What Is a Midlife Woman's Most Important Commodity?

From the YouTube captions, lightly cleaned. Some words and names may be misheard.

Welcome to the science of calm for women in leadership. A 7-day online experience to reset your nervous system and integrate science forward systems from world-class experts and pioneers in their field to help you lead with calm. Because a calm work day means more energy left when you return home for meaningful conversation, deep sleep, and weekends full of play. I'm Wendy Johnston and I will be your host for this event. I love to begin our sessions with a brief breathing exercise so that you can feel the shift and feel what 60 seconds of breath can do for you. Okay. So, wherever you're at, just find a nice comfortable place to sit down. Let the shoulders drop and you can bring your hands into your lap if you'd like on your desk. however is comfortable for you. So, we're just going to relax a little bit. Take in a nice deep breath in through the nose all the way down to the belly.

Exhale out the mouth. Let the shoulders drop. Inhale all the way to the belly and exhale as if you're fogging up a mirror. Inhale all the way to the belly and exhale. Release any tension in the shoulders. Inhale all the way down and exhale. Release any tension in the body. And last time, inhale all the way down, filling it up. And exhale out the mouth. Nice and noisy. releasing any tension in that whole body as we stay here for just a second more. And just feel that shift. It's amazing.

So, as we blink our eyes open, I would love to take this moment to tell you a little bit about our guest today. Christopher Grant and Daniela Hess are the co-founders of Great Energy, an online school devoted to embodied practice, conscious living, and nervous system health. Together they bring more than 40 years of lived and teaching experience across Taoist yoga, Qigong meditation, functional movement and energy awareness. Their work is practical, contemporary and rooted in direct experience. They are especially known for translating ancient practices into simple practical tools that work in modern bodies and busy lives. Their Great Energy Qigong certification has become a trusted training for yoga teachers and wellness professionals seeking trauma-aware accessible practices they can embody personally and share with their students. Welcome Christopher and Daniela. Would you like to take it away?

All right. Welcome everyone. My name is Daniela and I have an opening question for you. What do you think a midlife woman's most valuable commodity is? Think of a woman between 35 and 60. And you could just have that answer in your mind or you can put it in the chat. Bonnie, thank you. Yes, we would assert that it's your energy. And this talk today is the talk that genuinely we wish that every woman 35 and up could hear. Why? Because this is when perimenopause begins. And perimenopause is as wild of a ride as it was when we were in adolescence. And it reveals very quickly any and all imbalances that previously we could just push our way through or have another cup of coffee around prior to the onset of perimenopause. Now today there are three keys that I want you to walk away with. What do keys do? They give you access to something. They open doors and they move you forward. So the first key I really oh my gosh please take this home with you is the following. The quality of your energy determines the quality of the experience of your life.

The quality of your energy determines the quality of the experience of your life. They are always in direct relationship. If the quality of your energy is consistently mediocre, the quality of your life is going to feel mediocre. If the quality of your energy is great, then the quality of your experience of your life becomes great even with the challenges that show up. So everything that we're going to talk to about today really is in service of this. So for those of you that I may have the great honor of meeting for the first time, my name is Daniela. I'm a spiritual educator, a functional medicine coach, and a midlife mentor. And I'm here with my husband, Christopher, who is a yoga and Qigong educator, a certification trainer, and a meditation teacher. We are both the founders of Great Energy, and the creators of the Autoimmune Recovery Method. Now, here's why this matters. One in five women currently are living with an autoimmune condition. Many are undiagnosed for years. For many, it starts to show up undeniably in midlife. And many of us navigating autoimmune are in leadership roles. We're holding space for many. We're teaching. We're being there for others.

