Short grounding exercise to help SME owners manage their fear and uncertainty.

It would be very easy right now to step into fear and uncertainty and be consumed by it. This short exercise aims to help you stay grounded.

Managing Fear - Short grounding exercise for SME owners

Creativity and innovation go hand in hand. Every successful creative person has to start valuing their creativity if they want their life to flourish.

In this first episode we look at:

What is Life Design
Valuing our creativity
The value of working creatively
Mindfulness or not?
How to tend to the flame of creativity

In this episode I want to introduce you to the concept of Life Design and invite you to start to use this model as a way of helping to understand yourself more deeply and that of the world around you.

I want to encourage you to make use of your imagination in a way that will enhance your own life and help you make sense of this beautiful life in a different way.

Please do not listen whist driving as there is a relaxation element to the recording thank you.

New Leaf New Design - Episode One - Valuing Your Creativity

Looking after yourself in the centre of your world is key. In the Life Design image you are represented by a tree.

At the end of this podcast I will do a more guided process to help you understand this image more.

Why a tree?

Many stories have been told about trees. You may have heard the expression tree of life or Sacred Tree. Maybe you have connected with the Tree of Knowledge which is often said to serve and connect heaven and the underworld connecting all forms of creation this can be portrayed in various religions and philosophies, its a very ancient human image some say it’s a world axis which supports and holds up the cosmos.

You will be introduced to this image and start to work with and be given some life potent questions to ask yourself during the visualisation at the end.

Please do not drive and listen to this podcast as it contains some relaxation

New Leaf New Tree - Episode Two - Grounding yourself

Tapping into our deeper wisdom - We all need to feel well nourished in order to be effective in life. In this episode I want to take you into the well of wellbeing. In the centre of the image the tree sits above a deep well – the well of wellbeing. I will invite you to tap into your inner source.

I will be talking about a well spring and how we can use this imagery to help us flow more in life and help us to regenerate and renew so our creativity can emerge more easily. You can read about the full well story here

New Leaf New Well - Episode 3- How to tap into our deeper wisdom

In this episode I want to talk about uncertainty and how we need to manage the brambles in life that mask our future. I want to encourage you to clear the brambles away so that newness can emerge.

Throughout our life, we are not certain that what is going to happen in our near future and this feeling brings out the emotions of fear, anger and insecurity. But we have to control them or you start feeling that the entire world is spinning out of control. We almost have to slow the river of life down somehow in order to see the river bed beneath it.

To learn more about Life design you can access the Podcast Webpage

This is 13 mins long please do not listen whilst driving.

New Leaf The Brambles Of Life - Episode 4 - Working with Uncertainty

In this episode I want to explore the issue of control and trust with you. In the Life Design image this is represented by the very ordered formal garden image where everything has a place and there is a place for everything.

In order to let go more in life we have to trust ourselves and develop greater trust of our own true nature. Its easy in life to loose our confidence, have many knock backs and find ourselves trying to fix something in the future to try and manage current anxieties.

When we start to trust in our own process, in our own intuitive self in the deeper places we encounter in life then something interesting starts to happen. Our need to control lessens and we enjoy the art of surrendering more to life. This reminds me of when I had to first learn to swim, with awkward arm bands and then with a float out in front of me and then it came the time when I had to let go and trust the buoyancy of the water that it would hold me and I could then float.

When we start to trust ourselves we can create a living dialogue the ability to listen to ourselves and trust what emerges from our imagination. You can learn to trust your own inner experience more.

Please do not listen whilst driving.

New Leaf New Control - Episode 5 - Exploring Control and Trust

In this episode we will be diving into our nature. In the Life Design Image this is a place where our wildflower space is created. Have you ever seen a picture of the world from space and for a moment took in its beauty but also in the same moment acknowledged its small fragility within such a vast universe?

We will be starting to trust our creative imagination more and take it seriously. We will allow our true nature to flourish

New Leaf New Nature - Episode 6 - The Wildflower Meadow our true nature

Episode 1 - The Apple Tree - Sparton
This is a simple journey into Rural Life Design. The purchasing of an apple tree in Somerset has been the start of a journey. Jon Guard Musician, Gardner, Podcaster and Becky Wright Creative Director of New Leaf work together to create a Mental Health Garden and prepare for an Apple Blessing Ceremony to mark the next chapter of New Leaf

The Apple Tree - Series 2 - Episode 1

On November the 1st we held an Apple Blessing Ceremony to mark the launch of the New Leaf Rural Life Design Office. This new space marks a new chapter for the business and we invited friends and colleagues to attend. 

This podcast tells the story of the day, the Mandala created and the blessings that took place to mark Pomona the goddess of fruitful abundance. 

You will hear stories about the three wells from which the water was used to celebrate our well - being work and at the end hear Johns composition recorded from St Agnes Well at Cothelstone. It was a truly magical day!

Apple Blessing - Series 2 - Episode 2

In this episode I start to explore the challenges of self sufficiency when it comes to growing food. Not a skill that im particulary blessed with. Jon Guard explains what will be needed to make this a reality.

I start to talk about Deep Adaptationa paper written by Professor Jem Bendell he’s a Professor of Sustainability Leadership his paper was never published by academic journals one of the reasons being the emotional impact it may have on its readers. 

