This is a full transcript of the Nirvana Sisters podcast Episode 2, Breathe… Movement Matters..

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Welcome to Nirvana sisters, where we discuss all things health and well being to help you achieve your highest state your nirvana. Hi, I'm Amy Sherman, a marketing exec with a passion for wellness and beauty.

Katie: 0:27

Hi, I'm Katie Chandler, a former fit model that has a passion for health and fitness. We

Amy: 0:32

are sisters in law who share the same love for well being ready to sift through all this self care noise and bring you a splash of what we think is fun. So let's get started. In today's episode of Nirvana Sisters, we talk about the importance of fitting daily movement and meditation into your routine.

Katie: 0:52

Amy discusses how she mixes it up to keep it fresh, and I talk about my love for reformer Pilates. And at the end, a really new and exciting way to start your morning, Amy has been using a great product to help her wake up. And Enjoy.

Amy: 1:08

Hello, welcome to Nirvana sisters. Hi, Katie, what's going on. Okay, so we are back with another episode. And today we are going to discuss one of our favorite topics for both of us, which is movement and meditation. Then after that, we're going to go into my top three favorite products of the week. And then we'll talk about our weekly nirvana. So let's get started. cating. I think both of us are really passionate about this topic. We have tried so many different things over the years. And we're just going to talk about kind of a few of our favorite things. But I just wanted to start to kind of talk about health movement, as we both know is really important in your life. I mean, I think that some people can get intimidated and think they always have to like workout really hard and be sweating every day. But I think it's really just about moving your body, whether it's five minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, I think, many years ago, I decided I'm not going to make myself crazy, but I am going to make sure that I have some type of movement every day because I was feeling like I had to do something where I was doing cardio and you know, killing myself every day. But then what I realized is as long as you're moving, even if it's walking, you're doing something for your body, you're feeling better your endorphins are going and you have a much better day and feel more balanced. And before we sort of jump into it, I actually saw this article this week. It's written by this woman her name, I just discovered her her name is Kaki, oh Gomorrah if I pronounced that correctly, and she wrote an article called how Japanese people stay fit for life without ever visiting the gym. And then I realized she has a Japanese wellness blog, which is really interesting. Anyway, I Kyoko Mora wrote this article about how Japanese people stay fit for life without ever visiting a gym. And one of the things she says in her blog is that in Japan, people don't really think about exercises working out, they really think about it as just walking in that they don't really think about as exercising, it's just their way of life. So I'm just going to read a couple sentences from this article that she wrote this week, which says what the above results show is not that exercise isn't important to be healthy, but that in Japan's approach to moving perhaps most don't see it as exercise. Japanese adults walk an average of 6500 steps a day, with male adults in their 20s to 50s, walking nearly 8000 steps a day on average, and women in their 20s to 50s, about 7000 steps. Okinawans in particular are well known for their walking culture, being especially mindful about incorporating movement in their daily lifestyle. Nagano overall prefecture in Japan was able to flip their high stroke rate by incorporating over 100 walking routes. And now their citizens enjoy the highest rates of longevity in the country, which I think was really interesting part of the article. So all this being said, I just think that any sort of movement you're doing on a daily basis is super important for your body. I'm going to let Katie talk about what she prefers to do. And we'll kind of talk about what our routines are to keep to keep moving.

Katie: 4:10

Yeah, I mean, I'm just like you I mean that I don't go and hit the gym for an hour every day of the week. I can't do it. I mean, I used to be able to do it when I didn't have to chase after my kids all day and I could sleep in and I can recover. But now it's just a matter of if I think get in a good 20 to 30 minute workout, even if it's just walking like LIS low intensity steady state. It's so good for you. And then also, we're busy moms, right? We're running around in house all day. We're chasing after our kids. We're cleaning our house. We're running errands, I mean just the act of being on your feet all day. A lot of people kind of take that for granted if you if you're not super sedentary. The idea is to just not be sedentary, right? Just sit in a chair all day and if you do have to sit in a chair all day Do you have to be in an office or you have to be behind a computer screen that's when you need to make sure that you're taking the stairs when you can take the stairs that you're you know, just walking, park the car a little bit further and walk to to the to the store entrance.

Amy: 5:13

Yeah or do or do a walking meeting which I do a lot. I'll walk around my neighborhood and be on a call or have a standing desk or make sure you're having stretch breaks or whatever it may be.

