Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Use Music, Meditation, and Intention to Enhance Your Day, with Julianne Hough

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

While the coronavirus has us living isolated lives inside our homes, many of us are longing for nature. Yet, as Julianne Hough illustrates, there are ways we can bring nature to us by drawing it out from the inside. In this episode of The Brain Warriors Way Podcast, Julianne and the Amens describe the ways we can use this method to create each day, so you can live life on your own terms.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We're here with Julianne Hough having such a great time talking about dance and the brain. And during this time of pandemic,

I love that you talked about sober dance parties. That's the way to take care of your brain and your relationships. Alcohol ruins so many relationships that we see. But when people are home, what can they do? Oh my goodness, they can do so many things there's all the time in the world now um so you know one of my favorite things to do is when i wake up in the morning i have to train myself not to look at my phone and i i do it for an hour i do i don't look at my phone i put music on and i i i literally create the kind of day that I want to have by what music I'm listening to. So whether I want to have a more calm and peaceful day,

I might put on some meditation music and start my day that way. Or if I'm feeling fiery and feisty today, or if that's the kind of energy that I want to put out into the world today, I'm going to put on some salsa music and I start my day with how I want to show up that day I love that with music and how I move my body and so while I'm you know making my my hot water and lemon in the morning I'm listening to you know to music and I'm dancing around the kitchen I'm interacting and I'm having full human

connection whether that's to myself or to the people that are in my house without my electronics or my technology or I really like them so that is like my number one thing I then do a dump I write and I just dump out all the thoughts in my head and a lot of those thoughts are negative thoughts and I never read them back. I just write it out. And I write for three pages where I feel like I'm not, I'm not, it's just caused a stream of thought.

I'm just letting it go. And I start dumping out all this information that like maybe I've been holding inside that I can clear my mind. Then after that, I either do some sort of workout, and that could be weight training or yoga, or it could also be kinergy. And kinergy, what I love about it is it activates the imagination because we bring in the elements, the natural elements,

so we don't have to go outside of ourselves to feel nature because nature is within us. If we just activate our imagination and bring the earth and the fire and the water and allow ourselves to feel what it feels like to be connected to nature. So I'll do that. oh, I'm feeling a little anxiety or now that we're working from home right now and I'm sitting way more than I usually do on my phone or on my computer doing work, I'll literally put an alarm on to get up and do a two-minute dance. I'll just put some music on, I'll dance or I'll do a little breathing exercise, just something to shift my pattern just so that I continue to recreate throughout the day. I love that. Is Kinergy something, is it a program that people can do from their homes?

Yes. Oh yeah, absolutely. Tell us how. Yeah. So actually every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I go live at 11am and do either Kinergy Philosophy where I talk about what it is or on Fridays, I'll do a 15-minute experience and we get people up and moving. And the thing that I love about it is you can go full out dancing or if you're in a wheelchair or if, you know, one of my really good friends, Amy Purdy, she's paraplegic. And so she can't do all of the moves. And so she does it how she wants to do it. Because the moves are designed for you, for your body to move how it wants to be moved.

So it's, yeah, anybody can come and join in and just release some of that stress and anxiety, but also have fun doing it. And then have this insight. It's a website. I just want people to be able to get to it. Yeah. You can go to Instagram, and it's at Kinergy, K-I-N-R-G-Y. And then actually, if people go to the website, Kinergy.com, we're going to be doing longer 45 minute versions on zoom starting april 13th excellent okay that's why i just want our people to be able to join you the range is this more for

women it's both for women and men is it for kids and adults but who shows up it's for everyone in fact um especially being at home right now a lot of people have been doing it with their kids. And because it's such a playful method where we're banging on the floor and we're banging our body and we're dancing and celebrating, the kids are having so much fun and they're able to get a lot of that energy where they're feeling crazy out, you know, and they're doing it together as a family. And, you know, anytime you say dance, I think there's been a stigma around it, that it's for women. But when this, when people do this method, Kinergy, it's based in tribal, aboriginal movements that are ancient, that tribes do to connect to each other. It's a communal experience. And so for women, there may be a little bit more open to doing something

that's dance related, but when men do it, because they're more vulnerable and like a place, all of a sudden they have the best experience they've ever had because they never would have done it before. So the range of experience is even greater for men that do it because they didn't believe that they could have that kind of fun. So when they do, it's natural. So let me weigh in just a little bit. So many people on Facebook Live recently, I did ADD, ADHD during a pandemic. And so many parents had been blaming the poor teacher for why their child was struggling. And now that they're doing homeschooling, they're having so much empathy for the teacher but if you want to help your kids focus before they sit down to do their schoolwork get them to

do kinergy it will help them so much because not only is it activating their cerebellum which has connections to every other part of your brain, it's also increasing blood flow to their brain so that they can focus. And your day is going to go so much better than if you let them watch TV, give them sugar cereal, and then say sit down and focus. Which is the most impossible. Which, by the way, I don't want anybody to tell me that either. I don't want to get sugar. I don't want to sit on a TV and then tell me to do something. I'd be a nervous wreck. I'd be all over the place. So especially our kids

when they're so malleable right now, to be able to give them structure in something that's going to give them the best opportunity to focus. So I have a very hard time focusing. So my thing that I have to do, I have to move my body in order for me to focus. And so I used to have a very hard time in school because I would be sitting down and I would like get so distracted. And my mom didn't put me on any drugs or anything like that but I realized later on in life oh my gosh if I just was standing and I could rock side to side I would feel so much more connected and I can actually focus yeah well and if we did this in schools the incidence of ADD would go down and I ADD is real and it exists and get it treated can make a big difference.

But the first thing that it's, you know, first do no harm. And we always think at Amen Clinics, what are the natural things I can do to treat it before I go off to medication and get your diet right and then add the right forms of exercise? Yeah. So I've been having uh because we've got three kids here my daughter and our two nieces who we for the most part adopted and they're living with us right now and so i've been having them do yoga in the mornings but after a

while they start it's repetitive and they're starting to get a little bit tired of it which i think it's great for them but i think i'm going to have them try this because I think that the music part you know so I'm one of those moms who I'm not one of those moms who when I hear loud music coming from the other end of the house I don't freak out because I get it I'm because I need to do you know karate and listen to rock music or whatever so when I hear my daughter doing that it reminded me of what you said she's I hear my daughter playing all different kinds of music from all different generations, and I know she's like you. She's trying to set up her day. So it's so funny when I hear the music

coming out of that end of the house, it's very loud, but I'm like, oh, it's an energy thing for her. It is. So yeah. So I think my daughter loves to dance. Music is energy. Right. And it can either be toxic for some people or it can be healing we've actually produced three albums brain directed music yeah and music for bright minds spent 45 weeks on Billboard's New Age chart which we're so proud of but because music changes your state. Right. And you can have music for sleep, for focus, for relaxation to boost your mood.

And then if you add it to movement, it's just the perfect treatment. And as you said, you're actually, it's ancestral. It's natural to us and for children it helps their brain develop and now that they're on their gadgets uh their brain is developing in a different way but in a way that is skyrocketing anxiety and depression so this is a natural treatment. When we come back, we're going to have more of this discussion. Plus, I really want you to talk about what you see is the future of music and the future of dance and your hopes for our generation. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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