A Nudge Towards Balance.
Welcome to my first blog! Many of you will have received my newsletters when I was running Centre Anahata. I enjoyed the process of writing these and according to some feedback, so did others. This encouraged me to continue and develop my writing. I wish to use this space to share some of the insights, knowledge and experience I have gained on my personal and professional journey in holistic health. To get the ball rolling, I thought it would be useful to talk about the change of my business name from Centre Anahata (2013) to Yinspired Being (2023).
The Early Days of my Business.
I began working for myself in 2013. Even though I had been qualified in aromatherapy and reflexology for over ten years previously, it took a marriage breakdown, completion of a degree in medical anthropology and the introduction of a twice daily meditation practice, to have the confidence to go for it. This was despite my overwhelming lack of self-belief. I am sure many of us have at some point felt we are not good enough. It is something I had felt, subconsciously for most of my life. I did not think I knew enough, or was good enough to be able to offer holistic treatments as my occupation. Gaining a BSc degree as a mature student improved my self-esteem significantly. It also taught me to value the complementary therapy skills I had learnt many years earlier. As a newly single parent this was an invaluable realisation, as it enabled me to work for myself, therefore being more present for my children. One of my areas of interests during my studies was sustainable food production. This interest gave me insight into traditional, grass-root community ways of producing food such as permaculture. These insights, along with my renewed development of my holistic therapies and my developing yoga and meditation practices, shaped a vision for me to open a holistic health centre. A centre for community, connection, and healing. A place where people could connect with each other, themselves and share ideas, practices, and wholesome food. The original vision included a space for growing food and herbs, the produce of which would be served in the vegetarian café onsite. This idea came easily, but first I needed to develop my holistic health practice…what name could I use? Certainly the ‘Healing Hands’ idea I had in 2000 after my first course was no longer an option. I had worked with chakras as part of my own healing journey and at that time was working with my heart chakra, called Anahata in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. For a basic overview of the seven-chakra system see https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/7-chakras-for-beginners. In this system, Anahata governs unconditional love and is the bridge between the physical and spiritual dimensions of an individual being. Over the years I had experienced loss and grief, which I had tried to heal psychologically through talking therapies and self-help literature. This helped my understanding of myself (and others) but did not really help with overcoming some of the difficulties I experienced. The emotional pain was very physical for me, which was concentrated in my heart area and each time I experienced another loss, the old pain would resurface resulting in chest pain and panic attacks. The more I meditated, practiced yoga and received bodywork treatments, the more relief I experienced.
Centre Anahata.
The desire to share all I was learning was coming from this place of compassion for the suffering of others. This inspired me to call my business Centre Anahata as a way of expressing the central intention behind my work. Thus, my self-employment journey began and seven years later, mid-pandemic, the physical Centre Anahata came into existence.
It was during these two years that my most profound healing so far took place. Despite the restrictions at the time, we created a beautiful space in the heart of Chatham where we came together to practice, learn, and grow. An important aspect of the healing journey was to to live more consciously with a deep respect and love of our planet. We had a refill station of organic wholefoods and eco products and briefly ran a vegetarian café on Saturdays, called Unitea Cafe, in the hope to inspire others to make more environmentally sound choices. We were a part of the Medway Plastic Free Champion Scheme https://www.medway.gov.uk/info/200348/climate_change/1195/plastic_free_medway/2.
