everyday compassion with Henny Flynn

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This week is all about sleep... rest... routine. It's about how we signal to our body that it's ok to lay down the burdens of the day and be restored by a good night.

How do you get ready for bed? 

Are you ready for whatever life might throw at you? Or are you ready for rest?

Today's episode is full of tips and tools to help create a bedtime routine that signals to your body that it's time for rest.

A few of the things I cover include:

• Classic bedtime behaviours that may inhibit good quality sleep
• Things that may be masquerading as self-care - and why it's important to notice the impact they could be having
• Top tips and tools for good sleep shared by our Facebook group The Positive Menopause
• My own recommendations of things I've found have worked for me and my clients

The art, as ever, is simply to notice what your current bedtime practices are - and then see what you want to start, stop, continue or adapt.

Which bits feel like they’re nourishing you? Which feel like they just have to be like that? And what doesn’t need to be there at all?

Have a listen and then the invitation is simply to reflect and notice what you do as you get ready for bed tonight. 

Sleep is a classic area for disruption when we are stressed, and can be particularly challenging during menopause. The practices I talk through here are not an exhaustive list. And there are other steps that can be conducive to good rest, such as making improvements to nutrition, adapting how and when you exercise and dealing with the underlying causes of stress.

This episode is really a foray into practical actions we can all take that can help us move toward a better night's rest. If you would like more personalised support, please reach out to me, or whoever feels like they can best support you.

A key point is that for good quality sleep, we need to activate our parasympathetic nervous system - it’s the part of the autonomic nervous system which regulates the rest and repair. It’s when our digestio

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Today I’m talking with Emmanuelle Passes. A wise woman with a wealth of experience working with people going through changes in their lives.

Emmanuelle is an expert in energy. 

A cranio sacral therapist, she brings a wide range of therapeutic training and decades of experience to how she works with her clients. I first invited her onto the podcast back in season 1, where she shared a range of practical energy exercises with a live audience. The recording of that session is included here.

Our conversation today focuses on the experience of menopause as a time of great change - and explores how we can use the principles of managing our energy levels to support that experience.

If you’re not yet in menopause - or you’ve already come through the other side, or menopause is not going to be something you’ll directly experience… keep listening. 

The wisdom Emmanuelle shares - and the exercises she talks us through at the end of the session - are useful for us all, though they have a specific significance when our hormones are out of balance.

I first met her a few years ago in Ibiza (of course!) and by the end of our first session I thought she was some angelic being! She definitely has a very special approach to how she works with her clients and an enormous heart.

During the conversation we touch on many of the experiences that women can have during menopause and Emmanuelle shares her observations, taken from decades of working with women, and men, and supporting them through major life changes. There may be things that challenge your thinking - personally, I quite like it when that happens! My sense is that anything that takes us out of our comfort zone and helps us clarify how we think, and more importantly feel, is an interesting process.

The more comfortable we become with talking about this beautiful phase of life, the better it is. Menopause affects us all in some way - whether its our own direct experience or that of someone we love. Being able to discuss it in all it’s dimensions feels like a truly useful thing we can all do.

See the full show notes for the video of Emmanuelle demonstrating the exercises she

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This episode explores how being cheerful... grateful... happy is not about suppressing the things that make us feel sad, hurt or angry.

It's about noticing and accepting all the things that are happening around us, to us, and experiencing them consciously.

It's through our conscious awareness that we are able to make choices - and that includes choosing how we feel. There are three key themes to this week's reflections:

• The role of negative emotions and why it's important to honour them 
• How gratitude extends to what challenges us
• How our focus and attention is core to enabling change, neurologically

Eckhart Tolle says that "Choice implies consciousness... a high degree of consciousness. Without it you have no choice". I think the role and value of consciousness and presence is intrinsic to creating deep and lasting change - and integral to a full sense of caring for ourselves. And it's a theme I'll be exploring further in future podcasts.

