2024 Kickoff Party - Orientation to the 2024 Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference

Hello everyone. Welcome. I'm so happy that you're here. I'm so happy for everyone who's joining the conference this year, and I cannot be more excited than seeing people interested in neuroscience and yoga. So thank you again for being here. Welcome to the Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference kickoff party. This is the orientation to the conference. So we're going to go over the story behind the conference, the goal of the conference, how the conference works, how to get the most out of events, how to win prizes, what to expect every day, how to learn and have fun at the same time, and then a lot of the frequently asked questions that come up, and then the opportunity to ask more questions. So I'll tell you my favorite part of the conference, and that is getting to know everyone. It's kind of crazy how I can see someone's name or face, and I know exactly who they are at this point. I feel like I know many of you, and thank you for introducing yourselves. Please continue doing so. I was going through the Facebook group this morning, and I love hearing everyone's journey and your stories. So in return, I suppose I should introduce myself. So I'm Jonathan. I'll tell you about me through some photos. And I will say these are the same photos that I've used every year. I thought about including new photos, but I don't, I don't really have any new photos of me. All right, so the first photo is from 2013. This is me as a yoga student, and this is me with my teacher, Sri Dharma Mitra. And these were kind of like, I don't know, the good old days of being able to go and practice yoga all the time. This was a little bit later in 2020, and obviously before COVID because there are a lot of people around, and loved being able to practice at the Dharma Yoga Center all the time. Yoga has been a huge part of my journey, and I truly believe in it as a lifestyle practice that has changed my life. And the next thing to know about me is that I am a physician. So science is really important to me. I see science save lives every day. I am a neurologist, which means that I am a medical doctor that specializes in brain diseases like stroke and epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. My subspecialization is clinical neurophysiology. So I do a lot of EEGs or electroencephalograms and intraoperative monitoring. And then another thing about me is that I love neuroscience outreach. Neuroscience is the coolest science by any standard. And so I love being able to share neuroscience with everyone. This is from one of our events in 2019. So the neuroscience and yoga events, and I'm holding a plastinated brain. This is a brain that someone donated. So that we could all learn neuroanatomy from it. So this person, you know, passed away obviously and donated their brain. We should be able to get the brain back for in-person events this year. I'm still confirming that that's the case. So why do I tell you about me? You know, I hate introducing myself, but I'm doing this so that you think of me as approachable and human, and I'm here and I'm available to help, and I want you to have the best possible experience during this conference. So I'm actually on vacation from the hospital so that I can be fully devoted to this conference. And these neuroscience and yoga events go back a long time. This is actually the 10th anniversary of the neuroscience and yoga events. So March 9th, 2014 was the first event. And I still will never forget, we needed yoga mats and The Yoga to the People on St. Mark's was nearby, and Elena Wirtolik, I don't know if you're here, Elena, but she loaned us the mats and it was one of the nicest things. And that's, yeah, these are just so many of the different years of these events and more photos and more photos. And so there's a really large group of people and a great community interested in this. Other people involved in the conference. So I want to introduce you to the amazing speakers and yoga teachers. You'll get to meet each of them more during their sessions, and you can also visit the speaker page to learn about them. But I cannot emphasize enough how amazing they are. I look up to every single one of them. They are brilliant researchers and educators and thought leaders. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can look through many of the publications they've been featured in, the news articles that have been written about them. They've been featured in Time, Scientific American, NPR, TED, The New York Times, And they've published in the leading scientific journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Neurology, Annals of Internal Medicine. So yeah, really amazing crew of people. Other people contributing to the conference. So this is a huge undertaking to get this conference up and running and all of the backend stuff is so tricky with technology and advertising and there's a lot to it. So there are a lot of people working on this. You can see just on the experiments, a huge group of students and graduate students and postdocs working on this. In the advertising and communication realm, a ton of people. By far the hardest thing is getting the word out about this conference. So I really appreciate you sharing with others. And I just want to highlight, so translation this year, we were able to get English. Spanish, and French subtitles for all of the prerecorded sessions. So I hope that is helpful. And I will also mention that there is a WhatsApp group hosted by Charlotte Mouton for Francophones, for everyone who speaks French. And in the first email that goes out at the end of this session, you will be able to join that if you are a Francophone and want to join that community. Okay, so all of these people, all of this history comes together into the 2024 Neuroscience and Yoga online conference. The goal of this conference is to help you transcend misinformation and learn the actual science of how yoga affects the brain so that you can improve how you practice, teach, and advocate for yoga. And this advocacy part is a huge focus of the conference this year, and I'm going to talk more about it. The conference has 4 days, each with a different topic. And for this year, the first day is all about introductions. So what foundations do you need to know about neuroscience? What foundations do you need to know about yoga? What foundations do you need to know about research and the current state of scientific research on yoga in order to understand everything that's going to come for the rest of the conference? And then each of the following days has a very specific topic. So yoga and cancer. Yoga and sleep and insomnia, and yoga and eating disorders. So really interesting topics this year. Every day of the conference will have main components. So the main components are presentations, yoga classes, question and answer sessions, and discussion groups. There are experiments at the beginning and at the end of the conference this year. They're not going to be around every yoga class. So, before we get into each of those different components of the conference, I want to talk about the different passes. And the reason I bring this up now is because parts of the schedule will depend on which pass you sign up for. So there are 3 options for registration. And we do this so that there's really an option for everyone. Everyone should be able to participate in this conference. It's Brain Awareness Week. We're celebrating neuroscience outreach. So the first option is the presentation access pass. This is what you sign up for right when you land on the registration page. Attendees with this pass will have access to all of the presentations by the expert MDs and PhDs for 24 hours. So again, this is donation-based. It's available to everyone. If the funds aren't available, you do not have to donate. You can enjoy the conference for free. The 24 hours means that it should be accessible from any time zone. So at some point during that 24 hours, it should be daytime by you. And so hopefully you're able to catch as many presentations as you can. And then we also offer a Facebook group, which I'll talk about shortly. If you're interested in donating with the Presentation Access Pass, thank you so much for thinking about donating. It really helps the conference run. And the option to donate will come at the end. So at the end of the conference, you'll receive an email about that. Okay, one point of confusion, and I'm going to say this multiple times throughout the presentation. The presentation access pass includes live presentations, which can be confusing because they're live, but they're still presentations. So they are included in the presentation access pass and their recordings will be available for 24 hours.

