Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference 2022 Kickoff Party

Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan. I'll introduce myself in a little bit, but I am just so happy and overjoyed to see all of you here and to see the amount of interest in this topic and in neuroscience and yoga. I think this topic is extremely important and holds a lot of promise for human development and human advancement. And I'm so excited that you all share this interest with me and that we get to talk about it together. So welcome to the Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference kickoff party. This is the session that will really go over, um, an introduction to the conference, the story behind the conference How the conference works on a day-to-day basis, how to access all of the events, what to expect every day, some frequently asked questions that we get, and where to go with further questions if you still have them. And we'll also have an opportunity at the end to go over questions. So as you're going through this presentation, please write down any questions you have and save them for the end. All right, so it's my turn to introduce myself. I have to say, I've been hearing from a lot of you, hearing your stories, learning about you as people, and I really love that. So please continue introducing yourself. To formally introduce myself, I'm going to show you some photos to tell some stories. So first and foremost, I am a yoga student. This is me with my teacher, Sri Dharma Mitra, in New York City. I'm about 18 or 19 years old in that photo, and yoga has been a very large part of my life for a long time and continuing even until today. This is a picture from 2 years ago, February 2020, and this is again class with Dharma and how important it is to me. I was on vacation then, and I was taking class every day with Dharma when I could. Also, I am on vacation now so that I can devote myself fully to the conference. And another side of me is that I am a resident physician. So science is really, really important to me. I see science save lives every day. And I know its power. And I'm a resident physician, which means that I'm a medical doctor. I specialize in neurology, so I see patients and try to help them with stroke, seizure, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, neuropathy. And yeah, it's a huge part of my life, science and medicine. Here I'm pictured with one of my good friends, Dr. Irvin. So bringing the two together, yoga and neuroscience, I've been doing neuroscience outreach, which is something I love, and that means trying to share neuroscience with everyone. And here is one of our prior neuroscience and yoga events. This was at the Dharma Yoga Center on 23rd Street in New York City, and we were at the end of the event going over neuroanatomy, and we were using a donated brain. So someone who had passed away had opted to donate their brain after they died. And we were looking at it together to go over neuroanatomy, which was really cool. More on that later, by the way. Those kinds of things are back this year for those in New York City. So anyway, I share all of this about me just so that you think of me as approachable and human. I'm here and I'm available and I want to help and I want you guys to have a good experience and come to love neuroscience and yoga as much as I do. So yeah, don't hesitate with anything. So I'm just going to show you some past photos. I know that there are a good number of people in the conference, but for years now, a lot of, a lot of people have been interested in these events. So these are just some of the photos across the years. And I have more photos and more photos, photos from last year's conference. So we're a big community of people who are really interested in this. To introduce more of the people of the conference to you, we have a lot of speakers and yoga teachers, and you're going to meet each of them through their sessions. So each session will start with an introduction, but I, I can't emphasize enough how amazing each speaker is. I look up to all of them, and you don't have to take my word for it. They've been recognized in so many reputable sources like scientific journals, the Journal of American Medicine, the New England Journal, the Journal of Internal Medicine, news sources like Time Magazine, Scientific American, NPR, TED, the New York Times. So we have a really just a powerhouse group of people who are leading the presentations this year. In terms of the yoga teachers, we also have amazing, amazing yoga teachers. So if you look at this, you can see my mouse, correct? So these are the presenters, and the bottom 4 are the yoga teachers: Eddie Stern, Taylor Hunt, Lauren Duke, and Sridharma Mitra. So again, another powerhouse lineup of yoga teachers to help us advance our understanding. We also have an enormous number of people trying to make this conference happen. It's a huge undertaking, and we have experiments, right? So the Part of the conference includes neuroscience experiments, which are just a fun way to learn about science and see the effects of yoga on ourselves. And we have 3 people working on that: Ekaterina, Claire, and Ruki. We also have the Facebook group moderators, Kristen and Ruki. And we have 6 people who have contributed to advertising and communicating about the conference, which is, I think, one of the most challenging tasks And that includes Katya, who is here. Kristen's also here. I can't see everyone, so I don't know who else is here. Emily, Sarah, Nati, Joyce, and Chris. And I just have to say this