The Big Peace

Change your life in 40 days...

I'm just about to do the Big Peace yoga retreat at the weekend. (Now sold out! sorry! You can sign up for priority notification for the next one here.)
And my wonderful yoga teacher Viv has just sent me this information about changing a habit in 40 days and thought that it was encouraging fodder for the Big Peace December ahead....

"

*40 days will change a habit into a more positive one. Meditation for 40 Days

In the yogic tradition, meditations practiced for a certain number of days have a certain effect. Forty days is the minimum to break a habit and set the stage for an internal shift. One student asked me once-"Forty days in a row?!" The whole class laughed. Yes, forty days in a row…. And if that seems like a long time, in the past many spiritual masters have taken 40 years to achieve enlightenment. I imagine that all of us have done that path in other lifetimes. This lifetime, we are attempting to get quicker results, so that we can enjoy peace and happiness while still in the body.

 

* 90 days confirms the new habit in you…..

 

* 120 days allows the habit to become who you are……

 

* 1 000 days ensures that you have mastered the habit……..

 

 

Start your Big Peace now, begin with 40 days of watching your breath, the flow of the in breath and the outbreath….the natural breath

Then extend this to mental counting of the breath lengths, extending to the point where you are comfortable…if possible an equal ratio of 1:1

Then add pauses/hold at the end of the in-breath and the out-breath (these are known as kumbhaka’s)… starting with a natural pause/hold then building this up to an equal length of the in-breath and out-breath….

 

 

Enjoy and watch your life change in 40 days."

Now there's a promise. Change your life by just breathing in and out.

I will be starting Big Peace December on Monday. I'm off to the Big Peace Yoga retreat tomorrow so will be off air for a couple of days.

Suzy x

HOW NOT TO FIND THE BIG PEACE LESSON 2.

How Not to Be Peaceful Lesson 2. Compare yourself to others - be it the Joneses with a nicer car/house/spouse or jungle girl Dani Behr with a perfect body after 2 kids (really, how is that possible???) - when does comparing ourselves to others EVER bring inner peace. Even if you find yourself comparing yourself favourably ....when was being smug an emotional state to aspire to?

Big Peace December warm-up: Strive to be perfect

Today, just wanted to flag up a way of NOT finding your big peace and that's by striving to be perfect and have the script running in your head that you've got to get this (and everything right) or you will never be approved of/loved/included or respected.

Perfectionism is one of the most self-defeating strategies that you could ever adopt. It is quite simply a one-way ticket to unhappiness, stress, negativity and depression.

Perfectionism is a glorious way of setting yourself up to fail in spectacular style. It is a way to constantly affirm to yourself that 'you're no good'/not up to the mark/are failing every single day of your life.

Because generally, the perfectionist has set themselves an impossible task. Their standards are so high that they never can relax and give themselves a pat on the back. There is always, always something better they could have done. The perfectionist will focus on that tiny detail that wasn't quite right rather on the massive, amazing event/meal/report that they have just completed. 

Perfectionism is a 'survival mechanism' we learn in childhood. You learn from an early age that to be loved and approved of - to survive in the world - you must be perfect. As a child, you built a belief system that you're not good enough/clever enough/enough just as you are. Scratch any Perfectionist, and you'll usually find a little five-year-old who has decided that to be loved they must attain perfection. Perfectionism is simply a way of constantly trying to prove to the world that you are good enough. It is exhausting and self-defeating because generally no matter how hard you try you will always find yourself lacking.

The antidote? A big leap in thinking. It is letting go of the ideal of constant self-improvement and embracing the idea of self-acceptance. I call it acceptance of the 'what is'.

Let's face it, reality could probably always be better - we could be thinner, more beautiful, have more time, less stress, have a holiday planned to the Caribbean rather than Cardiff. If we thought about it hard enough, we probably could always 'do better, try harder, buy a bigger and better life.' But what if you could simply accept yourself exactly for who you are, how you're doing and what you've got right now.

Let's ponder that thought for today.....

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Peace is on the Sunday Times hot list

Finally.....we've got what someone else wants!
The Sunday Times hot list has just named peace as the no 1 most desirable must-have - ‘taking over from 'time' as our biggest, most elusive luxury.’

Not so elusive if you join The Big Peace?

We start our live Big Peace journey on this blog on Monday.

Stay tuned!

Big Peace Free coaching!