One in four women are on anti-depressants. 70% of Americans are not exercising. And over 60% of the American diet is processed food. Like that includes your bag of corn chips, which seem really innocent. So Christopher and I work with students and clients teaching yoga, Qigong, somatic practices, meditation, somatic regulating practices, lifestyle intervention practices, and how to help midlife women come back to life. So many of you here are leaders. What does that mean? give, you hold space, you're carrying responsibilities, and you're showing up again and again and again. You're high functioning. And for most of your life, many of you may have been able to push through and override signals. You just kept going. Even when something maybe underneath wasn't supported, then midlife happens and everything that was quietly being held together starts to reveal itself. Depletions will become visible, imbalances become louder, and your capacity to push through changes. Now, what is the first thing that gets disrupted? Your ability to feel calm. Now, if you don't feel calm, it may not be that it's anxiety. What you may be feeling, there's calm and then there's overwhelm, a fatigue that just doesn't go away. a background heaviness while you're still doing everything and a kind of malaise.

I want you to hear this. This is often an effect, not the root cause. Now, here's the second key. This may feel challenging, so just open mind to this here, okay? Calm is not something we can necessarily practice. It isn't something that we can make happen. And it is definitely not we something we can think our way into. Calm is the natural result of a body that is resourced. Now a resourced system is supported, regulated, and nourished. So if we don't feel calm, we're not trying to fix we're not trying to fix it by trying harder to be calm. Which leads us to the third key. The third key is we investigate. And here is the question to take with you. Where is my calm leaking from? Now, most of us have been taught to work from the nervous system down instead of from the body up. And today we're going to look at three places where our calm gets disrupted. It gets disrupted from the biological lens, the neurological, and the environmental. So, the first barrier to calm is often the most overlooked. It's biological.

Again, I said this before, one in four women in midlife are on anti-depressants, and many have never had their hormones properly evaluated. Your body in midlife is changing. Ready for this? Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. We've all heard of these. Many of us tend to think that these are reproductive hormones. They actually do so much more than that. They regulate the brain. So when progesterone drops, you lose your primary calming buffer. When estrogen fluctuates or drops, it totally disrupts. It hijacks serotonin and dopamine, and you're going to feel more reactive and less stable. And when your testosterone is testosterone is too low, you'll feel flat, unmotivated, drained. And for some women in midlife, your testosterone skyrockets. You become dysregulated and you're going to feel way extra amped, not calm, edgy, and revved. So now that is a huge component of what happens in perimenopause. Let's add some things in that impact our calm. blood sugar crashes which create adrenaline spikes. Low ferritin creates low oxygen delivery because your ferritin is your iron storage. Thyroid dysfunction for many women it's subclinical and not diagnosed yet and disrupted sleep. So now what we're labeling as anxiety not calm is often the body saying I do not have what I need.

So now that's just the first barrier. The second one is a neurological. This is neurological overwhelm. This often happens for women 35 and up. Is an undiagnosed or intensified ADHD. Constant mental switching and an inability to settle. Let's add in cortisol dysregulation. Sometimes our cortisol is too high and then sometimes it flatlines. Chronic stress. Feeling wired at night but exhausted in the morning. Now your nervous system gets stuck in a loop. And the third barrier to calm is our environment, our life. We exist in an unnaturally busy contemporary lifestyle that has constant stimulation, constant output, and very little quality recovery time. Let's add in for many people a lack of structure. lack of movement and then relationships, the health of our relationships. There's a great author, Lisa Rankin, she has a book coming out. It's called Relation Sick. Now, she was a physician working with women for decades. And she was just like, 'Oh my goodness, there are so many women in midlife that are trying to heal, trying to get their energy back, trying to reduce anxiety and feel calm.

And many of them are living in environments in a relationship that is depleting, misaligned, and emotionally unsafe or not nourishing. So we cannot feel calm in a life that keeps our system in tension. If your environment is chaotic and your relationships are depleting, your nervous system is going to be chaotic. So calm now just becomes some moments here and there, not a baseline. So instead of asking how do I calm down at Great Energy, we ask what is in the way of my calm right now? Is it biology, neurology, lifestyle? Now, here's a thread that weaves through all three. All three. Biology, neurology, lifestyle. They converge in one thing. They create inflammation. When the body is inflamed, it disrupts neurotransmitters. It raises your cortisol, and it increases nervous system sensitivity. So, you're going to feel wired, restless, unable to settle. The complete opposite of calm. Now, we layer in lifestyle. 60% of the American diet being processed food. 70% of Americans not exercising. You know, we've heard of seasonal effective disorder. Now, we have sedentary effective disorder, which creates a chronically inflamed system.

