Blog Archives - Joanne Sumner

How to bring more happiness into your life: joyful attention & kind attention

8th September 2021/in Blog /by Silvia Pink

How to be happier in life…

Your levels of happiness might have decreased in recent times or you may feel that you have never really felt a high level of joy.

You are in the right place, welcome to the first part of my two-part blog series about the components of happiness, things you can do to bring more happiness into your life in very simple ways.

For this series, I’m using work that was published by the Mayo Clinic in 2013 in a book called Stress-Free Living by Dr. Amit Sood who has carried out several research studies looking at ways to improve stress, anxiety, resilience, happiness, wellbeing and quality of life – it’s an excellent resource.

The book categorises different practices we can do to improve our happiness into three groups. The first group is ‘joyful attention’, the second ‘kind attention’ and the third ‘positive interpretations of life’.

One of the ways we can increase joy in our lives is by paying more joyful and kind attention, which are the two components of happiness I will cover in this blog.

JOYFUL ATTENTION

Spend time in nature

I don’t mean going for a walk in the park when you end up thinking about what you’ve got to do later, or you’re turning over a conversation you’ve had and maybe somebody said something that wound you up. That’s not going to cut it. If you want to increase joy in your life, time in nature must be present, mindful, and engaged.

It’s stopping and looking at the dew and the beautiful patterns it makes on the leaves. It’s stopping and listening to the birds as they swoop overhead. It’s stopping and actually absorbing the colour around you. It’s stopping. That word again and again for a reason. It’s stopping, dropping out of your daily life and into nature.

Notice the details

If you actually take the time to notice the small details of anything you’re engaging with, it actually increases your joy. When you’re eating something, notice the texture, the colour. Notice, of course, the taste. But what are the different depths of taste?

If you’ve bought a new piece of clothing, notice the details of its stitching, the variation of the texture of the fabric. Notice a small detail in how somebody’s laid out a piece of work for you. Noticing those small details helps you inhabit your life fully.

Part of the reason why we don’t always experience the joy that we’re capable of is that we’re living in our heads. We’re living partially in a fantasy of our own creation and not fully here in the present, in the actual life that we’re leading.

Cultivate novelty

You can cultivate novelty in tiny little things as well as in the bigger things of life. It might be applied to your daily walk by taking another route or walking in the opposite direction.

It might be that you change your beverage – tea instead of coffee. It might be that you meet a friend you would normally meet for drinks and dinner and you go for a walk and breakfast instead. It might be that you make a point at the weekend of going and finding a new town to visit. It might be that you change the style of film that you watch or you read a book you wouldn’t normally pick up.

There are all sorts of ways you can cultivate novelty. It will make a difference to your joy and of course, make a difference to your mental health.

Variety gives me a spring in my step!

Tip: if you’d like to take this practice a little deeper, try cultivating novelty by taking on this challenge – for the first five minutes of any experience, don’t criticise.

As human beings, we instinctively have an immediate, often critical, opinion when somebody is talking. I invite you not to criticise.

When somebody’s telling you a story you don’t immediately get or you think they’re wrong, don’t criticise. When somebody wants you to do something a particular way and it’s not how you would have done it, don’t criticise. Just for the first five minutes and let’s see what happens.

KIND ATTENTION

Take a different view of the world

Approach every human being, from all circumstances, from a position of ‘I wish you well’. As well as this, look at the world as you would like the world to look at your children.

How is it that you want the world to look at your children? For me, that brings up feelings of tenderness, of being given a fair chance, of being seen and cherished. How about if we looked at the world with tenderness, recognition, and appreciation?

Can you see how that changes your state? Just thinking about that as an experiment changes your state.

By bringing joyful and kind attention into your life, you create practices that are directly connected with increasing happiness. Consistency is key here, start small and enjoy.

Would you like to be supported in bringing more happiness into your life? I am an experienced Life Coach, here to serve the seekers, those who finally want to let their dreams see the light of day and make them a reality. Learn to love the life you have and build the life you want. Book a coaching session here.

How to bring more happiness into your life: positive interpretations of life

8th September 2021/in Blog /by Silvia Pink

Money can’t buy happiness, this much we know. But, there are ways we can cultivate happiness through simple practices that work.

Happiness is made up of several elements, as explained in Stress-Free Living, a book by Dr Amit Sood, published by the Mayo Clinic. The work is based on several research studies looking at ways to improve stress, anxiety, resilience, happiness, wellbeing and quality of life, and the basis for this two-part blog series on how you can bring more happiness into your life. Read part one here: joyful attention & kind attention.

The third component of happiness as discussed in Stress-Free Living is ‘positive interpretations of life’, which entails shifting the way you make sense of life to be more positive, the topic I will cover in this blog.

When I first started to take my personal development seriously, I began to look at the quality of thoughts I was having.

I noticed that most of my thoughts had a negative quality. For example, if I was thinking about something that I was seeking to achieve, I tended to think about the aspects I hadn’t yet mastered rather than how far I’d come. If I was thinking about something for the future, I tended to focus on the things that could go wrong rather than the things that could go right.

I would never have told you that I was a pessimistic or negative person. I actually would have told you that I was a positive person, but the quality of my thoughts, the nature of my thoughts, gave the lie to that.

