Befriending your Body and Mind

Body-based tools for integrating body, heart and mind. 
With Lou Coles.

Do you find that it’s easier to keep your mind busy even though friends, family or health professionals tell you 'you need to relax'? This can be an obstacle for many people that know the benefits of quieting the mind but find it hard to actually do in practice.
 
Do you struggle with traditional mindfulness practices such as meditation?
Join us in a safe and supported environment to learn body-based tools that build your capacity to sit with the feelings and thoughts that arise when you let go of the busy-ness.

The mind and body are not separate - What affects one affects the other.
 
In this 2-day workshop we will utilise this two way mind-body connection and learn ways to bring the body-mind into calm. Instead of pushing those thoughts and feelings away we will learn how to listen to our body and intuition with non-judgmental kindness and compassion. 


Over two days we will learn practical body-mind tools to: 

· Ground yourself to the here and now through your body.
· Learn how to notice and release uncomfortable or distracting thoughts and feelings using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT Tapping). 
· Practice tools to increase your capacity to feel safe with whatever comes up in the present moment. 
· Find a felt-sense of safety, patience, acceptance and compassion to yourself and your practice in these moments. 

 Lou combines her experience of these tools with her science-mind and shares tools and concepts for daily life that are grounded in the scientific literature and come from the leaders in body-mind practices and trauma research. 

 “If we don’t feel that we have the resources to feel safe with what comes up in those moments of quiet then of course we are not going to allow that! For me, it’s about providing the tools for the individual to build that capacity in themselves – that inner confidence is empowering” – Lou Coles 

 “Body awareness is a necessary aspect of effective emotion regulation. Learning to notice, tolerate, and manage somatic experience may substantially promote emotion regulation. 

Changing breathing patterns can influence autonomic nervous system functions, including heart rate variability and cardiac vagal tone. The extensive research on the effects of mindfulness meditation has been  demonstrated to positively influence numerous psychiatric, psychosomatic, and stress-related symptoms, including anxiety, depression, chronic pain, immune function, blood pressure, cortisol levels, and telomerase activity.”
- Bessel van der Kolk et al, Yoga as an Adjunctive Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 2014 

Saturday & Sunday 21-22nd September 9am to 3:30 pm
Held in the Wellbeing Centre at Chenrezig Institute. 
Facility Fee $120 
Accommodation and meals available separately. 


Lou is an Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Practitioner who incorporates practical mindfulness into her group workshops and one-on-one sessions. EFT has been described as psychological acupressure and is often referred to as ‘tapping’. In its simple form, EFT can be learned and used as a self-help tool.

Lou works with people face to face and online across Australia, mostly struggling with chronic and serious illness. Her work is influenced by her background in science and nature combined with her life experience of having come through Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with the support of meditation and yoga practice.

She recently demonstrated EFT Tapping for pain and stress-relief with Dr Charlie Teo on the SBS TV program ‘Medicine or Myth?’ with great results.

Having specialised in EFT for trauma and recently trained in teaching yoga and trauma-informed yoga Lou’s EFT practice is also quite body-based and trauma-sensitive.