I hope you are enjoying this Bank Holiday weekend. I am sitting in the sunshine to write this week’s Newsletter and all I can hear are the birds singing and somewhere in the distance an aeroplane flying over, but that is all. 

The peace and quiet is something to celebrate, somehow it feels like it quietens and calms all the senses down which completely feeds my heart and soul. I hope you find some peace and quiet this weekend.

On Tuesday last week I taught a Live Thoracic Spine mobility routine which is perfect to get the mid-spine moving when you are short of time. In last week’s Newsletter I shared a hip glide which is perfect to release the muscles which can hold onto stiffness in the middle of the back, so for this week's Newsletter I share just a couple of the exercises that I used in the routine that continue to move the spine once the releasing has been done. 

Enjoy, and remember to work appropriately for your body and keep away from pain.

Here is the video.

The whole Thoracic Spine mobility routine, on the other hand, is available in the JTP Members' website jtp.zone under the Online Tutorials button on the home page, and is just 15 minutes long.

What is your ideal day? What does it look like? 

Over the years I have been asked this question many times when I have been doing various self-development courses and business courses. And to be honest, when I hear those words I get a little bit of a panicky feeling. 

I work with a Mindset Coach and I have been working with her for a long time, really since the pandemic as I felt I had a lot to process, both with the business, but also personally, and I recognised I couldn’t do it alone. The question about the ideal day came up in my session last week, as I was running through my work/life situation and what my plans for the future could look like, and I explained how it made me feel, and also how this question made me feel. 

After chatting about this I realised that potentially I don’t have an answer, I don’t know what my ideal day would be, and this is what causes the panic. So I am set with the task of taking a piece of A4 paper and laying the day out starting from when I wake up, to when I go to bed and everything in between, including what and when I eat and drink. The outcome is to help me plan for the next 6 months, 12 months, and so on. but also to check in with my feelings and mindset around possible change.

One of the considerations I have is my teaching, not because I don’t enjoy it or don’t want to do it, quite contrary to this I am continuously grateful that I am able to teach, but because it has been such a big part of my life for the last 30 years, it kind of defines me and who I am. This surely then has to be included in my ideal day, but of course it is also my job, my work. And how many people would include their work as part of their ideal day, and what proportion of the day would that take up, and what time does it leave for other stuff?

When giving it some thought I realised that I let my days be led by the demands of my teaching so perhaps when I am looking at my ‘ideal day’ I should focus on how I would like my teaching to fit into my ideal day, rather than letting it be led by the teaching itself. 

Do you have a similar situation? Perhaps you have commitments — not necessarily work, but it could be regular demands on your time — that are keeping you stuck or that you feel are preventing you from planning to do other things in your life. Maybe this exercise will help you to move forward and start to include some plans for other things, such as holidays or hobbies, or bigger projects and adventures. For it to work it will mean change, so it will also give you an understanding about how you feel about change and how your mindset deals with it. Are you truly open to change, do you welcome it, or like me, does it make you a little bit anxious? I’d love to hear from you if you do the exercise and your thoughts. 

So I have my piece of paper, I know how I want to wake up in the morning, I know how I want to start my day, I know what I want to eat and drink for breakfast and when I want to have it, I know when and how much I want to teach … Then what? Mmm … Let me think. 

Have a great week folks discovering your ideal day, and I will see you in class.

With love

Jane xx