because it was so recent. Chris, at the bottom right, is my brother-in-law. He designed the logo for the conference. And I mention this because he and my sister got married this weekend, and I just have to show you how beautiful they are. So just a shout out to them. Okay, so all of this history and all of these people come together in the Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference. There are 4 days to the conference, and we are in day 1. Day 1 is not listed on this slide, but it is all about introductions, and that's what we're doing today— introduction to overview of science. Overview of how to read a paper, overview of the conference, overview of neuroscience, and overview of yoga. And then starting tomorrow, we will go through the topic days, each day with a different topic. Day 2 of the conference will be all about yoga and child development. This will include things like ADHD, school performance, executive function, social skills development. Day 2 will be all about yoga and brain aging, and this will look at things like sleep, how our brain changes as we age with regards to sleep, our moods, our cognitive function, and also chronic diseases like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. The 3rd day will be all about yoga and addiction, and this will include both substances and behavioral addictions. And yeah, that's an overview of the topics of the conference. Each day will have 3 main components: presentations, yoga classes with experiments, and question and answer sessions. So those are the main components of the conference, and they occur each day. And before we go over each of those components in more detail, I want to explain the different passes, um, just to prevent any confusion and make sure that everyone knows which pass includes what so that you can go forward with the conference with the right pass for you. So first off, why do we have all these different passes? Well, we want this conference to be accessible to everyone. We wanted to not have to force a certain price, especially across the entire globe where currencies may be different and people may have, you know, different fund availability. So the starting pass is the presentation access pass, and with this pass, attendees will have access to all of the presentations by the expert MD and PhD researchers for 24 hours. And again, we really want this to be accessible, so any time zone, you should be able to tune in each presentation within the 24-hour time period. This pass also includes access to our Facebook group, which I'll talk about in a little while. And it is donation-based, and the option to donate will be sent to you via email. It's a GoFundMe page that you can contribute to, and all donations will be matched by one of our sponsors. So, um, One thing that can be confusing is that there are presentations that are prerecorded, and there are also live presentations. So the live presentations are also included in the Presentation Access Pass. Even though they're live, they are still included. Um, so you'll be able to see them live and then also catch the recordings for 24 hours. All right. If you have questions, again, jot them down. The next pass is the Live Access Pass. So this includes everything that the Presentation Access Pass includes but adds 3 live components: the yoga classes with the experiments and the question and answer sessions. So all of this includes 4 yoga classes, experiments before and after each of them, and I believe 5 question and answer sessions. And the total cost of that is $75, which is a pretty good deal. I've gotten a few questions about this. Typically, the yoga classes and the experiments and the question and answer sessions are only available live, but I'm going to work really hard this year to make them available for 24 hours as well. It just takes a lot of processing on the back end, but I actually— I just did the 2 presentations from this morning. I put them fully through the pipeline of processing, and it only took about 30 minutes. I got a new computer that's a lot faster than my one last year, so I think, I think we might be in good shape to make this happen. So yeah, and if anything comes up, you know, we're going to try to be as accommodating as possible, so just let us know how things are working for you. All right, and finally, the Lifetime Access Pass. So this includes all of the above but adds a few extra things for people who really want to dive deep into the material and review it over and over and over again to reinforce the knowledge and have a lot of takeaways for them and maybe for the people that they teach as well. So the Live Access Pass adds ongoing access to the presentations In a secure online platform, and this is lifetime access, so it won't go away. You can keep coming back to it and reviewing it. The online portal, just so you know, is obviously not complete yet. We're still getting presentations and adding things one by one. I just put the 2 presentations from this morning into the present— into the lifetime access portal, so you should be able to see them there now. Um, one other thing to note, the Lifetime Access Pass comes with some bonuses. These include workbooks, which came out really amazing this year. They are— I see someone nodding. I don't know if you've seen them yet, but they— awesome. Yeah, so they basically are the presentations, but with pieces missing. And so as you're watching the presentation, you can write down what's missing to turn the passive listening of a presentation into active learning. And then this workbook becomes a reference