So we have to become dict detectives of where is my calm leaking? Have I had my hormones properly evaluated? Has anybody looked at my ferritin levels? Your iron storage through optimal ranges? Has my thyroid been fully assessed? Not just looking at TSH, but doing a full thyroid panel. Has anyone looked at my blood sugar? Now the following statement I believe with all my heart. Many if not most doctors from any modality care deeply about their patients. They care deeply about us. Many of them are also not using optimal ranges when you get your labs done. So many women in midlife are being told everything is normal because your results land in the green section called normal on your on your lab output. But many are still feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and not like yourself. Your hair your hair is shedding. You're gaining weight and it doesn't make sense. You still feel exhausted. You could have a ferritin level of 15 and by many doctors be told you're fine. But I want to tell you, you're not fine with your ferritin at 15.

Normal ranges are based on a sick population. Optimal ranges are where your body functions well. So when we stop at normal, you can lose years. It takes women on average right now in midlife seven years to figure out what's going on in their bodies. When their energy depletes, they're losing they're losing their hair. They're just tired and wired. definitely not feeling calm. I personally I lost a decade of my life. I was doing yoga, Qigong, meditation and underneath that there was still a hum tension and I was told by every doctor that my insurance covered I was fine. My labs were landing in the normal ranges but I wasn't. Now the lens was incomplete and it wasn't until I entered functional medicine that I found practitioners that were looking at a fuller picture. And I do not want another woman losing a decade of their life. Now, this is where Christopher comes in. And this is where Qigong comes in. Because as a woman who lives caffeine-free with Great Energy, and with autoimmunity in my life, Qigong is an essential practice. Now, Qigong does not override biology. It doesn't it couldn't replace what my body needed and it is one powerful bridge because before we can build Great Energy before we go from mediocre energy to great we have to find where the energy is leaking. So we can plug these leaks and we can then cultivate and circulate energy. Qigong supports you no matter where your system is. And once your physiology is supported, gh it becomes one of the most powerful ways to sustain calm.

Thanks Daniela. That was amazing. So shifting over to my side. I am biased. Shifting over to my side. My name is Christopher and I'm going to invite everyone here into a 10 to 12 minute Great Energy Qigong efficiency practice. What's so amazing about Qigong for me personally as someone who does have a resource system? My micronutrients are balanced. My ferritin and my d levels are in good ranges. My morning practice of Qigong steadies me for my day. It eases stress and tension out of my body. It centers, calms, and soothes my mind. And it moves me into my heart. It allows me to attend to my emotions. These practices are what let me enter into my day in the best way possible so that I can do the work that I'm here, so that I can serve in the way that I'm designed to do. Qigong builds and strengthens stamina. It increases the flexibility in mobility in the joints and it gently stretches out all the tight areas in my body. I basically think of Qigong as a cross trainer for life because all of the side effects of Qigong are beneficial.

Qigong improves the quality of sleep. It increases and steadies my energy during the day. It helps me to be in a better mood. It helps me to show up and be more present in my life and helps me to be more attentive to my wife. It helps me look people in the eyes and not feel like I'm rushing to the next thing. I can actually hear what they're saying. And you heard Daniela. What's incredible about Qigong is for women in midlife who are navigating the effects of depleted energy, whether known or unknown. For women with chronic diseases such as autoimmune, longcoid, chronic fatigue, and more and more and more, this practices is one of the only forms of exercise that doesn't add additional fatigue. It doesn't create flares. It actually allows for a net gain in energy. So for those of you with depleted energy, Qigong is the ideal starting point to start to recover your energy because every practice gives you energy rather than taking it away. You put in one energy token, you receive back two energy tokens. So I'm absolutely thrilled right now to have everyone here participate in today's 10-minute practice.

