Archive for category: Blog

Yoga hand gestures and visualisation: 3 natural sleep aids

/in /by

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.

Yoga hand gesture for tolerance

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.

Yoga hand gesture for grief

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 retreat at home

How to create a mini-retreat at home

/in /by

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:

  1. Time
  2. Space
  3. Beauty
  4. Restorative practices
  5. 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:

  1. 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.”
  2. 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.”
  3. 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.”
  4. 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.”
  5. 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

Effects of stimulants and depressants on your sleep

/in /by

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 Yoga classes in Ealing, West London, and if you have any questions please contact me here.

How to sleep well

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

/in /by

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:

  1. Please get outside in the morning and, if you can, combine that tip number 2:
  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;
  3. No more sleeping with your phone in your room, no more screentime in the last hour before bed!
how we build resilience in our lives

How to build resilience in our lives – Sage Advice podcast

/in , , /by

Here’s a transcription of my recent interview for the Sage Advice podcast.

Ed Kless:

[00:00:15] Well hi everyone and welcome to our Sage Advice podcast. I’m Ed Kless and with me today is Joanne Sumner. Joanne is an entrepreneur, trainer and wellbeing expert. She runs a successful coaching, yoga and holistic therapy practice in West London, specialising in teaching small business owners, teachers, health professionals and social workers how to relieve chronic stress and tension so that they can live happier, healthier lives. She also dedicates time each week to supporting business women in West London to build intelligent, creative and flexible businesses, drawing on her seven-year tenure as West London Regional Director of the Athena Network. Welcome to the Sage Advice Podcast, Joanne Sumner!

Joanne Sumner:

[00:00:55] Thank you, Ed. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Ed Kless:

[00:00:59] Well, first off, Joanne, tell us a little bit more about yourself and your business.

Joanne Sumner:

[00:01:06] I’m based in West London, Ealing. My passion really is small business owners, in particular, female business owners and helping them build happy, healthy businesses and then helping people in our public sector work, which is so important, be happy and healthy themselves while they’re helping everybody else to do the same. So really I suppose I look at myself and my business as a resource for people who give all the time. And my job is to give to them and help them understand how to sustain themselves in these tough and sometimes thankless roles.

Ed Kless:

[00:01:52] And why do you do it? [00:01:52][0.8]

Joanne Sumner:

[00:01:55] I think the inspiration to me really is having been in that position myself. My original work was in medical research ethics, and it was absolutely the most fascinating role in some ways, but under incredible pressure and I would say seen often as somebody whose job it was to say “no“, and under that pressure, over time, I burned out and have been through the experience of having to recover from burnout, having quite a physical problem to overcome. So, that makes me fascinated in helping other people avoid to burn out in the first place. And to understand how to resource ourselves so that we actually enjoy our businesses and we enjoy these incredible and heart-driven professions.

Ed Kless:

[00:02:52] And before we started recording you mentioned a topic of resilience and that’s something that you’re working most recently on. How can people help build resilience in their lives?

Joanne Sumner:

[00:03:04] I think that I’ve been working with people on a three-part strategy for it.

So, the first part is understanding that we have this vehicle for this lifetime which is this body. And we have what I call our energetic container, our energy field around us. And so that is our personal space.

That’s the most common way people think about it is our personal space in which we hold all of our experiences, our dreams, our aspirations, our insights, but also difficult experiences, too.

So, the first thing that we need to do is be able to seal that container, so that we’re not porous to each other.

And you’ll see online there’s so much talk about what to do if you’re empathetic. How do you deal with being an empath and being able to feed everybody’s feeling and being drained by experiences and the people around you? That’s because the person needs to better feel this energy field around them. So the first thing is teaching people how to do that and to heal to the difficult experiences that they may have had, so that energy is not getting caught up in trauma, for example.

The second part of the strategy is a shift in how you think about managing yourself and managing your mental, physical and emotional energy.

It’s really taking on board. I cannot just make withdrawals on this on myself, I can’t just make withdrawals. It’s like a bank account: I have to put deposits in, too.

But what deposit am I going to actively put in daily and weekly, monthly, so that there is something to give?

And then the third thing is actually beginning to choose to give your energy mindfully so that you don’t just give to anybody who’s asking for it.

I think people are attracted to people who have high energy and want to be around them. The result of that is those high energy people can end up very drained. So, what we want to do is begin to make choices.

“This is worth my energy. This person is resonant with me. They’re worth my time. This project is a good call for me”,

but also

“these things aren’t”.

