How to reconnect with yourself when your ego attempts self-sabotage

In a world where goal setting is rife it can be become easy to lose sight of what actually matters and why we have set out to do something in the first place.

Image from positivemed.com

Goal setting is everywhere, at work, at the gym, how much fruit and veg we should consume in a day, how many friends we must try and see in a month to maintain our relationships, not to mention how many times the happiest couples have sex and how many times you should aim to do it in a week. Just taking a moment to consider all the goals we must manage across multiple time-frames can feel utterly overwhelming and impossible.

Today I’ve been feeling a little bit off balance, for a number of reasons. I did my usual Body Balance yoga class at 7am this morning and my muscles felt so tight. It felt as though the flexibility I have been working so hard to achieve over the last ten months had started to go backwards.

I didn’t feel great about my body, considering the regularity of workouts and yoga I felt as though I wasn’t as toned as I should be. I was just having one of those moments. It’s quite hard to share this because I feel quite embarrassed to confess that I felt that way about my body; over the last year I have showed it so much more respect than that.

I wanted to eat everything! I had a few to many glasses of wine on Saturday night and as a result I have been insatiable ever since. I opted for a breakfast bagel with a veggie sausage and a hashbrown after the gym and I got busted by my colleague. He said:

“Han, is everything ok?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well you haven’t spoken much this morning and you’re eating a stuffed bagel”

Even he knew I was out of sync with myself! It couldn’t be more obvious that I was eating my feelings.

Realising my ego had taken over

I was talking to my husband tonight about how I was feeling about things and all of a sudden I realised that I had been thinking from a totally ego-centered way. All of the things I was telling myself in my head throughout the day had nothing to do with what I had ever set out to achieve.

Reconnecting with my lifestyle choices

I made the decision to practice yoga regularly to nurture my physical body and build a meaningful relationship with it, supporting my body to move by strengthening my muscles and improving my flexibility.

I made the decision to eat a plant-based vegan diet to nourish my body not to get a six-pack! I made the promise to myself that 90% of what I ate would always play a role in fueling my body and mind. It was never about losing weight or trying to eat less calories.

Do you really need to set a goal?

With my yoga and my diet I never set a goal. Instead I made the choice to keep my body and mind well. To thrive through movement, play and nourishment every day.

Diets don’t generally work because by following one you have to either cut out certain foods or cut calories and by doing that you may be stopping doing something you love. Deep down you might have an emotional connection to that food. That in itself can make it pretty impossible to just give up which means that your goal is going to be really hard to achieve.

The same goes with exercising (I prefer to use the term ‘moving’). Focusing on a weight or how you want to look can make you feel like things aren’t happening fast enough. If nothing is changing at the rate you want it to, it’s unlikely you’ll carry on. Do you actually feel more connected to your body through exercising? Are you listening to what it needs, do you know when it feels fatigued? Or are you just going through the motions?

By thinking about our food choices and moving as a way to optimize our health we can start to emotionally connect with our lifestyle choices which strengthen our commitment to ourselves and our bodies. We start to build a deeper connection with what our bodies need, how they react to the way we think and we start to understand how we can look after ourselves better.

Say out loud what is troubling you

When these kinds of nonconstructive thoughts fill your mind it is easy for you to ruminate over them. They just seem to create so much noise and it can be hard to make them stop.

In the same way that reading out loud helps me spot spelling and grammatical errors in my writing, saying what is affecting my mind out loud allows me to observe myself.

As humans we have the gift of personal observation. We can take a step back and review our behaviour and our thoughts. By saying out loud what you are thinking you can observe what you are saying.

Today this helped me realise that I wasn’t acting from a heart-centered place, instead I was being overly critical of myself and using my ego to bully me to make some changes to my lifestyle i.e. workout more, eat less. By taking a step back I realised what I was doing and said ‘no’.

Don’t beat yourself up for not realising sooner

Instead reframe it to yourself – realise that you’ve got to know yourself on a deeper level and as a result you will be better placed to make personal choices that suit your chosen way of living. Sometimes we just have to be reminded of what we have set out to do. Be kind to yourself and realise that as adults with multiple responsibilities it can be hard to stay on track every day.

Appreciate where you are right now

• Say out loud the three things that you are grateful for.
• Recognise where you’re at and why you’re proud of that.
• Smile to yourself.
• Take some deep tummy breaths over a couple of minutes to activate your body’s natural relaxation mechanism and reboot.