If this resonates with you, be assured that there are straightforward ways in which you can develop a more positive interpretation of life. I know, because these are things I’ve actually had to do myself and I really do understand the difficulties or challenges that they can present. But I also understand just how much they’ve actually changed my daily experience.

POSITIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF LIFE

Gratitude with a difference

Not the sort of gratitude that you repeatedly get told to write down, such as three things you’re grateful for at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day.

I don’t need another task for my to-do list, and I don’t need something that I have to fake some of the time.

The way that we’re looking at gratitude here is by waiting for and cultivating that rushing flow of gratitude. So when something just surprises you, it takes you over. That rush of emotion rises up in you where you are spontaneously grateful.

Now, really notice it, really experience it. And then cultivate it – allow yourself to deeply, fully express and experience that gratitude in that moment. It’s like any other kind of muscle – the more you give attention to your gratitude when you’re experiencing it, the more able you will be to experience it.

Compassion and acceptance

My approach to compassion these days is very much influenced by mindfulness practice. One of the things I love that Shamash Alidina talks about is how mindfulness could really be renamed ‘kindfulness’.

You could look at everything, including yourself and your own thoughts, with kindness. Compassion for me begins with yourself. It begins with being able to treat your own experience, feelings, thoughts, and dreams with kindness. If we can show compassion towards ourselves, it is so much easier to show it to other people without any doubt at all.

In my mind, when we find that we’re judging other people, it’s because we’ve judged ourselves first. The benchmark that we set is so high that no one can get over it. Compassion is also based on the idea that we’re not separate, that we’re part of one unifying consciousness, that we are human beings first, and then all the other labels later.

Tip: think about the things that you have in common with somebody when you need to access your compassion. What is it that you have in common with this person? What is it that you both want or need? And from there, it is often easier to be compassionate, even when they’re not behaving in a way that you appreciate.

Next is acceptance. Once again, for me, heavily influenced by mindfulness. Acceptance is really the baseline from which any change can occur.

While you’re in resistance, while you’re still wanting things to be other than they are it is really very difficult to change. Whereas if you can deeply, radically accept yourself and the situation as they are, you actually have a foundation from which you can decide whether anything needs to change.

And if it does, you have a much greater chance of actually making that change.

The way to be more accepting of other people is to be more accepting of yourself. So practise on yourself first. Practise accepting how you feel. Practise accepting the moments when you don’t get things right. Practise accepting who you are, what you love, who you love, what you want from your life.

Out of that, you will get rich rewards. And most importantly, for this series, more happiness.

You choose the meaning

Meaning is something that we can cultivate. We can in fact, create meaning for ourselves out of our life events.

In terms of developing a positive interpretation of life, meaning is very important. You assign the meaning to whatever happens. Sometimes we accept other people’s meanings, and sometimes we accept them without challenging them. And I’m asking you to change. Change that now, if you can, and begin to develop your own meanings for events or things that people might say.

One of the ways that I like to develop my own meanings comes from Nancy Kline’s Time to Think. She asks these brilliant questions: number one, is it true? Can I know for definite that it’s true? In most cases, it probably isn’t knowable, undeniably true. So if another interpretation could be possible, ask: what could I credibly believe instead?

It is such a good question, and the word credible is really important. You have to be able to believe it. Or even just entertain it, you might not fully believe it yet, but you can entertain this other possible meaning.

It’s a game-changer. It’s not a phrase I use very often because I think it’s overused. But really, that question is a game-changer. So let’s take control of our lives. Let’s take control of our thinking and begin to choose the meaning that we assign to things and make those meanings helpful.

Make those meanings things that empower you, things that enable you, things that help you grow, rather than things that limit you or in any way denigrate you. You deserve a positive meaning in your life, and you get to choose it.

Float towards forgiveness

I want to be so clear, forgiveness is not required for you to recover from trauma.

However, in terms of lightening your load, forgiveness is something I would highly recommend you allow time for. And there’s a beautiful phrasing from an artist colleague, Jo Jayson, which I love, which is ‘allow yourself to float towards forgiveness’. Let it happen naturally, rather than going and searching for it and damning yourself if you can’t yet achieve it. Rather, float towards it over time.

For me, often it’s a case of I just wake up one morning and realise I have already forgiven.

Celebrate regularly

We need to make sure that we build regular, joyful celebrations into our lives.

This is so important, especially as life gets busy and is full of normal ups and downs. Celebration is even more important when life is full of tragedy. Build-in and seek out opportunities to celebrate and make those celebrations special.

Joy inspires, alleviates and softens life. Make more room for it!

Reflection and prayer

For me, prayer is about asking for the support that I need. Reflection, which is something I largely do in meditation, is about learning to know myself better and being able to hear the dictates of my soul – both are needed.

We do get to ask for what we need and then in reflection, we receive our answers. One feeds into the other.

In this two-part series, we’ve covered ‘joyful attention’, ‘kind attention’ and ‘positive interpretations of life’, the components of happiness as shown through research in the Mayo Clinic book Stress-Free Living. I’ve shared practical methods by which we can improve our ability to develop these three elements in order to increase our happiness. I hope that you find pleasure in building these methods into your life and notice how they affect your levels of joy.

Would you like to be supported in bringing more happiness into your life? I am an experienced Life Coach, dedicated to walking alongside you, providing the guidance you need at just the right place. Learn to love the life you have and build the life you want. Book a coaching session here.