material for you to go back to anytime you're trying to remember details from the conference. All right, so— oh, and one more thing, the lifetime access pass includes Yoga Alliance continuing education credit. And if you want the continuing education credit, you just send me an email at the end of the conference or once you've completed all of the material, and then we can get that set up for you. So, um, you can switch passes at any point during the conference, but I highly recommend that you ask your questions now. Think about which one is best for you. Because I don't want you to miss anything. So let's say you have a Presentation Access Pass right now. If you waited to upgrade to a Live Access Pass on Saturday, you would miss some of the events that were live on Thursday and Friday. Now, I still think that what you get on Saturday and Sunday is quite valuable, so I'm not going to prevent people from doing this, but it is something to keep in mind that we can't back-deliver material. All right, so now we'll go through each of the components of the conference. So let's start with the schedule. So there's a great website— that sounds weird, but there's a part of our website that I think is great. Called, uh, the schedule page, www.neuroyoganyc.com/schedule. I just put it in the chat, and it has the schedule with descriptions for each day. So you can page through if you click these little tabs— day 1, day 2, day 3— it will show you all of the events for that day. And the way they're organized is by the type of event. Not by time here. So they're not in order, chronological order here, they're in event order. So, and by event order, I mean type of event. So all the presentations are first together. And then come all of the yoga classes and experiments. And then come all of the question and answer sessions. And you can page through, I'm just going to show you if you were to click day 2, you would see this. If you click day 3, you would see this. If you click day 4, you would see this. And so you can really get a sense of all of the events upcoming. Why do we have these detailed descriptions? Well, you may want to prioritize this weekend certain presentations that interest you most, especially if your schedule is a little bit limited. You can read about the presentation and know which ones interest you most. All right, so that's how to find events organized by type of event, right? So Presentation Access Pass members will have access to anything under Presentation, whereas Live Access and Lifetime Access will have access to anything under Yoga Class and Experiments and Q&A Sessions. But what if you want to see things chronologically? Well, if you scroll down on the schedule page there is this Google Calendar. And this is another way of looking at the schedule. And it is in order of time. And what's really cool about it is you could look at it by week, by month, or by agenda, which will just list the events. And you can download this calendar into your own Google Calendar, and it will synchronize. Even better is if I make any changes, let's say there are last-minute changes, that will synchronize with your calendar when I make those changes. So really cool. The other thing that should work, and let me know if there are any issues with this, is when you import this into your calendar, it should automatically adjust the time zone to your time zone. So it'll show you the times for you. So there are a couple of weird things about this, however, that I just want to go over to prevent any confusion. So there's an event every day called Presentations Are Available, and this is when the prerecorded presentations become available. But what can be confusing is that for whatever reason, and I tried fixing it but I couldn't, this event comes out of order. So if you look at the top on Thursday, March 17th, it says 5 PM Yoga and Child Development presentations are available. When in fact 5 PM should really be down here, right? But what it's doing is, because this is available for 24 hours, it spans 2 days. So anything that spans 2 days in Google Calendar gets put at the top. And so you can see it at the top here as well on Friday, because it's going to go until 5 PM on Friday. So it's 5 PM on Thursday to 5 PM on Friday. So just train yourself to look at it that way so it's not confusing. And to note, the presentations are available for 24 hours leading up to the question and answer session. So this gives everyone time to think of their questions, submit their questions. We'll go over where to submit your questions, and then we can have a great productive question and answer session after everyone has seen the presentation. All right, um, couple of other things that could be confusing on the Google Calendar. If something says live presentation or live workshop, that is still available to Presentation Access Pass holders, as we said before. But if it says live yoga class or hands-on neuroscience experiments or live question and answer session, That is available for live and lifetime access pass members. Okay, um, so where do you get the links for events? Oh, okay, so this is going to come via email. I had a grand plan to try to make the emails only send once. and then to update after the fact. So what happened is the link— what was supposed to happen is the link was a secondary link. It linked to a specific website, and then I could change that website to link you to either this isn't available yet or now it's available. I'm having some technical difficulties with this. I've been on with the conference email server Uh, all night last night