Optimize Your Home Practice

Right? Uh, my name is Dr Brent Anderson, founder of Pollstar Polonius in so excited to be here at piles any time and to be with you in your homes. And that's actually what we're talking about today is we're talking about, you know, as a pilot anytime viewer, you really are taking advantage of these great services, but you often might feel that you're alone or that you might be missing some of the feedback that you would normally get, say in a class if you were being taught in a group or in an online and onsite location. And today what we want to talk about is how can we optimize our abilities to correct ourselves? How can we really understand how to get the best benefit out of the online training that we do with is anytime or any online service that we would use. And so the first one of those is to understand why we move.

And I think this is really important for all of us, is to understand the why's, the why's. If we understand that, then we can sort of let go of some of the other concerns or the fears that we might have pertaining to moving without supervision. Right? How many of you have done these classes online at home? And sometimes you might be cheating. Sometimes you might be, you know, taking a break and everybody else is moving. You're going like, okay, I'm not going to do that exercise cause I don't like doing hundreds or something like that. But the idea is that there is something that we have to create to be able to fully optimize our experience online. So that's going to talk about, so on the wise I've listed a five whys of why a movement, why we move, why it's so important. And what I love about plies any time is that Justin, as it implies in the name, is that it can occur at any time. So you can be at home, you can be on the road, you can be traveling wherever you are, you can find a, apply these class in a small space, throw down a towel or a mat and away you go.

And because of that, it ties into the whole philosophy that we have of being able to move regularly. And one of the things we know is that people who don't move regularly do not have as good of health as those that do move records. So the first thing that we want to emphasize is we move because we want to improve the quality of our health. And if we can tie that together and just remember that it doesn't have to be a perfect class online, it just, just turn it on and do the best you can. And trust in the fact that any movement every day is going to be a better step towards quality of health. The reverse of this is true as well, meaning that people who do not move regularly on a daily basis have a higher risk of disease and have a higher risk of other types of impairments.

We know that Sedentary Ism is one of the leading causes of things from heart disease, cancer, uh, fatigue syndromes, chronic fatigue syndromes, many of the immune dysfunctions. And then you combine that with stress and it goes up through the roof of the things that happen. So we moved because we want to be healthy, we moved because we want to decrease the risk of disease, decrease the risk of injuries. The third reason is because we want to increase our energy. We know that when we learn to move well that our efficiency increases and improves and that provides energy for us and in a society where we often feel so deprived of having the energy that we need during that throughout the day. And it becomes increasingly important that we are envision ourselves doing these movements and exercises. And of course I'm sure you feel like I do. Um, this morning I spent maybe even 15, 20 minutes just doing some simple moves.

I did a couple of exercises, I did a couple sets of pushups and some, a set of hundreds and the Swan and a mermaid and just very simply went through four or five different planes of movement. And then I took a shower, did a meditation, had a lovely breakfast and then, you know, my days ready to get started. And knowing that something as simple as that can make a big difference. And there's a quote that I wrote a long time ago that said a little bit of movement, good nutrition and management of life stresses can make all the difference in world health. And that's what we're talking about. And that's why, you know, having this online capability of just turning it on and picking a class and doing the best you can is awesome. It's going to improve your energy. Another one is more of a psychological part of it. We believe that movement equals happiness.

So you think of why would I turn the turn the computer on and watch a class or take a class is because the world is so filled with darkness and negativity. We turn the news on, it's negative news and there's a lot of good things happen in the world. But we for some reason in media, don't like to talk about the good news. We like to talk about the bad news. Bad News makes a lot more money than good news.

And yet there's so much good news going on. And one of the things we realize is people after practicing PyLadies often will come up after class and they'll make statements like, I've never been as happy or I feel like I'm a better mother, a better father, a better spouse, a better partner, I'm a better employer and these are psychosocial responses to a movement experience. And so one of the big whys that we moved is because it makes us happy. We feel happy. You have to do an apply to this class and we feel energy if the class is taught correctly. I think that's a really important thing to recognize.

