Mindful Sonder is the conscious awareness that we all have, and all are, living our own personal truths. Working the mind, body and spirit, I take a holistic approach to wellbeing, which manifests itself for me in three areas: Life Coaching, Nutrition and Yoga.

Mindful Sonder

Mariel Witmond-Bateman

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This past year has been challenging us to FEEL, because it is only through feeling (the good, the bad, and everything in between), and through connecting with ourselves, that we can return home to ourselves - to our truths, to our magnificence, to our wholeness. This 30 Day Challenge has been designed to help you on your journey back to yourself, through coaching, meditation, breathwork and movement.

30 Day Home to Wholeness Challenge

Values help us to create the kind of future we would like to experience and determine how we show up in life. “Values” as a word often gets thrown around, but many of us rarely stop to ask what this means to us and how it might impact our lives. This video is all about uncovering your values and creating a values statement to keep you accountable to the kind of person you want to be and life you want to be living!

Day 1 - Values

Wrist exercises help to keep the wrists flexible and strong, and help our range of motion while preventing stress injuries. Without the right mobility and strength our wrists become vulnerable and are often the first to become sore when starting our yoga journey. In this video, I will show you both how to strengthen and stretch this part of the body - with exercises that you can do before your yoga practice and after!

Day 2 - Wrist Exercises

Today's class is about our core, but not just the physical core - our inner core as well, representing our center of vitality; our power and passion. Our core is the location of manipura chakra and uddiyana bandha (abdominal lock), and represents the seat of power in the body! In this video, I  will take you through both the core's anatomical and metaphysical importance as I guide you through some of my favourite fiery core exercises - tapping into that fire from the inside out!

Day 3 - Core/Inner Fire

Knowing our purpose and having meaning in our lives also gives us a sense of place, which in turn gives us a sense of belonging - something I spent most of my life searching for. If you, like me, have struggled for years to know what you wanted to do with your life, I hope that this video will serve as a conversation starter that takes some of the stress out of a heavy theme!

Day 4 - Purpose

In this video, I will talk you through prana (life force) and help you better understand pranayama (breath) such as yoga's ujjayi breath. I will also share with you my favourite breathing technique for stressful situations - box breathing (please avoid the breath holds if you are pregnant!)!

Day 5 - Introduction to Breath, Ujjayi and Box Breat

Asking for help can be hard and sometimes leaning on support in our practice can be too. There is so much about our practice that mirrors our lives. We are hardwired to want to do things on our own. We tend to fear being seen as weak, needy or not enough on our own. Being able to ask for help, to lean on others, requires vulnerability - which is essential in human connection. It is recognising the strength in vulnerability and confidence needed in order to not associate help with something negative. In this video we use a wall for support to help improve our practice.

Day 6 - Wall Drills/ Leaning into Support

Time to sit back and relax as I guide you through a 10 minute meditation on truths we all need to spend more time acknowledging and accepting. Allow yourself to simply be, as you tune in to my words allowing anything that resonates to remain with your sub conscience.

Day 7 - I Know This Much Is True Meditation

Before we go into practices for setting up our goals for success, we need to spend a bit of time looking deeper into what our goals really are. Keeping in mind that there are varying degrees of goals - from type and long term ones to daily ones - we will start by defining our goals and then going deeper into how we achieve them!

Day 8 - Goals

Do you struggle with back discomfort? The truth is that most of us do, and we do so for lack of a better understanding of our anatomy and the impacts of our sedentary lifestyles. This video will talk you through a basic understanding of the anatomy of the back, with some exercises to help you strengthen and stretch your back chain.

Day 9 - Back Health

In this video I talk you through alternate nostril breathing, called Nadi Sodhana, as we strive to find balance in our breath and mind-body. This is a powerful technique you can use to settle your mind, and emotions. We regulate the flow of air through our nasal passages and in so doing find harmony between our masculine and feminine energies. When we bring two of the main energy channels, Ida and Pingala, into balance, the central Nadi called Shushumna then begins to flow. Prana, or life energy, moves freely when both sides are equal.

