Newsletter Archive: August 2008

 

Text Box:  August 2008 Welcome to the Dare to Blossom newsletter. If this has been forwarded to you by someone else, you can sign up for your own copy every month here. If you do not wish to receive future editions, please email me to unsubscribe. Everyone who is on the mailing list will be entered into a draw twice a year (at the end of June and the end of December) with a chance to win a prize of six free life coaching sessions. In this issue: - Reflections and book review: “My stroke of insight.” - Article: “Meditation” by Anna Colmer - Dare to Blossom 2009 Calendar - Dare to Blossom Workshops: plans for Autumn 2008 and Spring 2009 Reflections and book review: “My stroke of insight.” In my April newsletter I included the video clip of a talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor on her experiences of a stroke. I recently bought her book “My Stroke of Insight – A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey”. It is an amazing book and plenty of food for thought and reflection. She talks about her experience of losing the internal chatter of her left brain that normally connects us with the world and with our doing, thinking self. The right “being” brain is where we can experience deep eternal peace, and it is accessible to anyone at any time. Jill says: “My stroke of insight would be: peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is to silence the voice of our dominating left mind.” (Page 111) It is easier to say this than to do it. As Jill says on page 159: “I realise that for many of us, the distance between our thinking mind and our compassionate heart sometimes feels like miles apart. Some of us traverse this distance on command. Others of us are so committed to our hopelessness, anger and misery that the mere concept of a peaceful heart feels foreign and unsafe.” We can learn to choose how we respond to situations and which side of our brain we allow to control how we react. One method is meditation, see Anna’s article below on how this is working wonderfully for her. Another is using affirmations or mantras to help persuade your brain into more peaceful patterns. This topic feels particularly important to me just now when there is so much fear, worry, and gloom all around us. Media coverage seems almost entirely negative and it can be easy to get caught up in that downward spiral. In the same way that Jill describes how she made progress by celebrating what she could do, not bemoaning what she could not do, one of the surest ways for refocusing and raising your spirits is to celebrate what you have. In my latest book I included a chapter on ‘Gratitude’, here is an extract: A few years ago on the way home from work I went to visit my mother in the nursing home where she lived. She had been there since leaving hospital following a massive stroke. In one moment her life had changed from being an independent woman with many friends and interests to someone dependant on others for nearly everything. That evening I went in as I did nearly every day, and after we had said hello, my mother said “I have been lying here counting my blessings, and the biggest one is you, Mary love.” As you can imagine that had me on the verge of tears, and we shared a big hug (my mother could still do that very well even with only one working arm.) It really brought home to me how much most of us take for granted all the good things in our lives. Most of us concentrate on things that are going wrong (giving our attention to those magnifies them as we discussed in Chapter 6), rather than what is going right. Being grateful can take many forms: writing or thinking about a list is a starting point. As with all these exercises the feelings have to be real, genuine and actually felt. It won’t be very helpful if you have a list of things you feel you should be grateful for. (Though if you find this is what you have, think through why those things are there, and some useful insights will arise.) As with noticing your negative thoughts and changing them to positive ones (Chapter 5), working with gratitude lists is a technique that helps you develop new habits of thinking that can alter your attitude to the things that happen in your life. Simply write a list of things you are grateful for today, large and small. At this moment mine includes: the beautiful music I am listening to as I write the wild Cornish winter weather outside the luxury of sitting here at my desk writing. Exercise: Making a gratitude list - Write a gratitude list in your journal that you can look at whenever you wish - When you go to bed at night think of three things to be grateful for that happened during the day. This is a lovely thing to do with children at bedtime, it helps them get rid of worries and focus on a positive thought to take into sleep with them. It can also be an opening for talking about their day, especially useful for those children who do not normally share their thoughts and feelings. © Mary Lunnen January 2008 “Dare to Blossom: Coaching and Creativity” You may well find, as I did, that most of the things you are grateful for have nothing to do with money and possessions as such, (though it is good to be grateful for these too!), but rather are the things that money can’t buy, and they are literally priceless. Have fun with your own lists, I do them in my head last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Article: “Meditation” by Anna Colmer “I’ve been what you might describe as an occasional meditator – that is to say I do it on special occasions – but have never managed to acquire a regular habit. I’ve always rather admired those who do make it part of their daily practice, but somehow never found the time or perseverance to do so myself. Confronting the chaos of my own internal chatter was always sufficiently uncomfortable to send me running for cover! However, when my colleague, Alex Williams, started an introductory meditation class, in Falmouth, I realized this might be my opportunity to develop a regular practice for myself. I enjoyed Alex’s relaxed, down-to-earth style and the guided meditations we did in class and, as part of my commitment to the course, I begun to meditate once or twice a day by myself. I frequently found myself frustrated by the deluge of distracting thoughts which arose (what Alex terms ‘resistance’) but made myself sit there anyway and bring my attention back to my breath. Then, sometimes, there would be episodes of great clarity, when all the internal babble faded away, and there was just me and the rhythm of my breath and an acute awareness of my own energy body humming and pulsating. During these episodes, I lost all track of time – what seemed a brief meditation turned out to be half an hour, or an apparently lengthy one barely ten minutes. Six weeks later, I’m already seeing the benefits. My mind is a lot quieter. As someone whose inner landscape resembles a busy airport, this is a considerable relief. Although I’ve always understood that we are not our thoughts, I now have a direct experience of this. I feel less attached to my own thoughts and less inclined to pay attention to the inner burbling. Curiously, although meditation takes time out of a busy day, since practising regularly, I’ve found I actually seem to have more time. Everything seems to flow more easily and gracefully – and I feel much less pressured and time-driven – so a definite quality of life improvement there. It’s also given a boost to my physical energy level. Although I felt more tired after meditating initially, as my body began to release old tensions, I’ve noticed now that I feel more energised and refreshed. This was particularly noticeable on a recent workshop where I was extremely busy and short on sleep, but didn’t experience the usual exhaustion at the end of the week. Finally, I notice that my senses have become more acute, particularly my sensitivity to feeling what’s going on in my own energy field. I also observe that how I am working with other peoples’ energy, as an acupuncturist and zero balancer, has changed subtly – that I am more in touch with the vibration within a client than before. So I’m a convert and meditation is now a part of my life. For me it feels like the necessary pause in the busy flow of daily life, the punctuation that allows us to make sense of the conversation. Anna Colmer is a Traditional Acupuncturist, Zero Balancer and Zero Balancing Teacher, living and working in Falmouth. She has a particular interest in helping people inhabit themselves and their lives more fully and consciously. She can be contacted at: tel: 01326 210931 anna@zerobalancer.co.uk Alex Williams can be contacted via her website here. Dare to Blossom 2009 Calendar I am working on a calendar that I will publish via Lulu.com. The picture for each month will be of flowers taken in my garden in Cornwall. I am very pleased with the sample calendar I have ordered for myself. It will be available to purchase soon so look out for news next month. Autumn 2008 and Spring 2009 Dare to Blossom workshop programme My thoughts on this have been developing since I wrote last month and I am working on a new workshop (or maybe a series of workshops) that will really give you a boost of energy and enthusiasm and tools to ‘beat the blues’. So, I am giving this development process time to blossom fully before booking venues and preparing the publicity – so watch this space! To receive the latest information as soon as it is available, register your interest now and you will receive a voucher code for a discount on any workshop or telephone coaching session over the next twelve months. Thank you for reading, do email me with any questions, comments or suggestions, or feedback on particular items. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think may be interested. All best wishes,  



 

 

 

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Newsletter Archive

August 2008

 

 

 
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