All right.

So as questions come up again, jot them down so you can put them in the chat later. Next, the Live Access Pass. So this is an upgrade option that adds to the Presentation Access Pass all of the live events. The live events include the yoga classes with our amazing teachers, the neuroscience experiments, the question and answer sessions, and the discussion groups. The Live Access Pass costs $100 at baseline, but there are early bird offers when you sign up. And again, there's another early bird offer that expires today. So as you learn about the conference and think about which option is best for you, you can take advantage of that deal. And then finally, the Lifetime Access Pass. So the Lifetime Access Pass is like the full conference experience, and this is for people who are considering this. Like a mini teacher training. And it includes every event in the conference and lifetime access to their recordings. In addition to this, it also includes bonus learning material like workbooks and quizzes to really enhance your learning. And I'm going to go over those in detail. So with the Lifetime Access Pass, you will have access to this login. And when you log in, everything you need will be in there. But I'm going to say this during this presentation multiple times as well. During the conference, try to follow along with emails because it will take me some time to get all of the recordings and everything into the Lifetime Access Portal. And lastly, the Lifetime Access Pass comes with Yoga Alliance and International Association of Yoga Therapists continuing education credit. Okay, one really common question we get. If I purchase a lifetime access pass, does that apply to all future conferences? And the answer is no. A lifetime access pass is for this conference, so it is lifetime access to the recordings of this conference, this year's conference. Okay, so you can switch passes at any point during the conference, but I would highly recommend that you think about it today and decide today, again, because of that early bird upgrade offer. But also because the, if you switch later on and some events have already happened and you miss them, then we cannot back offer them. It's too technologically difficult. And so you would miss those events. And I won't stop you from upgrading because I still think what you get from the later parts of the conference will be valuable, but I just want everyone to think about it now. Okay. And then the last component of the conference is the in-person part. And I know many of you are not in the New York City area, but for those who are, all events between 11 AM and 3 PM during the conference will have an in-person option. And that's every day of the conference. And so if you want to join, there is an in-person upgrade. And the fee for that is $50 and it covers all of the refreshments and staff and everything that we're going to have to make the in-person part possible. We're going to be near Washington Square Park in New York City. And yeah, I really am looking forward to seeing everyone in person. I think it'll be really nice. And then you might also be wondering like all of, you know, the fees that get collected for these upgrades, what happens with that money? So every person who contributes to the conference is paid. All of the speakers get paid. There's a tremendous amount of technology on the backend making all of this work. And this is really what all of the funds help support. So thank you for helping to keep this conference going. Okay, so now we've gone over the passes, we can talk about the schedule. So the schedule will be linked in every email. You can also find it on the website at any point, and this is a screenshot from the website of one way to look at the schedule. So this is the embedded Google Calendar, which is one of the most useful ways to navigate the schedule. There are 3 different tabs: Week, Month, Agenda. I think Week and Agenda are going to be the most useful. And it, by default, shows the Agenda tab. If you are looking at the Agenda tab, this shows everything in chronological order. And the other nice thing is it should automatically adjust to your time zone. If it's not doing that, I apologize, but you can also hit plus and it will go into your personal Google Calendar and then definitely adjust to your time zone. Okay, so let's go over a couple of things that can be confusing about this schedule. So the times are pretty clear for all of the live events. And remember, if it says presentation, it's available to presentation access passholders. If it starts with live, it's available. For live and lifetime access passholders. But this part, yoga and cancer prerecorded sessions are available. Yoga and cancer prerecorded sessions are available. Yoga and sleep and insomnia prerecorded sessions are available. That part can be confusing, and I haven't figured out a way to make that better yet. So what it is, is it's a timeframe for which all of the prerecorded sessions are available. So if you notice, like, why is it 6 PM above 9 AM? That's not chronological, right? But for whatever reason, Google Calendar displays any event that spans multiple days at the top. So this event starts at 6 PM on March 14th and goes till 10 PM on March 15th. So that's the full, it's more than 24 hours. So everything, just so you know. Things are available for longer than 24 hours, but that is when those sessions will be available. And other things to note. So I already mentioned this, but you can synchronize the Google Calendar with your own personal calendar. And this works on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, Outlook, regular Google Calendar. It should work with everything. And the benefit to this is that if anything changes, we'll update it and it will synchronize automatically. Not anticipating any changes. The schedule should be finalized now, but you never know. And then the last thing to note is links will not be in the Google Calendar. Links to events will be shared with you via email. And that's why email is so important for communication in this conference. And I really encourage you to make sure you're getting our emails. Every day of the conference, you will receive the daily pass email at 6 PM. The only exception is today when it will go out at 9:50 AM. So in about 30 minutes, you'll also receive emails with links to live events 15 minutes before they start. This will be a brief email. Hey, we're starting this event in 15 minutes at this link. Some people find it annoying to get so many emails, and I totally get that. So we have an option at the bottom of those link emails, the 15-minute-before link emails. Where you can say, I only want to receive the daily email. Don't send me these 15-minute reminders. And then we won't send you those.

