Mindful Gail March Newsletter
- gailcalthrop
- Mar 9
- 5 min read
Welcome to my March Newsletter.
Spring is here! Let us be sure to celebrate and revel in all its glorious new greening and growth.
The past and future dwell only in our minds, and in truth, all that we ever experience is this present moment ‘Look well therefore, to this day’,
Look to this day,
For it is life, the very breath of life.
In its brief course lie all the realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of beauty.
For yesterday is only a dream,
And tomorrow is but a vision.
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
A Sanskrit poem by Kalidasa, Indian playwright and poet
This poem is an invitation to notice and enjoy in the everyday moment, so usually overlooked, the wonder, beauty, the amazing, as our mind usually tells us, joy and contentment must be ‘achieved’, a target obtained and experienced when only certain actions and circumstances come into play.
The present moment holds an infinite of ways to experience life, and our holding onto the past and future shields us from this source of living well, irrespective of our circumstances. Rest into the spring sunshine, notice the emerging bright colours all around you, let your heart lift when the blue skies and warm sunshine embrace you. Feel how your mood and senses respond and release the held tensions, let go into Spring’s energies.
A Busy March:
Mindful Retreat Day at Hellens Manor:
The sun shone as Spring showed her emerging colours all around us at Hellens Manor, as we celebrated this new season. With a variety of meditations and practices, mindful walks in the gardens and grounds and delicious cake to close our day with, we found the richness of healing moments that nourish and sustain us. The gift of supportive silence allowed for decompression, to become curious and attentive to how we were feeling and reponsively lean into that which felt uncomfortable, tender or difficult. And in turn, we cultivated an openness to receive that which brought us a sense of joy, peace, pleasure and contentment.
WOW DAY 7th March:
Such an empowering day of resilience, nurturing and embedding of helpful practices and skills for the women that gathered at Hellens Manor from 4 professional and skilled women practitioners. Mindset and Coach Coilita, Yoga expert Saia Wang, Soesen of Edan Sounds and myself with Mindfulness, all shared lasting and nurturing practices and approaches to be in this life aswell as is possible, and enjoy it! There was much laughter, kind explorations of tensions within body, mind and being, nourishing, tasty food, soothing sound healing and all in the beautiful setting of Hellens Manor. I loved being part of this day, so powerful to celebrate International Womens Day this way.
NEWS
I am delighted to see a fellow Breathworks Mindfulness Teacher, Francesca Anderson, recently appeared in Robson Greens Weekend Escapes.
Francesca introduced Robson and Helen Skelton to simple mindfulness practices to ease tension and counter balance our inherent negativity bias. Have a look, she appears about 12 minutes into the programme. The power of Breathworks Mindfulness, always beautiful. WATCH HERE!
Self Compassion is a mindful gift to yourself.
Self compassion is the practice of acknowledging your mistakes or failures and forgiving yourself. It allows you to be less than perfect and still have personal worth. Self love is the expression of value in yourself. Rather than deny or look away from the parts of yourself that you would to change, self-love acknowledges those things as part of who you are and uses self compassion to forgive yourself and move forward. J Burnett
The research about self compassion shows how when we treat ourselves kindly, with the same understanding and kindness we show to others, it becomes a resource that develops resilience, and embeds helpful coping approaches. We work better in noticing our inner critic that hinders and sabotages us going forward with repetitive judgements that limit and deny our self belief and self value.
Using mindfulness practices and ways, we can learn to recognise the automatic habits and thoughts cycles that become the default button, and are so ingrained, we barely notice their ways and effects on what we do. Recognising we are only human, not some invincible being that is perfect all of the time, we can learn to be aware of our inner critic, of the emotions and then behaviours that arise. We start slow, inviting ourselves to notice when our thoughts berate us, criticise us; we befriend our thoughts, the emotional feelings that arise and often land in the body. For example, noticing ‘I cant do this as I will ‘fail/be wrong/not succeed’. You can hear the stories you tell yourself and your body reacts, perhaps the energy drops, the heaviness creeps in, tiredness approaches. This is a perfect moment to drop into your senses, acknowledge the thought[s] kindly, ‘I hear you, now I let you go’, feel where the heaviness rest, perhaps in the droop of your shoulders, or the clench in your belly. Invite a softening into these areas: imagine breathing kindness into these places, with the soft breath in, and the long sighing out of the breath. We gradually, with these sort of approaches, change how we treat ourselves, that help us flourish and be resilient, and find joy, peace and contentment in the life we are in.
Have a look at this article if you want to more about self compassion:
Mindful Events Coming up:
Monthly On-Line Mindful Drop In
Wednesday 12th March 7-8pm:.
Just £10 per session or £35 for four booked sessions.
Join me on-line for our regular checking in, the opportunity to pause and connect to the stillness and ripples of our life with mindful meditations and approaches. It is a chance to step into how we are, giving kind focus and acceptance to whatever is unfolding with our friendly and supportive online community. Drop me a message and I will send you the details.
Martina and I will be sharing a nourishing and empowering Body, Mind and Being Day May 3rd where we will exploring and develop ways and skills to balance and ground us and open up to benefits of finding joys in the everyday life we all lead. Join us at Little Birch, come and explore with an Aconbury Woods walk, releasing stretches of the body and mind, learn skilful self massage ways and approaches and rest into mindful meditations to restore and renew all aspects of ourselves. Book your place before 15th March, and the fee will be discounted to £50. Click on the link!
I hope March with all its Spring energies find a place in your life of renewal and solace. If you want to know more about what I offer and do, or have any questions, please do contact me.
Happy Spring!
Gail
YOU TUBE
I have now added some new videos, please check them out!
I also recorded a few meditation videos during Covid and put them onto a YouTube channel. Their content can be helpful now as it was then, so have a look if you would like to follow guided practices. I hope to add to them soon Follow the link HERE!
What I Offer...
Get in touch
Mindfulness crept into my life about 12 years ago after I completed a Mindfulness Based Reduction for Stress Course [MBSR], offered by my workplace, a Hospice. The teachings touched a need in me to want to experience life in a calmer and more enjoyable way; to find ways to be present helpfully to the way my life was unfolding rather than engage in battling with the automatic behaviours with repeating conflicting thoughts and emotions, with all the attendant emotional and physical fallouts.
Comments