and this morning trying to get it fixed. I'm not sure it's going to be fixed, um, in time, so it may just be that I have to send multiple emails per day with the updated links, and I apologize for the amount of emails if that ends up being the case. But please note, all communication for this conference will occur via email, so you need to make sure our emails are not going to And that you add us to your safe sender list. I can put my email in the chat, and I'll say it. It's Jonathan at Neuro Yoga NYC dot com, and it's Jonathan J O N A T H A N. All right. So this is scrolling down, just showing you the rest of the schedule for the conference. And there are a couple of things on Saturday and Sunday that you should be aware of. So first, on Saturday, the Yoga and Brain Aging Day, there will be 2 question and answer sessions. And this is because of time zone constraints. One of the speakers is from California, one is from North Carolina, and one is from India, and we couldn't get a time that worked for everyone, so we split it in 2. So there will be one question and answer session you can see up here at 8 AM, and this is with Shirley Telles and Stephanie Soule. So I recommend on Friday night that the first presentations you watch are by Shirley Telles and Stephanie Soule, because that's going to be the first question and answer session. You want to make sure you watch those presentations first. And then the rest of the presentations on Saturday, you'll have a little bit longer until 6 PM when the second question and answer session is. Does that make sense? Okay. And again, if you have questions, please jot them down. All right, the second thing to note. Is that on Sunday, the question and answer session is a bit earlier. So instead of in the afternoon or evening, it's in the morning. There are fewer presentations to watch for this question and answer session, but you should really be watching them even the day before because there are going to be live presentations by Dr. Khalsa leading up to this question and answer session. And it might be tough to squeeze in the presentations before then. I understand that it's hard because, you know, the presentations are available for 24 hours, but some of those 24-hour periods overlap. So for the presentations on Sunday, we extended how long they're available. Instead of being available for 24 hours, They will be available for 30 hours, so you can catch up on them later if you can't squeeze them all in before this question and answer session. But again, to have a good question and answer session, I encourage you to try to get them in. All right, so now let's go over what a presentation page looks like, and this is a presentation from last year that Dr. Telles gave. So All of the presentations will be available in this format for 24 hours, and you'll get the email with the links to this. Um, I recommend that even if you have a Lifetime Access Pass, you go to this page, which you'll get via email, because this page will include a question form. So Lifetime Access Pass members could also go to their online portal to watch, but the Lifetime Access portal will not have a question form. And from the question form, as you're watching, you don't even have to pause the video. You can submit the form as you're going, which is really nice, and you can submit the form as many times as you want. There are no limits. Another thing to note is that each presentation, in addition to having the title and the speaker, will have a And just a piece of information about when that presentation will no longer be available and a countdown timer until then. So, you know, how long do I have to watch this presentation? There's also a reminder, which is really important, that these presentations are for educational purposes and they're not personalized medical advice. And Yeah, that's an overview of what the presentation pages will be like. Again, really want to emphasize how important the question form is. All right, now we'll go over the live sessions. So as we said before, the live sessions include the yoga classes, the question and answer sessions, and the experiments, which are before and after the yoga classes. These are available to live and lifetime access pass holders, and you will get the links 10 to 15 minutes before each event. Um, again, just to say it one more time so no one is confused, some presentations are live, but those are still presentations, so they are available to Presentation Access Pass holders. So I just have to do a plug— the live events are so fun, like really, really fun. Um, we talked about the amazing yoga teachers we have and the experiments. We regularly get feedback that the experiments are one of the coolest parts of our events because they show you how science works and the effects of that yoga class on your own neurophysiology. And last year, the question and answer sessions were insanely good conversations. I actually go back to them regularly still. They were so good. All right, and now we will move on to the lifetime access portal. So how do you access the Lifetime Access Portal. Um, again, the Lifetime Access Portal is where you're going to find the ongoing unlimited access to all of the recordings of the conference, and it will have the workbooks in there. I also send you the workbooks if you have a Lifetime Access Pass via email, and you can mark things complete or, um, you know, jot down notes, whatever you want to do in the Lifetime Access Portal. It's a great learning resource. So let's take a look. So if you wanted to access the Lifetime Access Portal, you would go