Okay.

Another way to look at the schedule is like this, and this is the weekly view. I find this really helpful just for planning and figuring out how you're going to fit in all the other stuff you need to do in your busy life. One thing to note is the question and answer sessions for different days. So with the live and the lifetime access pass, you can join these question and answer sessions with the researchers. These are some of my absolute favorite parts of the conference. And if you want to join that question and answer session, I recommend trying to catch those presentations before you do. So on Saturday, those, that question and answer session is quite early. It's at 7 AM Eastern time. And so that means that you'll have 12 hours before to catch those presentations. It's only 2, so it shouldn't be too crazy. They're about 30 minutes each. And then, yeah, I, I think if you catch the presentation before, the question and answer session will be way more beneficial. And last thing to note is you can print the Google Calendar. So sometimes I get people asking, you know, do you have a printable schedule? And if you hit print for the Google Calendar, you can actually print out either view, the agenda or the week view, to help you stay organized. Okay, another way to look at the schedule. So this is new this year. It's a little bit different than in the past. This is how you find out more of the details of each event. So if you want to learn about what's actually going to be talked about in that session as you're trying to figure out what to prioritize. And so if you scroll down on the schedule page, or even on the main registration page, you'll see day 1, day 2, day 3. And if you tap any of the titles, it will expand with the time, how long it's available, who it's available to, and the details of that event so that you really know everything you need to know about each event. Now you may be wondering, you know, why not just have like a list like this? It's too long. It's just, it's like. A lot of scrolling. And so this way, you know, you can scroll and see the titles, and then when you're interested in one, you tap it and it expands. Okay. So that is the schedule. Please, again, questions, write them down. We're going to have time for questions at the end. And one thing I also want to note about the schedule is there's a lot. I used the word prioritize before because I know everyone is busy. And I know the conference is really full. There's just so much to go over. And so you may need to make some decisions about what events to attend live or what events to attend at all. And so, yeah, don't feel bad if you miss any parts of the conference. Anything that you're able to attend, you will get benefit from. So don't ever let how much it is feel stressful. Okay, so now I want to talk about emails. And as I mentioned, emails are super important for this conference. This is how all communication occurs. And I try to keep the emails very concise and very organized. I still know it's a lot and I know it can be overwhelming. My ask of you is to please read them. I promise I'm not putting in junk. Each email is going to be organized by section. So there will be a section called presentations, and this will have all of the presentations for that day organized by live presentations and prerecorded presentations. The links will be active, so they will take you to the Zoom room for the live presentations. And then it says after each live presentation, they will be uploaded— sorry, after each live presentation, they will be uploaded to the presentations page. And if you click that, that's where all the recordings will be. It will take me about 2 to 4 hours for each event to get it uploaded there. Thank you for your patience with that. Okay, so that is the presentation section. There will be another section for live events, which will include, you know, all of the yoga classes, the discussion groups, and the question and answer sessions. And then again, it will say this is where The live events will be uploaded afterwards. Lastly, or not even lastly, this, this is the next part. So this is the in-person events part. So this will tell you what events will be in person that day if you're able to join us in person. And then the last section of the email will be reminders. So as I get questions, as I get things, I will update the email so that everyone You know, if one person has a question, I'm sure many people have it. So I put all of that here. And then there's this attention grabbing section, what I need you to do right now. And this has the conference schedule, a time zone converter tool, a link to the Facebook group, the bingo card, which we're going to talk about, the submission form for questions, the WhatsApp group for Francophones. The tool for sharing the conference and winning prizes, which we'll also go over. And if you have a lifetime access pass, the link to the workbooks. Okay, so that's what's going to be in every email to help us stay really organized. Again, all links for events will be in emails. And one more thing to say about that, if you unsubscribe, which is totally okay, you will not receive communication from the conference and you will not receive those links. And so if you want fewer emails, we have those options to get fewer emails, but you do need to receive the day pass every day. Okay. So for presentations, this is what a presentation page will look like when you log in, you know, when you click the link and open up to watch the presentations, they will be available from 6 PM the day prior. So if Yoga and Cancer is Friday, March 15th. The yoga and cancer presentations become available the day prior so that you can watch them and get ready for the day. They're still available throughout the day. And then the, I think every pass presentation live and lifetime should try to watch presentations here because this is where the question form will live. And so if you want to submit questions, I think this is the best way. And like I said, I'm not going to be able to upload everything to the lifetime access portal as fast.

