The Big Peace

So it’s Big Peace December. I’ve just spent all weekend at
our first Big Peace yoga retreat and boy! am I ready to share what I learnt.

The weekend was profound. The thing that moved me beyond
belief is how –  if we believe the
negative script of our inner pessimist (inner critic whatever you want to call
it) –  we live our lives steeped in
anxiety and misery – how if we believe his ‘you’re not
good/beautiful/clever/you fill in the blanks’….rant, we are imprisoned.

The good news is that it is in a prison of our own making.

And all we have to do is open the prison door OR just create
a new reality for ourselves entirely. (And as say in my book, listen to your
inner coach.)

I interviewed Dr David Hamilton recently (he’s the scientist
who became fascinated by the Placebo effect) and author of How The Mind Can
Heal The Body.

(Here’s the interview if you missed it) and he explained
that the mind cannot tell the difference between real or imagined. Whatever
stories we tell ourselves become true for us.

One of the studies he quotes in the book revealed that we can get fit and
stronger – simply by imagining that we are. A study followed three groups and
showed that the group who did not exercise, but rather thought about exercising
experienced nearly the same gains in strength as the exercise group by
visualising three times a week.  (The
real exercises improved muscle strength by 28%, the visualisers improved by
24%) Yes, you read that right.

And that’s just fitness levels. Dr Hamilton gives study after study and case
history and case history of how our thinking can induce healing, anti-ageing,
losing weight – and even healing ourselves from heart disease and cancer.

On the yoga retreat this weekend, we did physical demonstrations of what
happens to our bodies, our stress levels, our lives when we listen to negative
stories. Then practiced over and over again with different tools on how to
make the leap from listening to our inner pessimist to listening to our inner
coach. We experimented with different tools on how to create new thinking and
new stories which would get us to our Big Peace place.

In this month of our Big Peace December, I would love for us to create a
daily practice for ourselves and try one tool per day to notice our negative
stories/ thinking and create new positive, healing stories for ourselves
instead. Over the last couple of years, I have interviewed some the
biggest self development gurus in the world so we will be experimenting with
some of the most tried and tested and most effective tools we have available to
us.

At the end of this month, I would love for you to find one or two brilliant
tools that work for you. I believe creating The Big Peace in our lives is a
daily practice (and sometimes minute by minute practice for me!) and we just
need to find a way that works for us to access that place within that can get
us tuned into the radio station of our inner coach versus our inner pessimist.

Today, I want us to try a visualisation that Dr Hamilton recommends in his
book. (Before you do this exercise today, try to listen to the interview
that I did with him so you realise the weight of scientific evidence that shows
that this works):

Visualise three times a day:

Imagine
a ball of soft green, pink or white light in the centre of your brain or heart,
or see it like a little candle flame. This represents your happiness. Note its
size.

Now
imagine a dial and turn it up. As you do this, see the light get bigger and
bigger and brighter. Mentally affirm that it is a symbol of your inner strength
and happiness.

Continue
to turn the dial and watch the light get bigger and brighter. See it expand
right out of your head or heart and throughout your entire body. See the light
flow through your arteries and your veins, though your heart and your internal
organs. Imagine it tickling your cells and organs and see them smile. See it
flow over your skin and imagine your skin cells smiling. See yourself
surrounded by this powerful light and mentally affirm that your power and
happiness are great.

Try this out – I just have and found myself smiling and then the sun broke through the clouds outside my window. My god, I knew I was powerful but that powerful? Sunny days, all round then?

Speak tomorrow and let me know how you got on with this.