Introduction to my Online Courses: Martial Meditations: Reduce Stress & Make Better Decisions

Only two more weeks for the blog this year, mind-body students! After next week, we’ll be on our holiday break until 2019! Today, we finish up the introductions to my mind-body courses with an introduction to my newest course.

My newest Udemy course is called Martial Meditations: Reduce Stress & Make Better Decisions. I used a different design philosophy when making this course, and decided to set it out in three sections.

The first section is a set of warm-up exercises that get your body ready for the meditation in section two.

The meditation is the main focus of the course, and is meant to be the part of the course that you can eventually extend to be as long as you want. After a while you won’t even have to re-watch the meditation. You can just follow along with the warm-up, and then get right into the meditation that you know well.

The third section is the cool-down. After every good meditation, you want to gently stretch and move the energy you have built up out into your body to nourish it and energize your mind. That’s how it helps you make better decisions. By making a regular mind-body practice out of this course, you will reduce your stress levels and be better equipped to make complex decisions in your professional and personal life.

What you’ll learn

By taking this course and making the techniques part of a mind-body routine, you should see improvements in their physical and mental health, as well as your professional performance!

Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?

• Basic mobility, such as being able to stand, walk, and sit for several minutes.

• You will need a wall, and a chair.

Who this course is for:

• Professionals looking to make better decisions and reduce their stress level.

• People who work in a high-stakes or competitive environment.

• Anyone who wishes to improve their overall quality of health and mental energy with a simple course.

This course is highly focused on developing one particular meditation technique with lots of supportive techniques and material around it. If that is the kind of program you think would work for you, then I highly recommend that you buy this course! If you think that you would like something more long-form, or with a focus on a particular part of the body, then definitely take a look at my other Udemy courses.

Until next week, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Introduction to my Online Courses: Strengthen Your Immune System with Tai Chi and Qi Gong

Another week goes by, Mind-Body students! We are almost done with our introduction to my Udemy tai chi courses.

This week, we have one of my most interesting courses to introduce: Strengthen Your Immune System with Tai Chi and Qi Gong. The immune system is a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to defend the body against foreign invaders that can cause infection (from The National Institute of Health website). A compromised immune system can lead to the common cold, the flu, or other chronic health conditions and autoimmune diseases.

Some of the most promising studies of mindfulness and meditation from the past several years have suggested that a regular meditation practice can reduce immune-inhibiting inflammation, strengthen immune system cell defenses, and even slow the process of cell aging.

In this short course, composed of 19 lectures that span an hour of video time, we have packed as many immune-system boosting techniques as we could, while also keeping the length of the course something that you can review in a one hour session each day.

What you’ll learn

• Mind-Body techniques to boost the immune system

• Methods for deep relaxation

• Skills for managing stress, anxiety and mood / depression

• Prevention against sickness and the common cold

• Mindfulness practice to be more productive

• Improved concentration

Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?

• 15 to 30 minutes a day - For all knowledge levels. Beginner and up!

Who this course is for?

• Students of all ages

• Anyone starting or looking for a new job

• Professionals with demanding schedules and deadlines

• Athletes

• Medical Professionals and Care Takers

• Anyone seeking gentle exercises combined with deep breathing and meditation

• Cancer patients and families going through or recovering from treatment

That’s all for this week! Be sure to put this course on Strengthening the Immune System on your wish list this year! Udemy is always having great sales, so be on the lookout for a good price, and don’t miss out!

Until next week, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Introduction to my Online Courses: Tai Chi for a Focused Mind - Pure and Simple

Welcome back, mind-body students! I hope you all had a happy, healthy holiday last week. Can you believe there are only a few weeks left before 2018 comes to a close? People are going to be preparing their New Years resolutions soon, and we all know how hard it is to stick to your resolutions.

A good way to stay disciplined and support yourself in your New Years resolution is to use one of my courses to guide you and make your learning and practice process easier.

This week, we’re doing an introduction to Tai Chi for a Focused Mind - Pure and Simple. I made this course as a nice middle ground between the long-form Tai Chi course and the 15 minute course. In this course, you will learn much of the same Tai Chi form as you would in the long-form course, but Focused Mind cuts out a lot of the extra stretches and meditations. That extra content might be something that you would find very valuable. But if you just want the distilled Tai Chi form, then the Focused Mind course is the one for you!

This course includes 72 lectures, each 3-5 minutes long. It totals roughly 3 hours of focused Tai Chi and Qi Gong content. There is also supplementary written material in each section.

What are the Requirements?

• An interest in becoming more fit, more flexible and more relaxed

• A small comfortable space in your house, apartment, office where you can learn and practice

• Willingness to invest 15 minutes a day, three days a week, to enjoy life more

What am I going to get from this course?

Do you want to become more focused, flexible, and relaxed? Don't have time for long workouts?

This course in nourishing Tai Chi forms for focusing the mind will show you how to do a Tai Chi routine in a simple, step-by-step proven method. Not one for all the extra philosophy behind the techniques? No worries. This course is purposefully abridged and focuses entirely on the forms.

