Pilates + Stress Relief Challenge

RESOURCES:

1. Register for extra Challenge support by activating your trial membership to Blessful Body Pilates

2. Download the welcome packet and checklist by clicking here.  

3. Looking for help setting up your home exercise space? Click here to find a short article I wrote to help you set your space up for success! 

4. Follow me on Instagram or Facebook to connect during the Challenge

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello and welcome to Pilates and stress relief challenge hosted by Blessful Body Pilates, and myself Ky Russell, the founder of Blessful Body. I am so excited that you are here. And we're going to be going through a little bit of information today to help you really get the most out of this experience.

Because I know that you are probably very busy - that is who this is designed for, it's designed for busy, grown-up women who do not have hours of their day to devote in the gym or the studio, or getting to and from the studio.

If you are not a woman and you are here, I totally welcome you. We are welcoming of all here at the Blessful Body. But I will be definitely talking about the challenges and struggles that women face trying to stay in shape, juggle careers deal with their family, or maybe you're already retired. And that has a whole new set of challenges as well.

Okay, so welcome. I am so glad you're here. And what you're going to see is that throughout our challenge time together, you are going to be exposed to five amazing Pilates workouts carefully crafted to help you manage stress and get stronger, more connected, improve balance and feel amazing in your body again, okay. It is also going to be coupled with stress relief techniques, because we know that stress is a huge issue facing many of us today. And stress can impact every system in your body, your hormones, your growth, your digestion, your sleep, your ability to strengthen to lose weight, get in shape, even feel good your mental health stress can take an enormous toll on all of those systems in your body, making it that much harder to have healthy decisions, make healthy decisions, healthy choices, and feel good and live the life that you want.

I want to thank you for entrusting me with your health and well being in this way. I'm Ky Russell. I have a master's degree in Kinesiology. I have taught Pilates for over 20 years. I'm a master Pilates instructor trainer. And I also am a faculty member in Kinesiology teaching stress management at San Jose State University. So I can have seen personally with my clients, and also I'm well versed in all the research that really does tell us how important it is to give ourselves a little bit of time each day to care for our bodies, care for our minds and care for our spirits. When we align body, mind and spirit in this way, anything is truly possible. So I am so honored and grateful to get to help you experience this one to thank you for entrusting me with your health and well being in this way.

I imagine if you're here that you joined this challenge because you were looking for a way to get in touch with yourself again to feel stronger in your body. Maybe reduce aches and pains. And you're also feeling perhaps overwhelmed have some anxiety. A lot of stress issues are super common right now. We've seeing an increase in stress throughout the past couple years. And so you're not alone, I totally understand if that's the case, or perhaps you've joined us because you're looking for something new.

We are going to be combining short. But frequent workouts, I'm going to be giving you one a day for five days, you may not do all five of them throughout the course of the week, and that's totally okay. The important thing is that you keep going if you miss a day, right and that's, that's my approach. Apart from a lot of the other instructors you may come across, I am not an all or nothing, our motto is all or something here. And also we don't follow no pain, no gain, okay? It is no pain ALL gain.

Because when you are working from a place of pain, you are most likely elevating those stress levels, and particularly through perimenopause and beyond. Women do not need to elevate their stress levels anymore. We're already stressed, right? The kids, the family, all of the things that we're managing, we don't need our workouts to cause excess stress, which actually raises cortisol levels, and makes our bodies less able to strengthen, get toned, improve our posture, release tension, all of the things that exercise particularly Pilates has the benefits of doing.

And I have to tell you the whole reason that I created my system, the tri core approach to Pilates and stress relief was because I actually lived through a time in my life where it was really challenging to find 15 or 20 minutes a day for myself. I was caregiving. My daughter who was a toddler, and my mother was diagnosed with dementia. I am an only child, the only person responsible for her care was me. I was juggling that. I also was in graduate school and finishing up my degree, which was incredibly important, and myself and my family.

So out of necessity, I began doing the shorter workouts just at home whenever I can fit them in because I knew right, I have a master's degree in kinesiology, I've taught Pilates for 20 years, I knew that I needed to do these movements for myself, because I could really tell that my mental health was suffering, my physical health was suffering, I wasn't able to show up as the mom and the daughter that I really wanted to be.

And so I started doing the shorter workouts, when I found was that by spreading it out and doing a little bit more regularly, I had not only did on my body feel better, but also my mental health was better because that's actually how we reduce stress better. There's a protective buffer from exercise that if you've exercised within the prior 24 hours of encountering a stressful event, you are less likely to experience extreme stress in the face of that event. Okay, so it's really important to give ourselves care more regularly, instead of just spending one big long chunk, say once a week.

And so as I discovered this on myself, I realized I had to share it. And so I created the Blessful Body. Where that is the basis of our program are the tricorder workouts, really integrating into intention using breath work using meditation throughout the workouts, and also afterwards, so that we can really take care of our physical body, and our mental body and our spiritual and emotional selves as well. And so now you are here and you are about to experience just how beneficial and nourishing this tricore approach to your health and wellness can be. So you have already successfully signed up for the challenge.

So your first step is already done. Now, there are some steps that you can take next that will really help set you up for even more success. One of those, you know that you are invited to upgrade your challenge for just $1 where you will get 21 days of access to Blessful Body Pilates, and you'll also get extra feedback and attention extra support from me and the rest of the community.

And another step that you can do, if you haven't already is to download the PDF. And the PDF guide has a checklist of things to do to prepare setting up your workout space right so there's a link below this video to an article I wrote about how to set up a soothing workout space. Even if you only have a living room to work with, which is the situation I'm in it's totally doable. So setting Got that, and then downloading the guide. And you're set.

So those are your three steps. upgrade the challenge if you want, download the welcome packet and read if you need to read the article about how to set up your space. And if you don't have time to do any of those things, you're fine as well.

Your video will arrive first thing Monday morning, and you can click play. Hopefully start your day but finish your day works great to be able to experience what it feels like to give yourself about 20 minutes of nourishing movement and relaxing breath work and stress relief. I'm so excited to be going through this with you to be your guide on this journey. I am looking forward to hearing how you are doing so make sure to stay in touch. You can check in every day on social media as well on Instagram or Facebook. And I just look forward to cheering you on. All right. I will be seeing you soon.

Take care. Bye