So.

This is the best place to go to catch the presentations. There will be a title, the video itself, and a timer telling you how much longer that presentation is available. And then you'll also have a summary of the speaker, and if you click their photo, it'll take you to the speaker page so you can learn more about them. Again, the question form is super, super important because we use this to figure out what to include in future conferences. We use this to guide the question and answer sessions. And it also just helps me know what everyone is thinking about. So please, if you think of a question, don't hesitate, just submit it. Okay, that's everything about presentations. Please put them in the chat. Next, we'll move on to the live sessions. So these are available for live and lifetime access pass holders, and these include the yoga classes, the question and answer sessions, the experiments, And the discussion groups. So the yoga classes are taught by amazing, amazing teachers. This year we have Eddie Stern, Ruben Damonte, Sarah Thomas, Lynn Goldberg, Sridharma Mitra, Shao Lumen, and Chelsea Roth. Some of these yoga classes are prerecorded just because it didn't work out schedule-wise, but you'll, you'll have access to them for the full time of the conference with the Live Access Pass or forever with the Lifetime Access Pass. The question and answer sessions we talked about a little bit. I just have to emphasize that they are insanely good conversation. It's so interesting to hear the researchers go back and forth. And yeah, so I love the question and answer sessions. The experiments this year are much simpler. We took feedback from last year and now they are just on the first day of the conference. So today you'll get it in an email and the last day of the conference. And this will make it much easier for everyone. It'll be easier to take them. It'll be easier to analyze them. And so I hope you get much more out of the experiments this year. And then lastly, the discussion groups. These have evolved a lot since last year, and they're based on the neurologic research workshop from last year now. And so what these will be is at the end of each day, we will form breakout groups, and these groups will be any topics that you're interested in. So you can suggest what you want to learn more about. We'll go into breakout groups, and for 20 to 30 minutes, you'll find, read, interpret, and summarize a scientific abstract, and then present that to everyone at the end. And this is really going to reinforce the main learning points of the conference, which is, you know, we can go over all of the science as much as is possible, but we'll never cover everything. And so the empowering skill of being able to find and read a research paper on your own is one of the main outcomes I would love people to leave this conference with. Okay, and then all of these will have recordings available. So if you miss them live, you will still be able to catch the recording. That includes the live access pass. So all live sessions will be available until the end of the conference. Okay, that's everything about live question or live sessions. Please put all of your questions in the chat. So I already mentioned the in-person upgrade. And to reiterate, this is available for Live Access Pass and Lifetime Access Pass holders. We'll be in downtown Manhattan near Wascuapa, which is what we used to call it in college, Washington Square Park. And after you register, all the details will be emailed to you. It'll be between 11 AM and 3 PM every day. Everything online will remain available, but you can join in person for anything that's occurring during the conference during those times. We'll have refreshments, we'll have dedicated mingling time. And so, yeah, I'm just going to go over quickly what sessions are going to be in person. And I do have to emphasize, I want to be fully upfront about this. Some of the sessions, the speakers were traveling or not available to be in person. And so they will be We will be watching a screen at, for some of the events. It's not, I think it's about 40 to 50% of them. So this is just showing on the schedule which events are going to be in person. So for today, it's going to be the presentation from Dr. Deepak Chopra, the presentation from Dr. Satbir Khalsa. Both of them will be remote, so we'll be watching the screen. And then the yoga class with Eddie Stern will be in person. The, for Friday, we will have the presentation from Heather Mason that will be remote. The yoga class with Sarah Thomas will be in person, and this will be dedicated mingling time. The yoga class with Dharma will be remote. He'll be in New York City, but he'll be at the Dharma Yoga Center. And then the presentation from Heather, from Sapir Khalsa will be remote, and then the discussion group will be in person. And on Sunday, it's similar. I don't have the schedule right in front of me, but it's noted in each of these events. If you click them, it tells you how it's set up. Okay, so now that we covered all of the live events, that's everything that applies for the Live Access Pass. Now we'll move on to the Lifetime Access Pass, everything that is included in there. So how do you get to the Lifetime Access Portal? This is where all of the recordings and quizzes and workbooks and everything will be. Well, if you find a menu bar, you click this menu button. And you may be wondering, why isn't the menu bar at the top of the registration