Day 10 - Nadi Sodhana

In this video I guide you through another meditation, about our energetic vibration. Self-awareness is so important. Studies of the brain have shown that changing thought patterns can lead to the old neural pathways withering away, allowing for new ones to become established in their place. By calming and resetting the nervous system (tapping into our parasympathetic nervous system) we can change patterns of the mind. Movement, meditation, breathwork all help to achieve this by being in tune with our entire being.

Day 11 - Our Energetic Vibration Meditation

If thoughts are the language of the mind, then perhaps our emotions are the language of our body. We already focus a lot on our minds – trying to understand our thoughts, quiet the unnecessary chatter, control the thoughts we choose to give our attention to – but, what about our emotions? In this video I talk to you about the importance of understanding ALL of our emotions and what they are trying to tell us about ourselves.

Day 12 - Understanding Our Emotions

Sitting all day can wreak havoc on our body, in particular our thoracic spine, neck and hip flexors. In this video I will take you through some nice yoga movements you can do all from the comfort of your chair!

Day 13 - Anti-desk Yoga

Sit back and relax as I guide you through another meditation all about my hopes for you ❤️

Day 14 - My Hopes For You Meditation

There seems to be a direct correlation between people pleasing and boundaries. Throughout life, it is vital for us to know and understanding what our limits are. Unhealthy boundaries cause emotional pain that can lead to things like co-dependency, depression, anxiety, and even physical illness caused by stress. Loose boundaries lead to disconnected relationships.

Day 15 - People Pleasing & Boundaries

Kapalabhati, (fire breath or skull shining breath) is a more advanced and powerful style of pranayama that helps to heats the body. It is an energizing practice that will clear the lungs and calm the mind while strengthening the diaphragm and abdominal muscles. Most styles of breathwork tend to focus the emphasis of muscular control on the inhalation. Kapalabhati reverses the normal flow of breath so that the exhalation is active and the inhalation is passive and without effort. Do not practice this if you are pregnant.

Day 16 - Kapalabhati Breath

As we spend so much time seated, it's little surprise we struggle with tight hips, but often we don't realise that tightness in the hips isn't just physical. In this video I share with you the deeper meaning of our hips together with some exercises in mobility and stretches to open up this area of the body.

Day 17 - Hips & Healing

We get personally invested – emotionally and/or mentally – in the outcome of things we desire and the moment we feel we have lost control, stress and anxiety rear their angry heads. This video will talk you through stress and anxiety - what causes it and what we can do to manage these emotions when they arise.

Day 18 - Dealing with Stress & Anxiety

The glutes muscles are responsible for hip extension, internal rotation, and abduction of the hip, that when strong, can help to prevent and avoid muscle imbalances that can lead to mobility issues. Strong glutes are essential to pelvic stability helping to prevent lower back and knee pain.
In this short video, I will take you through some exercises to work the glutes - it’s a fiery one! Just remind yourself it is short :)

Day 19 - Strong Glutes

Today we move on to exploring our thoughts and those we convince ourselves of that hold us back - our limiting beliefs. Enjoy this meditation all about challenging our beliefs in the hopes that it will inspire us into action.

Day 20 - Challenging Our Beliefs Meditation

Despite our accomplishments, we somehow keep pulling ourselves back into not enoughness and imposter syndrome. We tell ourselves stories over and over that we convince ourselves they are true. This happens to all of us growing up and it moulds the kind of people we become and the limits we set for ourselves throughout our lives. In this video I talk to you about limiting beliefs and personality types associated to high achievers that can result in imposter syndrome. I hope it serves to inspire you and encourage you to challenge those limiting beliefs of not enoughness as we all strive towards greatness.

Day 21 - Limiting Beliefs & Imposter Syndrome

Don't let the thought of arm balances keep you away from this video! This video is more about our mind playing tricks on us and holding us back - arm balances are just there to show you YOU CAN! If we don’t change the way we think, our lives won’t change and self criticism will merely reinforce the very thought patterns we want to change.

