Heart focused meditation
What I offer
I can guide you in the use of meditation and mindfulness practices to help you to find peace in a hectic life, connect to a sense of joy, feel refreshed and generally improve your wellbeing. A typical package of bespoke sessions comprises a beautiful blend of meditation, HeartMath™ and positive psychology techniques.
Heart Focused Meditation
To encourage thoughts to settle so we can experience peace of mind, heart focused meditation turns attention to the heart. With our focus resting at our centre, energy is gently directed away from the mind where it can be used to generate more thoughts.
The benefits from time spent sat in meditation stay with you after returning to your day to day activities. The Heart Practice helps us drop into quick moments of centring throughout our day, connecting us with our inner peace. We learn to pause, breathe and smile before responding to situations. We begin to embody the practice, and extend the 'carry over' effect.
Heartmath™
The Heartmath™ technique uses heart focused practices to help us re-enforce the benefits of meditation and are particularly helpful in times of stress. When our sympathetic nervous system (or fight and flight response) is activated, using the breath to regulate the heart beat helps send signals to the brain that we are safe, deactivating the sympathetic nervous system response.
Heartmath™ technology allows us to monitor Heart Rate Variability - the changing rhythms in our heartbeat- so we get tangible feedback of when the heart is in a 'coherent' state: one where our parasympathetic nervous system is activated, our rest and restore state. This helps reduce the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body, in favour of more beneficial hormones.
Positive Psychology
Up to 40% of our happiness has been shown to be dependent on our thoughts. Whilst meditation helps quieten rumination, positive psychology directs us to spend time thinking about things that will be beneficial.
Studying what makes us happy, rather than what makes us sad, positive psychology has identified a number of basic things that are essential for our mental wellbeing.
Deliberately taking time to savour our experience of these things, helps us to counter the 'negativity bias' - the human tendency to dwell on the negative aspects of our lives.
Nature Connection
Science is catching up with what we intuitively know: spending time in nature calms us, brings perspective, and enables happy feelings to flow. Meditating and practicing mindfulness whilst in a natural space can deepen your sense of wellbeing. Being with the stillness of a tree can encourage that same stillness to arise within us, we become one with the moment, a beautiful blessing.
Meditation starts to re-wire neural pathways, helping your body dwell in the 'rest and digest' parasympathetic nervous system. The more you practice, the more this ‘carry over effect’ spills over into day-to-day life.
“Wherever you go, go with all your heart”
– Confucius