It was such a joy and it increasingly became a sanctuary for many. Lockdown began just before I was due to open and like many of us, I was unable to work for a while. I had somewhat of an existential crisis with the removal of my work and a recent break up…who was I, and what was my worth if I wasn’t offering treatments and classes? I had been reading and listening to Gabor Mate (https://compassionateinquiry.com/the-approach/) and decided to find a compassionate inquiry practitioner to delve a bit deeper into my despair! Throughout lockdowns, I met with a wonderful practitioner, Kevin, who I highly recommend (https://www.in-mynd.com/) based in Northern Ireland. I could not believe how powerful these sessions were, especially via a screen. Kevin’s ability to hold loving space for me and guide me to being more present with the incredibly painful emotions I was experiencing was just what I needed, and led me to profound, personal insight. I was sure that I was, and had been kind and compassionate towards myself over the previous years of self-healing and discovery. Through this process, I realised I had been in fact holding other people’s pain and suffering with love and even feeling their pain, as a way of avoiding my own! This was quite a revelation to me and a little distubing at first. Despite these sessions being extremely uncomfortable and painful, they gave me the ability to really be with the parts of myself I had denied for so long. Of course, no doubt the foundational work I had done since the age of 15 certainly helped too. My experience of healing is, that we can only do as much as our body will allow and is able to cope with. It is much like peeling layers of yourself away each time you go a little deeper; if you peel too many at once you are left raw, exposed and vulnerable. Healing, if not done safely, can lead to further damage! It is a process of kind patience.
From the Physical Centre, (Back) to my Heart Centre.
Centre Anahata was developing in a beautiful way, and I was giving it everything, working long hours, many of course unpaid, and I tried to cram my huge vision into a little high street shop, with all responsibility as mine alone. I did of course have incredible support around me. Not surprisingly, my body held more wisdom than my thinking mind and gave me an even deeper lesson of insight by screaming at me to stop with a week on the cardiology ward at Medway hospital. After thorough investigation, I was told I had variant angina; contractions of the heart’s artery, caused by stress!
The irony was not lost on me. Here I was, making myself unwell whilst trying to support other people’s health and well-being – where was MY self-love and care? I obviously was still not practising what I was ‘preaching’. So began another layer of learning, unlearning and self-discovery. I realised I had developed a strong sense of responsibility for other people and a fierce independence from a young age and found my self-worth through being helpful to other people. I took some pressure off myself by closing the café; I realised I was trying to do far too much! I tried to get some other people involved in running the centre with me, but that did not work out. I was going through a challenging time with my daughter also at that time and so took the decision to close the centre at the end of 2022 and make my life a little easier!
It was interesting to hear other people’s words of condolences at my decision, like I had failed, and the centre wasn’t successful. Certainly, in terms of a profit-making business, it was unsuccessful. In terms of my personal and professional development and what it offered the community, it was hugely successful, rewarding and I have no regrets.
Transcendental Meditation.
I began my daily meditation practice over ten years ago, which has been life-changing for me. It is another Yin practice as it invites us to go within, silently on a regular basis. The technique I learnt was Transcendental Meditation, https://andreberrymeditation.co.uk/faq/, a meditation technique brought to the West by Mahesh Maharishi Yogi in the 50s and made popular by the Beatles in the 60s https://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-beatles-india-maharishi/ The secret of reaping the benefits of this practice is effortlessness, which allows the body to enjoy regular periods of deep rest, said to be as good as several hours of deep sleep. Most of us are operating on the stress hormones of the fight/flight response with no outlet for the energy created in us to flee or fight perceived threats. Our modern pressures are predominantly psychological, and we move from one ‘stressful’ situation to another without restoring our nervous system back into the rest/digest state. Our evolutionary ancestors and indeed wild animals today utilise/d the stress hormones to fight or run away from predators. As modern humans however, we have these continuously circulating in our system, leading us to feel on constant alert, and making it near impossible to fully switch off and rest. This build-up of stress within our system can lead to a more fearful way of existence, causing us to be reactionary with a narrow focus. Daily meditation with this technique or similar allows us to become more responsive from a place of love rather than fear, it can expand our awareness not just of ourselves but of the interconnected web of life that we are part of. For me it was life-changing and after my first session my panic attacks ceased! For many years I spoke passionately about this incredible practice to others and many friends and some family also learnt to meditate with this practice.
1GiantMind
In 2021 I qualified to teach a similar practice known as a ‘Being’ technique, taught by Jonni Pollard, http://www.jonnipollard.com/. He founded the 1GiantMind organisation, to teach this meditation technique, inspired by Vedic meditation. The state of Being can be simply described as ‘you minus your thoughts’. It is a state of consciousness that exists beyond the thinking mind. Dipping into this altered state on a regular basis, can balance the constant ‘Doing’ state that most of us live in. Regular, effortless practice allows us to reach this place of inner stillness and calm and over time this expands into our daily lives, improving our well-being through healthier behaviours, choices, responses, and relationships. As the accumulation of stress and fatigue are released from the nervous system, we respond to what were once considered to be stressful situations in a more open and calm way. I run regular courses over three sessions throughout the year.
