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Take Time to Relax

I have been running my Embrace Relaxation and Meditation classes for almost a year now, and have had some great feedback on the impact the classes have had on the participants. Today I want to share how relaxation can help you too.

Nowadays many of us are living increasingly busy lives; juggling demanding work schedules and an active home life, all within the presence of social media. It can be difficult to switch off, even after a long day’s work.

We all know that burning the candle at both ends can leave us exhausted, both mentally and physically, and as an ex-primary school teacher I have experienced it myself. My hectic work demands were leaving me feeling more and more stressed. I now know that constantly having high levels of adrenaline in the body lowers the immune system, leaving the health at risk.

Although exercise and diet were on my radar, I didn’t really think relaxation was relevantfor me. I had an enjoyable social life and I thought that was enough. But I became very ill and after all of the medication and treatment got me on the road to recovery; I decided to take a more active role in my health, with the emphasis on prevention.

The key issue was deciding to take charge, and ultimately responsibility for the body and mind in which I was living, and to encourage and nurture my own wellness. I now build in time to relax every day, and it has changed the way I live my life.

My Top Ten Tips for Relaxing

 

  1. Take control of your time and allocate a section in your day – even if it’s a few minutes, to empty your mind.
  2. Walk or sit outside during daylight hours. Give yourself ten minutes of uninterrupted quiet. Leave your phone and headphones in your bag and just breathe.
  3. Switch off gadgets with screens and apps for a short time every day. The world will carry on, and you can have a break and go back when you’re ready. Screen-free time is very important for children too.
  4. Listen to relaxing instrumental music for five minutes while you breathe deeply. Doing this before bedtime helps slow down brainwaves and aid restful sleep.
  5. Talk to and spend time with people who make you feel good. Being around positive people is relaxing.
  6. Take regular outdoor breaks. Studies have shown that when smokers take a cigarette break, it is as much the act of going away from their desk that relaxes them, as the actual cigarette. So take a break outside, ditching the cigarettes and breathing in fresh air instead!
  7. Stretching works wonders for your body and mind! Change positions regularly and have a stretch.
  8. Get things off your chest by verbalising them or writing them down. If you can have a chat with someone else, even better. Get it out, then move on.
  9. When you are going around in circles, it’s time to take a break. Switch to a task that is easy and automatic, allowing your mind to relax. Then go back to the original task refreshed.
  10. Drinking plenty of water keeps everything working properly including the relaxation response. This response is built-in to your system; you just need to give yourself the chance to enjoy it.

 

My Relaxation Classes

In my class I provide a safe environment where people of all ages can learn to relax. I use a non-religious approach, and break it down into little steps, so that the ideas are accessible to beginners and more experienced members of the class alike. There are a range of activities in the hour, focusing on learning to empty the mind and breathing to relax and renew the body. The aim is for you to leave feeling refreshed and ready to experience the week ahead.

Classes run on Mondays 6.30 – 7.30pm

St. Aldhelm’s Church,

2, Windmill Road,

London,

N18 1PA

Cost: £6.00 per session

If you would like to attend a class, please text, call Zeenat on 07961 389 030 or email me at zeenat@embracecoaching.com

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My Biggest Group Meditation Yet!

In January I ran a group meditation session at a charity yogathon for my yoga teacher Jackie Lee. She runs this yearly event for the Nightingale Cancer Support Centre in Enfield which provides support for patients, relatives or friends of people affected by cancer. Participants paid £15 each to come along and do several hours of yoga, taught by different teachers and there were so many prizes in the raffle that everyone went home with something! I won a box of bath bombs, which smell gorgeous. 

Jackie taught a sitting yoga, which is great for people with limited mobility and I believe it is similar to the classes she teaches at the hospice. I love the idea of this; it’s so empowering for people to improve their quality of life; even when it’s near the end. 

 

The yogathon was dedicated to the memory of Vicki Scarlet who was a local yoga teacher. Together we raised £1400.

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Completed Vision Boards… Ta Daah!

Here’s one of the vision boards created by a participant at the workshop earlier this month. I look forward to hearing about how this person’s vision grows and builds as it comes into fruition this year!

 

I love the images representing balance; something lots of us strive to achieve in our lives.