These Qigong practices can be done standing up. They can be seated. There's even energy practice you can do lying down in bed or if you're sick or on especially low energy day. So if you'd like to move through a Great Energy Qigong practice with me, then you are welcome to make your way to your space to come to Christopher. Would you like Oops. I'm sorry. Would you like for me to u make you to spotlight you? I think that's great. Yeah, we'll bring Okay. And then I'll bring Daniela back when Yep. Okay. And Christopher, we have time for the full practice because I cruise through intro. I was I was really excited. Daniela is lit about this work, isn't she? We can add in the naughty shodda and the we can do the full efficiency practice. Okay. So, I absolutely love teaching these practices. You'll catch the you'll catch it from me as we go along. So, you're welcome to make your way to a comfortable standing or seated position. So, you have a little bit of room to the left and to the right. These practices are generally gentle and appropriate for everybody and all body types. However, if you feel something within your body that doesn't feel quite right, if you feel some kind of twinge or burning sensation or a sharper shooting pain, please back off and then wait for what's next.

There'll be some other ones that are suitable for you, that are good for you. You can start to rub your hands together. I think of this as the original Qigong, our distant ancestors warming themselves by the fire, rubbing hands together to generate to generate energy. Let your feet become a little bit wider than hipwidth apart. Rub also the backs of your hands. We're waking up the chi. She means energy or the force or life force energy or my favorite definition today the vital principle. Your energy is the vital principle. So start to shake. Before we can participate in the circulation or the cultivation of energy that Daniela mentioned, we need to create some clearing. So these first few practices are designed to clear stress and tension from your system. So shake the hands, start to shake the arms, shake the shoulders, shake one leg, shake every part of your body. Take a big breath in and let it out with a sigh or a sound.

Breathe in through the nose and sigh it out. Make an audible sound. One more time. A little louder. Breathing in a sigh or play with any vowel. Good. And then bring both hands to cover the space right below your navl. and allow the breath to move into this part of the body. As you breathe in through the nose, this part of the body expands. And then blow the breath out. Imagine you're blowing through a straw. Breathing in full breath. Breathing out. The relaxed face. Breathing in through the nose as full a breath as you can. And then blow it out. And then let the breath become normal. Breathing in and out through your nose if it's clear and feeling your belly move. So as you breathe in the belly moves away and as you breathe out it comes in towards your spine.

In Qigong we say that breath is a vehicle of chi and should always be moving. There are many breathold practices that have benefits to us. However, in this Qigong practice, let's just let the breath be normal and full into the belly, into the abdomen. Notice the mind already starting to settle into this experience. Feeling of calm starts to show up. And you can roll the shoulders up and back and down once, twice, and three times. Opening and closing your mouth. Blinking your eyes a few times. Moving your head side to side. All right, rub the hands together. So, this one's called throwing away the trash. As you inhale, come up on your tippy toes. Reach the palms to the ceiling. And exhale, come down. Bend the knees. Throw the hands towards the ground with a big breath out. Inhale up. Exhale.

Make a sound. Blow it out. Imagine you're letting the earth absorb all the stale, stagnant, leftover energy that doesn't need to be here anymore. Inhale up and good. Then shake a little bit. Let the feet become wider than hipwidth apart. And we start to turn from the waist and the hips. So your legs are like tree trunks connected to the nourishing power of the earth and your upper body is moving from the center. Imagine that your arms are like empty coat sleeves. tapping and bumping into your body firmly enough that you can hear them. Breathing in through the nose and breathing out through the nose or the mouth. Letting your hands move around. Tap the hips. Tap the lower back. Tap the kidneys. Tap your stomach, your spleen, your liver. This area is called the chi belt and it's known as the lower dantenne. Dantenne is a word that means elixir field or energy field.