Katie: 5:22

Yeah, that's great. And meanwhile, of course, utilizing exercise is ideal and that is what's going to keep us the healthiest and the fittest for the longest in our lives. So having said that, I've tried everything I've tried everything from weightlifting, I've done bar I've done cycling, I used to be a runner when I was in my early 20s for kids, I've run six miles and I loved it. But I just it's some of it's too intense for me now. My main sources of exercise are yoga and pilates. I know what are you doing you're are you still doing the peloton cycling I do treadmill I do a

Amy: 5:57

mix so I do so same I use I've done like everything I've done weight training, strength training, just all sorts of different things. And what I found for me is the most effective is things that I love to do. So yes, I got the peloton years ago and I did because I did cycling forever. I did SoulCycle I did all the cycling classes. Then I got the peloton. Love that I just got the peloton tread a couple years ago and now I've become somewhat of a runner which I'm not a runner. But I think the thing that I like the most is just mixing it up. I can't do the same thing every day I get bored. So lately, what I've been doing is just like a mix between like cycle running, walking, yoga and pilates. And so actually since quarantine be gone, I really leaned into a lot of yoga and pilates because I think it's been really helpful just to de stress and all of that. And I've been doing the Melissa wood health app, which I know we'll probably talk about in a little bit, but it's been great. So I'll do that a few days I'll do peloton a few days I'll do running walking. So I just like to mix it up because it just kind of depends what I'm in the mood for if I feel like I have a lot of energy, maybe I'll do a peloton run and I'll do a Robin orizon ride she's amazing or ride, walk, run whatever it is. She's awesome. She's like so much energy and she's always playing hip hop. And it's super fun. And then on the days, I just want to kind of have a flow I'll do a Melissa would. So it just kind of depends. But I found for me at least that mixing things up really helps and gets me more excited to to move every day. And it just kind of whatever feels intuitive for me that day. I'll do so what about you, I know you're really big into yoga and pilates. So I kind of want to hear what you're doing now.

Katie: 7:25

I am so yoga has has been my mainstay, especially through quarantine because I didn't have to leave my house, I use the Allen moves app. It's fantastic. They have 1000s of classes, all of these different instructors, every different variety for advanced levels or intermediate beginner that I started doing a couple of years ago and I'm the same if I don't mix it up, then I'm not going to stay I'm not going to continue to exercise if I did the same thing, four days a week, every week of my life, I would be so burnt out, I would just not want to exercise ever again. So I also like to do, like I said earlier, low intensity steady state is really good for my autoimmune diseases, because anything that's high impact is not great on people that have cortisol issues, which that's part of my Addison's disease. So I have to do more low impact and you know, I can get on the treadmill while well resist napping and walk on there for an hour and listen to podcasts like ours.

Amy: 8:22

saying about low you said like a word. I don't know what that that's called. It's called lists. So

Katie: 8:28

you've heard of hit right high intensity interval training. So the opposite of that is less low intensity steady state. That's when you're on a treadmill, you're walking at like you know brisk pace for a long length of 45 minutes, an hour, hour and a half. And you want to just kind of keep your heart rate slightly elevated at the same, same elevation is the same rate the entire time.

Amy: 8:52

Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so would yoga and pilates fall in that category? Or is that a different category?

Katie: 8:57

It's a different category. Well, actually, it's not that different because you're, you're not changing your heart rate so much throughout yoga, pilates, maybe a little bit more. You know, I'd love to talk about reformer Pilates. Have you ever done a reformer Pilates class?

Amy: 9:14

You know, I've done it a few times. But I we haven't done it enough that I have an opinion on it, I guess.

Katie: 9:21

Yeah, it's honestly i It's the one thing that I have done consistently through the years I started doing it 10 years ago. I absolutely love it. It's so effective. And it's interesting and it's different every time and it's low impact, but you're still getting a full body workout. First of all, what a reformer is right for those of you that are listening that haven't done it, it's like it's kind of like a bed like carriage and it has springs on it that aid in the resistance and then has all these straps on it and you and it rolls back and forth and you you're using your own bodyweight plus the resistance of the sprays and their swift straps and there's there's arm straps. There's a million different things that you can do it but A fantastic thing about it that I love is every single exercise or move that you're going to do on it. It has to start in the core. It's Pilates is all centered around our core, all core. And the other reason why people have so much success with it to get like the long lean muscles is because it has something called it does. Eccentric muscle contractions, that's when you're lengthening your muscles as your muscles are resisting force. So that's like, you know, the ballerina, the long, lean muscles, which I prefer. You know, people say a lot of people think that when you start weight training that you're going to bulk up, you're gonna turn into Hulk Hogan, like that's not trill. But there is a different look between someone that's going to the gym and lifting 35 4050 pounds women doing squats with 50 pounds versus somebody doing Pilates and yoga, right?