How to improve emotional resilience

28th May 2021/in Blog, Emotional Energy /by Silvia Pink

Emotional resilience is directly linked to stress and the way in which we use and look after our energy. Here are four ways you can improve your emotional resilience, and in turn lower your stress levels. These tips are simple but effective and can be used before, during or after a stressful situation.

Sealing your energy

First, let’s talk about ‘sealing’ our energy so we are not at the mercy of external influences, and an effective visual to support you with this.

The personal space that I mean is the space immediately around you. And it is an energetic field. Sometimes we call it our aura.

Sometimes we think of it literally just as personal space – we feel when somebody intrudes into that space, perhaps physically, or with their emotions. In doing so, their energy field (which is full of how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, what their experiences have been) interacts with your energy field, where all your feelings and aspirations and dreams and experiences are held.

And sometimes there is an energetic clash, which makes us feel very uncomfortable.

So my first tip for managing your personal space is to learn how to seal your energy field so that you’re not at the mercy of what other people are bringing into it.

And the way that I like to do that is; I like to imagine myself in a protective bubble of light. It’s such a simple tip, but a very effective one.

I like to make that bubble of light, a beautiful rose pink, because I want it to have a very kind and compassionate energy.

But if you’re going to be around someone you know you’ll feel more threatened by, you can make a shield out of an image of indestructible lead, or your bubble could be made out of mirror to be more defensive.

The main idea is that we take responsibility for our own personal space.

With people we know, like, trust and love we often don’t even give it thought when we let them in because we already know them. We are already vibrating at a similar wavelength. So it feels really good.

It’s not even that it feels comfortable. It feels actively good.

But we need to know how to manage ourselves when we’re less sure, or when we know that it’s going to be a challenging situation.

Clearing your energy

Let’s turn our attention to clearing our energy with a simple action to clear emotions, thoughts, memories and difficult experiences which you’re ready to let go of. Hint: it’s a task that you already do!

One of my absolute preferred ways to clear my energy field is when I take a shower, to imagine that the water is cleaning my body, but it is also cleaning my energy field so that I’m cleaning both physically and energetically. And what are we cleaning off?

We’re cleaning off emotions, thoughts, memories, difficult experiences, that you’re ready to let go of now.

And also those intrusions from other people so that you don’t have to carry around their weight of experiences or expectations too.

Think of a bank account

Here is one of the most important tips that I could give you. It’s an idea about how our emotional resilience is like a bank account. In order to withdraw money, you must have funds in your account – the same goes for your emotional resilience, and I share how you can build up your ‘bank balance’.

The idea is that we get used to thinking of our emotional resilience like a bank account.

So just like a financial bank account, if you want to make withdrawals, you have to have deposits as well.

You have to have money in the bank, in order to be able to spend that money. Well, we have to have emotional resilience in the bank in order to spend our emotional resilience.

And so what we need to begin to get good at is putting those deposits in.

And a deposit, in essence, is something that makes you feel good. In order to do this, you need to get really getting good at noticing what lifts you up and what makes you feel good, what makes you feel confident, compassionate, achieving strong kind, all of those feel-good experiences. You notice them and bank them through noticing them.

You can also add an anchor – a physical cue.

For example, you could press your finger and thumb together tightly as you replay that good feeling. And by repeating that, you can recreate that feeling when you need it.

There’s plenty more out there about anchoring.

The key idea here is we get good at banking experiences that make us feel good. And that grows your bank account balance so that when you inevitably need to make a withdrawal, you have something to withdraw from.

Managing your energy

I want to talk about managing your energy. You may have already noticed who, what and where drains you of energy and what might do the opposite and help you feel energised. This is a reminder to become more aware of this and offer advice on what you can do to better manage your energy.

Let’s begin to look at energy as something that we direct intentionally. And with this, I’m asking; where does your energy drain away?

Are there certain people are there certain places, or certain tasks, which you know, drain you of your energy?

If so, it’s time to start working out how you can limit your exposure.

Sometimes you can cut something out or even at times, we might need to mindfully cut a person out of our life.

A lot of the time, we can simply limit the exposure or be really creative about how we spend time with that person or in that place or on that task.

Get really good at choosing where your energy goes so that you’ve got more energy for the things and the people that you love.

I hope these tips help, and I’m always here if needed.

Do you struggle with managing stress? Perhaps you would like help with feeling more emotionally resilient? Then book a coaching session with me here and we will get it figured out.

Sunny Afternoon Meditation

23rd April 2021/in Blog /by Silvia Pink

Sunshine meditation script

Let’s start by allowing yourself to just settle in the moment. Feeling the floor under you, or the bed, or the back of the chair and take a couple of breaths where you are, breathing in and then breathe out a long, slow out breath. Just imagine that anything from the day that you don’t need to be holding on to just drains out of your body really easily.

Harmlessly draining into the floor, leaving you feeling lighter and more relaxed. Breathing in calm, breathing out and relaxing. Imagining that you’re lying on a hillside in beautiful summer sunshine. The temperature is just exactly what you prefer. The grass feels soft underneath you. And you can hear the faint sound of bells in the distance and the occasional animal, maybe a horse, maybe a sheep and lots of birds calling as they fly and as they sit in the trees around you.

And it feels really wholesome. You are just happy to be here lying on the ground, watching the sky, listening to life playing around you. Each breath you take as you lie here, you relax that little bit more. Breathing in, you feel that gorgeous feeling of the earth underneath you, supporting you. And breathing out is just easy. A butterfly flutters past and makes you smile.