The area of the map which I found really fascinating is the part called Restoration. In this part it talks about re-wilding landscapes, so they provide ecological benefits and changing diets to match the seasons so it asks the question what can we bring back to to help us with coming difficulties and tragedies. It talks about making our food more locally. we need to reconnect with the land and farmers are guardians of the land.

In this episode we talk about this journey and I make a start on vegetables for the mind along with a French Fancy.

French Fancy - Series 2 - Episode 3

When life becomes busy and demanding you may find yourself craving some calm and gentle relaxation time. Simply Meditation is a recording, which will teach you how to meditate and pull some of that inner calm back into your life again.

Meditation is a life skill, which is easy to learn and with practice brings great benefits. Some people find meditation brings a clearer and more creative mind. Others report it increases their effectiveness, helps them to sleep, improves health and brings greater happiness and an inner state of calm. This recording offers a down to earth approach to help you gain those practical benefits. I recommend that you don’t eat just before or just after meditation and please do not listen to this recording whilst driving.

Simply Meditation

In everyday English, we often use the words intention and motivation as if they mean the same thing, but there's an important difference. 

Our motivation to do something is the reason, or reasons, behind an action. It is the source of our desire and gives us the drive to do something. Simply put, motivation is what turns us on. 

On the other hand, our good intentions set the tone for the change we want to make. The missing ingredient however is often willpower.

In today’s society most willpower is introduced as adrenaline-fuelled willpower which, in my experience, soon burns out and becomes hard to sustain and so we fail; we run out of steam and give up.

I want to offer you a different option. Our will is where our power lies. When we combine our will and our intention with our personal power we become more connected and so can sustain what we want to achieve. 

This recording aims to help you do just this.

Embody Motivation

Introduction to “Focus In” Embody Weight Loss
 
I believe if you want to lose weight, the place to start, isn’t with your mind, but with your body.

Many weight loss programmes sell you an idealised image of how you can become.  It is in this moment that we mentally separate from ourselves and imagine how we want to be, and whilst this may feel exciting at that moment, this feeling often fades quickly as the pathway between reality, the here and now, and your future body, begins to feel too far apart. You are not imagining how you would look – you are picturing an ideal, so this separation can quickly cause us to lose motivation, become resistant and fall into old patterns of behaviour. We start making excuses about why we can’t get there; we start sabotaging the process.

This recording is different; it starts from a place of ‘possibility’ – what might YOU look like if you lost weight? To facilitate change we need to be able to see and feel both our physical, here and now body, and, the future image of our new self.  We need to be conscious of the small place in ourselves where we feel the resistance building, where we begin our self-sabotage, and we need to use our imagination to create a bridge between our existing self and our new thinner self. We need to build that bridge that will confidently carry us over.

This process allows us to grow in self-confidence and self-belief, which in turn frees us up to feel optimistic and determined again. By doing this you allow yourself to be more present in the body you have now and to actively feel your self-worth grow as you cross the bridge to become your new slimmer, more confident self.

This recording is best used alongside a healthy eating and exercise programme to maximise its effects.

Focus In

Introduction to “Feel In”
I believe if you want to lose weight, the place to start, isn’t with your mind, but with your body. Many of us, who struggle with our weight, also have emotional problems which lead to comfort eating.  This comfort eating is triggered by our body because of these emotional problems.

Emotional distress creates stress within us and our clever bodies release two very powerful stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, to help us react quickly to a perceived situation. When the body produces these hormones our blood sugar levels drop. This happens as sugar stores are released to give us immediate energy to fight or flight the problem our body believes we are facing. This is an instinct that remains with us and whilst this is useful to us short term, keeping our bodies in this state 24/7 means that we have excessive cortisol present. At this point we are more inclined to feed the hunger created by our low blood sugar levels when we don’t actually need to.  This is why emotional problems are often a catalyst to excessive weight gain – our eating patterns confirm to our body that we are under stress and the cycle continues.

This is why we have produced this recording. It will help you to relax. It will guide you; helping you to understand how to feel and process your emotions. Your emotions are often connected to past memories; this process will help to bring your body into a healthy and relaxed state so that you can manage your instinctive reactions and break the cycle that is preventing your weight loss.

This recording is best used alongside a healthy eating and exercise programme to maximise its effects.

Embody Weight Loss - Feel In

This track was created by our friend and colleague Eric Smith. It was a fun track and a lovely offering from him to Barnaby and Becky. Our voices have been taken from a recent video we created to promote our Wellbeing Meaning and Business Group.

Imagine The Future

In a world of great uncertainty and change we need to understand how to navigate our lives in a way that takes control of our life design. The podcast covers a range of challenges like how to stay grounded, how to let go and still feel safe, how to value our creativity and finding our true nature.

Join Becky Wright on a journey that cuts through the normal cognitive mindful approaches and offers a much deeper way to explore your inner and outer realities using the creative embodied imagination.

I work as the Creative Director and Founder of New Leaf. I love developing recordings which help people flourish in life. This Chanel will have recordings related to Life Design and some meditations. I will also release my podcasting series on this platform which I hope you enjoy. I have a background in psychotherapy and coaching.

My Podcast Producer is Jon Guard you can locate his channel here https://soundcloud.com/jon-guard

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