to the menu up here, you click it, and you get a dropdown page, and you'll see Lifetime Access Login. When you click Lifetime Access Login, you're taken to this page. Now it says closed, it looks like you don't have access, but don't be fooled. If you click login, A little page will pop up for you to put in your username and your password. Both of these were emailed to you at the time of sign up for the Lifetime Access Pass, so you can refer back to your emails. It'll be an email from me, jonathan@neuroyoganyc.com. It's really from the server, and you can get that. If you cannot find it, don't hesitate to just email me. I can reset your password, or you can do it yourself by clicking Lost Your Password. Once you log in, you'll see a page like this that includes the courses that you signed up for. So if you signed up for last year's conference, you'll have that one too. And then you can scroll down through all of the topics and you'll see there's the workbook first and then each of the events for that day. And when you click one of them, in this case I'm going to click Yoga for Worry in Older Adults. You can see the video shows up, the title, and then on the side the navigation tool so that you could switch between them. And just to show you what the workbooks look like, they're really, really cool. This is an example of one of the pages from the workbook. So you fill in the blanks, and again, it kind of reinforces the learning for you and then serves as a resource for you to refer back to. Um, so to get access to the workbooks, there are 2 ways. The first is through the lifetime access portal, and the second is through sharing the conference. So we have a very special system set up for sharing the conference that I want to go over. So at the bottom of every email, you'll see something like this. In the conference emails, like day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 emails, it'll be shorter. It'll just say share the conference. But when you click that, it opens a special sharing portal where you can get your unique link. No login required, nothing special. You just click this link and it'll work unique to you. Very cool technology. And there are different prizes I want to highlight. So for one referral, you get a deep relaxation audio Which is basically a mini yoga nidra that you can use for insomnia or to help you go to bed, or even just to relax in the middle of the day. For 2 referrals, you'll get a dharma yoga class that I taught. It's a recording. It was a nice class on a snow day a couple months ago. For 5 referrals, you get a bonus presentation about the neuroscience of yoga for empathy, mental health, and cognition. It's a 1-hour-long bonus presentation. For 10 referrals, you get workbooks. So those are the workbooks that we've been talking about, and already someone has actually referred enough to get the workbooks, which is amazing. And yeah, you won't need to have the lifetime access pass to get the workbooks this way. And then finally, 20 referrals, we get to have a one-on-one and talk about neuroscience and yoga. I'm not sure how many people want to talk to me, but I'm offering this because I wanted something else. To offer. Um, so yeah, this is our way of saying thank you for sharing the conference. We really depend on the people who attend to help spread the word. Word of mouth is the best way to get this amazing knowledge out to people. So thank you for sharing the conference, and we're happy to be able to reward you for it. So when you click the link, your unique sharing dashboard, it takes you to something that looks like this. And if you scroll down, what you'll see is under share, you can get your unique referral link. This is what you would send to other people, and then when they sign up, you get credit. You can also click Facebook and it'll open up a post in Facebook, and you write about the conference, put the link in, and then you're good. For Twitter, it automatically fills that out, so it'll say, I joined this conference, here's my unique link if you want to sign up. Same thing for LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Skype. So lots of ways for you to share the conference, trying to make it as easy as possible. If you click Rewards, it will take you to the different rewards that are available and how close you are to getting them. So if you have one referral already, this bar will be completely filled up. If you have one referral, this bar will be halfway filled up, and there are descriptions of each of the rewards. And then finally, if you click Activity, You'll see the number of people who have visited your link and the number of people who actually signed up through your link. And that's an overview of sharing the conference. Okay, so all these amazing people join the conference. We have the best participants. How do we talk to each other? Well, there is a Facebook group. This is our way in an online conference of developing interpersonal connection. And community. And here are a few of us introducing ourselves in the conference. You should join and say hello too. Basically, the introduction videos are just like, hi, this is who I am. I'm interested in this conference for this reason. And I'm excited to meet all of you. And we all get to know each other a little bit. And there will be lots of fun prompts to generate discussion throughout the conference. And we can all engage in that discourse. One thing I will note, so the Facebook group is not the best place to talk about tech-related things. And the reason for that is that I set up the backend of the