Day 22 - Arm Balances & Self Belief

Do you find meditation intimidating or stressful even? Sometimes if we struggle with stress, anxiety or depression, sitting in silence allowing our thoughts to flow can actually have a negative impact on our wellbeing. But just because you cannot sit in silence, doesn't mean you can't meditate. In this class, I will walk you through a simple sequence, that we will repeat multiple times fully focussed on our breath as we get into a nice, moving meditation!

Day 23 - Moving Meditation

Affirmations are statements that are repeated in order to help uplift us. It may seem simple, but a set of positive words can dramatically improve our mental wellbeing. Simply by repeating affirmations, we can create more love, acceptance and self-belief, improve our health, and move forward in our lives. The brain takes what we say quite literally, which is why affirmations work! You can use positive affirmations to accomplish anything… so what are you waiting for?

Day 24 - Affirmations Meditation

Everyone has the capacity to be creative, whether we realise it or not. By tapping into our creative side, we find new ways to look at things that can provide us with solutions to problems in all aspects of our life. In this video I will talk you through some drills you can play with in your socks.

Day 25 - Embracing Creativity with Sock Drills

Our shadow is what we would call the dark side of our personality that consists of our more negative emotions and all that we deny ourselves. It is everything we cannot see in ourselves on a conscious level. The trouble is that it can operate without us really knowing. What is fascinating is that what we hide from or deny in ourselves, we more readily see in others. Our ego uses this as a self-defence mechanism whereby we project our own insecurities of how we see ourselves, and by projecting on someone else, we don’t have to take responsibility for it. The more we project, the more we distort reality. The harder we are on ourselves, the harder it is to confront our shadow (and essentially ourselves) with compassion.

Day 26 - Shadow Work

I share something I wrote during the first lockdown in this meditation to help us navigate the struggles we have inevitably been facing during this challenging time. I hope it reminds you of our interconnectedness; that we are united and in this together. You are not alone.,

A Meditation in Isolation

Our words have incredible power. They shape our beliefs, which in turn drive our behaviour and essentially create our world. They hold both emotional and energetic reactions meaning that if we can remain aware to their energy through things like our emotions, we can then intentionally make choices that impact the frequency we put out into the world and create realities more in line with what we desire.

Day 28 - The Power of Our Words

This meditation guides us through each chakra with centering thoughts and affirmations to help us find alignment and clarity as we journey home to ourselves.

Day 29 - Chakra Meditation

You've made it to the end of our challenge - well done! It took commitment to get here and I hope you have enjoyed this journey back to yourself. Watch this video, and when you are done, pop this playlist on and DANCE IT OUT! 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0bNdkg1cZ3siUX8PCNYOZY?si=4jylgP4xThihoLnwlSFIOQ

Day 30 - When In Doubt, Dance It Out

These classes focus on creative sequencing of vinyasa flows, focusing on themes and/or peak poses. Find new ways to transition through postures and move on your mat, making your practice more enjoyable - like a dance!

Creative Vinyasa Flow

Shenpa is the urge or the hook that triggers our habitual tendency to close down. We get hooked in that moment of tightening when we reach for relief. To get unhooked, we begin by recognizing that moment of unease and learn to relax in that moment.

Shenpa

A beautiful and dynamic flow that opens the hips and strengthens the legs as we move creatively around our mats reminding ourselves to dare to be who we are - embracing our bodies, our practice, our lives.

Dare to Be

This is a beautiful, fluid flow class where we repeat a creative sequence multiple times, moving one breath one movement. The theme is of getting to know ourselves better, imprinting our intent on the universe rather than receiving an imprint from existence.

Imprint You Intent

A lovely community class that explores the movement of energy through movements of the arms and legs as we glide into different poses and transitions taking us around our mat. This is a creative sequence that looks at how we cling to things and the need to choose love over fear.

Love Over Fear

Movement is a path to self knowledge that doesn’t require words. Immersive awareness is sometimes used to describe when we are intensely absorbed but not deliberately thinking, when we are just in the experience - which is what we will practice in this beautiful ladder flow class.

Immersive Awareness

This beautiful community class takes a look at our attachments to our roles and how they define us as we move through a dynamic practice that helps us shift energy with fluid movements.

