So here we go. So I'm now recording and just wanted to say how lovely it is that you're all here. I'm Henny and I've been really looking forward to running this session. It feels particularly appropriate for some reason on Mother's Day actually, a time for us all to spend a bit of time mothering ourselves just for an hour, a little bit of self care amongst this time that we're going through this unprecedented time. And I hope we can have a lovely hour of rest and relaxation and thinking about things other than what's all over the news at the moment.

Although it is really important that we also honour what is going on for us personally and all around us and that we don't try and suppress it but at the same time allow ourselves to come into this space and talk about gratitude and talk about journaling. So I see this really as a genuine time to regroup both with ourselves and with others and for now here we are together and that feels enough right now. So, there are a couple of core principles to this work, to the work of self care and to the work of gratitude and the work of journaling. And the main principle is that everything is valid. So, all sorts are accepted and there are no rules other than to listen to each other and most importantly to listen to ourselves, to listen to whatever comes up for us and honour it, allow it, let it be with us.

And I see this really is like a kind of mini, mini retreat. And with that in mind, it would be lovely for us to leave this cool, this space that we're virtually creating amongst ourselves refreshed and rested and having cared for ourselves. And if there's anything that you need during the session then pop a note into the chat. I can't promise that I'll have answers but I know from the work that I do that just airing things sometimes can be really useful, particularly in challenging times like the ones that we are experiencing right now. And my other sort of thought before we begin is it can be really useful just to note down if a particular thought keeps coming up for you or a feeling comes up for you, it can be really useful to note it down.

So in your notebook or on the paper that you've got, you can just write down. This is, I don't know, even if it's like, I'm irritated. I feel angry. I feel scared. I feel really elated.

Like whatever that feeling is, note it down without judgement and just see it as like, okay, that's come up. That's interesting. There we go. That's it. We don't need to do anything with it, but just noting it down can be really useful.

And that really is part of the of the kind of first steps into journaling actually is just the value of just noting things down without trying to fix them. I thought I'd begin with a little piece about what is self care. And it's not just about pursuing pleasurable activities, although long bars and long walks and all things like that, which give us some huge amounts of pleasure, are still obviously acts of self care. There's also self discipline and self awareness and accountability and motivation to make conscious choices. They're all facets of self care as well.

And there is a discipline to self care and that discipline is what enables us to build up the resources that sustain us, that give us a sense of resilience when things are more challenging and obviously as I'm talking now it feels even more resonant, know, these are all messages that come through again and again in the retreats that we do and in the coaching that I do. Now more so than ever for such clear reasons. And for me, I see gratitude and journaling as two of the key tools that help us form or can help us form a bedrock of self care. And the other important thing is that we all have different approaches to how we respond to the different practices of self care and some things will really resonate with us and some things won't. That's okay.

So if this resonates with you, wonderful. If it doesn't, wonderful. It's okay. It doesn't matter. But just being here is an act of self care in itself.

I also wanted to just sort of touch on the fact that this in times of great change, it can be useful to remember and this is a time of great change obviously unprecedented endless change that even though the evolution of mankind is dependent on successful change, you know survival of the fittest and how different species evolve to adapt to their environment. We're also hardwired to maintain the status quo and so that's where we can get that kind of tension and how we respond to change has as much to do with our mindset as it has to do with our kind of comprehension of what's actually going on around us. So the practices of journaling and self and gratitude can be useful for us in becoming comfortable in the discomfort, which can be quite a challenging concept in itself. I just want to sort of put that out there really and, you know, and these practices can be particularly focusing on gratitude can be really powerful medicine when things feel really tough. And that feels very resonant today.

So what is journaling? I'm going to ask you, in fact if anyone has a journaling or a gratitude practice, if you'd put a note into the chat that would be wonderful. And if you're sort of happy to maybe talk about it and just sort of share like how you do it, that would be great and I'll come to you. And if not, then that's absolutely fine. Of course, there's no pressure on anyone to share.

But it might be interesting to see how different people do it. Journaling as a kind of general overview of it is a free form approach to writing and it gives us the freedom to express whatever thoughts and feelings are arising. And for me, I certainly find it as a means of releasing emotions or thoughts that may otherwise become kind of trapped somewhere in my body, quite often around here, in my belly. So as a means of releasing emotions or thoughts might get trapped in our body or those things that can sometimes kind of spiral around in our head. The act of journaling, the act of writing it down without questioning it, without judging it, is effective and immediate and it's like a release valve.