conference. So I understand how like all the emails interface with the website, interface with everything. So if you post it in the Facebook group, I'm not— I'm much better at keeping up with emails than I am the Facebook group. So if you email me directly, I will get back to you. And some of you, you know, had some difficulties with links because our email server wasn't working this morning, and we got you links pretty quickly, like within 10 minutes, every person. So definitely much faster at email than anything else. All right, and now I get to tell you about a bonus event. This is super special, announcing it for the first time. It'll go on the Google Calendar soon. If I forget to put it on the Google Calendar, just remind me. But this is an in-person event. to the Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference. I apologize for anyone who is located elsewhere, but this event will be in New York City. So for those of you joining from New York City, we invite you to attend this live in-person component of the conference. And we're joining forces with the rest of the Brain Awareness Week events going on this week. And by the way, Brain Awareness Week in New York City is amazing. So this is one of the biggest and coolest events where a bunch of graduate students and undergraduates and postdocs and even PIs come and bring a bunch of experiments and brain samples and microscopes, and we learn about neuroscience together. So it's a really cool way to experience science. It's going to take place in Harlem on 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. And it's going to be after our events on Saturday, so I'm going to paste this. Oh, thank you so much, Kristen. Oh my God. So it's already in the chat. So it's 11 AM to 3 PM. Our events that day are going to end around 1 PM, so we can all maybe meet there later in the afternoon around 1:30 or 2. And we'll catch the end of the BioBus. And by the way, I asked the BioBus to send me pictures And they sent me this picture for this presentation. And this is one of my friends from undergrad, Tony Tao. And I was like, oh my God, it's Tony Tao. All right. So what do you do if you have questions during the conference or you're not sure, you know, why something isn't working or what to do next? So the first place to go is the main page. And this has questions that are kind of pre-conference questions. So, you know, why an online conference? I'm on a tight budget, how can I join? Who is this conference for? So you may have signed up already but still trying to figure out, you know, how do I fit into this conference? These are some ways to get those answers. But for most of you, you can go to the support page, which you can find in the menu, so the top right, go dropdown menu. Or you can just click here, other questions, check out our technical support page. And this is where you'll find our FAQs. And the FAQs, I basically take everyone— these are outdated, these are from last year, I should have rescreenshot it. But the FAQs on the website are kept up to date. And anytime people send questions that I think could apply to everyone, I try to update the FAQs on the support page. And so please check the FAQs first if you're not sure. And then below that is a support form where you can submit. You can also reply to any emails from me, and I'll receive those as well. All right. So that's an overview of everything and how everything's going to work. Thank you so much for bearing with me. I know it was a lot of me just shouting information. Um, what questions do you have? And while you're thinking of and writing in your questions, um, I just have to say a huge, huge thank you, um, to a lot of the people who have contributed to this conference, really everyone, and to all of you for joining. But I also really want to thank Eddie Stern and Marshall Hagans, who have been incredibly supportive of, you know, this conference and it coming to fruition both last year and this year. I also want to thank Lauren Duke, who has contributed to sponsoring this conference, and to Sarah Margot for reaching out to so many people and really coordinating a lot of things for this conference to happen, and to Katya Prager, who is here. for helping with all of the emails and communication with everyone, and to Kristen Anderson for helping to coordinate with Brain Awareness Week. And yeah, so many of you who contributed to this conference. Ah, Amanda, yes, so the— that's an excellent point. So in the Lifetime Access Portal The videos are slowly being updated. It is not complete yet, and there are video placeholders for some of them, especially the prerecorded ones, but they are not working, and I am aware of that. So day by day, I'm going to fix them. So when the child development ones go live today at 5 PM, I will fix those. All right, so I will close out this session. We will get to hang out more at the end of every session. We can have Little hangouts and talk. I'm sure as time goes on, we'll get to know each other, recognize each other's faces and names. And, you know, I'm sure everyone's a little bit shy right now to start talking about neuroscience and yoga, but soon. All right, so 1 PM, there is a live yoga class for Live and Lifetime Access passholders, and then for all passholders at 5 PM, Eastern Standard Time, so about 4 hours from now, there will be another presentation with Dr. Ben Rhine, Introduction to Neuroscience, followed by an introduction to yoga. So really looking forward to seeing all of you there. The links will be sent out. Bye everyone, take care, see you later. Bye, Jonathan.