Authors of Our Own Narrative

This is a beautiful and creative mobility sequence taught as a ladder flow to help you get the hang of things! Plenty of movement to open the hips and strengthen the arms as we focus on a theme of healing and growth.

We Grow Wings

This is a strong and creative practice focussed on back strength and mobility as we move through heart opening and balancing postures that challenge our fear and ego. Don’t let the fear in, but rather step into your fears.

No Fear In

This is one of my favourite vinyasa flows that combines functional movement with creative sequencing that will leave your hips feeling open and your heart feeling full!  Enjoy playful new ways to move around your mat as we embrace change and learn how to join the dance.

Move with Change and Join the Dance

One of our weekend soul flows that guides us gracefully around our mat, working on heart openers as we play with movements with the arms that help to guide us through transitions while stretching the shoulders. The theme of the class is our quest - life's journey to our truth through acceptance and a willingness to be open.

The Quest

This class takes us through a beautiful ladder flow that strengthens and lengthens the side body in particular as we explore knowing who we are not so that we can own who we are in order to be more self possessed, and from there, be able to create meaningful and lasting change in our lives.

Self Possessed

This dynamic, creative vinyasa sequence is a fun and challenging flow that will wring out the entire body through open and closed twists (among many other things!) With a theme of tuning into our home frequency, this is a beautiful practice that is both a work in and work out!

Home Frequency

This is one of my favourite creative flows working on the theme of grit and grace as we try to get out of our heads and into the sensations of our body that help ease us through transitions and posture variations. Expect to have fun and get playful with this great class!

Grit & Grace

So often in our practice, as in life, we pull back when we should lean in. Our discomfort teaches us to shift towards something bigger, in order to learn and grow. This beautifully creative sequence will challenge what you know and encourage you to enjoy the journey of new discovery moving through a dynamic flow.

Lean In

In this class you will move through one of my most creative, vinyasa sequences as we navigate the theme of water - allowing our thoughts to flow, our movements to be fluid, as we learn to balance between what we can and cannot control.

Water

This class uses the theme of finding the balance between effort and surrender - not as it relates to our more common interpretation of giving up, but rather our ability to allow what is to be. We move through a dynamic and playful vinyasa flow that challenges to find the effort in our postures and the ease in our thoughts and breath. It's a great class to usher in the new year!

Effort & Surrender

With close to 60 students joining live, this creative vinyasa flow is all about letting our experiences teach us about ourselves, much like our practice does! Enjoy this dynamic flow as we work a lot with the hips, with plenty of variations and modifications depending on your needs!

End of Year Dynamic Vinyasa Flow

In this special class leading up to the holiday season with the mutual celebration and struggle we face amidst new lockdown restrictions, this class is about coming home to ourselves, to our wholeness as we recognise that in the face of adversity, we need to reconnect with ourselves to better connect with others and be better equipped to face our challenges. This is a lovely embodied movement flow set to some fun, festive tunes.

Home to Wholeness

This dynamic and creative sequence is all about moving with intent, focus and awareness to create ease amidst the struggle and strength to help us move in a fluid fashion. Working with our arms to help guide our transitions and balance to challenge our stability, this flow is a yummy all rounder!

Fluid & Free

This dynamic, creative class takes us through a sequence we repeat twice working on both twists and open postures, the second round with opportunities to go deeper into our poses. Themed around the importance of showing up - in our truths, in our practice, in our lives - this sweaty class will leave you feeling ready to take on the day ahead!

Twist & Show Up

This creative, dynamic sequence is a strong flow building strength in the shoulders while opening the hips and working the legs. Navigating a theme of exploring our shadow, working towards wholeness rather than perfection as we assimilate our shadow into consciousness.

Shadow Work & Power Flow

This dynamic practice takes us through a creative sequence that works our hips and prepares our body for arm balances, strengthening the core and the arms. Using a them of light after darkness, this class is a work in as much as it's a work out!

Power Arm, Core & Hips

This creative sequence focusses on our side body - outer glutes and obliques in particular, as we challenge ourselves through balancing postures, using focus and intent in our movements. Connecting with our true essence, which is love, this flow is everything you need to work "in" as well as out.