Yin Yoga.
I was introduced to Yin yoga by my teacher, Kate Ashley and did my first yin teacher training with her in 2018. I regularly cried as she guided me to release the ‘issues in my tissues’ through the practice of yin. Sadly, Kate is no longer with us https://www.facebook.com/kate.ashley.92. Kate was the best teacher I had ever met and was truly inspirational to many.
I did not imagine I would ever begin teaching, as speaking in front of people was way out of my comfort zone. I was purely interested in deepening my own practice and knowledge. Once I completed the training and with Kate’s encouragement, I got the taste for it and continued to teach and train. Yin yoga is rooted in Daoism, where the ubiquitous Yin Yang symbol, the Taijitu comes from https://personaltao.com/taoism/what-is-yin-yang/. This symbol represents the dynamic interplay of seemingly opposing forces; Yin and Yang inherent in the cosmos and the microcosmos of the human body. It is showing us that nothing is entirely black or white and each only exist in relation to its opposite. For example, the Yin qualities of darkness, the feminine, and the out breath are balanced by the Yang qualities of light, the masculine, and the in breath. Each energy holds the seed of the other within it, represented by the little dots of opposing colour in each side. It is important to say that these qualities are not inherently Yin or Yang, only in relation to each other, they are not fixed traits. The line dividing the Yin and Yang represents the balance between the two. Neither energy is better than the other, both are required to make the whole, and the balance between them creates harmony, both in the macro-cosmos of the universe and within the micro-cosmos of the individual being. These relationships are dynamic and forever changing.
In the practice of yin yoga, we learn to come into the poses in a soft and passive way and we commit to stillness, over time. Instead of the thinking mind dominating and pushing us to achieve an aligned position with strong, engaged muscles, we are inviting a deep relaxation into the stretches we hold, inviting the energy of the poses into the deeper layers of our connective tissues, known as fascia (a blog subject in of itself!) https://www.anatomytrains.com/fascia/. Even though we are targeting specific local areas in the body within the poses, there is a general, global softening of the entire body and calming of the nervous system. As I said, there is no claim that Yin yoga is better than Yang styles of yoga, indeed they complement each other beautifully.
Generally, most of us live predominantly through the energies of Yang. Our current patriarchal culture values the intellect of the thinking mind over the wisdom of the heart-mind, analysis over intuition, controlling instead of allowing, forcing instead of yielding, technology over nature. We are constantly being stimulated by the world and devices around us and rarely enjoy deep rest. As we learn to embrace the often-challenging stillness and receptivity of Yin through our practice on our mats, we can become more aware of how we can introduce these qualities into our everyday lives off the mats, so that we can feel better physically, emotionally, and mentally.
Practice Not Perfect.
As with anything we incorporate into our lives to improve our health and happiness, the process is an ongoing journey and can never really be said to be complete. This is why we call many techniques a practice… not necessarily perfect!
My lifestyle and practices are increasingly inspired by this nudge towards balance. With the launch of Yinspired Being, I am hoping to share inspiration to help others (you) find this balance within your own body/mind/life. All of my offerings remain rooted in love and compassion.
Self-Help Resources.
Yinspired Being is an invitation to embrace these qualities into your life if and where they are lacking. I will share insights regularly through my blog, YouTube and all my classes and events can be found on my website. Check out my first YouTube video introducing the basic principles of yin yoga http://www.youtube.com/@Rebecca231
Remember, the smallest things can help us on this path. Pausing throughout your day to notice your breath, the sky, how your body feels can build your foundations to greater presence, joy and acceptance. It is not always possible to do an hour-long practice or to sit formally twice a day and that is ok 😊. Doing what we can, is what counts. If you have any questions about anything you have read here, or my YouTube content, please get in touch.
Thank you for your presence, stay well.