a variety of positions, from lying on the back or side, to hands and knees, moving from sitting to lying, rolling or standing.