There are two books I reference that you might enjoy:

• Self-Knowledge, from The School of Life
• How Pleasure Works, by Paul Bloom

In this episode I also include a self-reflection exercise. I explain the detail and am sharing the core elements here, for your ease. It's a beautiful and illuminating exercise that I use with clients - and have found to be beneficial for myself too. (In fact, everything I share is something I've been through in some way!)

Thank you as always to Angus at changomusic.com for his music and production - and the loan of his womb-like airing cupboard for this recording!

Henny x

SELF-REFLECTION EXERCISE

Draw a circle and divide it into 10 sections (like a wheel) - label each section:

1. Work
2. Finances
3. Love & romance
4. Family & Friends
5. Health & fitness
6. Personal growth & creativity
7. Well-being (physical, mental & spiritual)
8. Community
9. Physical environment
10. Fun & recreation

Imagine that at the centre of your circle is 0 and the outer edge is 10 - draw a line a

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As ever, if there is anything in this episode that particularly resonates with you, and you feel you would benefit from some support, please do reach out.

One of the joys of creating this podcast is the opportunity it gives me to talk with others about the changes they have made - and the steps they’ve taken to get there. This conversation with Carl tracks his personal journey from grief to growth and I hope you, like me, will enjoy his honesty and be inspired by the changes he has made - not only in what he does, but in how he does it.

You’ll hear that Carl and I used to work together - and the thing I remember most about our time working together is his love of the Lake District and how unlikely a person he was to work in an office. This reflection seems to have been born out in the work he now does and the way he now lives. 

A little while ago I spotted a phrase that Carl had used in a facebook post. He talked of how in the past he had borrowed resilience from his future self. It sparked me to get in touch to hear more…

In this candid interview, Carl shares how the death of his father marked a long period of his life where his usual buoyancy felt like it had disappeared and he reached a very low point indeed. No longer waving but drowning.

He talks of how he learnt to reach out for support, receiving bereavement counselling before turning to his GP, medication, and exploring Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - CBT.

Alongside this external intervention, he also made some enormous changes in his inner life… leaving his job in insurance (you’ll hear what a surprise that was to his wife at the time!) and he has not only published his own series of children’s books, he’s also set up a publishing house supporting other authors. 

Through this process of gaining self-awareness he’s used meditation and mindfulness; learning how to manage what he can and can’t control. He also shares how learning to listen to, and trust, his own voice was a huge part of what gave him the confidence to make the changes he has made. “If what you are doing is well-intended, no-body else’s opinion matters”

So often the impetus behind a change comes fr

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(Forgive the wind, sheep and horses who intermittently appear in this episode - it was recorded in an open field in the wilds of Shropshire!)

Today’s episode is largely inspired by a pair of rose tinted glasses I used to wear as a student.

Notwithstanding they gave me a 60’s hippy-chick kind of look (always pleasing!), I loved them as much for the glow they gave the world. And when I look back now I see them as a fitting metaphor for how I chose to view the world.

I wanted things to be ok - and that’s how I preferred to see them.

An important point here is that having a positive outlook is all well and good, as long as it doesn’t prevent us from seeing, or feeling, the truth of things. This idea of how we can balance optimism with truth, in order to stay present and grounded, is something I’m going to explore more in later episodes in this series.

In this episode I want to focus on the power of good intentions. And how they form a core tenet of Positive Psychology.

We all know the phrase that the road to hell is paved with good intentions - and I was possibly excessively pleased when I titled this episode! Because rather than being something to avoid or be wary of, there’s a power to having a positive intent.

There’s a power to seeing ourselves and others’ through a lens of positivity - that can influence our well-being on a deep level, physically and psychologically.

As with everything there’s a subtlety to it - very little in this life is binary. And we need to allow ourselves to feel into things in order to see what feels true.

Ultimately the question we can ask ourselves is ‘How do I want to feel?’.