[00:05:29] So, it’s really those three things working in concert with each other that helps us bounce back.

Really, resilience is the ability to come back from whatever experiences have happened. It’s not about not getting knocked down in the first place: that’s going to happen.

Ed Kless:

[00:05:50] In the introduction you talked about the relieving of chronic stress and I just that just struck me as I was reading it that there is a difference between chronic stress and what I would call “transactional stress” maybe: the stress that happens when trying to get the kids out to school on time, something like that. Why is it that you focus on the chronic stress rather than that transactional stress?

Joanne Sumner:

[00:06:15] I guess that with the transactional stress and what I might call “situational stress”, so long as the person releases that, so they’ve managed to get the kids to school, they take a breath and they go on with their day, there shouldn’t be long-term impact on their body from that. It’s just something that happens and then it goes away if the situation resolves. Chronic stress is when often the person has lost the ability to do that because there’s just one stress that layers on top of another stress, to the extent that they cannot let go. They cannot actually recover normally after a particular event. The one event just layers on top of the other. Then, you really start to see physical dilapidation of the body. As that as the body starts to go under, so the mind follows.

Ed Kless:

[00:07:09] Joanne, we have an exit question that we ask all of our guests and that is “who is a hero of yours and why are they a hero?”

Joanne Sumner:

[00:07:17] I love this question. My hero is Oriah Mountain Dreamer. So, Oriah is a counsellor and author and she wrote this incredibly beautiful poem that I think many listeners will note called “The Invitation” and I admire her because she is somebody who deals with chronic fatigue syndrome. She does this powerful work about purpose and passion and doing the work that you’re called for. And she is totally open, upfront and honest about the difficulty doing her own work with chronic fatigue. She just inspires me so much. And her work is beautiful. It’s poetic and beautiful and I would recommend anybody visit her website to find out more.

meditation retreat

Considerations and Learnings from my Meditation retreat

/in , , /by

During our meditation retreat during the Mothering Sunday’s weekend in the Vale of Evesham, Jo  said:

“The capacity to love myself is the direct cap on how much I can love someone else”.

The biggest discovery for me was the realisation and acceptance that learning to love myself is fundamental to being able to give the best of myself, my time and my energy mindfully to others, and to me.

I now understand the importance of nurturing and softening the physical, energetic, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of my whole self.

I am responsible for myself but I walk hand in hand with the Universe. If I work on myself to clear the clutter, I shall have the space to create and grow.

At the deepest level, I have acknowledged my truth that I haven’t prioritised myself enough and that body image is an ingrained issue for me.

However, I left our meditation retreat in Stanton safe in the knowledge that I have all the tools I need to start to address this.

I particularly enjoyed doing the Chi Do moving meditation to birdsong outside overlooking the stunning scenery in the early morning sunlight. With the massage, easy chakra clearing meditation and yin yoga helping me to better nourish and connect to my physical body, I practically floated home.

The “nurturing” quality of our meditation retreat included the location and catering, as well as the people:

Stanton has unique magic and energy of its own which nourishes the soul. From the moment of my arrival, I felt at peace and enveloped in the most nurturing of bubbles. The scrumptious vegetarian fare that Susan cooked and served with love only enhanced this feeling.

Jo is a true expert in her field. She blended her gentle and light-hearted approach with some really powerful and insightful coaching. The camaraderie with the other attendees was amazing and I know I have made some firm friends.

meditation retreat

The image that a participant created based on our meditation retreat

Here’s one more testimonial from another attendee of my meditation retreat:

Sometimes life just gets on top of you. You really need to stop and take a break. I am so glad I booked a place at Jo Summer’s meditation retreat. Indeed, I really needed to get away, take some time for myself, rest and re-group.

After two days of…

  • gentle yoga and deep relaxation by the fire,
  • group discussions and mood board creation,
  • blissful massage in the afternoon sun,
  • al fresco ‘chi do’ before breakfast,
  • delicious home-made food,
  • kind and supportive company in the most beautiful setting in the Cotswolds,

I ticked all those boxes and went home feeling rejuvenated and ready to get back to reality.

The thoughtful little touches like a handwritten welcome note with a trio of mini eggs, a crystal (in my case a yellow jasper) to keep, gluten-free options including biscuits (which never happens!!) made it all the more special.