Power Side Body

This class speaks to the emotional themes of loss and grief as well as the full cycle of our emotions. Set to a power flow that mixes strength with softness, challenge and play, we work a lot of our side body, hips and arms with opportunities available for arm balances and inversions for those that practice them safely.

Power & Flow - Side Body, Hips & Arms

This class was taught for lululemon's Sunday Sweats in partnership with Kuula. It is a fun ladder flow that creates a moving meditation of fluid motions that leave you feeling like you are dancing your way through class.

Flow Motion Community Class

This wonderful vinyasa flow focusses on working our inner thighs and hip flexors as we move creatively around our mat.

Creative Vinyasa - Inner Thighs & Hip Flexors

One of my favourite flows to play with spinal mobility and functional movements to help strengthen our hip flexors, glutes and core - all in support of our back!

Spinal Mobility

This creative sequence is one of my favourites, incorporating Eagle pose into different variations of the posture as we work with fun transitions.

Fly Like an Eagle

This is a great power yoga class I taught for Black Lives Matter. All music supporting POC artists and a very fun, and creative flow to practice to!

Power Yoga for Black Lives Matter

Enjoy this creative sequence where we work with and towards Baby Grasshopper Pose.

Creative Sequence with Baby Grasshopper Pose

This class takes all of the bird named postures into one creative sequence, using poses such as Crow, Eagle, Pigeon, Peacock - as well as their variations. 

Birds of a Feather

This class is all about working our side muscles through drills and transitions for our obliques

Tweak Your Obliques

This creative sequence focusses on bringing the right kind of effort and awareness into our postures and movements in between.

The Right Kind of Effort

This beautiful, creative flow is all about dancer's pose and several variations of it as we work on back bends and heart openers. 

Tiny Dancer

Join me for this class all about improving our ability to do the splits as we play with its variations and work on strengthening and lengthening our hip flexors and hamstrings!

Blitz the Splits

This is a power yoga class focussing on repetitive movements to build strength through creative sequencing.

Power Hour Flow

This fun and creative power flow focusses on movements for hip mobility.

Power Hip Mobility

This creative sequence takes you through movements and exercises all focussed on helping build strength, balance and alignment as we work towards Crow Pose.

Flow to Crow

This creative sequence takes us through open and closed postures as we work our way towards binds and then using opposing postures to open up the body.

Bind & Release

This recording for a class I taught is all about the journey towards handstand. Focussing more on creative flow than workshop style instruction, this class will help you strengthen the right body parts and gain a better understanding for practicing headstand in its many variations.

Journey Headstand

These high energy classes focus on drills and repetition to help build strength in our practice. Combined with yoga mindfulness and stretches, this is an all around great workout for body and mind! Get ready to have some fun!

Hiit Power Yoga

A high energy class combining pilates, yoga and hiit to help build strength and conditioning in a creative sequence that we repeat twice before winding down into stretches and our final relaxation. Focussing on a theme of bringing it back to our original home.

Bring It Home Hiit Power Yoga

A fun and dynamic class that increases your heart rate with bursts of cardio, working the entire body as we move creatively through a sequence we repeat twice before winding down into a well deserved savasana!

The Space Between (HIIT Power Yoga)

Enjoy a full body workout with this combination of hiit, pilates, yoga and mobility set to a very fun playlist. We lighten the mental load as we work towards building strength (inner and outer), playing with balance and a creative sequence that leave you ready to take on whatever life throws your way!

Full Body Hiit Power Yoga

This is another fun and high energy class to help you get out of your overactive mind and into moving your body.

Be Your Own Hero

Another dynamic and fun combination practice with a mixture of pilates, yoga and Hiit that will energise and strengthen your body with a full rounded workout. Class theme focusses on internal and external strength as we embody the Warrior within!

Grow Through What You Go Through

This is a fun and dynamic class combining Hiit drills with yoga poses as we work to build strength and mobility to help us improve our practice. We focus on the theme of gratitude and the frequency we need to tune into to be present and aware of our abundance.

Strength in Gratitude

This is a fun, high energy practice that gets the entire body working! Focussed on "rinsing" our emotions as we move through drills and a sequence we repeat twice - this is a great, dynamic practice to physically release trapped energy in the body.