And you watch it lazily as it heads for some roses, climbing on a fence nearby. It is a happy lazy sunny afternoon. And then you just get a little thrill because you remember what’s coming up later. Later you’ll be seeing some of your friends. You’ll be seeing some friends you really do love, and it makes you smile inside.

It’s like every cell in your body just smiled a great big smile and you relax even more. You hear a bee buzzing as it passes, and everything feels right.

Everything feels just as it should be, nature at its finest. And you are here, with this time to just watch the sky, letting yourself melt into the ground beneath you. Enjoying this moment.

Such a gorgeous moment in time. You hear the bells on the breeze. When you have an idle thought about why they’re ringing, maybe somebody is getting married, it would be the perfect day for it. And then you just let that thought pass. It’s very much like the clouds that occasionally pass across the sky. Just notice them and let them go.

Sunshine meditation script

You find your mind returning to the thought of the friends that you’ll be seeing later and for a few moments, just indulging in thinking about them. Thinking about who they are, and what they mean to you.

Perhaps one friend has a crazy sense of humour and a really wicked laugh and another tells such great stories, and another is an old old friend who just feels safe to tell anything to. Just thinking about those dear friends of yours for a moment, and their individual qualities, that you love. And letting those qualities fill you up now.

Recognising those qualities reflected in yourself. Your warmth, your kindness, your generosity, your sense of humour, your great storytelling, your ability to put a smile on people’s face. And again, it’s like a little rush through your body of all the different cells smiling back. It honestly feels good to be you in this moment.

Be at ease, and just keep that feeling of easiness, keep that feeling of smiling internally as you begin to be aware of being in the room. Whether lying down or sitting up, just becoming more aware of your body. And take a couple of breaths where you breathe in with happy focus and then just let the breath go back out. Another time just breathing in. It’s good to be here. Just breathe out and gently opening your eyes when you’re ready.

The slippery slope to burnout and how to avoid it

23rd April 2021/in Blog, Emotional Energy /by Silvia Pink

Avoiding burnout

I have a secret to share with you – you don’t have to try so hard to get what you want in life.

The Universe is conspiring with you every day to bring you what you want if you would just let it.

Do you identify with trying? Do you feel tired, maybe even exhausted, and frustrated that things aren’t happening fast enough, big enough, or
somehow well enough for you?

The feeling of ‘not enough’ is the plague of modern society and directly leads to burnout. Just think – not quick enough, smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough, rich enough, funny enough, amazing mum enough, entrepreneurial enough… ENOUGH. Enough. You. ARE. Enough.

This is my manifesto after burning out at uni, and then again at 30. Over the last 15 years, I’ve discovered that the Universe has my back – the clearer I am about what I want and the more able I am to step back from controlling how the result comes, the more my dreams get delivered to me on a plate, wrapped up with a bow.

How do I know the Universe had my back?

I was in the shower one new year, wondering what I’d really enjoyed the year before and would like to do more of, and I found myself saying out loud – I’d like to do more radio. Three days later I received a phone call from a radio station that I had recently been a guest on, saying their wellbeing show host had left and would I like to take over… Well, you can guess what my answer was! For the next 2.5 years I had my own radio show.

On another occasion, very early in my business when I was talking to my first ever business coach about what I wanted to offer, I found myself saying I wanted to teach the Bach Flower remedies but I had no idea how, as I had only just graduated from the course. The same month, my teacher rang me to say she wanted to retire and would I be open to taking over from her if she taught me how… again, you can guess what my answer was! A decade later, I am writing my first book on flower remedies, and have been teaching at the College of Naturopathic Medicine for that long too.

If you really think about it, I’m sure you have your own examples of speaking your dreams into existence.

How can I avoid burnout and get what I want in life?

Trying too hard narrows the flow of your energy and limits what you can achieve. The more tension the less energy can flow through you; and the less creative the Universe can be in finding ways to give you your desires.

Relax
Relaxing allows your flow to be as abundant as possible and directly expands your achievement because a relaxed mind is so much more creative and resourceful. Think of any yoga class you may have been to – you relax and let go into the pose. TRYING is the enemy of achievement!
Live Lightly
Living your life lightly gives other people the freedom to do the same. We invite others to get off the treadmill by getting off it ourselves. Just imagine the ripple of relief that would spread.
Let Go
Letting go of control allows the most room for new ideas and opportunities to come and for you to be surprised into greater delight and opportunity than you thought possible.
Choose to Love Yourself
Berating yourself to success simply won’t work, but LOVING yourself to success will and CO-CREATING your reality will.

I’ll expand on this last point as it is really key.

LOVING YOURSELF TO SUCCESS means deliberately curating your energy and your resources. We are many layered beings – PHYSICAL, ENERGETIC, EMOTIONAL, MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL. Each layer is nourished by different things and the key is to know what nourishes YOU. Your body, your mind, and your spirit.

CO-CREATING your reality means accepting total responsibility for your current situation, identifying what you want, and going to work for it –WHILE LEAVING THE UNIVERSE THE ROOM TO DO ITS BIT!

It is only from a place of love that co-creation can take place, or else you continue to berate yourself every time life’s difficult bits take place, leading you closer to burnout and further away from a life you want.

How can I start loving myself?

