Ayurveda is a 5000yr old Indian Science of life and encompasses the principles of mindfulness within its practices. It’s a fascinating subject as it explores our humanity and how its relationship with the five elements of energy; heat, water, air, earth and ether can bring balance and a peaceful, healthier life. It’s a way of understanding and working with your body and personality type so that you can enjoy a greater sense of wellness. For almost 45yrs I struggled with a tendency to angry outbursts and I felt ashamed that despite soul searching, counselling, therapy, prayer … you name it, I tried it, I couldn’t appear to solve this flaw.  Only when I discovered the principles of Ayurveda did I find some answers. I discovered that one of the ‘symptoms’ of being out of balance for my body/personality type was having angry outbursts. For example, I’m a pitta dosha which is characterized by the energy of fire and when out of balance can result in a fiery nature, prone to overheating, resulting in angry outbursts. Seems obvious when you think about it, doesn’t it?

This was a life changing discovery for me as once I understood this then I knew I had to do what I could do to bring a cooling element to my life. There are many ways I could bring a cooling balance, such as; avoid hot baths, hot drinks, alcohol, midday sunshine etc. Heating elements in our lives can be subtle so certain foods that are deemed healthy may not be advisable for some depending on their dosha type.  For example, tomatoes are considered healthy but should be avoided by pitta dosha’s as they are highly acidic and can aggravate pitta’s as they produce heat. Then there is the obvious hot spicy foods. This really is just a simple introduction so consider doing a dosha quiz (I’ve linked a free one below) and find out what your ‘dosha’ type is, as this will carry a key to what you need to do to bring balance to your life and this includes the foods you eat.

So as we can see above there are three dosha types Kapha, Pitta and Vata. They are understood to be a combination of the universal principles of all five energy sources, and we all need elements of each of these within us to live balanced lives. Each dosha type has been identified to have a more dominant energy source.

In terms of mindfulness and alleviating our suffering, our need to achieve balance within our body, minds and spirits leads to emotional intelligence and resilience. If we’ve achieved balance within our connecting systems, then we experience greater stability and inner harmony. Because the principles of Ayurveda are all very natural expressions of life, like mindfulness they can be practiced by anyone, with any belief or philosophy.

Ayurveda embraces all the natural components of nature. Water (sea, lakes, rivers, fountains), air (walking outside on a windy day, breathing in the fresh air), heat (feeling the warmth of the sun and the warm foods nourishing our bodies), earth (living organisms grow from the nourished earth -the plants, tree’s, flowers). Then ether (that space that is within each cell of our body where our spirituality is said to reside. We’re aware of the presence of ether even if we can’t detect it as easily as the other elements).

As mentioned earlier Ayurveda addresses all aspects of life and this includes our diets. There are many diets that we could follow to lose weight or try to be healthier in general. It can be so confusing to know which diet can be right for us. On some diets we may lose weight but still be so out of balance within ourselves that we’re still suffering despite effective weight loss. We can soon turn back to comfort foods that lead to further weight gain. I highly recommend you do the dosha quiz to identify your dominant dosha type and then follow the advice given for the kinds of food you can eat that will best suit you. It doesn’t mean you have to be strict with your diet, as you can allow yourself to eat something you enjoy and then bring balance with some of the other mindful practices we’ve already mentioned. I enjoy a well-balanced diet guided by my dosha type but still allow myself to eat a nice big piece of chocolate cake if I want it and occasionally have a glass of wine with a meal. I know that the alcohol will bring further heat to my body and isn’t good for me, so I understand that I need to balance this out with cooling practices.   You identify what your body needs and if you’re out of balance you can implement Ayurvedic principles to bring balance back and a peaceful sense of wellness.

You make your decisions in life, understand the consequences of those decisions, then make the necessary adjustment or simply live with the discomfort afterwards knowing why. Don’t beat yourself up or judge yourself harshly. Simply be present in the moment and as long as it’s not a harmful substance, then enjoy it!  Have fun finding your dosha and I’ll see you next week!

Love & blessings, Sam x

https://www.oneworldayurveda.com/free-dosha-quiz/

Mindfulness practice is about bringing your focus and attention to the present moment and journalling helps us to do exactly that. If you’re anything like me then your house is probably littered with notebooks & journals of all shapes, designs and sizes that you were inspired to buy and started to journal in. I actually love re-visiting old journals that are often only half completed but are full of good intentions, goals, visions, prayers, cut outs and, often times, painful experiences. A bit like the Bujo before Bujo’s became a thing (A Bullet Journal).

I love the Bujo phenomena and wish I was as creative as some of the Bujo masters I’ve seen on Youtube, but presentation isn’t as important as content. The content is what YOU choose to write and it’s authentic just as it is. So, don’t compare your scribbles to those who are more calligraphically blessed, ok?

