My Blog
Is your inner calm muscle getting enough exercise?
- Details
- Posted: 02 April 2020
To my daughter’s utter disappointment, her ballet school closed on Tuesday in line with the Victorian school closures. One of the biggest challenges for her and her ballet friends, as well as worry for their teachers, is that without regular, deliberate exercise, the muscles they have built over many years can deteriorate in weeks. While many competitions and auditions have been cancelled, they will be back at some point and the dancers need to be strong enough and ready.
For that reason, one of the teachers taught a series of exercises on FaceTime last night. The teacher said, “I know you know this, that you can lose strength very easily. So it’s really important that you keep up your strength by spending time doing these exercises every single day. Otherwise, it will be really difficult to get back to the level you are now.”
It is the same for our mind as well. The mind needs regular exercise.
A once off meditation or breathing exercise may feel good, but it won’t change the brain or give us a longer lasting sense of calm and presence. Regular meditation is shown to physiologically change the brain and calm down the amygdala, the fear centre of the brain.
Especially in this current chaotic, rapidly changing and stressful time, it would be easy to lose our ability to access our inner calm, unless we exercise it regularly and deliberately.
This is why the ‘Calm in Chaos’ virtual sessions are now offered weekly. It is an opportunity to regularly and deliberately pause, step back, challenge our minds to think and learn, and make conscious choices rather than be on autopilot.
In each session we will spend some time to pause, then learn from amazing experts who have kindly agreed to share their wisdom in the coming weeks. Keep informed about the weekly sessions by joining the newsletter.