Amy: 10:57

I totally agree. I mean, I have done well, it's funny that you say the long, lean lines thing, because so Melissa would help for those who are listening who don't know who she is, she has an app, I think it's $10 a month, which is really affordable. And she does all of her. Her sort of trademark is long, lean lines and her exercises and her Pilates moves probably have the same principles as a reformer Pilates, you're just not using the reformer. But I found a lot more. My body has changed definitely from doing that versus weight training, because I had a trainer for years and did a lot of weight training. And it was fine. But I did feel a bit bulkier. I mean, I did feel really strong, but I wasn't as defined as I wanted to be. And I feel like her program and probably yours. With Pilates, you get a lot more defined in your arms and your core and your legs. There's just more of that like long lean muscle than it is when you're doing squats and lifting and just doing that heavy weight. I just feel like depending on what your body reacts to, but I just feel like that does not produce that result as much.

Katie: 12:03

She's definitely utilizing like mat Pilates, Pilates moves, and some yoga moves, which is fantastic. I love it. I've done it at home as well, especially when I couldn't get on the reformer during quarantine. But yeah, the, you're still gonna get really strong on the reformer, which is what I like like unless we map out probably the big difference. Yeah, if you're doing mat work unless you have like a heavy ankle weights on and you're using, you know hand weights the entire time and you're varying the, the weight of the weight, you're not going to gain as much muscle it is going to turn you and you're going to lean out. But you're not going to be able to necessarily gain muscle mass like you can when you're using the reformer because the resistance springs are there. But it's it's also phenomenal for posture, and a lot of people use it to recover from injuries. It's great for relaxing. Yeah, back problems. So I know

Amy: 12:56

have you been able to do the reformer during quarantine,

Katie: 12:59

I just I wasn't I I have worked with a personal trainer off and on for years. And then I stopped obviously, because I didn't want to go to a gym anymore. And it was just kind of getting out of control. And it's so expensive. It really can be very expensive. But I found an amazing studio. Locally, they have six reformers in one room. And the only people that are in the entire place are the people that are on the reformers and the trainer. And then they have these huge plastic partitions in between each reformer. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, it's it's I honestly, I love it. I'll plug it it's couple of Pilates body bar here in Northern Kentucky. And it's been great. I'm back on the reformer again, which I love.

Amy: 13:37

That's so great. I've taken the classes, we don't have I'd like to find a small studio here like that we have some larger Pilates studios. And they do have the partitions. I guess I could try it again. But it just makes me a little bit nervous during this time, but I'd rather go somewhere a little bit smaller. But yeah, I need to try that and mix that into my routines. Okay, so we sort of have reviewed our routines and what we'd like and I think that the general idea just for anyone listening, any sort of movement for your body is great. It is so good for your body for your minds for kind of everything right? I mean, it's

Katie: 14:12

even just stretching even just a day like if you're tight and you want to go and do take 15 minutes, just stretch it out. Like that is also considered movement. Yeah. So

Amy: 14:22

key message here daily movement, and that so I wanted to to move on a bit and talk about meditation. Now, Katie, I don't know if you meditate. I know. We've talked about it a little bit. But I don't remember. If I have a meditation practice, like on and off probably right.

Katie: 14:37

Yeah. And I after you've talked about it, I have a great app to share. But yeah.