When you begin to write down what you’re noticing then you will be strengthening your mindfulness muscle. It will help you to become more present and gain awareness of the ‘as is’. You accept where you are at with kindness and without judging yourself. Also when your mind is cluttered or you are mentally & emotionally upset or confused then the act of taking those thoughts/feelings and writing them down can bring clarity, reduce stress and invite peace into the moment. Use all your senses to be openly aware of how you are connecting with your inner self and the world around you. You could just start writing how you feel in that moment and allow the cathartic experience to guide you. We can often think we’ve got nothing to say until we start to write and then we are surprised at how our feelings/ thoughts start to flow.  You gain a deeper awareness of who you are and how you’ve arrived at the place in life that you’re at. As we journal, we can be enlightened, grow, change, heal and be renewed. I recommend you hand write rather than type, even if your handwriting isn’t great. You can use a simple notebook or a snazzy journal. You can use a selection of coloured pens or highlighters if you wish. Again, up too you! Here are a few practices that can support your mindful journalling:

• Consider spending a few moments in meditation before you journal. Using concentrative meditation you can gaze at a candle flame with some gentle music in the background. Let your breath be your anchor and just see what rises up for you. Come from a place of curiosity of what surfaces.  When you are ready, pick up your journal and start to write.

• Consider sitting comfortably and either with or without background music, remember a favourite occasion. Immerse yourself in the memory. Remember what you saw, what you heard, even what you may have smelt or tasted. Take yourself back there and embrace the memory. The more you can immerse yourself in the good memory, the more happy chemicals will be released and will send a signal of well-being to your body. When you’re ready, come back to the present and start to journal. There’s no wrong or right way of doing this. Just write whatever YOU want to write.

• Consider taking a mindful walk and as you walk notice what you’re seeing, feeling, hearing or smelling. As you walk notice how your feet feel on the ground and how your body feels. Notice what rises up for you … your thoughts, your feelings, your general state of mind. Be ok with it and again, don’t judge yourself harshly. Just allow yourself to be present in the moment. When you return from the walk, sit down and write in your journal. Again, what you write is up to you and unique to you.

• If you’re feeling brave, then consider writing about something that has upset you. Something recent or even something that happened a while ago. As you write if you feel yourself getting upset then gently tap across your collarbone whilst breathing slowly in and out. Bring yourself to a calm place and then continue to write. If you’re struggling to put into words how you’re feeling, then consider asking yourself questions. If you ask yourself questions, then this helps your subconscious to send forward the answers of how you’re feeling. If you’re still struggling to write sentences, then consider drawing a stick man of you in the middle with a safe circle surrounding you. Knowing that you’re completely safe, draw some lines coming from the circle and throw out words, thoughts, feelings of how you feel or what rises up for you. Again, there’s no right or wrong answer here. Be as creative as you like. Use colours, diagrams, pictures, bullet points! Up to YOU!

It’s your journal … your thoughts … your feelings … your experiences.  Don’t judge yourself harshly if you have what seems like angry, upset or unkind words but be prepared to move towards kindness and non-judgement. Start with yourself and then towards the situation or people involved. You may find this difficult so consider re-framing the situation in your mind. Think about the good that you can gain from it, however painful. If we are learning and growing, then there is always something good to be gained. Then re-frame it! Reframing is a psychological technique whereby we can take a negative experience and intentionally interrupt the unhelpful thoughts and emotions that are associated with it. You can’t change the situation as it has already happened, but you can change your perception of it and choose to view it in a way that supports you. It’s the same picture, but you’ve changed the frame that surrounds and supports it.  EFT Tapping is helpful to process any remaining negativity within you.

You can journal as and when you like. Some find it helpful to write a few words in their journals before bed as it helps them to process what has happened that day.  Remember that ‘right’ mindfulness is from a caring perspective, so to practice mindfulness there should be an end goal of ‘care’. Care towards yourself and towards others. Mindfulness helps us to develop a different relationship with the struggles and difficulties we experience, which support peaceful living and building resilience.

Happy writing, and I’ll see you next week!

Love & Blessings, Sam x

I had a busy day today and had not had the opportunity to write my Wednesday’s Well-being Blog, despite being full of ideas about what I could write, given that our well-being has the capacity to embrace whatever is relevant and important to us as individuals. I sat in the garden with my beautiful 15yr old daughter (my baby) at 6pm thinking “I’ll just have 5 minutes relaxing and then I’ll go inside and write my blog”. FIVE HOURS later we wrapped it up and came inside. The relationship mattered and the time we spent together listening to music, chatting and eating chips mattered, because relationships REALLY matter!