A great way to cultivate self-love is through reparenting yourself. This includes acknowledging your wounds, and getting the help and support you may need to heal them so that they stop preventing progress. By taking responsibility for your own life, you can act with confidence in the direction of your dreams.

Lastly, understand that you deserve help, and be open to receiving it in a whole myriad of ways. Notice, accept, and thank the Universe for that help, and then take more action yourself, so that you create a virtuous circle of ask, act and receive.

So you see, avoiding burnout is really about learning to love, accept, trust and understand yourself to follow the direction of your dreams and allow them to unfold.

Do you struggle with feeling not enough or not loving yourself? Perhaps you feel you are already burning out? Then book a coaching session with me here and we will get it figured out.

Wings of Love Meditation

16th April 2021/in Blog /by Silvia Pink

Loving kindness meditation script

Let’s begin by taking a comfortable seat, or lying on the floor as you prefer, and allowing yourself to really sink down into the support, letting your breath be easy. And you just watch the breath going in and out of your body. It is much like watching the tide coming in. It comes in and goes out without you doing anything. You certainly don’t have to do breathing. Just allow the breath to be easy. And your mind to become still as you settle into the support of the chair, or the floor or the bed and watch your breath roll in and roll back out. You need to imagine that you are by the seashore, watching the tide. Roll in and roll out.

You have the beach to yourself and it’s such a precious moment just before the dawn.

You can see the sky beginning to get lighter. And it’s quiet to begin with. You just enjoy watching the sea going in and going out.

And then you notice that you’re no longer alone. And somebody you love dearly and who loves you really really dearly is standing there just behind your right shoulder. When they realise you’ve noticed them, they place their hand on your right shoulder. A little squeeze and then leave it there. And you feel this glow of warmth and happy feelings, absolutely safe in the knowledge that this person loves you, wants the best for you, wants you to be happy and healthy and well. And you let yourself just soak up those good feelings.

The tide is rolling in and rolling out. The sky is getting lighter and you’re beginning to get just the first glimpses of the Sun beginning to breach the horizon. And you notice another presence. Looking to your left this time. Another person who loves you dearly, smiles at you. Places their hand on your left shoulder and gives your shoulder a little squeeze, leaving their hand there, and your heart opens up just a bit more. You are so safe in this person’s love it is absolutely assured.

They want your happiness and your health and your wellness.

Can you feel their love through their hand, through their smile, through the kindness in their eyes? And you allow that to build in your body, in your heart. As you turn, the three of you watch the sun rise slowly. The light beginning to return, hope returning, beauty and above all, love.

And without needing to look, you know, the person on your right has a person on their right, supporting them, loving them. The person on your left has a person on their left, loving them, supporting them and it just stretches on and on and on. But you are at the center of a pair of wings made of love, that stretch all the way around the world.

And it’s exquisite to feel enfolded in them yourself and to fold your wings around the world. The sky is full of colour. As the sun lifts higher, your faces are all a glow. Your hearts are full, and, in this moment, you know nothing is more important than love. Allowing yourself to receive it and allowing yourself to give it with as much ease as watching the tide roll in and the tide roll out.

Understanding in this moment, it’s just natural. It is the natural order of things for love to flow in, and for love to flow out. And you know, in this moment deep inside yourself that there is an absolute overflow of love. There is enough and more than enough for you and for every other soul. And you take a deep breath.

Breathing that understanding through yourself. Breathing out that understanding into your life. You are part of the natural order of things. A giver and receiver of love and joy and hope. And the sun has risen fully now. It’s rays on your face on your body, and you feel a squeeze of your left shoulder and you feel a squeeze of your right shoulder and you smile, and you let your loved ones go. Knowing that they can be there for you again. Anytime you wish, as you will be for others.

So, you find yourself standing at the seashore at a new beginning full to the very brim and overflowing with love. And just allowing that image and those feelings to absorb into your body, into your heart. And then beginning to connect back to your physical self, your physical body here in the room, seated or lying down, becoming aware of the here and now and we’ll bring this meditation to a close.

I hope you found this loving kindness meditation script helpful. Do follow me on Instagram for more meditation scripts and videos.

Yoga hand gestures and visualisation: 3 natural sleep aids

30th December 2020/in Emotional Energy /by Silvia Pink

Today I promised you to talk about two yoga hand gestures for sleep that I find helpful. Then, I’ll add in a little visualisation that I personally use when I can’t sleep.

These are 3 natural sleep aids that you might not have come across before and may be helpful.

First of all, though, try asking yourself why you don’t sleep.

Indeed, how you might not sleep could be different from how your neighbour doesn’t sleep or your friend or anyone else. We don’t experience the same thing. So, you need to consider whether for you it’s

a lifestyle factor – for example, I wrote about alcohol and caffeine, eating and exercise, etc;
a stress or emotional factor – something that’s happening at your work maybe that you can’t stop thinking about? or perhaps someone dear to you is ill and you are really worried? Is it grief? It could be all sorts of different things;
an environmental factor – for example, it can even be there’s just too much light in the room;
a hormonal factor – this particular affects women in perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause.

There are lots of different factors that impact on sleep.

Therefore, the 3 natural sleep aids that I recommend deal with different things.

The first yoga hand gesture is for tolerance.

It is for if you if you’re struggling with somebody who you feel is making life difficult.

Make sure that all your fingertips and the thumb tips are touching.