I explore this through a couple of day-to-day experiences to highlight how we can give ourselves the choice of how we see things. Not in an artificially rose-tinted way but in a deeper, actively conscious way.

There are a couple of teachers I reference here, specifically their work in this area:

• Tara Brach and her powerful question: ‘Who are you if everything is ok?'
• Rick Hanson and his ‘Just one thing’ weekly emails (well worth receiving if you’re interested in Positive Psycholo

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There are two key themes this week; exploring ways to look at change.

One where I focus on the truth that if we want something to change, we have to change something. It feels so obvious when we say it, and yet still we can feel stuck or resistant to take the action that will make the changes we say we desire come into being.

Secondly I look at a principle of change where in order for something to begin, something else needs to end. When we think of that, it can feel hard - we often resist change because of an attachment to old thinking, old feelings, old habits. But approaching this idea as a way of empowering us can help us shift our mindset... that then shifts our actions and attitudes.

I also touch on the work of Viktor Frankl and Notes from the Universe - two ends of the same spectrum that tell us that at the deepest, most profound level, we are accountable for ourselves.

As ever, I hope you enjoy the episode. And that it provokes new or expanded thought for you. If you like it, please do leave a review on Apple Podcasts - it's how we can continue to share these thoughts with others who may enjoy them too.

This is the final episode in this series and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being part of how the podcast has developed since the early experiment 15 weeks ago. I'll be back soon with series 2 and look forward to meeting you there.

In the meantime, I send you a hug and a wave.

Henny x

Explore your own next steps to make and manage change
https://www.reegroup.co.uk/

Come and join the community on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thereegrouphour/

Listen to mini-meditative moments on Insight Timer:
https://insighttimer.com/reegroup

Connect on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/reegroup_henny/

And if you're interested in building a gratitude practice, take a look at:

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This week's episode builds on last week's exploration of self-care (So, what actually is self-care, anyway?). 

I focus in on 3 approaches that can be useful in supporting us to make habits that serve us - and break habits that we feel have had their time.

In the first example, I look at how the language of 'I can't' vs the language of 'I don't' influences our commitment to make better choices. And how when we are more emphatic about our choices, we find it easier to stick to our decisions.

Secondly, I share how this same attention to what we say supports us in creating new habits and building new behaviours. Shifting from 'I'm going to try to do X' to 'I do X' tells ourselves (and others) that we are truly committed to the change. It also tricks our mind into believing we already do the habit we want to adopt and that kicks our subconscious into gear to help us make it a reality. 

Thirdly, there's a psychology around change where when we focus too heavily on the big picture, it can become daunting and feel unachievable. So, breaking it down into manageable pieces, and attaching new behaviours to existing habits, brings it closer to us and we can start to make the changes happen that ultimately lead to its successful outcome.

And, as a little bonus idea, I've also included an idea from the Reegroup retreat, Building a Self-Care Bank, that can help us keep sight of how we are caring for ourselves. 

All of these have served me in making my own changes - and I see how they support clients in making theirs.

I'd love to know if this sparks some thoughts for you too. And whether making these small changes prove useful in building and reinforcing your own practice of caring for yourself - in what you do, how you think and what you say.

Henny x

Resources:

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I often speak of how self-care underpins our ability to make deep and lasting change. Yet, for many of us it can feel hard to identify what self-care actually is.

How do we know what it is? And what it isn't? And how do we identify habits that may masquerade as self-care, without truly serving us?

Self-care is not simply the practice of eating well or exercising (though both are, of course, such wonderful gifts to give ourselves). It extends beyond how we look after our physical body and moves deeply into how we care for our psychological and energetic body.

So, it stretches beyond action, into thoughts and into how we choose to feel.

Often we can inherit or adopt thought patterns that make us feel guilty about looking after ourselves, or we become self-judgemental when we know we're not doing it 'enough'.

I cover all of these areas on today's episode in an exploration of self-care, with a view to opening up our perception of what self-care feels like for each of us.