I LOVE that quote! Simply because we so often don’t see the potential that we have and we need relationships with others, young and old, to help us to realise our potential. We also often have the relationships with people that we ourselves have “allowed” to happen. We can often kick & scream on the inside because of the way people treat us, We wish they would consider our feelings! We wish they would be kinder and nicer to us, because let’s face it, we’ve always been nice to them, but yet they still treat us badly, right? It’s soul destroying and really affects our well-being in a detrimental way. We try all that we can to be kind and considerate to them, dropping HUGE hints, in the hope that they’ll notice it BUT THEY NEVER DO!!! Right? We don’t like confrontation and we are praying that they’ll suddenly see their lack of consideration and change their ways. But then they don’t, so what do you do?

You have to put in healthy boundaries. Now in an ideal world you wouldn’t need to do that, and with a lot of your family and friends you, thankfully, don’t have to. But with some people you do and that’s difficult but necessary. Some people live their lives violating other peoples boundaries and have no awareness that they’re doing that and usually leave a trail of broken relationships behind them. The narrative they may carry is that people are always mistreating THEM and they cannot understand what’s wrong with everyone else. Unaware that they themselves are causing the problem. Most people know people like this and they can cause a lot of heart ache and confusion.

Relationships are important and have a huge impact on our well-being, so it’s important that we decide HOW we choose to be treated and have healthy boundaries. As I’ve mentioned before we often have the kind of relationships that we allow to develop and that can often be a difficult truth to digest. It can make us feel weak. Life is a journey and we are always growing and developing on our journey so just because you may have felt unable to manage a difficult relationship in the past it doesn’t mean it ALWAYS has to be that way.

Take some time today to reflect on your relationships and some of the challenges you may face and decide TODAY how you want that relationship to be. To be stronger doesn’t mean you have to be mean or aggressive. Sometimes people can get assertiveness mixed up with aggression and feel that to address the balance they have to be really HARD!!! Not so! You can be assertive and stand up for yourself by being gentle and kind. But be prepared ~ if you have a difficult relationship and you are needing to put in healthy boundaries for your well-being then sometimes people can react badly at first. They may:

• Go absolutely crazy and get really angry with you.
• Go really quiet and moody and freeze you out.
• Leave you completely because they can’t cope with this new you.
• See the light and change their behaviour because they value your relationship.

People who appear to live boundary-less lives and cause all manner of confusion and potential harm to others have usually had a very challenging childhood and not had safe boundaries put in in their own lives so they don’t actually intend to be a pain in the butt, they just don’t realise they are being and often times lack the self awareness until someone has the courage and frankly the kindness to let them know. Don’t worry if when you put in healthy boundaries people end up leaving as you are an important aspect of their journey and they need that more than you realise. Just BE KIND and STAND FIRM in love and they, and you, will come through this either together or apart. Remember some relationships are only there for a season, and that’s ok.

I hope you give some love and kindness away this week, just because you can, and I’ll see you next week! Love & blessings, Sam xx

For the majority of my career I have worked as a Qualified General Nurse and throughout the many areas of nursing that I worked I loved the people. I loved caring for people and I quickly discovered that I really wanted to help my patients to feel heard and genuinely cared for. Being a Nurse is a demanding role and multi-tasking, writing copious notes, liaising with members of the multi-disciplinary team, assessing, planning and evaluating care ~ not to mention all the practical aspects of wound care, PEG feeds, medication administration, catheterisation, stoma care, supporting activities of daily living etc. My shifts were full and overflowing with ‘nursing activities’ and all I wanted to do was get back to my patients ~ to people! I wanted to connect. I wanted them to know that I truly cared and wanted to hear about their lives. In the 1st year as a Qualified Nurse I almost ended my career because the nursing activities seemed more important than the actual people and I couldn’t reconcile that chasm of disparity. In fact it wounded my heart! In the end I worked as a Nurse for over 20yrs so I must have worked that out. I learned that every second I was with a patient I connected and listened. It may have been brief but it made a difference to how they felt, and peoples feelings matter.

As I worked as a Nurse I was drawn to people and the obvious link between mental, emotional, spiritual & physical health and I began to steer my life more in that direction, learning all that I could to support people to heal, to grow and to flourish. Flourishing doesn’t have to mean 100% physical, emotional and mental health. I’ve known many people who have disease or physical challenges who are flourishing mentally, spiritually and emotionally. I’ve also known people who are physically well and no obvious physical challenges who are debilitated by their mental and emotional issues. There’s no judgement here. It’s about YOU and what you understand about yourself and what YOU value in life and whether these values are being compromised or fulfilled in your daily expression. It’s also about knowing that it’s ok to NOT be ok!

Throughout my years as a Nurse as well as studying the myriad of courses expected of me I also studied and qualified in therapies and life coaching. I KNEW this was where I needed to be. I always felt stuck in the middle some how as the therapy I was involved in seemed to focus on healing the past and the life coaching was about creating a future. I tried to separate the two as the general word on the streets (now I’m showing my age ~ who even says that nowadays?), was that therapy is very different from life coaching and you can’t mix the two. WRONG!!!

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!

Sorry … for anyone who knows me I’m not usual that confident or vocal, but it’s my experience that therapy and life coaching together are essential in some situations.

