By now everybody out there is aware that meditation has a wide range of positive benefits for our health. A consistent mediation practice helps us reduce stress, slow down the ageing process, as well as improve concentration, sleep, our self-awareness, and acceptance. Because the process of meditation improves parasympathetic tone (induces relaxation), it does promote cardiovascular health and it also encourages the immune system to work correctly (super helpful for anyone with autoimmunity). But that is the thing. The main key word in this entire paragraph is CONSISTENT.

The effects of meditation are cumulative and even though many people appreciate that, how many people do you know who have a consistent meditation practice? The truth is that you will enjoy the benefits with as little as 15 minutes per day (although more in this case is better), yet how many of us do it regularly? When I quiz my clients on this, most of them will say: “I know it is super beneficial and I should do it...

Nowadays it is well-accepted that our psychological/emotional state affects our immune system, which of course has massive implications for autoimmunity. Negative emotional activation (stress response) can result in increased susceptibility to bacterial, viral and fungal infections, as well as parasite infestations.

Likewise, we can improve our immune function when we switch from stress response to the relaxation response, which is why meditation and other similar tools have been shown to have a profound positive effect not only on our mental health but our physical health as well. Even looking at a flower creates a physiological response involving millions of nerve cells that can in turn create a positive or negative change in our immune function (depending how we feel about the flower)!

Psycho what?

This phenomenon is a result of interactions between our hypothalamus, our pituitary gland and our adrenal glands (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal or HPA axis). The science that aims...

I understand that not everyone is able to spend an hour each day meditating (although if you did, you would transform your health and your life!) but there is no excuse not to make a 10-minute per day commitment to breathing practice.

Breathing is one of these clever biological processes our body is programmed to do automatically, even when we are not aware of it. In fact, it is one of the primary functions of the body is to supply our cells with oxygen. It has to be automated (subconscious) because we would be in a lot of trouble if we had to think about it all the time. But we can also control our breathing if we choose to, and when we do it in the right way, we can influence our emotions, and of course our immune system and therefore our physical well-being.

You can control your nervous system response by controlling your breathing

I have many fantastic mind-transforming modalities at my disposal that I use for myself and working with clients but I always teach my clients breathi...