I often will gauge the quality of a class by how much energy I feel after the class versus like the old school of hard body workouts and think of the idea of like, I'm exhausted. The class killed me. It's like I'm 53 years old. I don't want anybody killing me. I want to feel good. I want to feel supple, I want to be happy, I want energy. And so for me, the idea of most of the applies classes I take and yoga classes I take are because I feel energy and I feel good. And so that should be something you're looking for out of your classes when you're taking the class online is you want to feel happy, you want to feel good. And that leads me to the next point is that movement is meditation. So I know sometimes in a lot of different religions and different belief systems, some people get a little scared of the word meditation for whatever reason.

I know that whenever I hear that, I always think, well, you know in the Old Testament there was a scripture in Joshua had said, thou sharp meditate. They're in the book of the Law Day and night at thy ways may be prosperous and now may be happy. And I thought even back in the Old Testament Times, that includes our Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and anything that's browse from there, meditation was used in the scripture. And sometimes we don't feel good about meditation because we associate it with other things. But Meditation is an essential part of our life. And the beautiful thing about meditation is that it's a singleness of thought. It's a singleness of focus. It's not even necessarily the absence of thought, it's just the singleness. So if I have you just try this for a second, the whole world, you're not going to see me, you're just going to listen to me, but close your eyes for a second and just ask ourselves, what's my next thought? What's my next thought gonna be?

What's my next thought gonna be? What's my next thought going to be? What's my next thought going to be? What's my next thought going to be? And now open your eyes. Did you have your next thought? Probably not because your thought was asking yourself, what's my next thought or was listening to me say that. And the idea is that we can only think about one thing at a time, but when we have running thoughts, they're changing so quickly.

And I remember Ryan Fletcher saying, you're now, when you're doing short spine, it's impossible to think about anything other than short spine. And I remember thinking it's like what Ron just taught us was that short spine being done correctly is meditation because it is a singleness of thought. And so when we are involved in really experiencing the movement that we're having, it is a systemic meditation. We're not thinking about the laundry or the bills or the children or relationships or work or any of those things. We're thinking about is my pelvis in the right place right now? Am I, am I feeling what I'm supposed to be feeling in this class?

And because that attention is so focused on that, it blocks everything else out and we experience now and anything that leads us to experience now clears that limbic system and clears that process that squirting out cortisol in our bodies and allows our bodies to go into even just a 15 minute 20 reset is so powerful. So that's a big why we do this. And that's what's so beautiful about, you know, being able to have access to this work online is that if you really understand why you're moving, just move. Just turn it on. Do it once or twice a day. You don't have to kill yourself. Make it a pleasant thing. It is your meditation. It will clear your mind, it'll clear your body. And that leads me to the last part of this particular, this first little tip of how to optimize your online learning.

And that is that movement is life. And you know, one of the Joseph's famous quotes as returned a life. And so when we perform [inaudible] exercises and movement exercises on a daily basis, it brings us back into a beautiful definition of life. Life being more full, life being filled with, you know, the strength and the courage to deal with the challenges that we all have in life. We all have them. We all have the stressors at work. We all have the stresses at home, we all have the financial stress, they're all there. They all exist. But the idea is that when we are healthy, when we have energy, when we find joy and happiness, when we are able to turn off the world for a few minutes every day, we returned to life. And so if we can keep that, why is is deep inside of us just turn it on.

Just do it. Just take a class and going to classes just as fantastic. Any just moving right. And sometimes it's just about getting out and going for a walk or even at work when the stress gets too great. Stand up, go out, take your 15 minute break and go for a walk outside and guarantee that 15 minutes of walking, 15 minutes of moving a half an hour [inaudible] class on plies, anytime any of those things are going to bring about those effects. And that's why we move. And that's my first tip on optimizing your plies experience online.