I'm so excited to begin on March 24th. I made you a quick video to make sure you're fully prepared for Monday!
You can turn this on and listen as you do some chores - no need to sit and watch it.
Scroll down for links to the resources I mention in the video.
Talk to you soon!
RESOURCES:
1. Download the welcome packet and checklist by clicking here!
2. 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!
Transcript:
Hello and welcome. I am so excited you are here getting ready for our spring renewal Pilates retreat that is starting very soon bright and early Monday morning. I am so excited for you to get to experience how these daily short workouts can help you have more energy, feel less stressed, feel stronger, more connected, and also get rid of those pesky aches and pains that can kind of show up and put a damper in your day. Okay, so it's really possible. You are going to be able to say goodbye to wondering how you're going to get your workouts in, what workout you're going to do, how it's going to work in your schedule. All of those things are going to be taken care of all you need to do is open your email, hit play get on your mat and go and it just feels so good. It frees up so much mental energy gives us physical energy and also really soothes our spirit. So I'm so excited you're here and thank you for doing this for yourself and also the ripple effect. is huge for the world around you. Because as you take care of all of these kinds of problems and you know really start to feel better and invest in caring for yourself. You actually are able to operate from this place of spent expansion and spaciousness. And so our relationships with others, our interaction with others really improves. And it can really change how we show up in the world and the work that you're able to do. And I know that you do great work already and have the potential to do so much amazing work. This is how I feel the world will change for the better, right is when women are taking care of themselves in this way, and really being able to show up with their full power and force in the world. So what's going to be happening is you're going to get these short daily Pilates workouts they're actually I call them my Tri core workouts because they blend body mind and spirit practices. So the three core dimensions of yourself and they each workout will be 15 to 20 minutes a day. So perfectly designed for busy women just like yourself and myself to fit them in our schedule and be able to you know, give ourselves some time when we give so much of our time to others. So I am Ky Russell, if you're not familiar with me, I am going to be your guide for the week. I have a master's degree in kinesiology I'm a certified Pilates instructor. Also yoga instructor grief yoga instructor, mindfulness meditation teacher and I'm even a master Pilates instructor. So I teach other Pilates instructors. So I have developed this system for myself and for all of the clients that I have taught over the years I've been teaching Pilates for 20 years, and the vast majority of my students have always been women who were between the ages of say 35 and 75. Right. So getting into that stage where things were changing, metabolisms changing, our strength is changing, getting a little more aches and pains becoming a mom becoming a grand mom, just things really changing in life and realizing that the old way that we used to work out isn't really serving us anymore. Okay. So this system has helped me I'm going to share my story in a minute, kind of like the rock bottom and how this really helped me. And you know, I was already a Pilates instructor when that happens. So there is really something beautiful about giving yourself a little bit of time each day, as opposed to you know, going to the gym once or twice a week and spending a full hour there, right. They're very different kind of self care situations.
