I am a young woman who has been working in the corporate environment for the past 8 years with a passion for creating the balanced life that we all dream of. I live in Berkshire with my husband and two dogs Rupert and Sky. In my spare time I can be found gardening, hanging out with friends, practicing yoga or of course meditating!
Meditation has changed my life. It has helped me to better manage my mental and physical health (including chronic pain), perform better at work, develop deeper and more meaningful relationships with both myself and others, and to come to accept my life to be as it is. Since meditation has had such a positive effect on my life, my passion is to teach others this fundamental skill.
I started meditating at the start of 2018 when I started practicing yoga. At the time my Crohn's disease was raging, I had just had 5 operations in 9 months and both my physical and mental health were at rock bottom.
One of the most profound things I’ve learnt is that everything is constantly changing from the flux of cells in the body to the galaxy expanding. Nothing is certain and we can count of change in every second of every day. I have discovered this through the body scan meditation, where I connect in with my body and focus on the sensations changing within me. This has helped me dramatically with management of pain. If my Crohn’s disease is flaring I will not try to block out the pain, instead I focus on it in a meditation and notice how it is changing with every moment that goes by. This helps to stop my mind from catastrophizing and stops me from subconsciously running into an exaggerated pain cycle. It also helps with mental discomfort as I know that the emotion or feeling I have will pass. Being more in touch with my body also helps me to recognize feelings of stress or anxiety in my body before my mind has realised anything needs to be rectified and so I can take action before things get worse.
Meditation has helped me to live in the moment and be present. It has slowed me down and I have stopped always looking to the future. I am not waiting for anything to happen and I am genuinely happy on a daily basis. I see the joy in the smallest things – from the wag of my dogs tail to the green of my garden in the rain; meditation has made me truly grateful for life.