I include an invitation to honour your own need for self-care. Not as a nice-to-have, but as a fundamentally critical component of how we live our life.

Over the past few years I've worked with many clients for whom self-care initially feels 'hard' or where they have attached 'shoulds' to their practices, so it feels like a burden rather than a joy. Or where, for many very valid reasons, they inhabit their heads to such an extent that they feel disconnected from their bodies - and find it difficult to register what self-care feels like. Or where there are old stories preventing them from valuing themselves and being able to give themselves the attention they truly deserve.

If any of that resonates, I hope this episode goes some way to helping to dissolve some of those barriers to caring deeply for yourself.

And if you want to explore how self-awareness and self-compassion (the two wings of self-care) help us create meaningful and effective changes at work, home or in our personal life, then you know where I am.

As ever, if you enjoy this episode, please leave a comment or send me your thoughts - it's

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Rebekah Brown is the founder and creator of MPowder.

She spent her career helping other companies to build brands and products as a researcher and creative consultant. Then the peri-menopause arrived. 

Turned away by her GP because she was ‘too young’ to have symptoms, she found herself trawling the aisles of the local health food store, staring at a vast range of products and ingredients she knew nothing about. Curiosity cut through the brain fog. She looked further into the bio-chemical changes the female body goes through in menopause and what vitamins we all need at each stage, regardless of symptoms. She explored the impact and practicality of dietary changes. She researched what herbs and vitamins have seen results in trials and, critically, what dosages have an impact. 

Armed with insight, and a growing sense of frustration that women were under-served with honest information and better options, MPowder was born.

This is her story of how self-care underpinned the decisions she made to make an enormous shift in her career and in how she viewed work, and herself.

In the session you'll also hear how Rebekah's experience of going to her GP resulted in a feeling of frustration and she has asked me to say that if that is your experience, please go back. Don't feel as though what you have to say is not valid. GPs work hard to support their whole community of patients and sometimes we just need to be persistent to ensure we receive what we need. Everyone's experience of menopause is different and we all need to find our own best route through.

Rebekah has also passed on a top tip for discussing your menopausal symptoms with your GP.

She has recommended using the Menopause Symptom Tracker, developed by Diane Danzebrink - a menopause specialist and the creator of Menopause Matters Campaign. You can download the tracker here, and use it to take to your GP to explain your symptoms in language that really resonates with the medical community. She has als

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What happens when we emerge from a moment of vulnerability - and how can we stop ourselves retreating behind our defences once again?

In this time, as we all emerge from lock-down and the global impact of Covid, it may be that as we lower the barriers to our external world, we begin to raise our internal barriers, in order to protect ourselves once more from the noise of a stirring world.

When we emerge from a time, where we've internally allowed ourselves to let down our defences, it can be hard to maintain that openness (or to not judge ourselves for that vulnerability) when we enter back into our day-to-day lives. 

This podcast is a reflection on vulnerability and how it serves us as part of our progression toward change - globally, and within ourselves.

This doesn’t mean we need to be endlessly open to the world - we still all need clear boundaries of what is ok and what is not. But it does mean that it’s important to keep sight of the things we’ve learnt while we’ve been in that more vulnerable place and to remember that vulnerability truly is our strength. 

Opening ourselves up, letting our defences down, being vulnerable, expressing our true self, IS an act of bravery. 

And each time we do it, it becomes a little easier, a little less scary, and we find ourselves able to stay a little longer and, if we choose, to grow a little more. 

You may want to see the work of Brene Brown to explore this idea of vulnerability as a strength. Or it may be something you've identified within yourself as an opportunity for personal development.

While we keep ourselves closed we may be protecting ourselves, but we are also potentially blocking out people and experiences that can help us grow.

As we move through the depth of the passionate response to The Black Lives Matter campaign, this idea of vulnerability resonates even more.

Allowing ourselves to feel vulnerable, whilst maintaining clear boundaries, is a fundamental component to change - globally and individually.

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