page? I want to find things just by going to the registration page. It will be at the end of today. The reason is that if I put the menu bar at the top of the registration page, people get distracted with it, and then they don't sign up for the conference. So everything on the registration page is Sign up, sign up, sign up, so people can just sign up quickly. Most people are seeing this, you know, on their phone as they're on the move. And so if you click this menu bar, you'll see all of the resources you need for the conference, the speakers, the schedule page, how to upgrade your pass, the support page, and then lifetime access login. If you click lifetime access login, you'll see the login page. Of course, if you have trouble logging in, you can do forgot your password. And once you sign in, you'll see all of the different days of all of our prior conferences. And for this year, it's the Introduction to Neuroscience and Yoga 2024, Yoga and Cancer, Yoga and Sleep and Insomnia, and Yoga and Eating Disorders. Some of you will have boxes that are grayed out for the prior conferences, and that's just because you haven't joined those. If you're interested, we can set you up with them, but whatever you have access to should be In you know full color, not grayed out. And I'd been doing checks. I'm pretty sure everything is working. But if you think there are any issues, just reach out and I will look into it. There's also this Dharma Yoga Classes one. These are just recordings of yoga classes that I've taught, and mostly it's my friends and co-residents and you know people in medicine who use that. But if you're interested, you're welcome to look at that too. Okay. So once you click a specific day. You will see all of the events for that day, including the presentations, the yoga classes, the question and answer sessions, and more, and the workbook, which is up here. And then if you click on one of them, you will see the title and the video. Pretty straightforward. Just a reminder, during the conference, this is not the best place to go. Use the links in emails if you have a lifetime access pass first. Okay, if you go back to that main page at the bottom of the Lifetime Access Portal, there's this resources section. And the first button is manage your receipts, account, and billing info. Let's say you need another copy of your receipt. You can click there to get it. Or let's say you need to change the name on the receipt or the address on the receipt because you want to use it for your business or a tax deduction or something. You can take care of that here. There's also a link to the support page where you can review FAQs and then submit a support request if you need it. And then links to all of the different ways to get in touch with us. So, you know, the Facebook group, this is the conference shop. So all the merchandise, this is the Instagram and this is the YouTube channel. Okay. Also with the lifetime access pass comes continuing education credits. In order to get continuing education credits, you do need to sign up for a Lifetime Access Pass. And after you complete all parts of the conference, just send us a support request letting us know. That includes quizzes. So I'm going to ask this year that people complete the quizzes before they submit for CE credit. There's no minimum score, but the feedback will be really good for learning. And then currently we have Yoga Alliance and International Association of Yoga Therapists continuing education credits. If you have another certifying body that you would like credit from, we can provide a certificate and a letter of attestation, but I can't guarantee that they will accept it. Okay, next is the workbooks, and these are like just mind-blowing. They are such a good education resource. The workbooks are really about turning passive listening into active learning during the conference. And then at the end of the conference, you have sort of like a mini textbook to refer back to. Let's say a year from now you're thinking, Oh, what were we saying about how yoga affects REM sleep? And it's like, boom, it's in the workbook. And I think everyone has experienced this where you just learn better when you're writing down the information. So there are 2 ways, and, and, oh, I just have to show you, this is from the workbook this year. You can see how beautiful they came out and they really highlight the main points of the conference. So there are 2 ways to get the workbooks. The first is to upgrade to a lifetime access pass, and it will be sent to you in all of the daily emails. The second way is sharing the conference. And so I'm going to go over sharing now. So in some of the emails, you'll see this, like this full body of text, or you'll just see share the conference with your friends to earn bonuses. So we appreciate you sharing the conference so much. I already mentioned how hard it is to reach people and advertise the conference. So we appreciate this so much that we are offering multiple different bonuses. So if you refer one person, you will receive a deep relaxation audio that you can put on to help with sleep. If you do 2 referrals, you'll get a Dharma yoga class that I taught. If you do 5 referrals, you'll get a bonus presentation. 10 referrals, that's how you can get the workbooks. So with any pass, you can get the workbooks by sharing the conference. 