So it's thought that this area of the body is where our vitality is both stored and sourced. Our body's vitality is stored and sourced in the lower dantenne, the lower elixir field. So, we're waking it up. We're saying, 'Come on, let's bring some energy in.' Good. Now, you can go a little further and let one heel lift and let a hand come up to the upper chest or to the shoulder. letting the legs rotate. Getting a little bit more into the hips and the back. Now let your face welcome a gentle smile. Our second principle, the first principle is the breath is always moving. And our second principle is to bring a gentle smile onto the face to welcome this present moment to relax the face. Qigong is enjoyable. 10 or 15 minutes you can completely shift your energy.

Now we're going to slow this down. Let the feet settle again. And now with the hands away from the body, we'll move even slower, letting both hands face in the direction they're moving. And imagine that you're moving or swirling water. You're in your favorite water. Maybe it's your bath. Maybe it's a pool. Maybe it's a lake. Maybe it's a tropical ocean. And as you move slowly, you can feel energy moving between your fingers. So go slower than your breath and tune in to the space between your fingers. Notice any sensations like tingling or warmth. or flow. You're already starting to tune into your energy.

Before we can circulate or cultivate or develop our energy, we get a baseline. Where is my energy? How am I today? Good. Enjoy this moving meditation. Breathing, smiling, relaxing, flowing. And let it slow down. And now let both hands face each other. and come to shape the form of a ball like the size of a soccer ball or a basketball in front of and a little bit below your navl. And let your fingers adjust to find a natural curve that feels really good. And bring your attention, your mind into the space between your hands. What do you feel here? What are the signatures of your energy waking up that are unique for you, that are specific for you?

Maybe your hands want to pulse a little bit, moving a little closer together and a little farther apart. You are a living being surrounded by an electromagnetic field. It's measurable. It's real. And you can tune into it. You can feel it. This is called the chiball. It's where our imagination and our breath meet our lived experience. So if you don't feel anything, use your imagination. Pretend as if you can tune into your own energy field and it will start to reveal itself. Now we can turn the chi ball now so that one hand is on top of each other and the other is below. I'll mirror you so you can bring your right hand on the bottom and the left hand on the top. We're going to do a version of a dragon. So with this one, we step open and spin our hands backwards looking behind us at that back hand. And then come on back to the front. Square your feet back to the front. And then the other hand, the left hand is on the side. Take a breath in.

As you exhale, open your feet. Spin and your hands spin. Travel with your eyes as far back as your hand wants to go. And then come on back to the front. Square your feet again. Back to the energy ball. Right hand on the bottom. Take a breath in. Exhale. Spin open. Look behind you. Inhale back to the front. Sink down into a high horse stance. Open to the other side. Spin. Breath in and breath out. Feeling these movements in the hips and in the back. Sinking down into a squat as far as you'd like to go. Open to the side. To the back. Twist. Back to the front. We're ringing out stress and tension from the meridians, from the energy pathways that guide vital energy to our vital organs and out to the hands and the feet and the head. The meridians are thought to be rivers of light. When they're blocked, our energy stagnates, imbalances come in, and disease follows.

When the meridians are open, energy can stay balanced, and our body can recover and heal itself. One more time. And back to the front. Now you can step your feet in. Inhale. Let the hands float up. And then exhale. They glide down the center of your body. This is called collecting the chi. Inhale. The hands come up. And exhale. Tune in to your fingers. As you move slowly, your hand is moving through your energy field. And you'll notice little tingles or shimmers. Now let's come back to that energy ball. Feet a little wider than hipwidth apart. This is called ready stance. Knees are soft, slightly bent. Tailbone is heavy. Sternum is lifted. Shoulders are down and back. Corners of the mouth turned up towards the ears. Breath into the belly. Ready? Come on back to that chi ball and we're going to paint a rainbow in the sky.