So at this point, you might be like a lot of my students were and myself kind of struggling to fit in your self care struggling to find the time you might be in aches and pains your pelvic floor might be you know, doing some very interesting things as we kind of as our metabolism changes and our hormones change our pelvic floor really changes. So does our ability to make muscle mass and our strength, our posture, things might just be feeling not quite familiar in the same way they used to be. And also energy could be taking a huge dive right it's really common for fatigue to set in energy and stress as hormones change. Our ability to deal with stress hormones actually decreases so we tend to get a lot more negative effects from stress from physical, mental and emotional so that might be what's going on with you and maybe why you're here and if so, then you're absolutely in the right place. These daily short workouts were designed for you in mind helping you connect to your core, improve strength improve your posture, feel more aligned, connect into your spirit, practicing mindfulness, doing breath work, and just moving through Pilates. So these daily workouts I know it can feel really weird like what 15 To 20 minutes like how can I actually get what I need in 15 minutes a day. Like that sounds wild. I you know, I grew up hearing Oh, a workout needs to be 30 minutes to be effective. Right? And actually, we really see that that is no longer the recommendations right. So experts across the board are now recommending that every minute counts. Okay, so this idea that it has to be a long workout to be effective is very outdated and it's actually a byproduct of when the instruments that we use to measure things like strength and VO two Max and all of those gains that we used to measure. The instruments were not as sophisticated as they used to be. And now that we have much more sophisticated instruments, researchers are actually able to see that these shorter workouts have a great impact and they really do affect longevity. They improve your sleep, they decrease your stress, all of the things I've already mentioned. So if you have these doubts about the 15 to 20 minutes, just put them aside. There is a list of research a mile long that actually supports the idea of shorter daily workouts being effective, and it doesn't mean that you can't enjoy a long workout as well right? That's going to work on endurance. Absolutely true. But it's not necessarily necessary. Okay. Um, and you know, I also have experienced this in my own life and I will share that story in just a second about how I'm you know, my needs were changing as I was dealing with more stress, being a mom and a caregiver, and just entering into my 40s and how everything just really needed to shift for myself, but also I wanted to share with you just so you could realize what's possible from short daily workouts. I have. One of my students actually wrote down something that she shared with me about her experience doing shorter workouts every day. And she basically this woman, she's in her 50s She has two grown kids, you know she's just an amazing person of force. She's out there doing amazing things in the world volunteering, and when I read her testimonial, it just fills me up. She says that I've become stronger and more flexible since starting the workouts. I like my body better and have seen an improvement in my mental health. I'm also more empowered and more intentional in my movements. I have blossomed. So that is amazing, right? That, you know, the mainstream idea of what you know, life is like would tell us like, Oh, you're not blossoming in your 50s. And here we have, you know, this powerful, amazing woman who's saying that she blossomed in her 50s from doing shorter daily workouts that inspired all of these other health changes. So just put aside any thoughts that you're too young you're too old. You know, it can't work for you. I guarantee you that really giving yourself 15 minutes a day will work for almost everyone, right? And so, there, you might be thinking, Well,
I just don't have the time. Okay, because that's a big thing that comes up is time. And whenever you catch yourself saying you don't have time, we have an assignment for the week. And instead of saying I don't have time, we're going to reframe that and say, Oh, it's gonna be a challenge to organize the time but the time is there. Okay. And think about today. 15 minutes. Did you spend 15 minutes on social media? Did you spend 15 minutes on Netflix? Did you spend 15 minutes, you know, doing something that didn't necessarily light you up and I'm not against those things, right. Those things are fine. I love me some Netflix I guarantee you, but give that your make that your reward for getting on the mat. Right. So first, you're gonna give yourself 15 minutes of energizing restorative movement, and then you can reward yourself with something else. I guarantee you the time is there. It's just a matter of finding it and prioritizing it and that can be hard. I understand. Like I said before, I have had so many hats to juggle just like you and I will have some you know, some some tips for that. But for this week, let's work on the idea because if you tell yourself you don't have the time then your brain will make that are the reality. Right? Our brain believes our thoughts, okay? So it's really important to get in there and change those thoughts. And you're gonna plan out your workouts right. So in the guide, right, you have your downloadable guide, which there's a link on this page. So once you download that guide, you can actually plan in when you're going to do your workouts each day. Okay. And then the second thing that can really stand in your way from success is guilt. And guilt comes in two forms, feeling guilty about doing the workouts and taking the time to care for