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How to care for yourself and others this new year   | Our Impulse to Care | | Caring inspires action, and everyone is nourished from it. | | Dear Friends, A New Year's blessing to you! We're grateful to be sharing this moment together as we step into 2023. Looking back at years past, we as a collective have faced profound challenges, testing our resilience and perseverance as a global community. Out of these shared experiences, something beautiful grew — our impulse to care for one another. Caring is a natural instinct, a way we connect with one another, a response of an open heart, and like a muscle, with practice, our caring instinct becomes stronger. When a friend is grieving a loss, you ask, "How can I help?" A neighbor struggles with illness, you offer to cook a meal. Caring inspires action, and everyone is nourished from it. To care for one another means to also care for your own well-being. Healing ourselves and feeling healthy and whole, we can stay present to life's fullness. Self-care is essential to living a more conscious life. DailyOM's commitment is to offer you a diverse range of learning resources that support your self-care practice. Below are six courses that we've hand selected for you. Each one is taught by a renowned teacher and offers tools for your personal journey of growth. A Year to Simplify Your Life
Give yourself the gift of deep soul nourishment for an entire year with this course by clearing expert and teacher Stephanie Bennett Vogt. Get bite-size pieces of daily wisdom with simple tools to cultivate a profound sense of spaciousness in all areas of your life that you can enjoy and experience for a lifetime. Learn more. Fascia Flows to Free Your Body
Free your body of aches, tightness, and tension. This head-to-toe, 10-day program by fascia expert and flexibility trainer Bonnie Crotzer will guide you through fascia flow routines that will reset your posture, improve your range of motion, and unblock your meridians to leave you feeling lighter with a renewed sense of full-body freedom. Learn more. Heal Your Soul by Letting Go of Emotional Addiction
We can become attached to the heavier, familiar emotions that we experience at an early age, and it can keep us from experiencing the joy that we actually desire. Transpersonal healer and author Leah Guy will teach you powerful recovery techniques to reprogram negative patterns so you can set boundaries and reconnect to your true nature. Learn more. 21 Days of Prayer to Change Your Life
Awaken your greatest gift for healing and hope with this course by spiritual practitioner Angela Montano. You'll transform the way you think about and utilize the power of prayer in your life. With daily inspirational videos and simple prayer practices, you'll explore your connection to the divine that will give you clarity and support in everything you do. Learn more. Shedding Your Menopausal Middle in 10 Days
Struggling with stubborn hormonal belly fat and totally frustrated with your lack of results, no matter what diet or exercise plan you try? Receive an exclusive, three-step hormone-balancing plan with this course by leading functional nutritionist Jacqui Justice. This program has already helped over 130,000 women around the world eliminate bloat, shed unwanted weight, and heal from bothersome menopausal symptoms. Learn more. From Self-Destruction to Reconstruction
Transform your pain, unblock negative patterns, and reignite your passion for living. This 21-day course by transpersonal healer and author Leah Guy will teach you how to dismantle self-sabotage and reconnect you with your higher self. This program will give you insightful guidance and an action plan to help you move forward with greater emotional ease and happiness. Learn more. Set an intention to make your self-care a priority this year with one of these courses, and collectively, let's work together to flex our caring muscles by lending a hand whenever it's possible. We wish you love, peace, and strength for this year and those to come. May you have a healthy, happy 2023, DailyOM | | |
  | Somatic Stretching to Relax and Release | | Somatic stretching brings your body and mind into harmony. Through gentle and easy moves you relax your muscles and retrain your brain so your body moves with more freedom. | Dear Friends,
Today we're speaking with best-selling DailyOM instructor Sadie Nardini about her somatic stretching course. As you'll learn in this interview, somatic technique radically changed Sadie's approach to stretching and her understanding of our mind-body connection. What she learned has been distilled into this 15-day course that will safely and gently increase your mobility and release muscle tension. Let's get started! | | | | Interview with Sadie Nardini | | DailyOM: How is somatic stretching different from traditional stretching?
Sadie Nardini: Exercise science tells us that long-held static stretching doesn't work well to create lasting flexibility, and it can even hurt you. Static stretching is what most of us commonly think of as stretching, where you're holding still, feeling your muscles and joints stretch out. But studies show that holding passive, static stretches can in fact make you tighter. This is because of something in your muscles called the "stretch reflex" which sounds awesome but really isn't. Your muscles are just not that smart: they don't direct a stretch, they react to it. What this means is that when you pull on them too hard in a passive, static position, your muscles and joint reflexes send a signal to your central nervous system to stop the muscles from stretching.
Once the muscles stop stretching, they start pulling on the connective tissues at the joints every time you try to stretch for a while. If you trigger your stretch reflex in the beginning of a yoga class, which commonly happens from one straight leg forward bend or Downward Dog during the Sun Salutations in the beginning of class, you'll likely stay tighter and lose strength during the whole class. And trust me, as a lifelong yoga teacher who taught the classic "forward fold over your long legs for 10 breaths to open your hamstrings" type of stretching for years, this came as quite a shock to me.