With this gesture, just rest your hands in your lap while you’re sitting. Now, breath up through the coccyx, through your tailbone from the ground up to your heart and then down into your arms and hands. Imagine the little empty space in your hands as if it was is filled with your breath when you exhale into little space.

This way, you build up some energy between the hands and you imagine the person that you’re really struggling with is in that little space. That space is a space of compassion. You’re just holding them in a compassionate space.

The beauty of breathing up from the earth is that you haven’t had to find that compassion in yourself if it’s not there right now. You can energise it from from the earth rather than having to find it in you. Indeed, if you’re really struggling with them, it can be very difficult to be compassionate towards somebody.

That’s one way to do it. If that’s too much, just sit with the hand gesture and watch your breathing. Don’t worry about anything else.

The second yoga hand gesture is to unburden your heart.

This is much more for you if you’re struggling with grief or there’s something that’s really weighing on your heart. It doesn’t have to be an enormous big worry: lots of little worries are often enough to keep us awake at night.

Curl the first finger into the base of your thumb. The thumb tip meets the next two fingertips and then the little finger is extended. You’re doing that with both hands: it looks a bit like a deer’s head.

Then, just rest them in your lap. I like to breathe up from the earth, so breath up from the earth to the heart. Then, imagine your breath dividing: some of it is coming down the left arm and some of it is coming down the right arm, coming out of the little fingers. If you have the little fingers pointing down at the ground, they will act as a drain. So, anything that you don’t need right now from your heart and that’s weighing on you, just allow it to come out through the fingers and to you just to be released.

I’m a firm believer in talking things through but I think sometimes we’ve done that and we just need to somehow ease the pressure. This hand gesture works amazingly for that. I find this hand gesture incredibly effective. In fact, I don’t have to talk about what’s weighing on me. I can just unburden my heart with it without having to analyse anything. Sometimes that’s what you need.

Now I’d like to give you the visualisation for sleep that I use when I’m trying to go to sleep and for some reason that night it’s not easy.

Lying on the bed on your back preferably begin to imagine that your breath is coming in through the feet and on the in-breath all the way up to the top of your head and then on the out-breath all the way back out through the soles of your feet. I like to invite people to think about when you’re watching the tide roll in and roll out.

You’re not doing anything. You don’t affect that tide going in and out. It just goes in and out. It’s the same for your breath. If you’ll let it be, just allow the breath to wash in like a tide and to wash out.

When it washes in, it’s bringing in relaxation, calm, anything you need it to bring in love, kindness, compassion, self-care.

When it is going out, it takes away anything you don’t need anymore. You can name that or you can just allow the breath to take away anything that you don’t need anymore or can’t carry anymore.

Try to do 3 to 4 minutes of the breath coming in through the feet to the top of the head and back out. Then, switch it so that you can do 2 or 3 minutes breathing in through the head down to the feet and from the feet back.

I personally tend to be asleep before I get to the end of the 3 or 4 minutes! So, I hope that that’s my personal magic trick and I figured it would be a nice one to end these tips on with my one that I’ve tried and tested for years and I really hope it works for you as well.

So, let’s just get us all resting better so that we can get on with our lives better and enjoy them more!

If you’d like a training with me, check out my

How to create a mini-retreat at home

27th January 2020/in Emotional Energy /by Silvia Pink

Retreats are a necessity these days because the pace and pressure of life strip our nervous and immune systems of their resilience. This means that we operate with cognitive and emotional deficiency most of the time! It’s not just you, and it’s only partly a lack of sleep! (Read more: Tips for a good night’s sleep)

Retreats give you the opportunity to reset your physical systems and gain a sense of perspective. Decisions made on retreat tend to be the life-changing decisions. Indeed, even when they are just small course corrections, those adjustments accumulating over time, lead to real shifts.

For me, a solid retreat practice means that I get to live with clarity about what I’m doing with my life! We only get this one precious life, “what are you going to do with it?” seems the most important question we can ask. Being able to answer brings peace of mind and provides direction – for any question you may have or change you want to make.

There is great benefit to getting away and going on a retreat away from your normal life. It will give you an enforced break from your routine, allow you to look at things afresh and also in the power of a group. Even in a reflective retreat, where you spend little to no time in discussion with each other, being away with a group of like-minded people intent on the same purpose magnifies the effect and creates natural accountability for those who wish it.

However, there is also great benefit in learning how to create a retreat at home

This way, you can return to yourself again and again. This will give that neural pathway the definition to serve you quickly and well when stress arises in the day today.

So today, I thought what I would do is share some trade secrets about what makes for a great retreat, so that you can build these ideas into your daily life.

In my experience over the last decade, I’ve found that there are five elements to a great retreat:

Time
Space
Beauty
Restorative practices
Reflective practices

For simplicity, I will take each in turn.

Time

I think this is the hardest for people sometimes – to feel that they can afford to take the time out. As a small business owner, I have so much sympathy for this. But the truth of the matter is if you don’t take time to periodically check the direction you’re heading, it is very easy to go wrong.

In her book describing her experiences looking after the terminally ill, Bronnie Ware identifies the top 5 regrets of the dying. I want to take the time to share these with you, because they have profoundly affected the way I live my life, and I hope it will affect you too.

