A still mind, knows no suffering

It is rarely our life that is difficult for us, but more of thoughts and feelings about our life. 

When we judge, blame and criticise, we resist what is in front of us, and instead leave the present moment and go off into thought.

All the ‘problems’ we experience in life are actually our thoughts about what is happening for us.

When we leave the present moment, life does indeed become incredibly difficult. In order to understand something and solve it, the mind will exaggerate, distort and go off into the past or future – making a simple scenario much bigger than it really is.

When we practice Mind Calm Meditation, we are learning to be like a body of still water. We let the mind rest and let simple be-ing be enough. There is no need to fix change or improve anything that is happening in that moment. We simply allow all and everything that comes up to come up.

It may for some sound scary or boring, but the reality is often an experience of awe and deep calm. 

It takes effort to resist life and thinking is very tiring. The simple act of be-ing and allowing is incredibly restful for the body.

Stress is able to melt away. We find ourselves refreshed, feeling more centred and balanced, and better able to deal with the challenges ahead of us.

Stay present throughout the day

Mind Calm Meditation is a great way to keep ourselves present as we go throughout our day. It is also very healing. The 10 Calm Thoughts are designed to help us relieve historic stress and have a more healthy and balanced relationship with life. This helps us reduce the amount of stress we accumulate moving forwards. 

Having a more healthy and balanced relationship with life enables us to invest more in doing the things we love and experiencing more from them in return. 

Mind Calm Meditation helps us to have a better relationship with our body, our friends and families, our career and our world around us. It helps us to see things as they really are rather than through the filters of our past experiences. 

For this reason Mind Calm Meditation is great for those that experience depression, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, poor health, difficult relationships, low mood and a general disinterest in life.

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To find out more and to learn about the Mind Calm Meditation technique, visit www.MindDetoxTunbridgeWells.co.uk/meditation. From here you can watch a video on The Hidden Causes of a Busy Mind, and learn a simple way of experiencing a Calm Mind anytime you want.

And if you would like to learn, the next Mind Calm one day workshop is on Weds 18th April, with 2 places remaining. To book, visit www.universe.com/mindcalm.

Counselling, Psychotherapy, Coaching, Mind Detox and Meditation – which one when?

Hi, my name is Becci, and I am a Mind Detox Practitioner and a Meditation & Development Group leader. I help people going through mild depression, anxiety, stress related illnesses and tough life experiences to turn their life around so they can be at peace with what is happening and move forwards to fulfil their potential.

One of the challenges I know people face when life gets difficult is knowing what kind of support they need. They might be going through things like a divorce, a stressful work experience, postnatal depression, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction, a health crisis or they find themselves blocked an unable to move forwards, sometimes even too afraid to leave the house.

When we get into one of these situations, the last thing we need to do is have to work out what can help us, so it’s good to know a bit about what sort of support and help is out there so you know who to go to for help, when.

Mental health, it’s worth paying attention to

According to Mind, one in four people will experience some kind of mental health illness

According to the UK Mental Health Charity Mind, one in four people will experience some kind of mental health illness in their lifetime such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder. I would argue, taking into account short periods of mental health issues such as exam stress or bereavement, that this figure is far more like four in four people will experience some kind of significant mental illness or mental health stress at some point in their life.

Once a poor distant relative of physical health, it is my view that mental health is worthy of a place in any healthcare system as much as physical health (and spiritual health). To me as a Mind Body expert, I feel this even more strongly as I know that the body is a manifestation of the mind, and the number one cause of all illness in this world is “stress”.

Our mind is a powerful tool that influences our behaviour, relationships and ultimately our wellbeing – so in my view it is an essential part of any healthcare and wellbeing programme. Our mind, quite literally, has the capacity to shut us down, or drive us to do things we wouldn’t normally do – so it is important we have a healthy relationship with it.

So what does each technique do?

I’m going to start with counselling, as this is the oldest recognised profession by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. The word “Counsel” means to give advice, yet ironically, a counsellor’s job is to support an individual experiencing personal, social, or psychological problems and difficulties, without giving advice. A counsellor will provide a safe and confidential place, so people can explore their difficulties, free of judgement and opinion. A counsellor might use skills such as active listening, clarification, reflection and effective questioning skills to help the client to see things more clearly in a way that is perhaps not possible with family and friends. Counselling tends to remain in the domain of the present moment, looking at ways of expressing the emotions of and ways of dealing with current challenges. Counselling is not designed to help you change the way you behave, it designed to help you to cope better with the resources you already have.

