Not as a warmup. Not as recovery. What happens in the first ten minutes after waking sets a pattern that carries through every session, every errand, every hour at a desk - and I stopped leaving those ten minutes to chance.
The foam roller lives on my side of the bed, on the floor, between the nightstand and the wall. Seeing it first removes the decision entirely.
The sequence is short and completely unglamorous. I start supine, roller under my thoracic spine, and just breathe there for two minutes. No rolling yet - just gravity doing the work of opening the chest. Anyone who spends time at a keyboard or steering wheel knows how much the upper back closes overnight into whatever shape the pillow and mattress allow. This undoes some of that before the body has time to reinforce it.
From there I roll slowly - maybe three passes - from mid-back to just below the base of the skull. I am not trying to crack anything. I am waking up the extensors along the spine so that when I stand up, standing tall is the default, not something I have to consciously choose.
The whole thing takes eight minutes. Sometimes less.
What it does for my Pilates work is specific: I notice it most in footwork on the Reformer and in any exercise that asks for a neutral spine under load. The Roll Up is more honest. The Swan on the Cadillac feels less like work and more like information. Extension that gets blocked by a stiff thoracic spine tends to compensate at the lumbar - and that compensation is exactly what Classical Pilates is designed to train out. Starting the day already more open means I spend less of a session fighting my own morning stiffness.
The roller cost less than a single private session. The habit cost only the willingness to leave it somewhere I cannot ignore it.