Rinse & Repeat

Another fun, dynamic practice that gets our heart rate up as we move through drills and sequences to build strength and mobility in our practice. Today's theme is around the power of our mind, how awakening happens through recognition, and our need to recognise that we are all one.

Power In Oneness

This is a full body, fun and energetic practice that will certainly work up a sweat! We move creatively through strength building drills and repetition working with the theme of lightening the load of pressure we place on ourselves, taking us away from ourselves.

Lighten the Load

This is a very fun, sweaty and dynamic practice where we work a lot with opposites (opposite hand to foot) while working with the theme of duality in life, teaching us to embrace both sides of the coin in our journey to self improvement.

Opposites

In this dynamic practice we look at the things we can control as we challenge ourselves physically and challenge our thoughts mentally in the face of fear and discomfort. This full body workout will have you working your legs, core and arms as we repeat a fun sequence twice. We finish with reclined stretches and nice savasana!

Fear & Effort

Unfortunately a lower resolution video as I only managed to save the zoom recording but this is still a great class combining higher intensity interval training with our yoga practice, building on both strength and meaning as we work our glutes.

45 Min Hiit Power Yoga - Glutes

Join me for this higher intensity interval class combined with power yoga as we get the blood flowing and the body moving with this predominantly side body focussed flow. We will work on those obliques, glute med, and even inner thighs through drills and stretches that will leave you feeling energised for the day ahead!

Hiit Side Body Power Yoga

This class is a fun, sweaty, full body hiit meets yoga class, with a bit more of an emphasis on those glutes! Using repetition, we make our way through two rounds of a flow full of drills to get that heart rate up, with some yummy stretches and a well deserved savasana! Theme for the class is Gratitude.

Hiit meets yoga, this creative class focusses on twists as we work our core and legs in a higher intensity yoga practice. Working with repetition, we build strength and mobility, finishing with yummy stretches to ease us out of our practice and into our day.

Deep Roots & Twists

This hiit meets yoga class focusses on our core and the theme of kindness. Working through drills and repetition, we move creatively around our mat building up strength and mobility with kindness and awareness.

Core and Kindness

This high energy class merges Hiit with Power Yoga and this class focusses on our hip flexors and inner thighs - our hip flexors in particular, being essential for splits, back bends and inversions!

Hiit Power Yoga - Inner Thighs & Hip Flexors

This creative and energetic class combines hiit, functional movement and yoga with a focus on the legs!

Hiit Power Yoga Legs

This fun, high energy class works the entire body with a particular focus on the arms and abs.

Hiit Power Yoga - Arms & Abs

This fun combo class is all about strengthening the muscles in our body that support our back.

Hiit Power Yoga - Strong Back

This fun and energetic class works the entire body but with a focus on strengthening our side muscles!

Hiit Power Yoga - Side Body

This great and energetic class combines hiit and power yoga with a strong focus on our lower half!

Hiit Power Yoga - Lower Half

Yin yoga is a slower and more meditative type of yoga that targets your deep connective tissues, such as your fascia, ligaments, joints, and bones. This gentle practice gives you the space to journey inwards and tune into both your mind and the physical sensations of your body.

Yin Yoga

This slow-paced style of yoga uses asanas that are held for longer periods of time with the idea of stretching connective tissue around the joints. This beautiful practice works with twists as we gently stretch the body and journey within.

Yin It Out - Twists

A beautiful full body yin class that focusses on the theme of letting go - physically, emotionally, to our attachments, to our thoughts. Learning to sit with the discomfort as we create space for transformative change.

Yin to Let Go

This is a hips and heart focussed yin class with curated music to help you go deeper, in both the physical and subtle body. We explore both suffering and joy, attachment and aversion - the duality that exists in all we experience.

Hips & Heart Yin

In our yin practice we apply moderate stress to our connective tissue, increasing circulation in the joints and improving our flexibility. A beautiful full body yin practice as we journey within looking at our attachments.

Mindful Sonder

Handstand Series

About this class

Videos included in this series