Psychotherapy is literally therapy for our psyche (the conscious and unconscious mind) and looks at how our thoughts influence our present behaviour. This may mean exploring past experiences, as a way resolving our present life challenges. This is appropriate when we still carry trauma from difficult experiences that cause us to behave differently now. Psychotherapy may ask us to reprocess old experiences so that we can release them from our consciousness. There are many different styles of psychotherapy that work with us and influence us in different ways. Some look at your experiences from an analytical perspective, some from a behavioural and others from the sensations and experiences you experience in your body. The goal of psychotherapy is to resolve current challenges that are mental in origin so we can lead a healthy and fulfilling life.

Coaching is way of developing people’s skills and abilities, and of boosting performance so that they can reach their full potential. This may be done when an individual has a problem, or done proactively to get the best out of a person. A coach and their client will set a defined intention or goal for a session or number of sessions such as change career and then take a number of steps to reach that goal. Like counselling, coaching believes the individual has all the resources within to complete their desired outcome, but unlike counselling, a coach may instruct, train and actively aim to develop skills within an individual to help them achieve that outcome.  Coaching doesn’t focus on the past. Instead, if issues from the past surface as a reason for someone not being able to move forwards in life, a coach would refer this person on to get help specifically for that, before coming back to the coaching programme to move forwards through focused action and skills development to reach their goal.

Mind Detox, like counselling, psychotherapy and coaching, is talking based. Taking the positive goal setting elements from coaching, in Mind Detox you start by getting clear on what it is you want to let go of, or gain giving the mind a positive final destination to aim for. In a Mind Detox session, we work with the Unconscious Mind, the seat of all our behaviours, memories and healing. The aim of the session is to clear a historic reason why a problem or issue is currently showing up in your life. Mind Detox is very direct and efficient and discovering and resolving the cause of your problems. A Mind Detox session can be used to clear difficult feelings and emotions around a past experience so you can move on and be at peace, or to resolve a current life challenge such as a fear of heights, inexplicable weight gain or health conditions that may have an emotional origin.

 

Meditation helps us to let go of overthinking and become aware of our true nature.

Meditation, unlike the other three is something that can be done whether we have challenges in our life or not. Part of a healthy self care programme, meditation helps us to let go of overthinking and become more aware of our true nature. Done through a number of techniques, true meditation has the ability to put space between our thinking and the true essence of who we are. It is a path of self-exploration and a way of being better able to let go of thinking when it is not needed. Meditation is useful for everyone, but those that want a deeper connection to Self or find they are unable to let go of thoughts and/or feelings tend to find it most helpful of all. In meditation we learn to appreciate that we have a mind, but it is not who we are. Unlike Mind Detox or coaching, we are not looking to change our mind, simply our relationship to it. And unlike counselling, we are not looking to talk out our problems, instead letting them go knowing we do not need to hold on to the content. By doing so, our mind has far less influence over us and we become more connected to the wisdom of our whole body. Many find the benefits of meditation is an increased awareness of life and clarity of body, mind and soul.

 

Which one when?

It can be tricky to know which technique you need when, so here’s a little breakdown to help.

Counselling is great when you just want to talk and have someone listen and help you problem solve your challenge yourself. A counsellor will be a strong and supportive person that see’s you as whole and capable, and will believe in your abilities and skills to create your own solutions.

Psychotherapy is great when you want to talk about your problems and find out where they are coming from. Psychotherapy mixes counselling skills with the ability to look at how the past shapes your present and can help you to develop strategies to cope. This is useful when you want to learn new ways to deal with a problem and let go of difficult feelings from the past.

Coaching is great when you want to achieve a goal. Coaches will help you to create a goal/goals and a framework to complete them within, so you can achieve, even when they seem a bit scary. It is a positive, forward focusing activity that draws on your existing skills and talents and facilitates you learning new ones.

Mind Detox is great when you know or suspect something in your past is responsible for the problem you are experiencing in the present. A Mind Detox practitioner will help you discover and resolve the thought process and emotion behind your behavioural or health problem, without having to go into the whole story. Those that like Mind Detox do so because it is very quick to get to the core of the issue,  has a positive forward focus of getting well, and goes back only to remove the issues that hold you back. A counsellor, coach, health professional or meditation teacher may refer someone to a Mind Detox practitioner to remove a psychological block that is preventing them from moving forwards.

Meditation is something I would recommend people do at least once a day on a daily basis as part of a positive health care programme. It is a choice to purposefully rest the mind, (which reduces stress levels) and helps us to develop a strong sense of our true self. Different types of meditation have different benefits, with some being stronger at bringing mental clarity and letting go of old beliefs, whilst others help us become loving and accepting of our current circumstances and others develop a stronger connection to our spiritual side. A balanced meditation practice will do all three as well as allow us to pause and make choices from a place of love before we respond to stimulus. Meditation may help us clear old trauma simply through us becoming unattached from and letting go of thoughts and beliefs that no longer support us. Meditation does not however, help us to change our thoughts, which is the domain of psychotherapy, coaching and Mind Detox.