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Vision Boards and Goal Setting

 

Goals or Well-formed Outcomes?


Saturday saw my first workshop of the year and as it was only 19 days into 2013, it was designed to get us all thinking about what we want to achieve this year. We started the afternoon with a relaxation exercise to get us all into a calm and tranquil state, which is a good way to allow the mind to be creative. I demonstated how to form a goal – rather than just stating what our goal is (that would be short workshop), we tested it out against several criteria. The questions are designed to get each participant thinking about what their goal is, how they would know when they have achieved it, how and where they want to see this skill/goal achieved in their life, what they would gain or lose if they achieved it and how they would go about achieving it. Sometimes half way through this exercise people realise that they don’t actually want what they said they wanted anymore, which is a good thing and allows them the re-think it, or word it differently, or add some parameters to it.

A yet unfinished vision board

The questions in the first part of the workshop encourage each person to check whether their goal is well-formed or not, meaning if I decided that i was going to go to the gym every night of the week, you could ask – for what purpose or at what cost? If I chose an unbalanced goal I might lose something as well as gain something. 

Busy creating

The second part of the workshop was where we used all of the ideas and inspiration gained from the first part to start the creative part. This was really fun, allowing our imaginations free, although we could have done with another hour or so. Time really does fly when you’re having fun!

The Create Place, Bethnal Green, London

If you would like to know about my next workshops, please contact me to be placed on a list. You’ll be the first to know!

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Vision Boards and Goal setting Workshop January 2013

Happy new year to you all, and welcome to 2013!

What are you planning to achieve this year? What would you like to have achieved when you look back in a year’s time? If you want to create your best year yet, come to my workshop!

On Saturday January 19th I am running a workshop in conjunction with Katie Macleod Peters of Creating Well-being in Bethnal Green, East London. We will be teasing out our goals for 2013, and drilling down into specific goals, and then working on moving towards achieving them. We will be using a variety of NLP techniques and principles including PACER which is a simple way to create a well-formed outcome. This will help us ensure that the goal is realistic and achievable. Katie’s Creating Wellbeing workshops work on the principle that each participant uses their creativity to support their own wellbeing, an idea that I love, so we will also be creating our own vision boards to take away to support our goals.
This session costs £40 per person to attend (plus booking and transaction fees; £20 concessions).
Tickets are on sale now and you can buy yours through Eventbrite: creatingwellbeing.eventbrite.co.uk
To find out more feel free to contact me.

More about Creating Well-being

Creating Well-being is an ever-evolving project, still in its pilot phase. There has been an overwhelmingly popular and positive response since the start of the project in August, but we are still trying to work out the most suitable funding model. When the pilot phase is over, we will asses whether Creating Well-being will become a charitable or commercial project, Community Interest Company or Social Enterprise.
For more information, email: 
creatingwellbeing2012@gmail.com

 

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Getting Over Your Phobias

A phobia is the fear of an object, place or situation which is so strong that it changes the way a person organises their life. It is more than a strong aversion to something, but is a persistent and irrational fear. If you have a phobia, you may recognise that even though you know the thing is not necessarily dangerous, you still feel terrified of it. If it is debilitating and causing you anxiety, you may want to be rid of it. The NHS currently favours CBT, Psychotherapy or medication, but NLP and Cognitive Hypnotherapy is a very effective and fast treatment. Some people report a vast improvement after one session.

You have probably heard of different ways to get over phobias by using techniques like flooding and desensitising – meaning that you increase your exposure to the thing that you are afraid of, gradually. This can be successful, but relies on the person keeping their cool and not getting too freaked out. A good therapist will ensure that the person is kept feeling safe is and able to reduce the exposure at any time. This can be a good techniques for fear of spiders, or similar phobias, where it can be tested – ie. at first you coudn’t be near a spider, and at the end, you could hold one!

In my experience though, if you are terrified of something the last thing you want to do is to face that thing, up close and personal. Cognitive Hypnotherapy uses a gentler approach, for phobias like this. The mental health charity Mind sites hypnotherapy as an effective treatment. The Phobia Cure is based on NLP techniques and is a very effective brief therapy, so the problem can be ‘fixed’ quickly.