Jo’s clear, calm, gentle (and often very funny) guidance and wisdom was wonderful and has inspired me to learn more about chakras and chi. Spring is a time of renewal and it was the perfect time for such a nurturing retreat. I need to make this a regular thing…

Leona

yoga and meditation retreat

What happens at a yoga and meditation retreat

/in , , /by

I recently came back from the Yoga and Meditation Retreat which I held on 29th – 31st March 2019 at The Guildhouse, in the Vale of Evesham.

The impressions and memories are so fresh that I would like to show you through some of the attendees’ words what is like to participate in one of these events.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Find out what happened at my yoga and meditation retreat in the testimonial below:

Why go …

I was at a crossroad in my life. Indeed, I wanted to invest in myself and really get to know myself again.

I had been attending Jo’s yoga sessions and had really hooked into her approachable and inclusive teaching style. So, I was very curious about the retreats she offered. The idea of nurturing myself, taking care of myself and learning strategies to do more of the same was just what I needed.

On the retreat…

It was just like visiting a friend. Someone who made me feel safe, valued and included. There was such an atmosphere of peace and good intentions. I instantly felt at ease … and completely safe to let go and focus on pleasing myself and giving myself what I needed for a couple of days.

The house, the surrounding area, the fresh air….they all enveloped me like a warm blanket. So, I sank into such a deep sense of relaxation and reflection.

Group sessions with Jo felt more like conversations with friends and I felt zero obligation to add more than I was comfortable with. There was plenty of time for myself but also times to come together… there is balance everywhere.

I loved the yoga and meditation – so accessible and always mindfully facilitated by Jo who is able to anticipate and scaffold my needs effortlessly.

What you get out of it…

So much. No matter what your reasons for being there…..it could just be about getting away to a beautiful place, eating amazing food and relaxing.

It could also be about you giving yourself the chance to think and really seek something new for yourself.

I went with an open mind and an open heart. The experience was, for me, a true act of self-love. I became filled with such positive energy and also the desire to put things into my life that would support me in continuing to feel that way. Relaxed, nurtured and content within myself.

 

Yoga For Sleep

Yoga For Sleep

/in /by

As you might know, I’ve been running Yoga classes in Ealing for 10 years now and today I’d like to share with you some very simple tips on “Yoga for Sleep”.

In my previous article, I shared some tips for a good night’s sleep and today I’m starting a series of posts aimed at really helping you get the absolute best out of yourself by nourishing yourself at night.

The core principle of Yoga For Sleep is the deep nourishment of both body and mind.

The reason why we want to do that is to allow the body enough time to rest, to digest and to repair from your day’s activities. Actually, we want the mind to have the same opportunity to rest, to digest what experiences you’ve had and any sort of repair and restoration that you need. That can happen at night time.

The first idea that I really want you to take on board today is that

It is so unhelpful when talking about sleep, to obsess too much about how much sleep you got and whether it is good quality sleep.

When you’re having a challenging amount of sleep, you can really start to think:

“Oh, I only got 3 hours (or 4, or 6 hours…),  I should be getting 8 hours every night”.

I’m going to ask you, as my first tip, just to put that obsession to the side. You don’t need to create performance anxiety around sleep. It’s not going to help.

Also, if you are perhaps only getting 3 or 4 hours at night, setting this target for yourself straight away to 8 hours, it’s just too much! It’s too much of a leap to go straight from 3 or 4 hours, to suddenly:

“I’m supposed to get eight hours of sleep”.

So, my tip number 1 on Yoga For Sleep is let go of an idea of how much sleep you need to be getting.

You should progress gently and steadily from wherever you currently are. For example, from getting 3 or 4 hours, let’s get you to 5 hours. If you’re getting 5 hours, let’s get you to 6 or even from 5 to 5 1/2 can make a difference.

My tip number 2 is: if you’re experiencing the feeling of just lying there, trying to sleep and you can’t sleep, if you’re obsessing about the fact that you can’t sleep, I want you to switch your mindset into:

“I am still resting my body”.

Yes, I’m not resting my mind so much, perhaps, but I am still resting my body.

“I’m just going to release the need and anxiety that I should be sleeping and allow my body to rest as best as possible. My body will rest better if my mind is more relaxed”.

It’s a core yoga principle that mind and body are really intimately intertwined.

So, if your mind is anxious and running fast and turning things over, your body can’t fully let go. We’ll talk a little bit more in the next articles about what’s happening hormone-wise.

Today, I wanted to begin this “Yoga For Sleep” series with the basic idea of: let’s start with releasing performance anxiety around sleep.

We just take wherever it is that you’re at now, and we’re just going to add a tiny bit.