15 referrals is a souvenir mug. And then 20 referrals, I have no idea who would want to talk to me. I'm the worst, but there's, you know, the option to have a one-on-one session with me. I needed to come up with something else for a bonus. And yeah, we really depend on you for word of mouth, and I appreciate it so much. If you click on the share the conference with your friends, this is what the sharing widget looks like. So it tells you What prizes you have won, how close you are to others, and you can see how many referrals you have. And this is the link that you send to other people. So if you want to share the conference, you copy this link and then send that to them. Or you can click Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Telegram, and it will create a pre-populated message with your sharing link to send to people. And yeah, I think this is the way we're going to get the best people into this conference, right? All of you who are attending are very interested in this. And so bringing in more people like you who are interested in this is the best way to make this an amazing gathering of knowledge and curious people. Okay, next I want to go over the Facebook group. So this is our way of having interpersonal communication and community during the conference, given most of us will be online and not in person. In the Facebook group already, people have been posting, introducing themselves. I think it's absolutely beautiful. I'm going to catch up later today. And I would love to see people talking about, oh, this thing we learned today is so cool. I'm thinking about applying it to my practice or my class or the way I advocate for yoga this way, or talking about resources or other ways that you've learned that you have found helpful. And some people may ask, you know, what if I don't have a Facebook? I, like me personally, I don't really have a Facebook. I don't use Facebook. I'm not interested in it. I actually made an account just to join this group. And if that's something that you're comfortable with, please, you know, you're welcome to do that. You don't have to like be super engaged in Facebook to join the group. And then the last thing I'll say about the Facebook group is it is not the best place for support or tech questions. I'm not constantly monitoring the Facebook group. I check it once or twice a day. And so if you want support or technical questions answered, the best thing to do is to email me, submit a support request or reply to an email. I am not bragging, but I get back to emails usually within 5 minutes, but definitely like within an hour or 2. So that is going to be a way more efficient way to get technical support. I also have Kate helping this year. So Kate is someone who's very knowledgeable about how the conference works and everything. So she is also helping with emails to make it even faster. Hi, Kate. And Kate will, you know, I think if I get back to you in 5 minutes, Kate gets back to you in like 2 minutes. She's really fast. Okay. So that's everything about the Facebook group. And now we can go over the fun. So, um, I think the conference is fun in a lot of ways to begin with. And it sounds really cheesy, but I think bingo makes it even more fun. So with bingo, this is basically guiding you through all the different ways to participate fully in the conference and you get rewards for it. So I'm going to show you the list of prizes. I think you're going to be blown away by the prizes. But even just for signing up for the conference, attending this presentation or watching its recording, joining the Facebook group, introducing yourself in the Facebook group, and then sharing your biggest takeaway from a presentation in the Facebook group. If you check off those 5, that's one entry for bingo. And that's an entry to win prizes. You may be wondering, can I win bingo if I have a presentation access pass? The answer is yes. Yes, you can win up to 3 prizes with the Presentation Access Pass. You can win more with the Live Access Pass and the Lifetime Access Pass because then you can participate in the conference more and check off more of the squares. And so here's the list of prizes. So you'll see on the website, this is a screenshot of the website. If you forget this presentation, there's a summary of how bingo works so that you can go through everything. And then the prizes include a crewneck t-shirt, which I'm wearing. I'm sorry, sweatshirt from the conference shop, a t-shirt or tank, which I'm also wearing. We have a special 10th anniversary edition of the conference t-shirt. I'll show you that, or a mug from the conference shop. We also have books from Catherine Cook-Cotone, on-demand courses from the Minded Institute, a 5-day training in yoga therapy for anxiety from the Minded Institute that will be live on Zoom. Relax Fast Lite acupressure mats from Complete Unity Yoga, a $100 gift card to Lululemon, a live lymphatics teacher training from Yoga Medicine with Tiffany Cruikshank and Doreen Wiggins, and an Eat Breathe Thrive immersion from Chelsea Roth and the Eat Breathe Thrive team. So these are all, I'm going to go over the rest of them in a second, but if it's not clear, all of these are free. If you win, and these are incredible learning resources. And then the last group of prizes you can win are recordings from prior conferences. So a lot of different ways to get more education and more learning out of the conference by participating. And if you scroll down, you'll see get your card ready, download your bingo card here. If you click that, it will Open