How does it work? The memory or memories from the sensitising event (when the phobia started) have been stored in the brain in a certain way, and by recoding them, you can update your understanding, thus reducing or alleviating the fear and beating the phobia. 

Contact me if you would like to find out more about how I can help you to get rid of your phobia, and if you enjoyed this post, feel free to share it with others on Facebook or Twitter.

 

You can read the article entitled ‘We Beat Our Phobias’ – using NLP from this month’s Top Sante magazine here.

A boat trip in The Mediterranean Sea – a seemingly innocent photo. In fact, a frightening incident here caused the start of a deep-rooted phobia.

Call now to book your free consultation.

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Learning To Relax – My Journey

As you may know, I have been running my Embrace Relaxation and Meditation classes for a few months now, and I previously blogged about how I got started here. Today I want to tell you about the journey I have been on myself, and why and how I first became interested in relaxation.

Hippies, Fairies and Mung Beans

If you had asked me my thoughts on relaxation or meditation 20 years ago, I would have been quite closed-minded to the idea, and would have had a particular ‘type’ of person in my mind. Although in my teenage years I wore an abundance of tie-dye, fragranced my bedroom with incense and listened to Jimi Hendrix, I wouldn’t have had a clue about meditation or relaxation! But as I got into my 20’s I started to feel aches and pains in my body, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced before. As I started my career in teaching, it became evident that something was wrong. After what seemed like months of tests, we had a name for what I was going through – an auto-immune type of arthritis. ‘Arthritis? But I am only 23!’ I remember thinking. The next few years were hard; trying out different medications and beginning to realise what the future might hold.

Me aged 23, and getting used to life with pain.

Pain

The pains which had started in my right heel, had spread to my left knee, and on any given day could be in my fingers, wrists, shoulders, upper spine, ribs, sternum, ankles, toes, neck and lower back. Coupled with actual pain was the continual sensation of feeling feverish. It was horrendous. The more pain I was in, the more depressed I felt and the less I thought I could do. Most weeks I had to have at least one day in bed, which was not great for my career, my self-esteem or my mental health.

The Turning Point

During this time I had started to see a counsellor for a seemingly unrelated issue, and we were talking about the idea of self-efficacy. It was then that I had my light-bulb moment. It dawned on me that if my illness was auto-immune, and my body was making it, then it could also work out how to fix it. As the words came out of my mouth I realised that something in me had changed forever. Such is the power of words and therapy my friends!

The Journey Back to Health

That strike of inspiration happened about 7 years ago, but it was still another year before I was willing and able to do anything about it. I kept thinking about ways to look after my body; eat better, sleep better, take more (gentle) exercise, and just learn to listen to the many signs and signals my body was trying to give me. It was a fine balancing act between doing enough, but not too much (which could end in a flare-up). The key issue was deciding to take charge, and ultimately responsibility for the body and mind in which I was living, and not to blame an illness, but to encourage and nurture my own wellness. It sounds easy, but it wasn’t. It was a journey of many steps, and it’s one I am still on today.

Me this year. Happy and healthy 🙂

How Did Relaxation Help?

This was actually one of the last stages of my journey. Since I started studying NLP a few years ago, I have made a conscious effort to engage more with my body and my kinesthetic side by taking up more physical pursuits, including Tai Chi, Yoga, walking, massage, swimming, Zumba and so on. I also started to listen to guided meditation Cds, which were an easy way in for someone with little experience. As with anything, it took time to get used to and I had to try at first. I found it hard to switch off my internal chatter and found that I would focus on the person’s voice or accent – anything to detract from the business of relaxing! I then tried listening to meditative music, (without words) and this helped quieten my mind.

Puffin presenting a guided meditation cd.

Last year I read a book on holiday called ‘Teach Us to Sit Still’ by Tim Parks and I had another light bulb moment! I realised that a lot of the time I was making things worse for myself, by holding tension in my body, or ignoring a physical need, or tensing muscles somewhere deep within me. I started to work on breaking these habits and began to understand how to ‘let go’, and how to ‘breathe into the pain’. These things have changed the way I live my life.