They were:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
“This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams. They had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise until they no longer have it.”
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
“Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.”
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
”This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”

Taking time out – regularly – will help you to check-in with your dreams, know whether you are missing people, feel your happiness or lack thereof. It will give you time to decide what changes to make. Taking the time now makes the time that you have more worth it.

Space

For me, time and space are two sides of a coin. So, all the arguments for taking time out of your busy life apply. Also, we add the dimension for space of removing yourself from your daily distractions. This is why getting away can be so effective. There, you won’t be in the midst of the demands of your work, your chores, or even your loved ones.
Space gives you YOU. It gives room to breathe and feel like yourself again. It is a perspective setter.

So, when taking time out at home, make sure you identify a space that gives you the most respite from life demands. Perhaps there is a nook in the garden, or in your bedroom, or an easy chair that looks out the window, or perhaps you can go to the park. Whatever you choose, just know that the space you choose to retreat to is important.

Beauty

Beauty is in my belief a basic human need. I am not alone in this belief. Talk to any architect or designer, talk to a neuroscientist or an artist. Talk to a person on the street, in the shop, on the train. Above all, talk to and listen to yourself about what beauty means for you.

For me, beauty inspires me that life is worth living. Beauty helps me step out of my petty worries. It encourages me to lift my head up, to be the best I can be. Beauty helps me to love people better. To forgive and understand my sense of place and belonging. It helps me to be.

In sadness, beauty has sat with me and helped my heart to go on. In joy, I see only beauty – in you and me and everything.

Beauty is of almost unexplainable importance in the process of retreating because beauty connects you to you. And that is the entire purpose. So whatever beauty is to you, focus on that when you take time and space for yourself.

My morning retreat is as simple as a cup of tea sitting at my balcony, watching the seasons change in the trees outside my flat, watching the squirrels and the birds, and feeling the air on my skin and the warmth of my cat against me. Beauty inspires presence.

Restorative Practices

We need to become disciplined about giving back to ourselves as well as continuously giving to others. If you treated your wellbeing as a bank balance, you would soon run out of money if you continually gave to others without ever depositing more.

This is a direct analogy – your wellbeing functions exactly that way, arguably, until you learn how to draw on resources beyond your own, which is a subject for another article. You MUST put in in order to continually take out energy.

So if we discuss how to create a retreat at home, it is imperative that you build in practices that you know to be restorative for you.

I use yoga nidra, meditation, gentle yoga, chi gung, art, reading. You may knit, write, arrange flowers. The restorative possibilities are creative and varied, so have fun with it!

Also, consider all the layers of your self in your restorative practice:

your physical,
energetic,
emotional,
mental
and spiritual restoration.

One day it may be your spirits that need lifting, another day your body. The nuance of listening to your needs each day is itself a restorative practice.

Reflective practices

We’ve done so much good, by giving ourselves time and space, by focusing on beauty and restoring ourselves – mind body and spirit. Now, it comes to reflection.
In my experience, there are times when sitting quietly without focus, allows what I need to reflect on to rise to the surface without prompting.

It’s a process that takes place over a couple of days sometimes – of sitting quietly and letting my thoughts form. And often, the biggest changes I’ve made have come to their culmination in just this quiet way. I get up and find the resolve has been made, and just like that, I have changed.

And at other times, we can benefit from having prompts for reflection. You can take prompts from anywhere, or you can be very structured about it. A prompt I might give myself if I wanted to look at how I am living is:

“What do I need to be at my best today?”
or “What part of myself do I most want to express this week?”
or “What is the message I want to give in my life?”

From time to time, I will review how I feel life is going in each area – like a wheel of life coaching exercise – and take direction from that. Also, more than once, I have used the practice of imagining being on my deathbed and asking

what would I want to be able to say and feel about how I have lived?
Will I be able to say that?

If you think that changing your setting could help you get more from your retreat, then why don’t you book one of the next Retreats that we will run in the exquisite Stanton Guildhouse?

Surround yourself with the natural beauty and spend a weekend in the Grade II Listed Manor House, with stunning views stretching over the Vale of Evesham to the Brecon Beacons.

Here’s a recent Testimonial of one of our retreat participants:

“Jo has an innate gift when it comes to creating beautifully restorative and therapeutic retreats. My time at the retreat last November in the Cotswalds was at a very difficult point in my life and proved to be an important catalyst in my personal and spiritual development. The work we did together, as a wonderfully supportive group led expertly by Jo, has helped me navigate some very hard times since. Everyday I reflect on what I learned at the retreat and am so thankful I attended. I can’t wait for the next one, which I have no doubt will be as powerfully moving as last time. Thank you, Jo, the gift you have given me in helping me understand myself better has changed my life.”

Lottie

Effects of stimulants and depressants on your sleep

8th July 2019/in Emotional Energy /by Silvia Pink

Today I’d like to continue our tips on sleep here talking about the effects of stimulants, depressants and mindfulness on it.

The most popular stimulant we use is caffeine.

I know that when you’ve had a really poor night’s sleep it can be incredibly tempting to use caffeine to keep you gain during the day. I really want to recommend that you resist that temptation.

Caffeine actually has an impact on the body in more ways than you might realise, in particular on your blood sugar.

What happens with caffeine is that you end up causing a repetitive cycle of blood sugar crashing. Then, your blood sugar crashing makes you crave sugary foods, starchy foods and more coffee. You go back up the cycle, you feel good for an hour or so, then you’ll have another crash. In order to cope with that crash, you crave the sugary foods, the starchy foods and some more coffee and then you’re okay again. It keeps repeating all day long. That actually has a really tiring effect on the body over time and it can do is help people add on some weight that they don’t want.

