Hi Comfy Friends! I had the privilege of subbing for two of Kira's Embodied Blast classes in the past few weeks, which allowed me to pay homage to one of my heroes, Richard Simmons. I love the way he brought visibility to older, fat women including in the representation within his videos. He was also one of the folks talking about joy in movement and finding FUN in exercise, as opposed to punishing ourselves. Are there icky diet culture threads in his work? Totally! But I still appreciate and celebrate the good stuff. Plus, those outfits, that hair, the flair. SWOON. I thought my playlist would come through in the recording and that proved to be totally wrong. As promised, here's the link to the Spotify playlist I used: Roller Rink Disco Babiez. If you take the first class and want to use this playlist, we start warming up to Barry White. The second class warmup starts with Got to Give it Up by Marvin Gaye. I also recommend bopping to your own favorite playlist. It doesn't matter if you're on beat (I'm certainly not) or matching my movements (I am not a professional dancer BY ANY MEANS so do your own thing). If you do happen to take the class, I hope you have fun! xo, alexis

Last month, I was excited to host a Comfy Happy Hour on the topic of my favorite (non-fiction) book of the past year: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. While what drove me to read this book was the way the author discussed types of focus, including what it means to find FLOW, our Happy Hour conversation brought forward some great ideas on how to reclaim our focus. Everyone agreed that mindless scrolling and screen time were stealing hours and days away from our lives. Here are some helpful tips the group shared. And please! Comment with your strategies (or struggles) so we can share the wealth of knowledge and experience from this wise community. Strategies: Use apps to monitor and lock your phone: Anti-social - helps to monitor usage of screen time and on individual apps. Freedom - locks website and apps for periods of time to eliminate distractions Get rid of notifications Social media apps will do anything to get you to open them up. They don't care about your wellbeing, they want your attention. Make sure when you engage its because you WANT to by limiting or eliminating notifications. You can do this by going to Settings then Notifications on your iphone. Put your charger in another room To maximize evening (or anytime) relaxation, charge your phone in another room. This adds a layer of effort and difficulty in order to open your phone, and one that is VERY EFFECTIVE for me because I won't get up just to check my phone once I commit to couch time. Put apps you don't want to mindlessly use deep into a folder to add another layer of difficulty. Keep your phone on silent. One intrepid participant from the group discussion said they were going to delete their gmail from the phone altogether! As scary as that may sound, think of how much better your response ratio will be knowing that you only open emails when you are in a proper setting to respond to them. Don't even install social apps on your phone. In an effort to make scrolling social less pleasant, delete the apps from your phone so that you have to use their website to view content. Limit permissions for more privacy. Practice being free from your phone. Take walks without phone or stick your device in the backset where you can't reach it when you're in the car. If something works for you, please share it! We're all in this landscape of attention stealing together, and any motivation or skillful means helps.