My Relaxation Classes

In my class I attempt to create a safe environment where women of all ages can learn to relax. I have benefited from learning to relax so much myself and enjoy sharing these gifts with others. You can find out more about my classes here and you can even download Relax Kids meditations from my website here. I also have a shop where you can find cds which I have used myself. As always leave me a comment below if you have anything to share, or contact me privately if you would prefer. 

This amazing photo was taken in Sri Lanka in 2009.

 And you can share the love by passing on my blog post for others to enjoy. Thanks!

 

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Buying Olympic Tickets and Why Persistence is a Virtue

If you read my last post you will know how excited I have been about the Olympics taking part in my home city. Well, the games started a week ago, and I am still well and truly gripped by Olympomania! In fact as I write, I am waiting in an (online) queue to see if I have managed to secure some tickets for next week. Last night, after two and a half hours of continous tapping, clicking and waiting I managed to buy a ticket to see judo today. I think I will get to see the repechages, bronze and gold medal contests. Needless to say, I am very excited about it! Photos to come soon…

It made me think about persistence in achieving a goal. In total I have spent around three hours every day trying to buy a last-minute ticket to an Olympic event, any event in fact, just to feel even more a past of these games. Despite trying to buy tickets when they originally went on sale last year, I wasn’t able to get any, and I have been hearing the reports of the unused Olympic Family allocation, which are now being sold every day. But it’s a slow and clunky system; made worse by the sheer volume of traffic going to the site, it is taking up a lot of time and you don’t know when the tickets will be released and so on.

So why am I still trying despite these annoying obstacles?

  • I am persisting because I know that just trying over and over again sometimes works – a case of numbers.
  • Also because in this case I have nothing to lose, only a potential seat at an Olympic event to gain.
  • Although I am spending hours of my time in pursuit of Olympic tickets, this period of time is short-lived so I can happily give up that time.
  • Even when I feel disheartened and walk away from the computer, I switch on th t.v. and see the crowds watching an event in my city, and think ‘that could be me!’. I then go back to the computer and  keep trying.
  • I have successfully bought one ticket, and I also know of other people who have managed to buy tickets this week.

In this case, my motivation is very towards my goal (as opposed to away from – for example ‘I don’t want to miss out’). I will report back on the judo experience later and see if and how reality and my expectations coincide.

If you are searching for tickets, keep going. They are out there and more are being released every day!

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London 2012 – Looking Forward to an Olympic Summer!

London 2012 is… finally here! With less than 24 hours to go before the opening ceremony, I am really excited and  have lots of plans to make the most of living in this amazing city, while The Olympics are on. I haven’t really ever been much of a sports-fan, but as I get older, I realise how much more there is to sporting competitions and tournaments like this, than just a pure love of a sport. Over the last few weeks, and particularly this week, the atmosphere has changed, I think, with more and more Londoners getting into the spirit. I have had an amazing week, which started with watching the technical rehearsal of the Olympic opening ceremony on Monday. It was just incredible! Tomorrow the whole world will be able to watch it on their screens, and I can’t wait to see it televised. I am planning to watch the opening ceremony concert on the big screens in Victoria Park, with a picnic dinner, before the main event at 9.00pm BST.

The Action for Happiness Campaign says: 

 Looking forward to things is great way to motivate yourself

…and so I thought I would share some of the ways I have enjoyed the run-up to The Olympics, in my home city of London, and the other Olympic-related activities I am looking forward to.

Yesterday the Olympic Torch Relay came to my neck of the woods, and I went to see it. I was amazed at the numbers of people who had come along, and it was great to soak up the party atmosphere. The torch bearer I saw must have run past very quickly, because I couldn’t get a photo!

The person in my house who does love sport is my husband, and as soon as he had the chance to, he signed up to be an Olympic volunteer. Here is his uniform, all ready for the next two weeks.

The Games Maker uniform

The photos below were taken just before I went into the Olympic Stadium for the rehearsal of the opening ceremony…

The Orbit Tower shining in the evening sun

The Olympic Stadium, as I arrived

Once inside the Olympic Stadium, I expected to have our cameras taken away, or at least for us to be requested not to take photos, but I was pleasantly surprised. Everyone was taking photos, and even video, but we were just asked to #savethesurprise. It was clever to invent such a hashtag (which started trending on Twitter staight away). Because of the way the words were phrased, most people have respected the wishes of the organisers and kept the surprise – which is why I haven’t posted any photos of the ceremony here!

