I have played with this recipe (originally from my friend Jules) to make it perfect for my tastes but do enjoy being creative yourself with it too:)
Read MoreOver the years I’ve been a fan of cutting down on refined carbohydrates, dairy & sugar and eating a more plant based, whole food diet. In these times it’s especially important to keep our immune system strong and one of the ways we can do this is by making healthy choices with the food we eat. This can be easier at home but often more difficult when we go out. I love finding new, interesting, tasty & healthy places to eat out and I wanted to share some of them with you :)
These are just some of my favourite places where I can go to get a ‘healthy’ option but some have ‘naughtier’ options too ;)
Read More‘Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity. Meditation is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being.’ Sogyal Rinpoche
‘The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.’ John Milton
Meditation
Meditation ultimately allows us to find peace within by observing our thoughts and becoming aware of the space between our thoughts.
Meditation is something we can all easily learn to do. From 5 minutes to half an hour a day, meditation has amazing benefits on our health and wellbeing. We often find time to keep our body fit but do little for the health of our mind which in turn keeps our body healthy.
There are many different types such as sitting quietly and focusing on your breath, chanting a mantra or dancing meditations. It can even be something we can do whilst going about our daily lives. Reiki, Hypnotherapy and Self Hypnosis are also forms of meditation.
Read MoreWe can change our habits and hypnotherapy is a great tool to do this with. Hypnotherapy works with the subconscious mind where our habits are stored. Being able to access that powerful part of our minds and make the changes we want with the help of a hypnotherapist, helps us to replace old unwanted habits into new more beneficial ones.
Autobiography in Five Chapters by Portia Nelson
ONE
I walk down the street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost…I am hopeless
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
This information is taken from the book ‘How God Changes Your Brain’ Andrew Newberg MD & Marc Waldman.
8. Smile
Smiling tells the brain you are ok. When you smile it releases dopamine and other relaxing neurochemicals. It also leads other people to respond to you in a more generous and kinder way.
It works even if you don’t feel like it so fake it until you make it! Learn to let go, lighten up and smile.
7. Intense Intellectual Stimulation
Learning new things strengthens the neural connections in your frontal lobes. This improves your ability to communicate, solve problems and make rational decisions about your behaviours. Use it or lose it!
6. Consciously Relax
Your frontal lobes are more active when you feel relaxed allowing for better brain function.
A great way to do this is to use a progressive relaxation. Just go through each part of your body and allow each part to relax as you focus on it. You can imagine a relaxing colour spreading over you or all the cells smiling as you go. Another way is to focus on your breathing, noticing the gentle rise of your abdomen as you inhale and the fall as you exhale. Otherwise just use any of your favorite ways to relax such as listening to calming music.
5. Yawn
Apparently, yawning will relax you and bring you into a state of alertness faster than any other meditation technique. It improves cognitive function, memory recall, empathy, relaxation and lowers stress. Try yawning a few times when you wake up, before you go to sleep, if you feel anxious, stressed or before an important event. However it may not look so good in front of an important meeting so choose your time and place to do it!
When you yawn, this temporarily suspends all brain disorder symptoms. It resets the correct metabolism and consciousness in the brain. It is contagious like neural empathy.
Read MoreI have found a new passion to add to my toolbox in teaching Yoga
I love the nurturing energy & self awareness of Reiki and tapping into the mind for breaking habits & focusing on positive change with Hypnotherapy. Knowing a bit more about the body/mind through Yoga for breathing, stretching, releasing, strengthening & energising feels like the icing on the cake! All 3 provide healing, stress relief and so much more for the body, mind & spirit.
I recently completed my Yoga Teacher Training practical & theory exams with Union Yoga Ayurveda http://www.unionyogaayurveda.com.sg to whom which I am deeply grateful. They teach a traditional form of Yoga from ‘Patanjali’s 8 limbs’ of Yoga where the Asana’s (postures) are only one of the limbs. Subsequently my Yoga classes will involve breathing techniques, Asana’s, Pranayama (channeling energy using the breath as a tool) and a little meditation.
I have completed my 30hours of teaching for the American Yoga Alliance Teaching Cert. & I would like to complete 80 hours for the Indian Teaching Cert. I am offering Yoga by Donation which will go to the Alzheimers Association of Singapore in memory of my Mum and the Paramhansa Organisation in India which is linked to my Yoga organisation. I will be doing this until around September 2016. If you are interested please email me inspirationhealing@icloud.com and we can discuss options. I am happy to run group sessions and/or individual sessions depending on requests.
