Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
A space to settle in and listen, and see where the episode takes you. This inspiring, reflective podcast is an invitation to travel deeper, with compassionate self-enquiry.
Henny shares insights from her own life, alongside practices that help us connect with our inner wisdom, explore our relationship with change and find a greater sense of flow. Henny believes we all hold our own answers, so there are no one-size-fits-all solutions here. This is a space to be with what’s true for you, and to grow from there.
If you’re drawn to slowing down, listening in, and exploring what it means to live with greater authenticity, this podcast is for you. Guided by psychology, mindfulness, therapeutic coaching, flow journaling, and everyday compassion, we explore ideas that help us step further into our inner worlds, in order to shape the changes we seek in our outer worlds.
After my travels last week, I am back home and you might be able to hear the tiny little waterfall that we have that pours into the brook that runs along the edge of our land. This kind of slow, kind of faded rushing sound and maybe you can hear the birds too. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self awareness with profound self compassion. I'm Henny. I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self love.
Henny Flynn:Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. I'm beginning today by noticing those sounds and also noticing the sounds of Anton downstairs, pottering about and I can almost yeah I can just about make out Ronnie somewhere off in one of the fields barking at something each of these things they fill me with a sense of gratitude. A sense of gratitude that I am here, home, safe warm comfortable with everything that I need to sustain me and sometimes it is so useful to pause and to acknowledge these simple, maybe at times they feel a little bit mundane, but you know, to pause and just to notice what is around us. And I think at times it can be really useful to begin with sounds because often they're not things of our own making, of course, you know, they're sounds that are being made by something other than us or someone other than us. And one of the things about the sound of birdsong, of course, is that birds sing when they feel safe.
Henny Flynn:So actually noticing the birdsong is a way of activating that parasympathetic, you know, aspect of our autonomic nervous system. Because when we hear that birds are singing, our sort of oldest, deepest part of our brain recognises that they sing because they feel safe. And that means that there isn't any danger around. And therefore that transmits a sense of safety to us too. We know that we can feel safe as well.
Henny Flynn:And, you know, I love that. I love knowing that. And of course it speaks to the reason why, you know, as human beings, we love the sound of birdsongs so much because it makes us feel safe. And, you know, and I think sort of using sounds as a point of gratitude can be a really interesting place to start, particularly if things in our life are feeling really hard, really challenging. If, you know, the feeds on our phones are filled with hard stuff.
Henny Flynn:If hard stuff is happening in our day to day life. Finding a moment where we can pause and notice the sounds or notice something that our eyes fall upon. I'm doing that right now. Actually, I'm sitting upstairs in my bedroom and recording this for you. I've kind of feel as though we've been moving around my home quite a lot recently doing these recordings.
Henny Flynn:I wonder whether unconsciously or subconsciously I'm having some kind of internal experiment with the podcast. But it's interesting, even just sitting here, there are so many things that my eyes are falling on. There's a plant, there's my tiny little bedroom shrine, which has got some crystals, some stones, a tiny little teddy bear that belonged to my mother. So that's, you know, over significantly over 80 years old and a tiny little toy rabbit that belonged to my son. And they're sitting together on the shrine that fills me with great joy.
Henny Flynn:There's a picture created by a friend of mine. There's photographs, pieces of furniture that have been with us for a long time. Even my old dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, you know, when I lay my eyes on that, that and the recognition of how long that has been with me, all the years that I've had it, that fills me with a sense of gratitude too. And I think, you know, this is sort of one of the things about the attitude of gratitude, you know, this as we build this muscle of gratitude, it becomes easier to feel into the things that we are able to feel grateful for in our life. Always remembering that it's not about forcing ourselves to be grateful.
Henny Flynn:It's not about a kind of, you know, a distorted version of toxic positivity. It's about really being able to sink into what is it about this thing that I am thankful for? And actually, reminds me of a piece of research that I'm going to share next week in the opening event for the gratitude quest that begins on the February 26, which is a piece of research that looked at how important it is that gratitude is true, that it's a real thing. We're not just pretending that we're grateful for something. So, it's almost the antithesis of the fake it till you make it sort of, you know, psychological state, which is often quoted for helping us get through hard things.
Henny Flynn:And, you know, I think that's really interesting. So kind of finding the point of truth within us in order to be able to begin to exercise that stance of gratitude or that muscle of gratitude. And it's one of the reasons why I think personally for me, and maybe this resonates with you, maybe not, but I think personally for me, why beginning with a sound can be really powerful because if we're fortunate, maybe that sound will be something to do with nature. And the minute we start to connect with nature, we start to ground our system. We start to ground this natural body that we are.