DailyOM: So flexibility doesn't come from our muscles? Tell us more about this.
SN: I'm sure at this point, most everyone reading this is asking the same thing: if the old way we used to stretch doesn't work, what does? Two modalities have shown promise in studies: dynamic stretching, which is when you move while stretching, and somatic release work, which bypasses the muscles and goes straight to the source of why most people's muscles are tight at all: the brain.
Your brain has a gamma loop, a stream of messages going to your muscles all the time. It's listening to what your body does repetitively and it's keeping those muscles active and ready 24/7. This is good in a way, because it helps you get stronger and perform your regular tasks more effectively. However, if you don't also teach the gamma loop to relax those same areas, it will keep them tense. The Somatic Flexibility Technique (SFT) I created brings your body and mind into communication. Through gentle and easy moves, you can quickly retrain your brain to keep your muscles relaxed yet ready. SFT restores more full range of motion to our joints, which is what we're really looking for when we stretch.
DailyOM: How about course participants who might be working with some serious limitations due to past injuries. Is this course a good option for them?
SN: Absolutely. What's so powerful about somatic flexibility work is how gentle it is. People with past injuries, scar tissue, immobile or less mobile joints, or less flexible connective tissues due to aging, can all benefit from this program. I should know. I'm not only 50, but I also had a severe spinal injury in my teens that caused me a lifetime of limitations I have to care for and manage. SFT work is the best thing I've ever done to maintain my flexibility without a full range of motion in my central spinal joints, and it's working for thousands of other happy students of all body types and needs.
DailyOM: What kind of commitment will students have to make for this course?
SN: Each session in this course is around 10-15 minutes. That's it. One session will release a whole chain of interconnected muscles, like hamstrings, glutes, and low back. It's amazing! And once a participant goes through all the sessions, they can return to the ones they need the most. Once they retrain the gamma loop, they will need these less often, but 15 minutes spent on oneself is not too much to ask. I know I scroll social media for way more than 15 minutes a day, and most people have at least these few minutes free to dedicate to their body's holistic freedom.
DailyOM: What if people just need a certain area released? Do you still recommend they do this whole-body program?
SN: Our bodies are not made of single muscles that exist independently of one another. Muscles are linked together in lines, or myofascial (muscle and connective tissue) meridians that intercommunicate. For example, the soles of your feet, inner shins, inner thighs, and hip flexors all affect one another. If your hip flexors feel tight, it could be because the soles of your feet or quads are tight, and you're feeling it higher up the line. Because of this, I recommend that even if people have a certain area where they're feeling the tension, they go through all the sessions on this program in order. The release sessions start at the feet and work their way up, so participants may be surprised at all the secret spots they find to release along the journey.
DailyOM: What would you say to those who have tried everything to release chronic muscle tension and nothing has worked? Why will your program be any different?
SN: This is a program unlike any other. It focuses the mind in new ways to give the student more tools in their quest to feel their best every day. This work is holistic. It unites the awareness of the student with their body. Not only are they going to release muscles more deeply than ever before, they are also going to re-educate their brain to send new messages to the muscles all day (and night) long.
With a new mindset comes greater consciousness, so people will start noticing when tension is building up. They will be able to drop into a few minutes of SFT release work, even sitting at their desks, and prevent new tightness from creeping into their muscles.
My program is a new way of feeling stronger and freer in our bodies. I invite everyone to come along on this adventure with me! | | | | How Does It Work | | Starting today, you will receive all 15 of your lessons. Each lesson is yours to keep and you'll be able to refer back to it whenever you want. If you miss a lesson or are too busy to get to it, each lesson will conveniently remain in your account so you won't have to search for it when you're ready to get back to it. | | Get Started Now | | We are offering this course with the option of selecting how much you want to pay. No matter how much you pay, you'll be getting the same course as everybody else. We simply trust that people are honest and will support the author of the course with whatever they can afford. And if you are not 100% satisfied, we will refund your money. | | | How Much Do You Want To Pay? $19$39$59 This is the total amount for all 15 lessons | | If you're ready to experience less muscle tension, and a whole new sense of freedom and well-being, join Sadie on this journey! Until next time.
Be well,
DailyOM | | For more information visit: | | Somatic Exercises to Relax and Release | | | | Somatic Exercises to Relax and Release | | By Sadie Nardini | | Somatic stretching uses an effective mind-body approach to movement that eases discomfort and stress within minutes. In this course, anatomy and fitness expert Sadie Nardini will provide gentle guided exercises that release each muscle on a deeper level than traditional static moves. These beneficial lessons also include useful tips to build long-term flexibility and improve your range of motion. By the end of this, you will feel and stay relaxed before tightness or pain even builds up. | | | | | |