This set that we're working on today is called the radiant light set. So, we're going to imagine as we bring the chi ball up and over that we can hold it up mirroring that golden white light of the sun. And then we can bring it down over to the side. So it's both a physical movement and an energy movement. So we bring it up. Imagine you're holding that ball. And then it come on comes back into the center. And then we swift switch sides up and over painting a rainbow above you. And now the other hand is on the bottom. So imagine that you're visualizing a rainbow of colors surrounding you and protecting you. You're connecting your energy now with the radiant light above. Sun, the moon, the stars, lifegiving sun. Let this movement become a little bit bigger. So your hands are moving and your legs are also pulsing and changing, strengthening.

Smile to yourself. You are cultivating the light within. This is good work that you're doing right now. Good. One more time. You can step the feet in. And again, the hands circle up and around and down in front. The hands come to the side. Take a breath or two here. And just as our spirit, our mind, our life is enlivened by the light of the sun, we are also nourished by our mother, the earth. So now as the hands start to float up and down in front of the body, imagine that nourishing energy from our mother, the earth is streaming up your legs.

This one's called the sixth direction flow. So inhale, the hands are rippling up and floating down. So this isn't an arm thing. This is a whole body wave. and the arms, the hands being led by the wrists is kind of the effect of your body opening to flow. In Qigong, we call these practices moving meditations. In our Great Energy Qigong classes, we learn a bunch of them. And for people who have excess energy or have experienced difficulty meditating, these moving meditations can be very nice. So I'm going to teach you this one and then give you a minute to explore it yourself. Right? So we have up and down direction. Then the next time your hands are up, they press forward and then draw back in. press forward and draw back in. Those are the next two directions.

And then the next time the hands are near the shoulders, out to the sides and draw back in. Okay? So, you're experiencing the edges of your own energy field. And the hands can float down. Inhale, the hands up. Exhale. Press forward. Inhale. Draw back. Exhale to the side. Inhale. Draw back. Exhale. Notice the ground beneath your feet. Go ahead. Breathing in through the nose. Press forward. Draw back out to the side. In we go and float down. So moving at the pace of your own breath. There's no stress or tension. Now you're looking to flow in a way that's effortless. You do a few on your own. Moving slowly, soothing your nervous system.

As if your mind is feeling a little calmer. One more full round. When you're complete, pause here. Tune into your mind. Notice what you're feeling. Feel your heartbeat. Notice your pulses and then we welcome the radiant light of the sun to infuse our body. Inhale, bring the hands up overhead, collecting and gathering all the celestial light. The hands create that shape of the ball and we move it down. The hands are coming down in front of the body. Noticing the head. Noticing the heart. Noticing the hips. Noticing the feet. Letting your knees be soft.

Your feet are open to the energy of the earth. Inhale. Now, this energy ball isn't moving in front of our body. It's within our body. Guiding your hands down. This golden orb is filling your head, your smile. Filling your heart, filling your hips, down your legs, down to the feet. Again, stay relaxed. Big breath in. Welcome this energy. Feeling the head center of wisdom, the heart center of love, the body center of vitality. Let your three centers fill. Do this a few on your own. Wisdom, love, and power. moving slower than your breath. Now, imagine every cell in your body is glowing with the radiant light of the sun.

Let all your cells receive, be nourished. This feels complete. Let both hands settle on the space below your navl. Step your feet in close to each other, perhaps touching. And we finish with bamboo in the wind. letting your body rock and sway. Bamboo can withstand fierce scales because their roots go deep. Letting your imagination bring your roots deep into the earth even while your body is filled with light. Notice how you're feeling.

Release and relax. Thank you everyone. How do you feel? Welcome to Great Energy Qigong. Hey Daniela, welcome back. Thank you Christopher. Oh, I love everyone's reflections in the comments. It is. Thank Christine. You really said that so beautifully. Relaxed and energized at the same time. Yeah, calm and energized. Isn't that a great balance? Oh my gosh. Well, thank you, Christopher. So friends, as each of you continues through this summit, you're going to experience some really wonderful things. You're going to experience breath work with people. Mon Monday is all about the science of calm and you're going to experience some sound healing and somatic work and meditations. And all of these practices are incredibly nourishing.