So, tonight I encourage you, if you find yourself awake in the night, to tell you just:

“OK, so, I’m awake. Yeah, that’s fine. I’m just going to focus on resting my body, then, and allow myself to get as much as possible from just gently lying”.

Check the video version of this article:

I’ll be back with you next week with the next couple of tips on Yoga For Sleep!

silencing inner critic become inner coach

How to become your own inner coach and banish the inner critic for good

/in /by

The overwhelming majority of athletes have coaches – in fact, we remark on the few who don’t. More and more executives have coaches and mentors to help improve performance. Businesses of all sizes are employing coaches to help create and execute plans that succeed. We have relationship coaches, life coaches, spiritual coaches, money coaches, visibility coaches.

But no coach is ever going to be as effective as you at coaching yourself.

The main thing all those coaches are working for is silencing the inner critic.

The inner critic is the term we use to define the negative voices in your head, that

  • undercut your belief
  • tell you that you’re not good enough,
  • make you second guess people’s intentions,
  • enlist in you in self-sabotage,
  • help you procrastinate,
  • avoid,
  • martyr yourself
  • or whatever you personally choose to do to trip yourself up.

Whose voices make up the inner critic’s cumulative one?

In order to understand this, let’s have a little check. I want you to think about a situation recently when you caught yourself giving yourself a hard time. Maybe you filed your tax return later than you really wanted to. Or was the bill higher than you expected and you hadn’t planned for it? Maybe you were late dropping your children to school. Maybe you’re avoiding making a sales call or dealing with a tricky customer.

What thoughts did you think?

Did you…

  • beat yourself up for not having planned better?
  • imagine the other mums or the school staff rolling their eyes and badmouthing you?
  • worry about the example you were teaching your kid?

What about the sales call? Do you talk yourself into all the reasons why they absolutely should not under any circumstances buy from you…? And therefore not have to make yourself uncomfortable by making the call?

Well. I want to share this little video with you….

Now. In some cases, STOP IT is actually going to be enough.

But in other cases, we need a more nuanced line of attack. Why?

The thoughts we think create our feelings, which create our behaviours, which have consequences.

Those consequences give rise to a new set of thoughts, which create new feelings, new behaviours and of course new consequences.

And if you’ve set off on a negative track, the result is a downward spiral into increasingly negative thoughts, feelings, behaviours and consequences. And that can have a direct negative effect on your physical and mental health.

Let’s play “silencing the inner critic” through…

  1. Take a piece of paper and think of a situation – perhaps the one you thought of earlier, perhaps a new one. Describe the situation in as few words as possible.
  2. Now, was your description true or do you need to retell it without some of the judgements or assumptions?
  3. Ok. Now, start to make a list of the thoughts you had about that situation and about yourself in that situation.
  4. Pick a couple of those thoughts and look at how they make you feel.
  5. So how does the feeling affect your behaviour? How does shame affect your behaviour? How does guilt? Disappointment? Disappointment in yourself? What feelings are you having now? What sorts of consequences might come from entering a life situation or work situation with those behaviours?
  6. Now. Let’s go back to the initial situation. Your job is to come up with alternative explanations for what happened or alternative ways of looking at the situation. It doesn’t matter if they are provable or not, so long as you could credibly believe that explanation instead.
  7. Fantastic. Now, what feelings are you feeling about the situation and you in it? How might these new feelings change your behaviour? And what might the consequences be?

Even neutral thoughts give rise to more helpful feelings.

And we want to actively cultivate feelings that allow us to be resourceful and creative. In fact, the more resourceful and creative you can be, the more you will begin to generate an upswing in both the results you’re getting and, of course, in your feelings about those results and yourself, so that you create an upward spiral.

So. How would this help in silencing the inner critic for good?

Firstly…. When you begin to examine the thoughts and see how outrageously untrue and unfair some of those thoughts are about you… I’m hoping your inner rebel will come out and start fighting on your behalf!!

Who dared tell you that? Where did that idea first come from?

If your inner rebel is asleep, go talk to a dear friend, or a good therapist, to help you get some perspective.

So often these thoughts aren’t actually our own.

Maybe its something a teacher said in passing or an aunt or uncle or mum or dad. But for some reason, it went in and continues to play havoc with our lives. And the more we can name them – and I do literally mean name them – the sooner we will be able to let them go.

Baldy Bob telling me I’m not good enough

has a lot less effect.

Secondly, as you start to see for yourself how direct the link is between what you think and the results you get, you can start to build a positive feedback loop. Build evidence that when you think positive and supportive thoughts about yourself, you feel strong and resourceful. Also, you behave creatively and assertively and you get better results.

