Holistic Feathers

Your mind is critical to achieving a happy, harmonious state of balance  – to achieving that elusive feeling of wellbeing.  Working together with your body and spirit, if you can learn to tap into the secrets to quieten your mind and learn how to re-evaluate and adjust your ways of reaction you will find your body responds immediately.

This is not ‘new’ thinking: way back in 1990 an article appeared in TIME entitled ‘Can the mind help cure disease‘.  Gradually we are seeing medical practitioners embracing the results that can be achieved by using our mind to battle health issues.  Brandon Bays, for example, has spent the past few years showing people how she made a miraculous recovery from illness via a process she called The Journey – and she is far from alone in this.

Dr. Candace Pert is an incredible scientist who talks of the “bodymind” (if ever you get a chance to, do read Molecules of Emotion, its a fantastic read).  Indeed, Dr Pert believes that you are already biologically “hardwired for bliss”; we all just need to learn how to tap into our own body’s unlimited natural living in joy and connecting to the divine.

We can easily tap into our personal power by way of meditation and visualisations, working on our own to quietly find the ways and methods which suits us best.

We share a little information about meditation and visualisations (the way we use them when teaching the Art of Being Still deep guided relaxation techniques) below.

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What exactly is meditation?

Everyone seems to do it, so what exactly IS it?

“Meditation is a means of relaxation, medical treatment and spiritual progression. The word itself finds its roots in the Latin ‘meditatio’ which means intense reflection or contemplation of an intellectual kind.”
- (c) MeditationExpert

Meditation is an essential daily feature for energy healing practitioners and therapists – for those of you who really struggle to unwind after a stressful day, you can’t beat it!

Meditation helps to quieten your mind and you will soon feel more relaxed and able to cope with whatever life throws at you, as well as being able to focus on your body’s needs and start to live in ‘you’ rather than just gliding along, trying to avoid life’s bumpy path.

For those who find it difficult to practice the more spiritual type of meditation, such as Transcendental Meditation, you may find it easier to try mindfulness meditation (Jack Kornfield and Jon Kabat-Zinn are two leading lights in this form of meditation – we list our recommended reading at the end of this page) or guided meditation or visualisations, such as those we teach in the Art of Being Still techniques – with practice these really do become easier and you find yourself automatically unwinding as soon as you press ‘play’ on the CD player!

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Guided visualisations

The Art of Being Still also uses guided imagery techniques (visualisations) which work directly with your emotional control centre of your brain. There are proven health benefits of guided visualisation and many top business people and sports personalities swear by the power of guided visualisation techniques alongside relaxation techniques to help them achieve their goals.

By using relaxation techniques and guided visualisations you will be tapping into an excellent resource which is simple to use and effective in easing chronic pain, speed up your body’s own innate healing abilities and reducing anxiety and stress.

This is a simple process which will take you no more than 15 – 30 minutes per day which will affect every single aspect of your body, and your life. You will enter in to a state of deep relaxation, a similar state to that of meditation.

By taking this small proportion of time each day you will find that somehow, as if by magic, you are able to fit even more into your daily routine and with a positive impact on your stress levels – just what we are looking for!

So in guided visualisations you will consciously imagine your goal – this is completely personal to you. As you relax and visualise your goal you let positive hormones flow throughout your body. Guided visualisation and relaxation techniques will send positive messages directly to your emotional control centre of your brain which will then swoosh throughout your immune system and autonomic nervous system which will positively affect your blood pressure, breathing and heart rate. As your body is unable to tell the difference between thoughts and reality, if you are consciously visualising positive outcomes, your body will respond in a positive, healthy way.

Guided visualisation has been proven to:
:: reduce chronic pain levels in people of all ages
:: lower blood pressure
:: help with depression and anxiety
:: reduce any distress present in people awaiting operations
:: help to prevent, or reduce the severity of, headaches and migraines
:: lower psychological distress for cancer patients
:: help people to curb excesses (such as reducing levels of drinking, quitting smoking etc.)

We highly recommend Anne Jones’ guided visualisation CDs if you are a beginner; with her gentle, soothing voice she leaves you able to focus on the visualisations, rather than focusing on an accent.

We stock a range of Anne’s CDs; if you are visiting us for a treatment, please do ask if you can listen to one of the visualisation CDs to see whether they may be perfect for you.

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