Amy: 14:43

So I try. I mean, it kind of depends on what's going on. I've been trying to infuse it and what I found to be the most helpful because I think when people think about meditation, it sounds very intimidating, but it's really not if you think about like, I do it five minutes a day because I love People don't have patience like me. And it's really hard to sit there. So but I can sit there for five minutes. So I have this app that I use, I have a few apps, but one of the apps that I use is called simple habit. And I can't remember where I found out about it. But it's a free app, I think there's a paid version of it as well. But I like simple habit, because they have a section on it, that's called on the go. And you say, like, if you want to do five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, so I just do five, and then it'll say, different topics, like, you know, can't sleep stressed, need to let go, like, it just has all these different topics, you can just do a quick meditation. So sometimes I'll do one in bed just to relax before bed, sometimes I'll do one in the morning to get energy. But it's five minutes, and you can just kind of breathe and let it go. So that's a really good one. I've been trying to work up to like a little bit longer of a meditation. So speaking of Melissa, what, how, um, she has some meditations on her app, which are really good, but you're like 1020 minutes. So I've been trying those lately, and it's a little bit harder, but it is good. Her meditations are really good because they really focus on the breath work. And then I have some things that I try to do. There's a Dr. Weil, who's like a very famous holistic doctor has a technique called 478, where you breathe in for four, you hold it for seven, and then you breathe out for eight. And you just do that you do that four times, and then you kind of repeat it and the more you practice it, the easier it is to do. But I do that a lot. If I wake up in the middle the night and I can't fall back asleep, I just do 478. And I'm like back to sleep. And like one second. I've been doing it for so many years that it's really easy for me to do. But when you first start doing it, it's a little bit hard. So those that are listening, you can look up 478 technique, and you'll see it online, but that's another great one. So I consider meditation, really anything that's sort of like just taking a step back and just breathing out. So whether you're sitting and doing it or you're doing this breath work in bed, or there's like this nostril breathing technique that I don't know, Katie, if you've seen but you just put one finger on your nostril, and yeah, breathe in. And it really helps to relax you if you're stressed out. So I just kind of tried to do those things every day, as little stressors come up, I need to do it more. I think we all do. But I think it's along with daily movement, having some sort of daily breathwork, or daily meditation is so good for your health. And it really helps to keep your stress levels low. So those are my kind of thoughts about it.

Katie: 17:18

I use Insight Timer. Meditation. Oh, yeah, I've used that before. Yeah, I just did one the other night for decompression, but also for people that maybe I don't know, for whatever reason don't have access to an app or something I learned recently, the simplest form of meditation when you're just starting out. If you can go outside, close your eyes and pick a sound that you want to listen for. Maybe it's a bird chirp. And don't think about anything else. Just wait for that bird chirp. And every time you hear a bird chirp, you think about it. Oh, there's a bird chirping? And then you wait for the next one. Oh, there's another bird chirping? If you do that, that really committed? Yeah, if you're really committed to just waiting for that sound, your thoughts aren't going to creep in. And then it's really cool. Yeah,

Amy: 17:58

I like that idea.

Katie: 17:58

It's just a super simple way of clearing your mind and take it actually

Amy: 18:03

sounds like a great idea to do with kids. Because I always tell my kids like to do like a little meditation with me. And of course, they always roll, roll our eyes and laugh. But I think if we're outside, that's like a good, fun thing to do. I also want to have a hard time paying attention to meditation, even if it's five minutes, sometimes. Some of these instructors will give you a little mantras to say so you're saying something in your mind as you're doing it. So it keeps you focused versus your mind, like wandering off. So I love that I'm going to try that outside idea today. Okay, so two things that I think Katie and I, you know, really live by is this daily movement and daily meditation and making sure that there's balance just to keep you kind of clear headed, ready for your day ready to take on anything and that you think those things are really, really important. And I try to spread the love on all of those all the time. So moving on, I am going to talk about a couple of my favorite things of the week. I have three things that I just want to talk about quickly before we wrap up. And one of them I'm speaking of movement is called a Thai massage, which is nothing new but I had just never done one before. My friend Natasha had always told me about Thai massage. And so I want to do it. I just never did it. And so I had someone come to my house socially distanced outside, like it's not socially distance, but we were both wearing a mask outside. So it was I felt safe. And this was a couple of weeks ago and I got a Thai massage. And it was the most amazing thing. I've never had a massage like this Katie it was like her feet were like on my shoulders. I don't even know what she was doing. And it kind of hurt but felt good at the same time. Because my muscles were so tight and my shoulders and my neck and my hamstrings and I guess she was like walking on me and pulling in different things. But it was really gentle. So it wasn't like jarring by any means but it was also painful because she would like get into the knots and my shoulders and like with her feet and like really kind of push and pull. But it was also really gentle and nice. It was I think I did 90 minutes And I was so relaxed afterwards, I just like laid on the couch and just I wasn't tired. I was just my body felt so relaxed and so rejuvenated I, I didn't realize how much I needed it until I had it. So I like caught everyone on I was like, Oh my God, you have to get a Thai massage. So I still need to make another appointment to get one because it was so good in my body for the next week or two felt so aligned and so balanced. Wow, never have, we just like, for like a week, like my posture felt better. My breathing felt better. I just felt like, really loose and relaxed and nimble. And I've just haven't felt that way before from massage. So that's going to be my new go to