The course begins with a short introduction to the goals for the course. Immediately after, you'll dive right into learning and practicing the Tai Chi form. At the end, we've included a bonus section of stretches and breathing exercises that will help you take the benefits of the Tai Chi form to the next level.

What is the target audience?

• Anyone interested in becoming stronger, more flexible and in reducing stress

• People with little time or interest in going to the gym and taking classes

• Weekend warriors

• People who travel frequently

That’s all for this week. Come back next week for another intro to another one of my courses!

And as always, happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Introduction to my Online Courses: 15 Minutes Mind-Body Workout for Recharging & Reducing Stress

It’s Black Friday! No doubt, many of you will be running around looking for great deals all day, and won’t have much time to read a blog. That’s okay! I created a mind-body course (and this short blog post!) for exactly this busy lifestyle, whether it is for just the holidays, or someone’s entire schedule!

My 15 Minutes Mind-Body Workout for Recharging & Reducing Stress is not like my other courses, which expect you to master intermediate Tai Chi techniques slowly and over long periods of time. This 15 Minute Mind-Body Workout will synchronize your health, boosting your emotional balance while also keeping you fit and healthy. This course is for anyone and everyone interested in a more holistic workout that includes strength training, stretching, meditations, and relaxations. Once you have it down, you can do the workout in just about 15 minutes a day!

What are the requirements?

• Only a chair!

What am I going to get from this course?

• Relieve Stress

• Sleep Better

• Improve Your Fitness

• Keep Your Schedule Open

• Balance your emotions

• Improve your mental stability

• Engage your inner warrior spirit

What is the target audience?

• Everyone should use this course, especially people short on time!

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That’s all you need to know! I don’t want to take any more of your busy time this holiday, and this Udemy course won’t take too much of your time either. Go get it now while it is on sale! Now is the best time to buy into any of my courses for the cheapest you can get them.

Leg Workout for Health and Martial Arts: Part 7

Welcome back mind-body students!

This is our 7th and final part of the leg workout series, the previous installments of which you can find here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6. Next week we will consolidate all of the leg series into one post so that you can have all the links in one place.

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We’ll begin this week with an advanced version of the outer hip stretch. Once you’ve practiced enough on the chair, you can work on stretching your hips while sitting on the floor. You can still use some kind of object, like a pillow or blankets, to support your knees and stay between 60% and 80% effort. Once you get comfortable and your body feels safe relaxing in these very tense muscles, you can gradually remove the supports that you use so that your legs can lie parallel to the floor.

Instead of a technique today, we’ve got my video about common walking issues. You should use this video to examine your own walking and see if you have any of the common issues I demonstrate. These include walking with one or both feet flaring outward, collapsed arches, lack of smooth rolling from heel to toe, etc. Once you have seen the ways that your walking might be causing misalignment and pain, you can begin working to correct them!

Finally, our meditation for this week is meditation the taoist way. In this video I review the way that taoist meditation uses visualizations of the energetic system to have purposeful effects on the body. The first step to building up the energetic system is to focus on the lower energy center. The easiest way to help you practice this visualization is to hold a small object in the front of the lower energy center (two inches below the navel). Once you can hold your focus on the energy center, and then visualize the energy center, you should be working toward “residing” in the energy center. Over time, as you’re able to reside in the energy center longer, and the visualization grows, you can replace the small object with a larger one, and an even larger one. Good luck!

See you next week! Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!

Leg Workout for Health and Martial Arts: Part 6

Good to have you reading the blog again, mind-body students!

This will be Part 6 of our leg workout series, the previous installments of which you can find here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

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Our stretch for this workout is a quad stretch called the “heron” stretch. This was one of the very first videos I posted on the blog! Stretching the quads is incredibly important for improving mobility and performance, in both your daily life as well as sports and martial arts. In the video, I show you how to do the stretch with a chair and a wall, or on the floor in “seza”, a sitting position.

Sit for 2-3 minutes at first, and then see if you can stretch comfortably for 4-5 minutes.

Next, we have “kick-backs", which is a great way to further stretch the quads and increase flexibility, but with a little more intensity than the heron stretch. You can get a good cardio exercise going as you practice this technique by doing it while running. See if you can do 15, 30, or 50 kick-backs on each leg.

And finally, we have the dissolving relaxation for this week’s finale. This exercise, which I show here on two blocks, is a follow-up to the light and heavy forces, and the grounding and rooting technique. After you are in an aligned and comfortable position, you focus on scanning the various “plateaus” of your body. When you reach a place of negative sensation or energy in your body, you dissolve it by using the metaphor or meditative mantra “Sold to liquid, liquid to gas.”

I have spent very long periods of time doing this meditation, and you should try to build up to 15, 30, or even 45 minutes if you really want to explore the depths of this technique. But to start off, just try to scan the whole body in 5 or 10 minutes.

Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!