Week 54 - “The Nerve”
"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality."
-- Zora Neale Hurston
Hello Pilates People!!!!
Happy Sunday! THANK YOU for making our birthday SO WONDERFUL! We had a blast and aren't ready just yet to let it go...so...we have one more surprise for you!!
Throughout this next week (Monday, March 29th - Sunday, April 4th) when you bring a friend to class (a friend who is new to Pilates People), you AND your friend will both get your next LIVE class FREE on us!
Couple things:
your friend has to be new to US but not necessarily new to pilates in general
their first class should be taken WITH you! The whole idea is to make a date and spend time together :)
they can purchase our introductory $10 LIVE class for their first one (which means they essentially get 2 classes for $10!!!)
there is no limit to how many friends you bring! Grab Sally on Monday and Lars on Tuesday and then bring Oakley on Thursday! You'll get 3 classes for your friends and they'll each get one themselves!
It's a really good deal - PLEASE take advantage!
Also! Our next donation class is TODAY at 10am!!! We're supporting The Family Center NYC - an organization dedicated to supporting families in crisis with various different resources. The work they are doing is SO IMPORTANT, especially right now so please join us! And if you can't join but still want to donate, we love that too!
To sign up, please click here and use either your already purchased class package OR buy a "The Family Center Donation" class in the amount you'd like to donate!
And we have a few adjustments on our schedule starting THIS week:
Monday at 6pm Stretch It with Cassandra
Tuesday at 9am Feel It with Jenni
Tuesday at 6pm Work It with Sean
Saturday at 11am Feel It with Grace
Sign up and we'll see you soon!
And now...nerves.
Anyone else feel like people are dancing on them recently? Like not just getting on them but literally camping out for a shuffle ballchange right on the last one you've got?
If you have no idea what I just said, all good. It just means you weren't a tap dancer in a former life and I'm positive your parents are grateful they didn't have that added cacophony of noise in their kitchen as you were growing up as you LITERALLY danced on their nerves. Sorry, Mom :)
But you know what I mean, right?
But do any of us, really?
What are we talking about when we say things like, "you're getting on my nerves?"
Well, let's start with the nervous system - it's made of your nerves, and it controls your movement. Now, this is a pretty complicated topic and we can nerd out on it literally ALL DAY - so I want to start off by saying, we're going to ease into this one and get more specific as we go. This is another one that we'll be spending a few weeks on, framing and reframing the idea as we dive in deeper, so get ready!
The big take away for you this week is that your nervous system is responsible for ALL of your body's movement and functions. Yup, all of them. Sometimes you can control the movements with a thought, sometimes those movements are automatic. Sometimes those movements happen in response to your environment, sometimes they have nothing at all to do with it.
Examples:
Your heart is beating. Right? It has to be. That's your nervous system, but you aren't sitting here thinking "Beat heart! Keep me alive!" - it's just doing it.
When you're afraid or exerting extra energy, your body will respond by increasing your heart beat to increase your blood flow. That's your body automatically doing something in response to your situation but again, you are not consciously thinking about it.
You accidentally put your hand on something hot and it immediately pulls away as you yell some things that maybe you shouldn't yell in front of your 3 year old. The hand pulling away is your nervous system doing its automatic thing to protect you...you yelling is you controlling your nervous system to let everyone within a 20 foot radius know that pan is hot and they absolutely shouldn't go near it without an oven mitt.
You're in a Pilates People class (because you rock) and we ask you to extend your right leg. You do that. That's you taking control of your nervous system and asking it to fire the right signals to get that leg where you want it to go.
In order for your nervous system to control ALL of this, it has to cover a lot of ground, right? Right. In fact, if you stretched out all the nerves in your body and lined them up, you would cover 45 miles. That's A LOT of nerves.
You can think of it sort of like a tree, your spinal cord is the trunk in the middle that feeds up into your brain (where all the messages are sent and received) and there are branches upon branches upon branches that extend out from the trunk. It's actually pretty wild and awe-inspiring when you really take the time to consider it.
Anatomy-wise, these nerves have to find their way through your body, right? That often means they're traveling over, under or through your joints. Ever heard of an impinged nerve? Well, that means something happened to your joint/muscles around the joint and it's putting pressure on the nerve. Nerves don't like pressure so they give you pain/tingling/numbness as a response to let you know, "Hey, something's in my space and to be clear this is MY SPACE." They're a little bossy and unforgiving actually...
And getting back to my little aside at the top, nerves are involved in your emotions too, just like everything else. That fight or flight response we love to talk about that does some wacky things to your body sometimes? Nerves. When you feel sad and wind up frowning? Nerves. Any other cause and effect you can think of? Nerves are there.
So, this is a really, really big one, friends. This week, we'll focus in on some ways we can pay attention to and make our nerves happy, because we want them on our sides to protect us, move us and make us feel good!
Got any questions specific to nerves? We're here! Shoot them our way!
And as for that person throwing a party on your last nerve - call 311 on them. It's time to give it a rest already.
All our love, always,
Cassandra + Pilates People