I’ve had life coaching sessions with people who could not move forward because of issues that were related to the past and were deeply connected to their emotional health. You can throw as much NLP and other change modalities that you have at your disposal and they simply won’t or CAN’T change!! It’s demoralising for them (and you as the practitioner) and something or someone is to blame, right?? Usually…

1. The client
2. The Practitioner
3. The approach

Therapeutic Life Coaching is all about the people! It’s all about YOU and your uniqueness. It’s about listening, hearing, understanding, healing the past and creating the future. BUT, it’s also about living in the present, acknowledging the past and still having hope for a brighter future.

Your past doesn’t determine your future

Unless it does! The past is determining your future if secondary gain is present and keeping you locked into certain patterns of behaviour and repetitive thought processes. That’s where Therapeutic Life Coaching comes in. It supports and plans for your future and STOPS to hear and honour your past, whilst living in the present. With gentle but powerful techniques such as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Tapping, hypnotherapy and mindfulness, I can hold a safe space for you to pause and breathe and connect you to your authentic self. Allowing you to be (without judgement);

who you are, when you are, where you are

But remember the journey IS the thing. Not the end product. I’ve struggled all of my life with crippling and debilitating negative beliefs about myself and in the end you have to surrender to the fact that you are who you are (with all your imperfections and struggles) and that is someone pretty darned wonderful, in my book!!!

And then supporting you to the next stage of your life, and sometimes, free from what was holding you back. “Is it that simple Sam?” I hear you cry!!! I didn’t say it was simple! Although for some, it can be. Becoming aligned and shifting perspectives and beliefs can absolutely bring freedom. I do believe that we were created to be far more resilient than we actually are at times and we have been created with incredible internal resources that we often don’t fully know or understand how to process and deal with life’s challenges. Often we hold beliefs that hardships shouldn’t happen to us, so when they do we’re so shocked we can be stuck for years. At some stage wouldn’t it be great to become free of that, and often, you can!

So, I’ll leave it there this week ~ but do know that I’m here for YOU! Just get in touch and let’s have your first FREE Therapeutic Life Coaching introductory session and you can decide from there, ok? What have you got to lose?

Have a great week,

Love & blessings, Sam ❤

Our spiritual health and expression is absolutely essential to experiencing well-being. Our spiritual aspect is the unseen component that some have likened to The Matrix. What you see on the outside, although is real, is not the actual full true reality of who you are. Yes it’s one aspect of you and a very important aspect of you. It’s the aspect of you that involves the physical body, that carries the emotional and mental characteristics of who you are, which are the expression of your soul. But the physical you is mortal and not an eternal aspect of yourself, and we are eternal beings living within a created time. Time was created for us to function within, in the natural, but the reality is there is a huge expression of yourself that is outside of time.  Hence why when we experience a trauma of some kind it can be coded within the cells of our bodies and with specialised help we can be taken back to the time when that event happened and be healed ‘back then’ for the future us now. Also, we can use our powerful imaginations to day dream and think about us doing something incredible or imagine being somewhere beautiful and as we think and really feel how we would feel if we were actually there we will send a message of well-being to the cells within our body. Our brains won’t know the difference. We have the capacity to live outside of time, but it’s yet to be realised.

Of course learning to live within the moment with a mindfulness practice is essential, but even then, to realise that within that moment you have everything you need because there is a huge expanse of timeless energy that you are living within is powerful. Spirituality is entirely within that dimension of timelessness and although interpreted in a myriad of philosophical & often religious ways I think it’s helpful to focus on the love aspect of that spiritual dimension, as we are wired for love. Regardless to the seeming inconsistencies in the holy scriptures at times, I believe in Jesus. I don’t follow a religion, although Christianity has developed a structured religion around Jesus, I believe in a relationship with a father who loves us, all of us. I also believe that the spiritual dimension, although cannot be seen with the naked eye is vibrant with energy and life forces, good and bad. So, it’s important to be careful about what you are involved in as avenues of harm and deception are just as real there as they are in the natural world.

I would love you to discover your spiritual life by connecting with the creator of everything and entering into a relationship with this creator. After all who understands and knows the beauty of the art better than the artist who created it? Again, as mentioned last week, as with my reference to  you not needing to fully understand the workings of the human body, right at the cellular level for you to believe and accept that is does what scientists says it does, you equally don’t need to fully know and understand theology and the full workings of the universe or how the ‘God’ thing works to believe that it simply does. Your beliefs about yourself and the world are powerful, and as the saying goes,

whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right!

So, if you choose to not get taffled up in the semantics of what the so-called inconsistencies mean within life’s philosophical and religious offerings and focus on believing in a loving creator who cares deeply about YOU!  He, who knows the power of embracing and producing the fruits of the spirit,

love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law!