this really cool bingo card that I actually want to show you because I think it'll make things really clear. So this is the bingo card. And let's say you're like me and you don't have a printer at home. You don't want to print things. You don't want to deal with, you know, carrying a pen around. You can just take this PDF form and if you tap on it, it Xs out the individual Boxes. Also, you should note that the links work. And so if you click this link, that's a quick way to get to the Facebook group. If you click this link, that's a quick way to get to the schedule page, so on and so forth. And so, yeah, the bingo card is really user-friendly. There are also descriptions of each of the tiles here so that you know exactly what you need to do to check that tile if you're not sure. You may also be wondering, can I win multiple prizes? The answer is yes, there's no limit. Do I have to upgrade my pass in order to win? We talked about that. You can win up to 3 prizes with the Presentation Access Pass. Will I be checking if you say you have bingo? To the best of my ability, yes. Please don't cheat. And we already talked about what if you don't have a printer. Okay. Next is the conference shop, which I mentioned has a lot of nice merchandise that helps support the conference. I really love this sweatshirt. My friend and I wear it all the time. And I also want to show you these new 10th anniversary edition t-shirts. The model is male, but the t-shirts are for men and women. And it has the little brain logo holding a 1 and a 0 balloon for the 10th anniversary with a little birthday hat on. It's really cute. Okay, so let's say you have questions during the conference. And you're not sure where to go with them. Well, if you go to the support page, I keep an updated list of all of the FAQs. And so you can just scroll through this, tap the one that applies to you, and it has an explanation. And if that doesn't answer your question, there's a support ticket request at the bottom, and you just submit that, and we usually get back to you really, really fast. So that's everything I have to help orient you to the conference. I'm really happy you're here. I'm so thankful for this community, and I really appreciate everyone's kindness and friendliness. And yeah, I open it up to questions now. So I know there's stuff in the chat. Okay, do you need to attend all live events to receive Yoga Alliance credit, or can, do the recordings count? The recordings count. So if you miss even all of the sessions and catch them later, you can still get credit. Um, and, oh, thank you, Chantal. You answered that one. Amazing. Um, is there a list of experiments shared anywhere? No. So we surprise you with the experiments because if you looked them up or knew what they were before, you could kind of bias them even subconsciously. So they're meant to be a little bit obscure. And are they connected to the topics? Most definitely. So we choose the experiments to relate to the topics. And this is really to help you see how science works, how experiments work, how yoga affects you and your own neurophysiology. Someone is asking if the price is the same if you can only attend certain days. The answer is yes. I don't have a way to really adjust the price. Okay, someone is asking why the Lifetime Access Pass is the only one that includes continuing education credit. It's because for the full educational experience, I really want people to have the workbooks, the quizzes. The ability to go back to the recordings. And so that's really the way to make this like a mini teacher training. Oh my God, Chantal, you're amazing. You answered that one too. Yeah. So if you have a lifetime access pass, you can watch it as many times as you want forever. You know, once last year I got a question that was like, what if I die and then resuscitated? Is that still one lifetime? And it's like, it's just in your email. Okay. Uh, someone is asking, so there is a way when you buy a lifetime access pass to add prior conferences, you can just uncheck that box. It shouldn't be checked by default. It's an opt-in, not an opt-out. So someone is asking why it's including that. You can just uncheck it and you don't have to include that. Yeah, so how much does the lifetime access pass cost? So the live access pass is $100, the lifetime is $200, and then there are different early bird discounts based on when you purchase it. And as a reminder, today, the, at the end of today, 11 PM, 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, it goes up to the normal price. If we sign up for past conferences when upgrading, to this year's conferences, do those credits for the Yoga Alliance also apply? They can, yes. I should be able to make that work. I think the key is you have to participate in the Facebook group to make it a live, have a live component, but that should work. Where are the links to share the conferences? In every email where it says what I need you to do right now, there's a button that says share the conference with your friends. So someone is asking about the menu. So the menu on the registration page is all the way at the bottom right now. Like I said, it's because if I put it at the top, people get distracted and don't sign up. I will change that later today. But for right now, if you want to get to the menu, just scroll all the way to the bottom of the presentation, the registration page. So bingo will also be in your emails. Any questions? Anyone wanna unmute?