Katie: 20:38

that's love to heaven. And then you got me a time inside. Like I didn't

Amy: 20:41

do it outside. It was so nice. So that was one thing. The next thing that I found on Amazon, which I'll put in the show notes, which is really random, but really good for winter. For those of us on the east coast where it's starting to get cold and dark at night, I found this sunrise alarm clock, which I'd heard about before, but I never really thought about it, but I started reading about it. And it's made a huge difference in waking up in the morning. Because in the morning, you usually have like your alarm clock, and it's loud and annoying. And it's very jarring. But the sunrise alarm clock, you say let's say you want to get up at seven in the morning, you put the timer on. And then what happens from 645 to seven. It's like a gentle sunrise. So you don't you don't wake up you just the room gets a little bit lighter, but it's right next to your head. And it's like not a jarring light. It's really like a muted sort of light and it for 15 minutes just goes a little bit at a time. And then at seven o'clock, you can pick your sound, but I do like birds chirping and it's like a light bird chirp so and I have a hard time getting up and it's I only have it on like volume three, but I hear it I almost sometimes wake up before the bird chirp because I guess feel the light somehow. But it's a very gentle way to get up. I mean,

Katie: 21:49

I have to tell you, it's amazing that you're bringing that up this morning I was reading about the two hormones cortisol and melatonin. Melatonin is what puts us to sleep. Cortisol is what wakes us up in the morning. And these two things are triggered naturally by sunrise and sunset.

Amy: 22:03

Oh, wow. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that must be while some genius invented this because it seriously has changed my waking up experience because I'm not a morning person. As Katie knows she gets up early. I'm not such an early riser, my husband knows. But this has really helped me to get out kind of in a better mood and more ready for the day because it's just like a gentle nice ease. And especially in the winter when it's really dark in the morning. So I love it. And I got I'll put it in the notes. But I there's some really expensive ones, but the one I got was very reasonably priced and so far so good with it. So highly recommend that. And then my last thing talking about meditation is I have this meditation cushion from a company called Mala collective. I was introduced to them through work last year, and I met the founder and she's amazing. And this question is just around beautiful cushion, but it it's statically beautiful. It's really well made. And it's super comfy. So when you sit on it to meditate, it just has like a really comfortable like the perfect size. So when you sit on it, your sits bones really kind of like sink in and you just can kind of it's a nice way. So you're not like sitting on the floor. Sometimes when you sort of sit on the floor and meditate or do something it's not as comfortable. So this just makes it really comfortable. From meditation standpoint. That would be my fav of the week. So just wanted to share that with you, Katie. Nice. And before we wrap up, let's talk about our weekly nirvana. I'll let you start Katie.

Katie: 23:22

Yeah, mine. It's kind of silly. But my weekly Nirvana this week was my salad. I made the most delicious salad and I eat it every day. This week. It was Oh my god. It was a super simple it was a warm kale and chicken salad and I just saw did some kale and some coconut oil and added some like shredded rotisserie chicken straight out of the fridge so easy. And then I topped it with some scallions and some almonds. I made a plant based coconut milk ranch dressing and it was just like, amazing. You know how in the summertime you want salads, but when it's cold in the winter, you don't want a salad because the salad is cold. Right? This was like my answer the warm I got

Amy: 24:03

I felt so good. It was so good. I need to make that today. Okay, well, my nirvana of the week, which was probably a lot of people's in America is Nirvana was last weekend, celebrating the win of Joe Biden. I just I'm so excited about that. And I think everyone or people that are in the same mindset as Biden, were really happy last weekend, and I think people sort of had that release and breath out last weekend. So I was really excited about that. But I wish I had a food one because that sounds really good. And now I'm really hungry and I need to eat something. Yeah.

Katie: 24:36

Make a salad for lunch. Yeah.

Amy: 24:38

So that's it for this week. Thanks, everyone, friends for tuning in to today's episode. And for more information on this episode, check out our show notes find us on Instagram as always at Nirvana sisters, and if you loved what you listen to or know someone that would please share it but don't forget to check us Tune in next week for a fresh new episode of Nirvana sisters. We're so excited because we're both doing The food sensitivity test from everlywell, which Katie has been doing a lot of research on, and we'll talk more about it next week, but we're both going to try it this week and share our results on the podcast. So and we'll see you next week. Bye bye