Galatians 5:22-23

Can we dare to believe that it could be that simple? Does life and life’s meaning have to be complex and complicated? Sure there will always be complex and complicated unanswered questions that scholars will sit, debate and discuss, but I care about YOU finding who YOU are and being at peace with yourself. There is no room for comparison or competition here. There’s no room for arguments and dissension. I’m not inviting them on this journey! So don’t bring them to the table. Set aside your proclivities just for now. Give yourself room to grow. If you’re so full of yourself and your pre-conceived ideas then they’ll be no space for you to grow. It’s not about you embracing my beliefs or ways, it’s about being open to you discovering that there could possibly be more, and the more is not always the most complex and complicated. The more is often being the simple and having a childlike faith. Knowing that when you become connected to your creator and who you are created to be then a peace that transcends all understanding will guard your heart and mind.

Have a peace-filled week and may blessings chase you down the street 🥰

Sam xx

The physical aspect of who we are is a huge area that encompasses all of the biological components of this incredibly well thought out vessel that carries us around every day. The human body has 78 complex organs that work together to keep us well and healthy. It can be helpful to consider that the larger organs break down into smaller structural arrangements, such as the organ system (e.g. respiratory system), the organs (e.g. lungs), then tissues, cells, organelles, molecules, atoms and subatomic particles.  

“Hold on Sam, I didn’t sign up for a human biology lesson!”

I hear you cry!  The reason I’ve added this is because, interestingly, the tiniest cells within the organs of the body are not just helping the specific organ itself to function and maintain homeostasis, they are also vibrating with energy. We can influence this and they are continuously sending messages throughout the body and brain which can bring either health or harm. You don’t need to have a masters in the anatomical and physiological aspects of the function of the human body to be able to influence your health. You just need to accept that it does and leave the medics and scientists to explore the how.

The physical aspect also involves the role that a well-balanced diet, gut health and exercise has in ‘feeding’ us physically with healthy or harmful messages. Our bodies, again, right down to the cellular level, need certain elements to thrive and without them they can distort and produce similar unhealthy and distorted cells. There are also elements that our cells really DON’T need or, indeed, want as they cause weakening and corruption of the cells at some level. The human body has been designed to miraculously restore itself and withstand A LOT of mistreatment, so it’s not all doom and gloom, as we’ve just established that the human body can restore itself when changes are made. With intentional and more conscious living we can influence our daily decisions and choices and although at the beginning may feel clumsy and uncomfortable, they will become the new normal.

So, this week think about what you’re feeding your body. What messages are you sending it? How are you nourishing it and caring for it? Again ~

We’re not inviting guilt or shame on this journey

So don’t waste ANY time feeling bad about what you have or haven’t done so far and just decide today to make some changes. Small consistent changes make a BIG difference further down the line, right? And if you need help with this then get in touch and lets have a few sessions to get you off to a good start, OK?

Love & Blessings, Sam

We are now going to look at some of the key features of EFT Tapping to understand why it’s such a wonderful technique to incorporate into your everyday life.

It can bring quick results

EFT Tapping can often work very quickly on an issue that is causing you to feel upset and anxious as it brings a level of mindful awareness to what you’re experiencing and validates how you’re feeling. You therefore feel understood and heard. Feeling validated, or understood and heard, is an essential part of our ability to process a situation and be prepared to move past it. So often an issue lingers within us because we haven’t felt heard or validated.

It is gentle and can contain your emotions

EFT Tapping can help to hold gently but effectively, or contain, an issue for you while you are working through it over a period of time. If an issue rises up for you that is really quite emotionally upsetting, then you can tap and breathe through the issue slowly and with calm intention. As you tap, a signal is sent to the Amygdala that tells your mind and body that you are not under threat, so your body, mind and emotions start to calm down. Tapping is shown to have a similar effect on brain waves as REM sleep. People often find themselves yawning half-way through tapping.

However, if what you are facing feels overwhelming to you and you really feel as though you’re not ready to deal with the issue in that moment, then you can use tapping to  honour that, soothe your emotions and return to the situation another time. Once you have reflected on the situation with new awareness, you can either continue to use the EFT tapping skills you have gained or seek out a qualified EFT practitioner to support you and guide you through it. Give me a call, I’m here for YOU!

It works better if you are really specific 

Although it could be helpful to tap on something like procrastination or low self-esteem, they are considered more ‘global issues’, so to help to be specific, start tapping at times when you’re aware you are procrastinating or if you are facing an issue that you believe low self-esteem is causing, to use the examples.  This will help you to pin the global issue down to specific scenarios that you hope to overcome in future, but that you also know are a symptom of the global issue.

There’s often an initial event that happened, often when we were younger, that set this negative belief in motion. For the most part, those early memories are at a sub-conscious level so typically not easily retrievable in full by our memory, so there’s no need to go digging around looking for it. Just start tapping on events that are happening with you now and your mind will automatically sort out the background issues. Evidence of this includes gaining awareness of how present events that are part of a global issue affect you.  When you notice how the global issue hindered, hurt or embarrassed you in some way, for example, you can again tap on that too to clear the negative energy from your body, mind and emotions.