This is how the stadium looked after I left…

After the opening ceremony rehearsal

I am really looking forward to spending a day at the Olympic Park during the Paralympic Games (In August), as well as attending a few different paralympic events.

Here are a few more photos from my evening there:

Looking up the Orbit Tower

The Aquatics Centre, Olympic Park

Beaming after the showAnd finally I am doing my little bit, by bringing the spirit of the Games to little people in Enfield, with my Relax Kids Olympic-themed classes. You can find out more about enrolling your child in my classes here.

Relax Kids Olympic Adventures

What are you looking forward to? Drop me a line, or leave me a comment. I read them all and always respond!

 

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How to Get Started…

Do you have ideas, plans and goals that you think about, but just can’t ever seem to get started on? Do you procrastinate and worry about how things would work if you tried to move forward with those ideas? Me too. Below is a case study of one such idea I have had for ages, and finally got around to starting.

 

This Monday will see the last of my weekly Embrace Relaxation classes for this term (which return in September, after a summer break). I can hardly believe it has been running for nearly 2 months! It has been a successful project for me on several counts: Mainly because:

  • People came along and enjoyed it
  • I enjoyed doing all of the planning and preparation and I loved teaching the classes
  • I have received amazing feedback from the women who have attended
  • I have felt the physical knock-on effects myself. I leave the class floating each week – this has got to be a brilliant benefit! 

We practise Green Therapy in our classes. Just allow your eyes to rest while gazing at something green.

So, it got me thinking about why it took me so long to get started on such a project and why I found it such a difficult thing to do? I realise that I have a problem with the idea of ‘being ready’. I always think there is more to learn, more to read about, more flourishes and embellishments that could be added and more details which could be tweaked. It is one of the main issues I have had with writing a blog, marketing my services or even putting this website together. It is a theme which has run through most of the things I have done. But there comes a point with every project I try to put my hand to, when I must think “…Okay… I am ready…”, otherwise I would never have done anything!

You have to climb a hill one step at a time, but the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll reach the top!

‘Know Thyself’

A few years ago I completed an online personality test called Strengths Finder, which is designed to pull out your strengths and talents and show you how to develop them in a work context. It is quite a useful exercise, as it gives you your top 5 ‘themes’, which is like having your personality distilled to its essence. What jumped out at me from this test, was that my top 3 themes were ‘Input’, ‘Learner’ and ‘Positivity’. That fits me to a ‘t’ actually. Although it was great that my strengths were in the region of learning, (it’s what I love), the test also pointed out that I needed to develop my action-skills. (Incidentally, the test results guide you in how to use your strengths, and improve your ‘weaker’ areas).

So in the case of the Embrace Relaxation Classes, I needed to take the action steps towards starting this project – researching a venue, booking the hall, telling people about it, preparing the content and so on.

Once I had booked my venue and had the dates in the diary, I got down to the nitty gritty of planning what would we would be doing in the sessions. Knowing that I was now committed, I just had to say to myself ‘I’m ready… enough’.

I enjoyed this book, not least because I used to be quite sceptical about meditation myself, and have also found a way to make it work for me.

How To Get Started on Any Project

1. Make a start.

2. Dedicate 20 mins a day to your project – and stick to it. You will start to make progress in no time (and I found that when I set myself 20 minutes, I usually got stuck in for longer).

3. Decide what you want to achieve and by when. As well as an overall goal, think about what each step will be – these will form your short-term goals.

4. Think to yourself ‘How will I know when I’m there?’ Ensure that you know what the end goal or (in NLP-speak) solution-state will look like.

4. Create a vision board of what you want to achieve and/or write your goals up somewhere where you will see them every day.

5. Make a start! 

 And of course keep going.

What I learnt from this experience was that sometimes, success can be relatively easy, and that for me, once I committed, it helped me get started. I also practised trusting that I was ‘ready enough’…

 

I’d love to hear your experiences with putting projects off, procrastinating and wishing you could start – and what has helped you to get started.