Being mindful of who you are and what is important to you will bring you back to the present moment which will stop any further over-thinking and rumination.

Go to bed happy 

So it might not have been the easiest of days but you have just managed your problem successfully and reconnected with what is important to you. Having put your ego back in its box and tuned back in with your heart you’ll be set for a brilliant day the following morning.

 

Having thought I had nothing to write about this evening, I realised I had a lot to say! 

As always I hope my experience and my tips help you live a happier life. 

Lots of love, 

Hx 

 

How Mr Men’s Mr Jelly can teach us how to manage stress and anxiety

“All you have to do is count up to ten, and you’ll find that whatever’s frightening you isn’t so quite so frightening after all”… the Tramp’s advice to Mr Jelly

Roger Hargreaves

Having had a hectic few weeks at work my colleague presented me with a book, Mr Jelly, from the Mr Men series. It felt like I had forever been chasing my tail with clashing deadlines, like so many of us are, and upon giving it to me, he said “my daughter says you just have to learn to breathe like Mr Jelly, she said you can borrow her book”. Curiously I had a quick read and discovered that I had forgotten what I had read as a child and the relaxation tips that I share with my clients. This book’s key message is that by counting and breathing we can create a sense of calm which is key to managing stress.

In the book. Mr Jelly begins to count each time he panics or feels scared. Every time this happens he begins to use his new counting technique. As he does, he realises that by taking the time to focus through counting, he no longer feels frightened of what he originally perceived to be a threat.

In our everyday lives it is easy to feel overwhelmed, managing multiple responsibilities at home and work, being contacted via various social media channels as well as by traditional phone and email, cooking the right food and doing enough exercise. Sometimes it can feel like  our minds just don’t have any more spare capacity to deal with all these demands and we start to feel understandably anxious and on edge.

Breathing for health

We can use breathing techniques to calm our minds but they’re actually really good for keeping our bodies well. When we feel stressed and anxious we activate our stress response (also known as fight or flight), which hijacks our nervous system, flooding it with cortisol – the stress hormone. The problem with this is that all of our key organs and systems within our body are managed by our nervous system. The usual functioning of our bodies stop when we activate the stress response because the body is going on stand-by and switching to its survival mechanism; all the blood rushes away from your organs to your muscles to help you fight or flight even though this isn’t actually required. This is ok now and then, but frequent activation of this kind of response can lead to chronic health issues overtime.

Breathing to balance the body

In our body we have the sympathetic function and the parasympathetic function. The sympathetic function is responsible for the stress response which fires up when our brain thinks we need to take action urgently. To turn this off we have to learn to activate the parasympathetic function which enables us to relax. We can kick-start the relaxation response through deep breathing from our tummies and taking long breaths in and out.

7/ 11 breathing

Its not the nicotine that relaxers a smoker, it’s the breath. If you watch a smoker, you’ll notice that their exhale is always longer than their inhale and through doing so they are activating their relaxation response. How often have you heard a smoker say, “I feel so much better now” or “I feel so much calmer for having that cigarette” – now you know why.

The inhale exhale technique that smokers use is the same as 7/11 breathing. I learned this during my training to be a hypnotherapist to help my clients relax and soothingly transition into a relaxing trance state.

This is how you breathe to bring about a sense of calm and space:

• Breathe in for 7
• Breathe out for 11
• As you do, focus on breathing in from your belly and exhaling all the way out
• Focus on your breath by imagining it has a colour to it, I like to use a golden, warming sunshine yellow or sometimes a cooling blue colour with my clients.
• Alternatively you can imagine a picturesque scene, maybe a beautiful place you’ve visited, and just imagine relaxing there.
• After 3-4 minutes you should really notice the difference in yourself and how much calmer and clear headed you feel.

If the count of 7/11 feels too long you can shorten it, just make sure the out breath is longer than the inhale i.e 5/9.

Heart Math

• Place your hand on your heart and focus your attention on your heart and the area around it.
• Start to take deep belly breaths for 5 to 6 seconds both on the inhale and exhale and eventually you’ll find your heart’s natural rhythm.
• After a few rounds start to visualise something happy like a fond memory of family and friends. Focus on breathing that memory into your heart and back out again into the world or to the people you are thinking of.
• Focus on breathing that love in to your heart and back out again.
• Continue to breath in this way for 5-6 minutes. Notice how much happier and positive you feel afterwards.