If your feelings become overwhelming and painful memories rise up, you may benefit from consulting a qualified EFT practitioner to support and guide you to a place of peace and freedom, so get in touch ~ I’m here for YOU!

Borrowing benefits

How about joining an EFT Tapping group? There are number of benefits in group EFT, not least economic, but also tapping into issues that others are tapping on, so sharing, or borrowing, the benefits. For instance, if you’re in a group and someone shares that they are feeling upset about an issue and the group leader is tapping through the issue with that individual, when the rest of the group taps along, they will benefit from the tapping as well. The rest of the group won’t need to repeat the words the individual is speaking while tapping, as they won’t necessarily relate, but just  the simple act of tapping will send a calming message to the body, mind and emotions of all the group members.  So, consider using this wonderful tool with friends or in support groups where sharing personal issues may be difficult.

The results are typically lasting

After EFT Tapping, the issue raised is typically resolved and the results lasting. If it’s a deeper issue that you’re working on, either by yourself or with an EFT practitioner, then it can take a few sessions to work through the many aspects of the issue. If, however, you find that an issue isn’t resolved, then usually it’s because there are other aspects related to the difficulty that need to be discovered. For more generalised day-to-day anxieties or stressors however, EFT Tapping is highly effective for reducing the heightened emotional and physical responses we experience and bring us to a calmer, more centred place.

You can tap silently  

Silent tapping is an essential tool when you’re in a situation where speaking out loud isn’t possible. Maybe you’re at work in a meeting and you’re finding it difficult; you can take some slow quiet deep breaths and tap on the finger points under the table. Or if you’re sat on a train and you’re thinking about something that’s upsetting you, again you can tap quietly on your finger points, the karate chop point or gently on your collar bone. You can either take slow deep breaths and bring your focus to your breathing or you could go through the set-up phrase and reminder phrases in your mind until you have processed the situation.

You can also silently tap if you can’t find the words, you don’t feel like talking, or you simply don’t want to talk about a situation.  Maybe you’re an EFT practitioner and your client does not wish to speak out loud but is remembering a situation and needs to remain connected and present with the memory. You can tap quietly on the client’s karate chop point or finger points and hold a space of kindness for them while they process the memory and move towards no longer having an intense emotional response to it.

You initially focus on the negative

This can sometimes feel unusual as you might feel as though focusing on the negative could increase the problem. I’m a firm believer in the use of positive affirmations, however, especially when in a relaxed state and brain waves are in the Alpha frequency, as in that state the subconscious is especially open to new information. There’s definitely a place for positive affirmations of course, but with EFT we focus initially on the negative issue or emotion as this is what we want to clear.

We also want to give our brains time to find memories that relate to that emotion or issue in our past so that they can be re-processed and cleared of their negative impact. As stated earlier, those negative issues may have been trapped in the body at a cellular level, when from the time of the initial cause to now we’ve not been able to fully process our difficult, confounding or traumatic experiences.

So, with EFT we tap on the negative emotion or issue first to highlight, isolate and validate it and give ourselves time to work through it and clear it. It’s often good to start with the most dominant negative issue first and once that appears to have subsided, work on another that may lay beneath.  Then carry on tapping round the emotions as they arise until your overall emotional response is calmer and we feel more grounded and centered.

It can be used with other healing modalities such as prayer, meditation and hypnosis

When I practice EFT Tapping on myself nowadays, I very rarely use it in isolation. I’m an avid meditator and believe in the power of prayer, so will often combine these with tapping to bring greater personal meaning and spiritual connection. For example, I may commit my meditation to God through an opening prayer and invite Him into my meditation time. As I’m meditating, I notice, without making a judgement, what rises up for me, and if I notice negative intrusive thoughts during my meditation then I’ll pause and tap like this, for example:

“Even though I have this intrusive thought that is unsettling me, I love and accept who I am. Even though I am having thoughts that are unsettling me, I deeply and completely accept myself. Even though I’m noticing that what happened yesterday is still bothering me, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Then I’ll do a few rounds of tapping on whatever the issue is that is unsettling me, using the reminder phrase. I’ll also check in with myself throughout, asking myself (and God) questions, such as:

“Why am I getting this intrusive thought? Why is the situation from yesterday still upsetting me? What does this feeling remind me of? Do I have any healing that I need to invite today so that I can be free and continue on my journey into wholeness?”

If as a reader, with or without faith in God, you are wondering why I include spirituality in my EFT practice,  it’s because I believe that God knows everything about us and knows what hinders our experience of joy and freedom. He knows what has happened in our past and longs for us to experience healing and fullness of life. Therefore, if we invite God into our experiences, He will lead us to a spacious place within our self where we can find healing, love, peace and acceptance. 