The trick is to think it matters enough to listen to what you’re thinking in the first place. If you do, I promise you will soon see better results and you will feel better in yourself – physically, emotionally and mentally.

If you’d like my help to train your inner coach the ways of silencing the inner critic for good, book a discovery session of life coaching in Ealing or by Skype with me!

better sleep tips

Tips for a good night’s sleep

/in /by

Getting enough sleep is a perennial problem for some, and I sympathise. I’ve had two stress-related periods of exceptionally poor sleep in my life, and as a result, I began to dig deep into the science to help myself and others get a better night’s sleep. Here is what I found.

Tips for a good night’s sleep: environmental factors

Our circadian rhythm is influenced by external factors such as light and darkness in the environment.

So one thing we can do is to manage exposure to light to ensure that it works for our biological and mental processes and not against them.

For example, the hormone melatonin is responsible for good sleep and is produced in the mornings. Getting outside in the morning, therefore, can help your body to create more melatonin, which will help you get your snooze on at night.

Similarly, ensuring that you use blackout blinds and turn off blue light devices (phones, tablets, laptops) at night will mean that you are creating the right environment for your body to understand it’s time to rest. Especially given that reading on a tablet, say, can stimulate your brain so much it delays sleep onset for up to 90 minutes!

Finally, in terms of sleep hygiene, it’s important to keep your bedroom cool and to use the bedroom for sleep not work, housework or storage.

No more working from bed or watching the TV while you do the ironing in the bedroom. Make it a sacred space and have a ritual at bedtime instead. Perhaps, you fold your clothes away, get into bed and spend a few minutes thinking about what went well that day. Then, turn the bedside lamp off and go to sleep.

Tips good night's sleep bedroom sanctuary

Photo by Tan Danh from Pexels

What we eat or drink

You probably know what’s coming next… the bad boys of beverage stimulants – caffeine and alcohol.

As you may know, caffeine stresses the body through the impact it has on your blood sugar, causing spikes and collapses that make your energy levels rollercoaster through the day. The general advice in relation to improving your sleep is to avoid caffeine (e.g. in tea, coffee, chocolate) after midday and perhaps switch over to herbal tea. I found drinking Chamomile very helpful, and also the last thing at night a combination of Limeflower and Passionflower helped me to drop off.

The advice on alcohol may be trickier in some ways.

The “ideal” time to drink alcohol from the perspective of a good night’s rest is actually 5.30/6pm.

So that’s good news for the after-work drink and bad news for the drink with or after dinner. It is best avoided close to bedtime too as, whilst it can appear to help you to get to sleep – it can also cause you to wake in the night. The best advice is not to drink every night, and especially to avoid drinking on consecutive nights if possible.

Tips for a good night’s sleep in terms of what to include in your diet.

Magnesium can be very useful. You may even choose to get checked for magnesium deficiency as too little can reduce the production of neurotransmitters that help to balance mood. Supplementing with magnesium works for many people I talked to. Generally, professionals seem to recommend 500mg, especially when combined with a specific amount of calcium. You can find a professional near you by searching for the British Association of Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine website.

Mental factors

One of the most important things I learned during my flirtation with insomnia was that the more I worried about not being able to sleep the worse things got.

Cultivate a determined attitude that your body is still getting some rest if you lay down for several hours. Refuse to count how many hours sleep you feel you actually got. This will slowly but surely begin to work. With that in mind, I’m not a great fan of the smart devices that show you your sleep pattern. Use them sparingly in my view – perhaps as a source of information – but watch out for obsessing over how much and what type of sleep you did or didn’t get.

In general, I recommend focusing on relaxation and breathing exercises instead.

My own favourite breathing exercise: imagine that your breath is like a wave, entering through your feet and washing up the body to the crown of your head. Then, on the out breath, it washes back down the body and out the feet. You can imagine that the incoming wave brings anything you need more of in your life – my go-to is calm – and then the outgoing wave carries out of you anything you don’t need any more. It’s a beautiful relaxing visualisation. Breathing out my worries, disappointments, tensions, busy-ness, helps me enormously to wind down and let go. And then I find I can sleep.

And the remaining thing you can do is get help – talk to a professional if you are concerned. I have found Reiki has helped many clients get better rest, as does yoga nidra (yogic sleep) and yoga itself.

So please do contact me to discuss how you could benefit and get a better night’s rest, or go ahead and book an appointment.

The land of nod awaits!