 

I hope the above goes some way to explaining the differences, which can be confusing to those first starting out exploring mental health. It may also throw light on where a different approach to the one you are currently taking may be helpful – for example, learning to meditate to help with anxious thoughts, rather than trying to change every anxious thought we have – or moving from counselling to coaching to achieve a particular outcome. The most important thing to do is to discuss what you want to get out of a session or sessions with your potential counsellor, therapist or coach. You need to make sure you are confident they understand your challenges, what you want to accomplish and they have the necessary skills and experience for the challenge you bring. In my experience, it is important to find someone you can trust and with whom you have a good relationship, so you can relax into the process and know you are taken care of.

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Becci Godfrey is a Mind Detox practitioner and trainer, Reiki Master and Teacher and Equine Assisted Learning Facilitator. From her base in Mark Cross, East Sussex she helps hundreds of people locally and all over the world overcome their life, emotional and health challenges to fulfil their potential.

To find out more, or find out what up and coming courses are available you can visit Becci’s professional profile here or follow Mind Detox Tunbridge Wells on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To heal or not to heal?

Hello lovely people!

Well hello and welcome to the May newsletter from Mind Detox Tunbridge Wells! I am sat in my summer house as I write, listening to the birds, some lambs bleeting and the wind and enjoying a garden that is just coming into bloom. As you can see Daisy the cat is sat with me, which is lovely – I love how my cats hang out with me whilst I work. I am sure they are a very big reason I am self employed and work from home – they intend it that way! Sharing this picture is two fold – because it also gives you an idea of where we hold a lot of the events we run here. My Tuesday morning meditation group, theAscension Weekends, our June Detox Weekend and the Holistic Days all make as much use of my garden space as much possible. I am also well know for setting my Reiki couch up in the garden in summer and giving barefoot treatments from there too! I am enormously lucky to live where I do, and I don’t take it for granted for one second. I also love making it available for others to share and experience, so they may be uplifted in the same way I am daily. The chance to walk bare foot on freshly cut grass, the sound of birdsong, being surrounded by nature is enormously healing – and has long been a passion of mine to bring into the work I do. I have long felt that people would overcome sadness, depression and anxiety so much quicker if they could connect into the rhythm of nature and life and be reminded of their inner beauty and true essence. So here it is, here is my garden, I’ve not long cut the grass, the birdsong is amazing and there are flowers in bloom, will I be seeing you in it soon?

What is healing? I wanted to talk a little this month about ‘healing’, what it is and why some are so interested in it. The best description I have ever seen for the concept of ‘healing’ is that it means: to make whole Personally I came into the concept of healing from two angles – one was a deep sense of knowing of what it was and how it operated and the other was kicking and screaming because it went against everything I had ever been taught.Whilst having a peripheral interest in healing, it wasn’t until I found myself with crippling M.E. in my 20’s with limited future prospects that I was drawn to look at the concept and educate myself on the topic. The concept of ‘healing’ was the only thing that offered any scope or potential at all to solve a seemingly insolvable illness like M.E. that has no obvious physical basis. They say you are never given more than you can handle and that things are meant to test us and help us evolve and grow and that is exactly what M.E. did for me. Ironically I was ahead of my time when in the early years of my illness I asked my GP to see if there was a mind-based cause for my M.E. When the standard Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and counselling approach didn’t work for me it took a leap of faith to return to it 10 years later and explore it via the Mind Detox Method. Thankfully the Mind Detox Method is set up to work specifically with the Mind-Body connection so it came as no surprise that I left my first ever consultation finally free of the last of the M.E. I had be doing for the last 28 years. My use of the word ‘doing’ is very deliberate in that last sentence. It is my experience that our illnesses are a reaction to the environment we live in and created by our mind as a way to survive. This might be our: ▪ Physical environment, i.e. chemicals, moulds, temperature, food, security ▪ Mental environment, i.e. thoughts, beliefs and self-talk ▪ Emotional environment, i.e. anger, hurt, sad, guilt, fear ▪ Tribal environment, i.e. family, school, workplace, culture ▪ Spiritual environment, i.e. the karmic lessons and journey we bring with us I had literally be ‘playing dead’ for 28 years to avoid an emotionally destroying situation. However, when I revisited it 28 years later I was emotionally mature and secure enough to see the experience from a different perspective and ‘make whole’ the memory by seeing the balance and the side of the equation. Most importantly I was able to tell my body and mind that that experience was now over and I no longer needed to respond to the stimulus, I could come back to the present moment. This huge release of stress saw me simply bouncing out of the session and committed to becoming a Mind Detox Practitioner! Mind Detox wasn’t the only thing that helped me. Before I did the last piece of the puzzle I had seen and tried many different approaches such as acupuncture, herbs, nutrition, diet changes, chiropractic, meditation, spiritual healing, Reiki healing, past life regression and of course I’ve been around horses all my life – though I didn’t know it at the time, I was getting healing from them too. Reiki, meditation, nutrition, being in nature with horses and chiropractic are the ones I have stuck with – not because I am still sick but because I know what I need to do to remain in balance and stay well. Plus we are all a work in progress – so even now I continue to heal and grow and the more I do, the more incredible and richly rewarding my experience of life becomes! Looking back, it is so easy for me to see why some of the treatments I tried worked and why some didn’t. In the beginning I was convinced I had a physical illness so focused mostly on physical treatments (and so does most of the medical profession). In reality the trauma was more tribal and emotional so that is where my efforts ultimately had the most gain. Unlike now, the help and support out there was much more patchy – whereas now some of these treatments are far more mainstream and health coaches like me a lot more available. To get through my experience (because I am a determined little so and so) I literally became my own coach and my own hero sticking with the journey till I got what I wanted and knew was possible. In hindsight, I had no idea how unbalanced, vulnerable and emotionally repressed I was when I was younger because it was my norm. I couldn’t have even have begun to have imagined the life I had now, I had to learn what was possible from inspiring people around me and to them I owe an enormous debt of gratitude. To heal, or not to heal? That is the question!