I’ve had some incredibly powerful and profound experiences during meditation/prayer and EFT Tapping. God longs for us to be whole and experience fullness of life. He grieves with us when He sees our suffering and, I believe, wants us to experience healing.

Get in touch if you need some support. I’m here for YOU!

Love & blessings, Sam

Our emotional health involves the feeling aspect of self and the neurophysiological changes that take place within the individual in response to various events or situations that they experience, whether good, bad or indifferent. Our emotions are a beautiful gift if we learn to understand how to process them in a way that serves us better, and the greater good of the community and the wider aspects of the world. If we develop emotional intelligence then not only will we enjoy life and feel better able to soothe ourselves through the difficult emotional experiences that we all face, we will also be able to ‘read’ and understand others more easily too. If we learn to understand emotions in an intentional way and adopt skills and techniques to manage them effectively then we will enhance our experience of daily joy and happiness significantly.

Your response to anything, is everything & how you do anything is how you do everything

That wasn’t meant to be a tongue twister but connecting the 2 different sayings together actually makes us think more deeply about what is being said. So take a moment and breathe ~ and now read it again, and keep reading the quote until you know it’s dropped deeper into your understanding. We’ve talked before about learning how to respond to something/someone rather than react. Take a moment to breathe and simply feel, accepting where you’re at as you won’t be there forever. Sometimes we have to learn to let go as what we try and resist we experience more of in life. You’re not accepting that negative feelings or experiences are ok (although in reality they are a natural part of life), you’re accepting that this where you’re at at the moment, and that is ok!

Within embracing a more intentional approach to understanding your feelings and subsequent emotions you will have the added joy of no longer taking how others behave around you personally. We can often exhaust ourselves emotionally by being negatively affected by the emotions of those we come into contact with and especially those we are in relationship with. If you’re an empath like me then internalising the emotional presentation of others can have a devastating effect on your mental and emotional state, as some times you don’t know whose emotions you’re feeling and you can think that they’re ALL yours.

When they’re not!

Learning skills and techniques that, once adopted into your everyday life, become a natural process for you will breathe life into your weary and exhausted state. It will breathe life into you emotionally and mentally, but it will also breathe life into you physically and spiritually. Your emotional life is a powerful force for good or bad and it is within your ability to do something about. It can, and does, take a tremendous amount of courage though to become more consciously aware of this aspect of yourself, but the rewards and benefits outweigh the difficulties; and the difficulties, although extremely painful, become the gifts that shape us into being the gift we always were created to be in the world.

Despite the need to be more consciously aware of your emotional health to improve your well-being there is still the need to self soothe and be gentle with yourself, especially now as we begin to emerge from the isolation of the pandemic. A dear friend and gifted poet, Joanna Hargreaves, recently wrote this and I thought I’d share it with you today. May it bless you as it blessed me!

Until next week, lots of love and blessings, Sam x

I love the idea of being a well-balanced individual. I’m pretty sure I’ve not always been one and I do believe it is something we need to intentionally do. I know, I know ~ I always seem to be going on about doing things intentionally. It’s been my experience that if we just leave things to chance then we’re likely to become out of balance. So, let’s look at what the word balance means.

The noun is ~

an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright

The verb is ~

to put something in a steady position so that it does not fall

I especially like the verb definition when it comes to well-being. The idea that if we’re not balanced then we won’t be in steady position and could fall!! When the challenges of life come then we do need to be sure that we’re not only rooted in something solid BUT we’re also living well-balanced lives so that we are in a steady and grounded position. Resilience is a result of this, which is having the ability to recover quickly after a challenge ~ a struggle ~ a hardship. Balance is also one of the fundamental keys of having a healthy sense of well-being.

So what areas of our lives do we need to give some attention to, to ensure that we are well balanced and have a healthy sense of well-being? This is not an exhaustive list as there are many ways that we can address balance in our lives but today we’ll look at 4 key areas ~ physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual. Although I will outline these areas, how you can balance these areas in your life can require a multi-faceted response. There will be many ways that you can nurture these areas and you need to find what works for YOU! Sometimes this involves getting help and support from professionals or doing some research yourself. It can involve talking to family and friends and getting support for the changes you need to make. The main goal today is for you to reflect on each of these areas and consider writing down what you are currently doing to nurture and nourish those areas and bring balance. Then consider what you know you need to do for your own well-being. Remember we’re not inviting guilt or shame on this journey, it’s just a futile waste of your precious time. So don’t waste ANY time thinking about what you haven’t done so far. Decide that you are ONLY going to feel good about this. It’s within your power to do so, right? Ok, good ~ so let’s look at the areas:

Physical – this area includes what you eat, meeting your nutritional needs, what exercise you do, how you sleep, do you drink enough water, personal hygiene, habits such as smoking/ drinking alcohol, how you treat your body, posture & alignment, getting out in nature, expressing gratitude to your body for carrying you around every day!