So if that’s an issue for you, just have a look at your caffeine.

I’ve spoken to numerous nutritional therapists over the years and on the whole, people will say one or two cups of coffee in a day is not going to do you a terrible amount of damage. But actually, if you’re really struggling with sleep, you need to make sure that you have absolutely no caffeine after lunchtime. If you’d like to reduce your caffeine intake, make it gradually and do not stop suddenly, in order to prevent potential side effects.

In my previous post on How to sleep well – 3 Yoga tips for adult bedtime routine, I mentioned other stimulants when I suggested not using your screens in the last hour of the day.

The second thing I would like to focus on today is depressants.

You may not realize that alcohol is a depressant: it gives you a little bit of stimulation at the beginning, but then its impact on your sleep cycle is depressive and you can’t stay asleep.

You might have had that experience where alcohol can help you go to sleep, but, then, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and it’s hard to get back to sleep: you have that sort of restless during the second half of the night. So, with alcohol, it’s really important that if you’re going to drink, you actually need to be drinking much earlier in the evening and believe it or no 6:00! Let’s say you’re going to bed at 10-11 pm, then you would need to be having your alcohol at about 6 pm.

It’s going to be easier on your body if you actually stop having alcohol some nights of the week if you are in the habit of having alcohol every night of the week.

I always recommend to just take things down one step at a time. So, if you’re in the habit of drinking every night of the week, maybe take that down to every other night.

So, we need to reduce alcohol and we need to have it earlier in the day.

The final thing I’d like to introduce today is mindfulness.

Having a poor night’s sleep can throw up so many emotional sorts of questions and worries. There may be things that stress you out partly just because of the tiredness, part because of feeling rattled and not feeling in a routine. Often, we try to medicate ourselves through the use of stimulants or depressive.

Mindfulness works on being able to tolerate whatever emotions are present right now on the understanding that emotions change.

You’re not going to continue to feel whatever it is that you feel right now. If you can just tolerate it, knowing it’s going to change, then that gives you a bit more freedom from needing to use stimulants or depressants.

I’ll focus a little bit more about in my next article. In particular, I will explain more about mindfulness and actually particular hand gestures that work with the meridians. These are the energy channels in your body that help you manage your emotions and allow yourself to sleep from that point of view.

Check my Private Yoga Sessions and my Online Yoga Classes, and if you have any questions please contact me here.

How to sleep well – 3 Yoga tips for adult bedtime routine

21st June 2019/in Emotional Energy /by Silvia Pink

In this second article on Tips for Yoga for sleep, I would like to introduce you a few changes in your routine that can help you sleep well.

The main hormone that contributes to your good sleep is melatonin.

You may have heard of that, it’s actually available in these days to buy over-the-counter for example and to actually help good sleep is really really helpful for avoiding jet lag for example.

We reduce melatonin in the mornings and so actually it’s really important if you possibly can to stimulate it by daylight. To get outside in the morning is really helpful for building up the store of melatonin in your body so that when you come to want to go to sleep, there’s enough to help you go to sleep.

In order to achieve this, one thing I’d love to invite you to introduce into your routine is just going outside in the morning.

Especially in the beautiful sunshine that we’re experiencing at the moment, go out and get those melatonin stores.

Also, exercise is a fantastic contributor to sleep – so long as you’re leaving a three or four-hour gap between any really energetic exercise and your bedtime.

Make sure you got that through three or four-hour gap between going to the gym and when you want to go to bed.

This relates to a general point about timing that I wanted to share with you. If you think about a car, it takes a few seconds to get from nought to sixty. It’s not completely instant. It might take 10 seconds or 15 seconds, according to the different cars.

What I find when I’m working as a meditation teacher and a yoga teacher is that people do expect an instant switch! They stop work or looking after the kids, they stop making dinner and they sit down and expect an instant stop or an instant start in the morning. Either way, we don’t work like that.

What I see works best for people, for example, in meditation practice is actually really giving time for relaxation.

That has a very specific application in yoga for sleep which is actually building in a good hour of time to just do the wind-down and that needs to not be screen time.

I know that’s really frustrating and in fact, you shouldn’t be sleeping with your phone or any other Ipad or computer in your bedroom.

I’m going to be a bit strict here in thé. If your complaint about that is that you use your phone as your alarm clock, so do I but I just put it on a plug outside the bedroom. I could get a little desk just in the hall where my bedroom is, not in the bedroom with me I still use it as my alarm clock, although you can buy a specific alarm clock.

The problem is that screen light, blue light is stimulating for the brain.

Even just five minutes are enough to delay your sleep cycle by up to 90 minutes! So you might think that quick moment checking Facebook before going to bed isn’t having an impact, but it can have up to a 90-minute delay on your sleep time! So that is something I’m banning from the bedroom.

Recapping, we have 3 tips on how to sleep well today:

Please get outside in the morning and, if you can, combine that tip number 2:
Exercise is fantastic for regulating mood, to promote the right balance of hormones in the body that work amazingly well for sleep. Exercise in the morning would be awesome but have at minimum 3 to 4 hours without exercise before bed;
No more sleeping with your phone in your room, no more screentime in the last hour before bed!