This kind of breathing not only activates the relaxation response, it also sends powerful signals to our brain that we are ok and helps us to feel happy. Getting to know our own heart rhythm by regularly practicing Heart Math breathing can support our brain to function more efficiently, improving our creativity, intuition and decision making skills.

You can find out more about Heart Math here.

If there is one thing we were all born to do – it’s breathe. It’s the body’s built in healing mechanism and these two techniques are really simple and very effective. The bonus is that you can use them pretty much anywhere whether it’s on public transport, in the office or at home.

Give them a try and let me know what you think, 

Hx

Touch

No other form of communication is as universally understood as touch. The compassionate touch of a hand or a reassuring hug can take away our fears, soothe our anxieties, and fill the emptiness of feeling lonely. 

Randi G Fine

The power of touch – enabling you to feel connected to something greater than yourself

Touch is hugely powerful. Have a hug, it makes you feel better, hold hands and feel a connection, stroke your cat under the chin, they purr yet somehow you feel happier. All of these things are gorgeously comforting which have the power to lift our spirits and let us relax.

We are genetically made to respond positively to touch. Newborns and babies who are affectionately touched and gently massaged release serotonin in their brains which is a happy chemical, this calms the baby and balances their breathing. We grow up to always need this kind of affection in our lives.

We are programmed to ‘touch’ giving us an instant boost because our skin has in the region of 5 million touch receptors. When these are activated our brains release immune boosting endorphins and oxytocin, known as the ‘love’ hormone which naturally make us feel happy.

But there is one more element of ‘touch’ that I really value – it’s power to heal us emotionally and physically.

Through this part of my blog I want to share with you the benefits of touch, partner stretch and my journey as an energy therapist – ultimately I want to share the tips and tricks I am learning to help you feel lighter, optimistic and happier.

Studying the body’s energy system to make the most of “tapping”

Having trained as a solution-focused hypnotherapist and psychotherapist I decided to take my practice further by training as an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner. EFT is built upon the principle that our body is an energy system and that through everyday life ’emotional blockages’ can become trapped within our body. EFT releases this blocked energy through tapping on a series of points which are based on the body’s energetic meridian system. Anyone can tap on themselves, or as a therapist I can help a person work through releasing the energy by tapping on them while they focus on what it is they need to release.

So rather then using acupuncture needles in poignant energy points within meridians EFT practitioners release the energy through touch; a skill which is known as “tapping”.

By moving the blocked energy from the body, we allow ourselves to feel a lot more balanced and it also enables us to remove negative emotions which can actually affect our behaviours, habits and the way we perceive the world – our truth. The amazing thing about this therapy is that it is fast because it goes directly to the root of the cause and manages the problem out.

Through tapping we can also challenge our “truths” about ourselves that are preventing us and our bodies from doing amazing things. I’d like to share a little story that I think highlights the power of EFT and it’s instant benefit.

Our bodies are energy, our genes aren’t fixed contrary to belief – they are blueprints of possibility and can be changed based on our perceptions, beliefs and consciousness.

On the final day of my level two training we did some positive tapping, focusing on positive affirmations and developing optimistic thoughts about our futures. Having sat in a training room for three days I decided to test out EFT with something which I thought was ‘impossible’; I wanted to get my noes on my knees. To be clear when I went into forward fold I was at least 6 inches away.

I tapped through my beliefs and made positive statements about my body’s capability to do this, while also visualising out loud how it would feel when my nose and my knees met for the first time.I did this for around  fifteen minutes over three five minute intervals. Every time I paused I realised I was getting closer, so what was happening? I have a number of thoughts on this.

First up, the tapping was clearing out some of the old beliefs I held in my body about my body’s lack of flexibility. Secondly the positive affirmations and statements were acting as some kind of placebo.

The positive impact of tapping to improve flexibility in the body

Within 15 minutes my nose was on my knees! I felt incredible and my whole body was buzzing with happiness. Even if I had completed ninety minutes of hot yoga I would never have been able to get my nose on my knees in forward fold – this development was really quite astounding.

To test it out again I ask my friend Laura if I could try it out with her the following day. Again, after 15 minutes she made awe-inspiring progress – not quite nose on knees as she had further to go but just about.

Here is a super quick video of me getting my nose on my knees the following day.

Wonderful proof that flexibility can be enhanced through the power of touch, stimulating the body’s energy points and self-belief.