And I use it to tap into whatever I have going on in that moment. And I mean literally mean whatever. And it's an act of opening a gate and letting words kind of fall out onto the page and not worrying about spelling or grammar or I rarely use paragraphs. And and the act really is just to keep the pen moving. It's almost like a kind of you you settle in to just just writing whatever's coming up.

And one of the reasons why it's so powerful is because when we're writing, it naturally slows our brain down. So we can't write as fast as we can think. And it kind of settles us and brings us out of that sympathetic nervous system where a fight flight freeze and into the parasympathetic nervous system of rest and repair. So, there is a wonderful TED podcast or TED talk by the psychologist Susan David where she talks about the power of writing to release emotions and thoughts. And I have written a blog post quite a few months ago now, but I wrote a blog post on the regroup.co.uk website.

That's got a link to Susan's TED talk. And it's really interesting. If you want to explore how journaling can help with anxiety and with fear, then I really recommend going and listening to her as well and know and taking a look at that blog post. But for today we're going to be focusing on the act of gratitude. And thank you, Catherine.

I saw that you popped a note up about your practice and I'll come to you shortly if that's okay. So, I'm going to move on now to talk a bit about gratitude and how we can use different approaches to access gratitude. It is a deep and wide subject and there's a lot of science being done currently around the impact of gratitude on our brains and how it influences our state of well-being. We only have a short amount of time together now but if it's something that you want to find out a bit more about then drop me a note and I can send you some links to some bits of some studies that have been done into it as well. But for me, there are kind of three core ways that I practise gratitude.

One I do every day. One I do occasionally but it's quite a deep sort of big thing. And then another one I do every now and again just when it feels right. So the one I do every day is called 21 Beads of Gratitude and I have an Instagram account dedicated to this practice and it started on a whim about fifteen months ago and it has sustained me ever since and basically I write every evening 21 things that I am grateful for which sounds like a huge amount and is only 21 because there were 21 beads on the bracelet that I was wearing when I decided to start doing it. But it is amazing how when you activate that gratitude muscle how many things we can find to be grateful for.

But even if it's just a gratitude practice of writing three things or saying three things out loud or one thing each day that can be incredibly powerful and I have noticed the effect of doing that practice on myself. I am much calmer and much more able to stay present And I think it's been powerful medicine for me. The one that I do very occasionally and we've done it in the weekend retreat that we did last year was a gratitude galaxy which is something that I picked up from Elizabeth Gilbert who's the incredible author of Eat Pray Love and various other amazing books, ones I can't currently remember. How it works is you draw a big circle on a sheet of paper and you segment it like a pie and you label each section with an area of your life. So family, friends, community, spirituality, work, self development, you know, sort of whatever the areas of your life are that are important to you.

And in each of those little pie sections, you just write stream of consciousness, write things that you are grateful for about that particular part of your life. And you keep writing and keep writing and keep writing and keep writing and then eventually it comes off the page and it tumbles out into the universe. Hence it's a gratitude galaxy. And again, it's incredible how as you start to kind of dig in and write more and more and more and get more and more focused and centred on that particular area of your life, how many things you can actually tap into and of bring to the page. And then the third one is gratitude journaling, which is what we're going to do together.

And this is one page generally, might be more, but generally one page. And sometimes it can be a broad open invitation just to write about anything you are grateful for. And sometimes it's something that is much more focused. So about a particular topic or a particular aspect of your life and that is the way that we're going to do it today. So the approach I'm going to offer up just before we come to have a look at the things that have come up in the chat, It's the way that I do it.

It's the way that I was taught when I first came across it and it's how I like to do it. There are many and varied ways of doing it. There's a wonderful book called The Artist's Way, which has a really interesting approach to journaling and to how writing can be something that sustains us. So I'm going to talk through, there are kind of nine sort of key kind of aspects to the way that I do it. You might want to take a note of those or the ones that resonate with you, you might want to take a note of as I'm going through them.