Psychological – this area includes your mental health, your thought patterns, your beliefs about yourself and the world, are your thoughts supporting you, how you manage stress and anxiety, the rules that you have in your subconscious that you live by that make it either really easy for you to be happy or really difficult.

Emotional – this area is linked to your mental health (although ALL the areas are linked as we are holistic beings). What you think and feel, do your emotions control you, how much control do you have of your emotions, can you experience an emotion and understand it, how emotionally mature are you, how emotionally intelligent are you, do your react with high expressed emotions to situations or respond calmly.

Spiritual – this area includes our own personal beliefs and philosophies, including religion and culture, it includes meaning and purpose, it’s the part of us that is drawn to hope, how we connect with others relationally, the invisible footprint that we leave in the world, a place where we can flow freely without physicality and commune with God.

All of these areas cross over and connect as they feed into our need for balance and lead us to a place of flow and ease. If we do something to nourish and nurture each of these areas then we will find that we will have greater resilience and a healthier sense of well-being. Why not choose one or two things that you could give some purposeful attention to today. It doesn’t have to be big. So often it is the little changes that are done consistently that bring about the biggest transformations in our lives. So, it’s ok to start small ~ just start! 😃

I look forward to seeing you next week friends,

love & blessing, Sam ❤

The beliefs we have about ourselves and the many aspects of the world we inhabit, influence everyday how we think and feel. When we consider ‘well-being’ then we always have to consider that we’re talking about more than just how we physically feel, right? We are holistic beings after all and what we think impacts how we feel ~ how we feel can influence how we respond ~ how we respond then sends either a healthy or unhealthy signal to the cells in our bodies. So for today let’s just look at the area of the mind and how our beliefs can effect our well-being. Beliefs are defined as;

An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof ~ trust, faith, or confidence in (someone or something)

I find that definition fascinating as it states that;

1. A belief does not have to have proof
2. It’s something the individual has confidence in

Which tells me that we can believe something potentially ‘wrong’!! We can have negative and bad beliefs about ourselves (and others) which will hinder our personal growth and potential for happiness. So how did our beliefs form? Well, there are universal beliefs that many of us hold, such as we believe that the sun will rise in the day and will set at night. We believe that spring follows winter, which leads into summer and then autumn. We believe that the opposite of up is down and that the law of gravity keeps our feet on the ground!

Our personal beliefs are formed as we’re growing up and are influenced by such things as our parenting, culture, life experiences and what others may speak over us or to us. Imagine a table ~

For example, if when you were a child somebody constantly said that you were clumsy and uncoordinated you would likely grow up believing that this is true. The first incident placed the first table leg and then any time you dropped something, tripped over or the somebody who originally said it, says it again, erects further table legs, reinforcing the belief so that it is strong within you. You might avoid anything that required coordination and limit your life experiences in life as a result, just because someone has spoken that over you. It may never have been true but as they say

If you say you can or you can’t, you’re right …

What we believe about ourselves does have an impact. We’ve said before that words are powerful, and the phrase,

sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me

is NOT TRUE!! Names absolutely CAN hurt you and can influence what you believe about yourself. Many of us believe unkind and horrible things about ourselves that we often have no idea why, but all we know is it feels true. It can become an unhelpful cycle in that what you think affects how you feel, and what you feel affects how you think and the whole ‘chicken and egg’ scenario comes into play. ie. what came first?

Can we do anything about this? YES!!! It takes some intentional thinking and sometimes we might need to see a life coach, a therapist or a counsellor to support us with this, especially if our beliefs about ourselves are really damaging our sense of self worth and sabotaging our well-being.

Take some time alone in a peaceful place where you won’t be disturbed (turn off your mobile), to reflect and think about what you believe about yourself. Write down any beliefs that you have that you know are not good (regardless to whether you think they’re true as they’re probably not ~ you just think they are). Then allow yourself the time to reflect on what beliefs you would really like to believe about yourself, and then believe it or not, choose to believe those instead. Wow! That’s incredibly simplistic Sam and can’t be that easy! You’re right, some aren’t, but actually some are. Some of the beliefs we have are weak and you can sweep the table legs from under them and the belief will come crashing down. You won’t know until you try and if the belief doesn’t change then start to intentionally speak out what you do want to believe about yourself as though you already are that, not just wishing for it. Example,

I am loved and I am worthy of love

rather than ~ “I wish I was loved“

Look for guided meditations on YouTube that speak the affirmations that you know you need to hear and allow yourself to relax and let the positive message wash over you like clean, fresh spring water cleansing and refreshing you. When you enter a time of meditation or relaxation then your brain waves are in Alpha and your subconscious is open to receive all the good messages that you need. It can take time but why not decide today to make a start on changing any negative beliefs that you have about yourself that are not supporting your well-being.

I’m here if you need me,

many blessings, Sam 🥰