yourself, and then feeling guilty about missing a workout and both are completely faulty right, just false thinking guilt really serves almost no benefit to us. Right? If we're operating out of guilt, it's really hard to motivate. Instead give yourself compassion, right. So in the first one thinking about guilt, I want to share with you my story about how this all happened. So, you know, in I guess this was in 2013 was when my mom was diagnosed with dementia. She passed in 2019. I'm an only child completely responsible for managing her care. She had a one and a half year old at the time and was in graduate school finishing my master's degree and was working and teaching and even teaching workshops. So it was a lot and I was you know, a wife, and trying to maintain friendships and all of those things, right. So I'm sure this sounds familiar. You probably are juggling a million responsibilities. What feels like the weight of the world just like I was right. And so when that happened, my stress skyrocketed. My whole body nervous system, everything changed. And, you know, going in and doing an hour's workout was actually tiring me out it wasn't giving me energy. It was actually harming my energy because my stress levels couldn't handle it. And I really didn't have the time, right because I was I didn't have time to spend like an hour driving somewhere to go to the gym and the studio and then an hour doing the workout. So I told myself like I have to do something. And I didn't believe that the time that you know, 10 minutes or 15 minutes a day would work. But I was like it's better than nothing. And so I just committed to doing that getting on my mat and doing movement and meditation every day. And what I found was not only did it help me survive through this really tumultuous time, but I actually started to feel really good. I had more energy. I was more positive. I was able to deal with stressors better because I had a little bit of exercise boost every single day. And I was taking the time to care for myself. And so when I would feel guilty about this, like oh, I should go and you know, be playing with my daughter because I'm going to be with my mom all afternoon. I actually realized like how am I going to show up and play with my daughter if I don't give myself something? So taking those 15 to 20 minutes to care for myself actually gave me so much more energy to care for others. Okay? So please, when you feel like you know, it's selfish of you to do this work and to give yourself some time it's actually the
opposite. So you can look at this as a truly selfless act because, you know, you can't give from an empty cup. It sounds cliche, yet, it's totally true. Just like gas, right? Gotta put gas in the car. A car doesn't run on fumes and when it does, it's not running really well. Right. And we're heading for a breakdown. So give yourself permission to say I'm not going to be guilty this week. I'm going to make the time organize the time, right get my time in and then you can go about doing your other things knowing that you've cared for yourself and you're going to be showing up to those other engagements, those other obligations, the things that you care about and love with more of your spirit and your heart, like showing through. Okay. All right. So we've got the time there's no guilt if you miss a workout, right? Just commit to coming back the next day. It's okay, you do the best you can and when you can you do better, right? So don't beat yourself up that is the like, erase the idea of all or nothing. We embrace all or something. So if you want five workouts great, but if you get three and that's perfect, that's three more than you would have done otherwise. Right. So how do you get started? What are your next steps? So if you have not already download the guide, there is a link and underneath this video for you to download it if you haven't yet. And then you can fill out your checklist. So you would ideally do this so that you can be very clear about when your workouts are going to happen, what your intentions are and why you're here. Okay. And then this little calendar we're going to use throughout the week and you can actually you know, fill out whenever you've done the workout. And the cool thing about this is I actually do recommend printing it and putting it up somewhere so you can see it and it will be a reminder to get on the map and your second bonus activity. So if you get that one done and you're like ready to go and you want to do one more thing, lay out your mat. Make your space organized for your workout tomorrow, okay, so wherever that may be in your home, wherever you're going to do it. If you're going to do this somewhere else, put your stuff in your car, so that you can make sure that it's super easy for you tomorrow to do it. And then you know if you're doing it in the morning, you can even just do it in your pajamas right or if you need special clothes. You can lay those out. Just make it as easy as possible so that tomorrow all it is truly is open that email, click on the link and there you go. You've got your workout, you're ready to go and I will be with you every step of the way. And remember the prizes so you want to find the check in post on my Facebook or Instagram page. Make sure to follow me there so that you'll get notified when those posts come out. And every entry you're going to comment below saying you've done the workout of the day. And each one of those comments will earn you a basically like a raffle ticket. And at the end of the week, I'm going to raffle off prizes. And if you want to make a post on your social media, saying you know I did the workout put it on your story tag me so I make sure to see it right. That also was worth an entry right? Okay, so I am so excited. I will be seeing you in your inbox. tomorrow. Have a beautiful blessed full day.