And I just want you to remember when our physiology is off, it can't create sustained calm. It creates what we call treading water calm. You feel better for a little while, but then you return to the same baseline. Or maybe you need more coffee and you're wired and tired. Okay? So remember, we cannot meditate our way to higher ferritin. We can't meditate our way to better D levels or B12 levels. We can't meditate our way to mitochondrial functioning. We can't breath work our way into replenished hormones. And we can't somatic our way into a functioning thyroid. All of these practices support us, but they won't replace what our body needs if something's missing. And many practitioners, many somatic practitioners become deeply trained in one modality and not also in women's midlife physiology. So what some practitioners can offer is valuable and yet it can be incomplete at the cost of that being women lose years thinking well I'm doing the breath work I'm doing the meditations I'm doing the Qigong and still I'm experiencing low energy my hair is falling out body composition changes I can't sleep at night right many of these things happen so if you're working if you're going to work with somatic practitioners ers vet them. Make sure they understand also just the basics of women's midlife hormones, metabolism, how does the nervous system work and the biology

Together. Because many of the people that each of us and you serve and many of you here are women in midlife and we can't as leaders and helpers and educators stay siloed. And I see too many women thinking they're doing everything right and not getting the results because they're missing like half the equation. there is just so much more that we could say about this. You can find us over at greatenergy.org. or I love teaching both the science and the soul of women's midlife wellness, vibrancy, recovery. You pick your pick your word. And I also love helping leaders and practitioners and educators fill in the missing gaps about just understanding women's physiology. So, you can look us up and we have great education, but I but if anything, I just want you to remember the three keys. Okay, let me go through them once more. The first key is remember what do keys do? They open something. So we have access to something. The first key is the quality of your energy will determine the quality experience of your life. The second key is that calm. We can't try to get calm. Calm is the effect.

It's what your body gives you when it's properly resourced. And the third key is notice if you don't feel calm. You want to ask where is my calm leaking from? Because when the body finally has what it needs, calm isn't something that we have to chase. It's something that we that we naturally will feel. So thank you Oh, thank you, Daniela and Christopher. Oh my goodness, what a beautiful offering. I loved that. My hair is a little wild now, but I loved it. Wildly painting the rainbow, right? Like, yes. Good. I loved every minute of it. Oh my goodness. So, as if that wasn't a beautiful gift enough, you lovely, wonderful, generous souls have brought everybody an extra little free gift. Would you all like to tell them about it?

Christopher, over to you. So, you all just experienced one of our Great Energy Qigong efficiency practices, and we have another one if you'd like to. Wendy will share the link and you are welcome to sign up. You'll both be able to receive two different versions of free classes. Pretty different than the one we did today. Today was a never t never before taught sequence especially for you. I always teach my I teach from an inspired place for who's there. And so the jump start your energy is a daily practice. We have one version that's 15 minutes and one that's 20 minutes. and you're welcome to sign up. And if you if you do, you'll be on our on our communications list and you'll also hear about Daniela's upcoming educational offering that she'll be leading in June. I love it. Well, thank you so much. Oh my goodness, this was amazing. So, let's see. I see some comments in the comment box if there's anything that you guys would like to address or if anyone has any questions. We have some few minutes for some questions or let us know how that landed for you.