One word of wisdom. If you think my healing journey makes all it sound rather lovely and easy and the results wonderous then know this – healing can be very very tough. Somethings are easy to heal, but the big things are big things for a reason – you’ve probably been avoiding healing those for a while and it’ll be a bigger journey. To make an experience whole often means needing to revisit an experience albeit briefly, and that takes courage, a strong connection to yourself and a commitment to the process and the outcome. Not everyone has this in them, and it is something I pre-screen my clients to check that they have. Those that do, often have highs and lows on their journey and that is something I help support them with and guide them through. Some people get part way and stop, and that is also something I totally respect – this is their journey, so it is my job to work with them, not their job to work with me. Now I offer the service I gave myself from age 19 when I took on responsibility to heal myself. I now have nearly 20 years of healing experience and a strong understanding of what is required to make change for a range of illnesses and disorders. My last piece of wisdom is this. When you are ‘healed/whole’ you will not be the person you were before or during the experience. What you learn through your experiences causes you to grow and in some cases this can seem like a very dramatic change (mine was). This is not a bad thing, nor something to be resisted – but a part of the process and a learning in itself as you return back to your true nature and let go of what was holding you back. I hope that my story and my journey provides encouragement, support and is an inspiration to others that are thinking of making something of their challenges. As I wrote in one of my blog posts recently:

You are not lacking, but life see’s you are capable and throws open the door and you ask – could I really be that great? Yes you can. Take a deep breath, puff up your chest, and put that best foot forward…

Next dates Our full set of Meditation Dates are up on the Mind Detox Tunbridge Wells Facebook event page. Please either sign up there or drop me a reply email to confirm your place. Remember, you are welcome to join us from afar – simply sit down at the same time with the intention to connect to you inner stillness and that will be enough. Note! I was originally due to be away on 5th May, but that course has been cancelled so the Tuesday morning group will go ahead as usual!! ▪ Tues 5th May, 10.30-11.30am, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross ▪ Tues 5th May, 8-9.15pm – The Salt Cave, Vale Road, T Wells ▪ Tues 12th May, 10.30-11.30am, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross ▪ Tues 19th May, 10.30-11.30am, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross ▪ Tues 19th May, 8-9.15pm – The Salt Cave, Vale Road, T Wells ▪ Tues 26th May, 10.30-11.30am, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross ▪ Sat 23rd May, 9.30-4pm Holistic Day, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross – 3 spaces left ▪ Fri 12-14th June , Mark Cross Detox Weekend, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross (non-residential) ▪ Fri 10-12th July, First Sphere Meditation Weekend, The Old Farmhouse, Forest Farm, Mark Cross (non-residential)

And finally… Those of you that read last months newsletter would have read about a fund raising project for a wonderful individual going through their own experience with M.E. Thank you to all of you that donated, that you would do so for someone you have never met really touched my heart and makes me know this is a wonderful world. Here is the link for anyone that meant to but hasn’t got round to it yet: ▪ www.gofundme.com/boywhocanteat And here is a link to his blog if you want to see how he is doing: ▪ Me versus M.E. All profits from the Holistic Day in May will also be going towards this cause. Till we meet again, stay wonderful my friends and I wish you much love, joy and happiness.

Becci Harvey is a Mind Detox practitioner, Master Reiki Teacher and Equine Assisted Learning Facilitator. From her base in Mark Cross, East Sussex she helps hundreds of people locally and all over the world overcome their life, emotional and health challenges to fulfil their potential.

To find out more, or find out what up and coming courses are available you can visit Becci’s professional profile here.