Henny Flynn:We are all part of nature and we begin to reconnect with our true state and, you know, and sort of move out of that illusion of separation and isolation, which is often how it can feel to be human in this modern world. We have this sort of illusion of separation, but the true state is that, you know, we are natural beings and part of the natural world. So, I'm also grateful that Oh, there's a car coming by. I'm just going to pause for a moment. So not a car, a quad bike from one of the farmers nearby.
Henny Flynn:We don't get very many vehicles going by. So yes, so I'm also grateful that I was able to take a day to rest yesterday. Having been away, I managed to pick up some kind of bug and I feel like fingers crossed, it feels like just having a day in bed has helped it move through my body. And I'm feeling much more able to speak and to be here with you, which is the reason why the podcast is a little bit late getting published this week. So I'm grateful for that.
Henny Flynn:I'm grateful for sort of my knowledge of myself, my willingness to trust my body when it said I cannot continue with all the plans that I had yesterday without it depleting me to such an extent that I would get very ill. And so quite often the quad bites back. So quite often, you know, in the past, what I would have done is just kept going. And I suspect that might resonate with many of us here, you know, and it's, you know, it's often something that's, that's kind of hardwired into our sort of belief of, you know, how we should be, how we are meant to show up in the world. But finding these points in our day, in our week, in our month, in our year, when we can rest and sort of being grateful to ourselves for taking those moments or those days, or maybe it's a few days and genuinely resting.
Henny Flynn:And I've got a memory has just come of when our son was little, maybe seven years old, I think. We had a camper van and I managed to arrange to take five weeks off work in order to go and drive to Southern Spain in the van with our dog. It was brilliant. You know, it sounds so idyllic and so much of it was. And I also have a memory of trying to sit and work on a laptop and find Wi Fi at campsites across France and Spain in order to carry on doing the work that I believe no one else was capable of doing.
Henny Flynn:Now, that's a really complicated thing because the woman that I was then, she truly believed that was true. And I wouldn't wanna take that belief away from that version of me, that woman that I was. And the reality of the impact of that belief was that I didn't really rest. I wasn't able to be completely fully present in that time away. And the woman that I am now looks back and sees, Oh my darling, like how could that have been handled differently?
Henny Flynn:Simply that. And so that feels a little bit of a random segue and I'm just, I'm kind of trusting that sharing that is resonating with some of us here. Maybe that helps a thought or reflection crystallize for you or maybe it's a, oh yes, I recognize that too. So I think that might be it for today. I think this is just a really short episode and trusting that.
Henny Flynn:And just to say if you haven't yet signed up for the gratitude quest that begins next week, then please do. We've now over, well over 200 people have joined. And we begin on Thursday, February 26 at 7PM. That's UK time. And we're going to begin with a lovely opening event together.
Henny Flynn:So I'll share a little more about the science and the practice of gratitude, the different ways that it can help us. And also exploring some of the different ways that we can approach it as well. And recognising that sometimes it feels really hard to find. So, this again is about really sort of looking at this practice of gratitude from all perspectives, not ignoring the more challenging aspects. We'll also do a delicious relaxation practice together.
Henny Flynn:And we'll do some journaling. We'll do some journaling that helps us expand into this theme of gratitude in order to understand, you know, our own practice, our own approach toward it, our own challenges maybe with it. And then the gratitude quest, twenty one days of gratitude that officially begins the following day on the February 27. And what I'll do is I'll share a very simple prompt. If you've received the everyday compassion from me, then you'll understand, you know, you'll have a sense of how these simple little prompts can really support us.
Henny Flynn:If you're curious about everyday compassion as well, I'll put a link in the show notes so you can have a look at that too. But for the gratitude quest, I'll post a very simple prompt to spark your gratitude. And maybe you use it that day, maybe you don't. Maybe you write your own gratitudes that day, maybe you don't. It's all okay.
Henny Flynn:There's nothing here that you have to keep up with. There's no pressure to perform in any way. It's simply a quest for gratitude. So whatever that quest whatever the journey of that quest looks like for you is okay. And the invitation if you wish to is to share one of your gratitudes that you have written that day.
Henny Flynn:And if you don't want to share, you don't have to. Again, there's absolutely no pressure on you at all. And recognising that sometimes it can be really helpful when we have this sense of the group practice, you know, all of these people writing together, practicing together, sharing this energy of gratitude together and helping gratitude to hold us all for the period of the quest and beyond. So I'm going to put the link in the show notes if you want to know more if you you know have any questions at all you can always drop me a line henyhenyflinn dot co dot uk and I would really really love to welcome you there and I just leave you with a little question now just where you are right now whatever you can hear whatever you can see whatever you can touch What's something that you're grateful for? And I send you a hug and a wave.