Orientation to the 2024 Neuroscience and Yoga Online Conference Encore

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, 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, Sridharmamitra. 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 were 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. 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. 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. 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 Wartolik, 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. 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. 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 7 days. 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. 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. Next, the Enhanced Access Pass. So this is an upgrade option that adds to the Presentation Access Pass all of the enhanced events, the yoga classes with our amazing teachers, the neuroscience experiments, The question and answer sessions and the discussion groups. The Enhanced Access Pass comes with donation to the conference. 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. 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 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 back end 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.

And the thing to note is links will not be in the schedule page online. 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. Okay. 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 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. 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 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. The links will be active, so they will take you to the presentations page. And if you click that, that's where all the recordings will be. Okay, so that is the presentation section. There will be another section for enhanced events, which will include, you know, all the yoga classes, the discussion groups, and the question and answer sessions. 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 link to the Facebook group, the submission form for questions, 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 for those with the presentation access pass and the enhanced access pass. 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 click the link and open up to watch 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. Next, we'll move on to the enhanced sessions. So these are available for enhanced 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. These yoga classes are prerecorded, but you'll, you'll have access to them for 7 days with the Enhanced 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 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. 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 be recordings. That's everything about enhanced sessions. Okay, so now that we covered all of the enhanced events, that's everything that applies for the enhanced 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, 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. 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. 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, um, 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. Um, 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. 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 an hour or 2. So that is going to be a way more efficient way to get technical support. Okay. So that's everything about the Facebook group. 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. 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. 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 lifetime is $200 and then there are different early bird discounts based on when you purchase it. 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. Any questions? Anyone want to unmute?

I just wanted to know if we could purchase any of the merch, like the, the mug and the t-shirt.

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

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jonathan, this is Rajeev from Canada. My question was, how do I— so I did I'll 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, there will be the 3 bars for the menu and then 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 is, this is Gianna from Tampa.

Hi, Gianna.

My question is about the lifetime pass. How many credits do we get for continuing education with Yoga Alliance? 25.

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.

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. Slowly opening the eyes. Okay. Thank you everyone. I'll see you in a little bit.