We love Q&A in our programs. We always have office hour style conversations. Yeah, it's the best. It's the best. Oh, I love what Christine wrote. Thanks to both of you for these valuable holistic information tying together biological, neurological, environmental into a bigger picture. Thank you. A Oh, thank you, Maryanne. She is the gift I didn't know I needed. Yeah, I get that. It finds you. It can sneak up on us, right? and it can be such a it's such an incredible practice that it can easily be overlooked like oh is it really doing that much like and it is just absolutely incredible and I love how even without being prompted the face kind of wants to smile when you do Qigong it's like all your cells are like oh thank you it's like they're getting receiving such nourishment and it you'll find oh my god Gosh, I'm actually smiling while I'm doing this practice. I don't have to make it happen. I love it. So, I put the link also is on your speaker page. Okay. So, let me tell them real quickly about how to get to your speaker page. So, when you get an email from me, it has a link for nonVIP and it has a link for VIP. And so you can follow whichever link is you and it will take you to the today's speaker page and on that speaker page it has all of the speakers listed and then it has their speaker page button and so you just click on that button and you can go to Christopher and Daniela's page and you'll learn all about their bio and their social media and their website and all of that. So that's all right there.

And it also has your free gift. Yeah. Thank you, Wendy. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you so much, Christopher and Daniela, of Great Energy. This has been so amazing. Thank you so much. And yeah, I would love to offer everybody if you need a restroom break or bio break, we have the next five minutes. Let's do it. There's a question I'd love to answer in the chat while we're in our last few minutes. Yes, please. [An attendee asks how to adapt the twisting movements.] So, these Qigong practices, we say movement is medicine. So, these Qigong practices are beneficial for any level of movement. whether it looks like me or it looks like anybody else, it doesn't matter. So, always checking with your doctor for anything that's specific to you is key. And then generally what I would suggest is starting with less or could that could be way less. And the movements such as the swinging the arms side to side we did in a dynamic way where we are moving back and forth. It could be that a more of a static twist like there's one where you can just gently move and feel where the edge is there and then gently move the other way and finding that place where you say, 'Oh, if I go any further, that might be too much.' And that's where you where you call it a pause. The benefits of these practices are whole body benefits.

So even if you're moving in a way where you think not much is happening, it still is supporting the internal rebalancing of your body's own physiology as well as your energy system. So always do less. Always do less. And while I have the microphone, someone commented earlier during the practice that they were experiencing hot flash. Even doing that much exercise brings on hot flashes and makes me want to stop moving. So, thank you for thank you for sharing that. Thank you for outing that. My question for you would be to notice how you feel now because the benefits of these practices come afterwards. So, if now you feel oo I wish I hadn't done that, then that's really good information. Whereas if now you say, 'Oh, I feel okay now.' Then that these experiences sometimes when we're in the practices, they don't feel calming or energizing. However, if afterwards you feel a little bit better, then you'll know it was an okay practice for you. And if afterwards you feel something's not right in any of the beautiful layers of your being, then you would know to do less next time or perhaps to work with somebody one-on-one so that you can find practices that are supportive for you.

Thank you. All right, I'm going to bring our recording to a close. thank you so much. Great energy. We'll be still on, but thank you everyone. So, click the link below and pick up your free gift from your speaker. And don't forget to meet us back in the Science of Calm Facebook group every evening for our evening recap at 4:30 Pacific, 7:30 Eastern. And for those of you who purchased the VIP all access fast pass, we will see you in the Zoom room 1 half hour later. So that's 5:00 Pacific, 8:00 Eastern for our evening embodiment session. It's just a delicious way to integrate everything that you've learned from the day and just let the day go and just come into rest and relaxation. So, if you haven't purchased your VIP class yet, it's not too late. You still can. You will get all of the recordings of your expert speakers from the science of calm for women in leadership. You will get your day one embodiment calm experience. You will get the recordings of all of those and you will get your evening embodiment integration sessions. You'll get all of the recordings for those as well. And you will get one month of whispers of calm.

I love this series. It's I call it an environment of calm. It's it gives you a prompt and it gives you breath work. So you feel really relaxed and regulated in the moment that you listen to it and then you have prompt something to consider and bring with you throughout your week. Because when you are practicing consistently, you have calm consistently, right? So, consistent practice of calm equals consistent calm. So, it's not too late to pick that up. Go ahead and click the link below and I will see you back here tomorrow for more of the science of calm for women in leadership. Thank you very much.