So first of all, find a book. That's always a good thing. And this is my book that I'm currently using. I tend to use an A5 book with lined pages and use a pen that flows really nicely. It's a bit annoying if your pen doesn't flow nicely, so find a pen that flows nicely.

Be in a comfy space where you're not going to be disturbed. So if you decide to set a weekly or even ideally daily practice of journaling, then it can be really useful to tell other people who are in the house with you that this is a time that is yours and that you ask them respectfully not to disturb you during that time. It's useful to set a time of day that you do it. I tend to do it first thing in the morning, but it's not, it doesn't matter if you know, for whatever reason I have to change that, but I tend to do it first thing in the morning. The fourth point is just to let the words flow.

Don't worry about meaning, grammar, spelling, content. It's really important that we let go of the desire to be right. This is a private practise. No one else is going to read what you write. And I do know people who write on a whiteboard and then wipe it so that it's even more private for them.

Or people who write on a sheet of paper and then burn it, put it into their fire. So, you know, it really depends on what you want, but it is a private practise. It is just you and your pen and your book. So you can be utterly honest. Don't read over it as you write.

That can trigger that like bit of us that goes like oh I could have phrased that differently or it doesn't really make sense or I feel a bit stupid doing this. I don't know why I'm doing it. Just keep writing and if the thoughts are coming up that I feel a bit stupid writing it, right. I feel a bit stupid writing this. Just go with whatever's coming up.

That is the practice. Don't read over it after you've written it. At least not for a while. Give yourself a little bit of space from it. Ideally write the same amount each day.

I tend to write two pages. Sometimes I write four, sometimes I might write one, mostly I write two. And when you've finished it, acknowledge yourself, thank yourself for the practice even if it's felt uncomfortable doing it, thank yourself for doing it. This is the discipline that I talked about with self care it's the thank yourself for putting the discipline, putting the practice into place. And then the last one is when it's time to stop, stop, put the book down, put your pen down and go and do something else.

So it's a closed experience if you see what I mean. So we we do it, we close the book, we move on and and we just allow it to be however it is. So for me, like I said, I like to do it first thing in the morning but it doesn't matter if I don't. I do it every day, doesn't matter if I don't. I don't beat myself up if I miss a day or two or even you know a week.

I won't beat myself up about it. I just notice and then I come back to it. And I see it as a gift to myself. I see it as time for myself and it clears my head and it refreshes me. And sometimes if all I can write is I don't know what to write then that's okay.

I mean I have journal entries where I've literally written I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write and then eventually something else will come through and then there I am writing. So I've seen that we've got a couple of notes here from Catherine and from Beb. So Catherine, do you have anything, a different kind of approach that you'd like to, might be helpful for other people to hear or bear? Do you have a different approach? Just let you put something into the chat.

I can see so Catherine's basically saying that she has a journal and she writes down her intentions for a morning meditation each day, oh that's lovely and to write what you're grateful for And then from Bev saying that you journal and found it useful to keep anxiety at bay, I think that's such a key point. I find it very useful for naming what's going on inside me in a way just by acknowledging it, by seeing it written down. It's a way of kind of, I don't need to hold onto it because it's there, it's on the page and it's a way of kind of helping me release it. I think just to reiterate as well that point around this act of journaling and this really is like this has been something I've had to really work on so I'm very familiar with this thought is the letting go of having to get it right. So part of my currency is having to get things right And that's something that I've brought from way back childhood stuff.

And so it has been really helpful to me, really useful to me to have a practice that I know I cannot get wrong. Is that right? Is that the double negative? That I can only get right because it doesn't matter what I write. It's in my hands.

That's something, yes, that's a really interesting point as well. So another point on the chat is that using the journaling to talk about gratitude feelings, gratitude rather than other emotions is something that we can do in case we are concerned about other people perhaps reading what we write but that kind of brings me back to that point about you know writing on a whiteboard and then clearing it down or writing on something that we then perhaps put in the fire afterwards you know something so that we still have that opportunity to release the feelings and not just stay with the gratitude practice. However, I have to say that there are a number of meditation techniques as well. So Tara Brack has a beautiful meditation technique called RAIN which is a little bit like the practice of journaling but in meditation form. So there are four stages to it.