Read MoreI was chatting to my daughter about gratitude the other day and then I remembered one of my favorite films ‘Pay it Forward’. The film is about a young boy who partakes in random acts of kindness to change the world for the better. We decided that we would focus on this and chat about what we’ve done each day.
Gratitude is an important part of our every day life and we express thanks to family, friends and colleagues in various ways. It encourages us to appreciate what we have in our life and to pay them forward. To sociologist Georg Simmel gratitude is the ‘moral memory of mankind’.
Benefits
Experiencing and expressing gratitude is an important part of our daily lives. It opens the heart and activates the positive emotion centres of the brain. Regular practice of gratitude can change the way our brain neurons fire into more positive and automatic patterns…..Gratitude is an emotion of connectedness and this reminds us we are part of a larger universe.
Dr Robert Emmons (researcher and writer on gratitude, University of California) has discovered how gratitude gives life meaning. However he says it is a ‘chosen attitude’ which needs to be cultivated which can take effort. He says ‘Without gratitude, life can be lonely, depressing and impoverished…Gratitude enriches human life. It elevates, energizes, inspires and transforms. People are moved, opened and humbled through expressions of gratitude.’ With eight years of research on this topic he has found gratitude:
Read MoreThese are some general rules of the mind that are a useful reminder. They are really important and many of us don’t truly realise how powerful our thoughts can be for our own health and wellbeing. When we don’t follow these rules, we can get ourselves in a lot of trouble.
Every Thought Has A Physical Reaction
The mind is where the action is, the body is where the reaction is.
Example
Stress headache or butterflies in your stomach. Our feelings and thoughts change our bodies and over the long term can cause major problems with our health.
How can this affect my life for good?
Understand that thoughts are just thoughts, you’ve had plenty of them and just let them pass. It’s like thinking about buying something, then not doing it. The buying thought was just a thought that had no effect over you, unless you let it;)
Holding on to negative thoughts and feelings can have a negative effect on your ability to handle situations and can hurt you mentally or physically in the long run.
Where Your Attention Goes, Your Energy Flows
Wherever you put your thoughts, good or bad, you go in that direction.
Read MoreA bit about sleep
Rapid eye movement or REM sleep is responsible for the rest and rejuvenation we get from sleep. It is thought that this is the sleep phase where dreams occur and it is important for our mental and emotional health. Bursts of REM sleep are said to last for about 30mins and occur on average five to seven times a night.
The pattern of sleep in human beings varies during different ages. Sleeping mostly at night starts as early as the first few weeks of life and continues most of our life. In old age the pattern begins to break down as people sleep less at night and nap during the day.
Sleep deprivation has huge impact on our life leading to loss of wellbeing. It may start with irritability, stress, loss of concentration and fatigue and progress to more serious issues. Too little and too much sleep are both associated with an earlier death. Both the quality and the amount are important, with between five to nine hours correlating to the longest lifespan.
Read MoreI find Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, ‘My Stroke of Insight’ such an inspiring and informative read for anyone interested in the amazing powers of our brain. My Mum was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s when she was sixty and this has really increased my interest in the brain. Click on the link above to view her talk on TED.com which is just under 20 minutes long.
Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who had a stroke, and watched as her brain functions shut down one by one. It took her 8 years to get her brain function back and she has become a powerful voice for brain recovery.
“I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is.” Jill Bolte Taylor
Read MoreAs you might be able to imagine, I love doing my New Years Resolutions. I generally like dream-building type of exercises as they’re fun to do. I like to look back on my New Years Resolutions and am amazed how many of them are now a realitI have written up a couple of simple ideas below that have worked well for me over the years. The first is a dream building exercise to really let your creative juices flow in all directions. What do you feel enthusiastic about, what makes you feel motivated, fulfilled, and happy? Be specific or unlimited but really create some positive energy around it. The second is a simple self-hypnosis tool that is great for focusing on one thing that is most important to you at this time.
Dream Building Ideas
If such as time and money etc were no object, write down all the things that you would most like to do, be or to have. You can do this for the coming year, the next 5 years or 10 years. I like to do it for all three. I also split it into the different aspects of my life such as my dream family life, relationship, career, personal development, fitness, travel and perfect place to live.
Some of the things in the 10 year list were things I could not really believe would happen when I started this 12 years ago. They were so far from my reality then, but many of them have now come true. The power of the written word and focusing your mind on what you want instead of what you don’t enables you to achieve these things. It’s hard to reach your goal if you don’t have them clearly laid out and your brain is set up to work towards what you are focused on.
So that’s a great first step, to know what you want, and that can be enough. If you want to take it further with some of your most important or trickier goals, you can do the simple, short self-hypnosis below.
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