I just wanted to know if we could purchase any of the merch, like the, the mug and the t-shirt without doing bingo.

Yes, they are in the conference shop, which will be, I don't know if I link it anywhere. I probably should. I, it's in the chat right now. Thank you, Susan. And I'll, I'll actually add it to emails.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, Jonathan, Susan, if we are attending in person, how can we tell from the schedule whether something will be offered as an actual in-person offering versus Remote on a screen.

I, I'm pretty sure I noted it, but if it's not noted well on the schedule, I also have been putting it in every email. So at this point, everyone should have gotten the day pass for today. I scheduled it to go out right around this time. And so if you look at the in-person part, it should say, like, I forget the way I worded it, but it was like streamed or like totally in person or something like that.

Okay, great. Thanks.

Yep. Thank you. And if it's, if it's still not clear, just send me a message and I'll try to figure out a better way to note it.

Hi, I'm wondering if there is an option to just sign up for the in-person yoga class without the passes.

Not currently, but if you send us an email, we'll, we'll make it work.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Hi Jonathan, this is Raji from Canada. Hi. My question was, how do I, so I did take just the, uh, the basic pass, the free one, but I want to upgrade. So where do I go on the website? It first tells you to sign up, which I already did.

Right, right, right. So if you do it from the website, you can scroll all the way to the bottom of that first page. There will be the 3 bars for the menu. And then there's an option to upgrade. It'll also be in your email. It'll be like, if you're interested in upgrading, the early bird pricing expires at this time. Here's the link.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you.

Hi, Jonathan.

Hi.

This, this is Jana from Tampa.

Hi, Jana.

My question is about the lifetime pass. How many credits do we get for continuing education with Yoga Alliance?

25.

Okay. Thank you. Yep.

Thank you.

Hey, Jonathan.

Hey.

This is Andrea from North Carolina.

Hi, Andrea.

Upgraded to the lifetime, but I don't see, and maybe you said this and I'm sorry if you did, but I can't find where to download the workbook. Yeah.

So this year, the way I did it is in the email you should have just gotten. Yeah. There's a section, what I need you to do right now. And then if you click the, I think it's the last one or the second to last one is workbook. Do you see that?

Yeah, I just got another one. So let's see. Person, what I need to do. Okay. Oh, got it. That just went through. Okay.

And then if you confirm for me, if you click workbook, is it opening a folder with all the workbooks?

Yes.

Okay, great. Good.

Thank you. Okay.

And while questions are rolling in, I just want to give a huge thank you to a couple people who really, really, really support the conference. The first person is Eddie Stern, who since I like first had the idea for this conference has been incredibly, incredibly supportive. And also Sarah Margot, who attended the first conference and since then has been Kind of like a guide, like a complete guiding light on how to make things work. The in-person is additional. It is an add-on upgrade.

Good morning, Jonathan. Aloha from Carlin, Hawaii. Will we be able to say hi, dear? Thanks for the conference. And wow, what an attendance. Will we be able to save the chat? Sometimes people put really good info there, and I noticed that it just says merge to window, not save chat.

Yes. And you know what, Carla, we talked about this last year and it became too overwhelming for me to save chats, but I have an idea this year and I'm going to, I, I do have copies of the chats and what I can do is feed it into AI and it can generate a summary for me, I think. So let's see how that goes.

Cool. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey Jonathan, this is Karen Pimentel from Boston, Mass. I'm gonna be in New York next week. If I upgrade for the in-person, where is the in-person? I probably couldn't find it, but I figured I'd ask.

Yeah, it's near Washington Square Park. I'm not saying the location cuz I don't want people to just like show up all of a sudden and—

Oh, gotcha.

this. But, you know, it, like I said, I'm not trying to turn anyone away. There are fees just so that there's a structure to it. And if people sign up, then we have the, we can pay for the refreshments and the staff and everything. So if—

Right, right.

If there were an extenuating circumstance and you just needed to show up and we would make it work, but please go through the channel if you can.

Okay, sure. I have to attend another conference, so I didn't know if it was even worth it if it was close. So I'll, I'll look into it.

Yeah, thank you. Yes, there are replays. They will be available for every pass for 24 hours at minimum, and then longer with the lifetime access pass.

Thank you so much for doing this, Jonathan. I never knew about this conference until just yesterday, so. Oh, wow.

Thanks for joining.

Thank you.

All right. I'm going to get set up to run. My yoga teacher says all yoga practices start and end with Om, so we'll start the conference now with one loud, long Om. Sitting up nice and tall, shoulders back. Eyes closed. And together, one loud, long Om. Om. Slowly opening. Okay, thank you everyone. I'll see you in a little bit.