So stage one is recognise, so name what's coming up for us emotionally to ourselves, not necessarily out loud to ourselves. The second one is to accept it. The third one is to investigate it with curiosity just to sort of look at kind of what's coming up and the fourth one is to nourish it. So if you're interested in that kind of practice then take a look at Tara Brack Rain meditation. So, does anyone have any questions or anything or any other kind of thoughts coming up that you'd like me to cover off before we come into the actual practice itself.

If you do have anything then just pop it into the chat and I'll bring it in. We have, we've got sort of half an hour left, it was a bit of a whistle stop tour through gratitude practices and through the practice of journaling. But nothing is quite as wonderful as doing something listening to it is one thing doing it is always better. So just to show how do you spell Tara's name? Very good question.

So it's Tara and then Brach is B R A C H. And she is a Buddhist psychotherapist. She is the queen of compassion and also resilience, how resilience is founded on compassion. I really highly recommend her. So, as we go forward, we're going to settle a little bit.

So, I hope you're somewhere really comfy. And just to show how flexible this approach is, We're actually going to do it as a timed activity and you can do it in whatever way works best for you. So you can do a page, you can do two pages, but today we're going to try doing it as a timed activity. In a moment I'm going to grab my gong because I've realised I've left it over the other side of the room. And the main thing to remember here really is that this practice is about the repetition of the practice.

So it's about building the habit of telling our brain here is a release, here is a space for you to be able to release these thoughts. Here is a space for you to be able to express this gratitude and that that in itself is really nourishing for us. Like we like rhythm, we like routine. So building a routine of journaling into our day or into our week is something that our brains really like. Our bodies like it too because they're connected obviously.

So sort of developing it so it becomes like second nature is really important. Like I said before, it's a big part of building that bedrock of self care. So before we move into doing the actual journaling, we're just going to get settled with taking three lovely deep breaths and I'm just going to get the gongs. Just one moment, get settled while I while I do this There we are. Here is my beautiful gong.

Hang on. That's the wrong face. My lovely little bow. It's a very nice sound. I've just seen what's inside it.

Couldn't be more perfect. It was a white feather in case you couldn't tell. That is beautiful. Okay, I'm going to take us through three deep breaths and get your book, get your pen, get your paper ready. And I thought that the area of focus for today, these times that we're in and the amazing community spirit which is arising all around us, I thought that would be a lovely topic for our gratitude practice today.

So we're going to write for twelve minutes. It's a very specific amount of time. We're going to write for twelve minutes and just remember the key principles just don't worry about spelling, don't worry about grammar, don't worry about it making sense, don't worry about paragraphs, just just write whatever comes up and just keep on writing until I chime the gong again. Okay? So before we start, just settle comfortably wherever you're seated and we're going to do three deep breaths just to come inside ourselves a little bit and come out of our heads where we've been listening and come into our bodies where we can feel.

And you can either do this with your eyes closed or just with a gentle downward gaze. I'm going to count our breath actually so we'll inhale for four and we'll exhale for four and we'll do that three times. To help deepen your breath on the first exhale if you really sort of pull your tummy in and really empty all the air out of your lungs it's much easier to take a longer breath on the next inhale. If four is too long do it to three or do it to two counts just do whatever feels most comfortable and if five counts feels better do it to five. Eyes closed if you like or lowered gaze and we'll just do the first inhale to a count of one, two, three, four, exhale four, three, two, one.

Inhale one two three four exhale four three two one last one inhale one two three four exhale four three two one. So now just begin to write. We have twelve minutes. I'll strike the gong to start and and I'll strike the gong to close. So remember the rules: put the pen down, close the book, turn the paper over, whatever it might be that your approach is.

So I'm going to close this session now. I'm going to stop the recording and then if you want to stay on just for a few minutes, just for a couple of minutes for us to say our goodbyes, that would be lovely. But just to, before I do close the recording, just to say that if you want to talk more or if you've got any questions at all about the practice whether it's hard or easy or how it feels, what the challenges are around it, whatever you know comes up for you is valid and worthwhile and worthy of attention. So do get in contact. Just want to be useful in whatever way I can in these times so I am here and I'm going to close the recording now and thank you so much it was really beautiful sitting here as you all wrote.

Okay take care.