So, very excited! I'm going to run The Big Peace programme daily from this blog through the month of December. Love it! Hopefully all that focus on peace in December will ease me - and hopefully you - into a 2009 of loved-updom and peace to all men (and women, dogs, you know what i mean)

I'm really lucky because the weekend before 1st December I'm running The Big Peace yoga retreat so I'll
be so chilled out then anyway!! (By the way...there are 5 places left now and if you sign up NOW, I am
throwing in three months of one to one coaching with me! I've had a lot of feedback about this retreat and the main objection has been that it's all very well going on a workshop and feeling great for 2 days but then you always end up falling by the wayside....so with three months of me by yourside, the big peace programme via blog as well as the workshop - I think we'll make some progress)

To book a place click here: www.bigpeaceretreat.co.uk/

INSTRUCTIONS FOR BIG PEACE DECEMBER ON MY BLOG....
I will be doing the warm ups next week so just log in daily and I'll be giving us some warm up exercises to get us in the peaceful mood. Starts in earnest (although not too earnestly, if you know what I mean)
December 1st!

Big Peace Design

People keep asking me who designed the cover of the Big Peace CD - and I feel awful because I forgot to give Big Leaper Kate a plug on the CD.
Kate England from Marmalade Moon designed it.
and isn't it cool?
I was never in the too cool for school gang.
But hire a designer like Kate and you can be!
Suzy x

Giving up coffee

It's a small thing but a big thing. I drink coffee. Sometimes A LOT of coffee. (10 cups or more a day) I told my workshop group (I went to the wonderful and amazing How to Self Publish a Best-Seller seminar on saturday with the creative and genius Jacqueline Burns and Kirsty McClachlan of Freethinking.tv) and they all gasped and told me that no wonder I always seemed so hyperactive. (I think the word they used was manic!) Me? Manic? Not the look I was going for.
But yes, it's true. I can be a tad overexcitable. Especially after 10 cups.
So I've decided to wean myself off in the next month. By Christmas, I promise to be caffeine free.
Will it make me more peaceful? I'll report back.

Interview with William Bloom

I was privileged to talk to wise and rather wizard-like William Bloom last week about his work and his book The Endorphin Effect, all about the miracle hormones - endorphins.

William Bloom is Britain's leading holistic teacher and has just been presenting at the annual global conference in London 'Happiness and its causes'. William was speaking alongside Professor Tania Singer, the neuro-scientist who is researching the brain chemistry of compassion, Alain de Botton, philosopher and Ven.
Robina Cortin,a Buddhist nun who works on death row - among many other top experts.

In this interview, William takes us through a step by step guide to feeling good, no matter how grotty you feel by releasing a flood of endorphins into the body.

And there are also some top tips on how to have better intimate relations! 
You can't say I don't bring you intesting pod-casts!

Here's the interview:

www.bigleaplife.com/audios/williambloom.mp3

Dr David Hamilton interview: listen to a doctor dance

I was very excited to get to interview Dr David Hamilton, author of his
new book How The Mind Can Heal the Body

David is a scientist, a trained chemist who was inspired by the
field research tests he conducted for chemical companies.
Realising that placebo tests produced comparable results with the
sample that received the actual drug, David set about understanding
why.

His research has resulted in his accessible and extraordinary
books, in which he has assembled all the research from mainstream
scientists and writers such as Gregg Braden and David Hawkins to
create a convincing and inspiring case for the power of compassion
and kindness to really make a difference in the world - as well as
healing our own bodies simply by thinking different thoughts.

In my interview, David gives us a brilliant examples and tips of
how and why visualisations works - plus exercises to do at home!

He also dances - twice. David has also agreed in principle to come
and talk at our Big Peace event early next year (once I get some
dates together.)

Here's the link:
http://www.bigleaplife.com/audios/davidhamilton.mp3

If not now, when?

I'm just back from half term holidays and I took a quick break up in Haworth in Yorkshire - by heck, it was cold! But spent time walking my lovely dog Oscar over the moors where Cathy and Heathcliffe fell in love.
I also visited to the Bronte museum, which was the residence of the Bronte sisters. It was interesting but also really sad. I didn't realise that that every one of the sisters had died before the age of 40.
All that talent, all that ambition (they self published their first poems, they tried to set up their own finishing school, they blagged their way into their first publishing deal by pretending to be men!) and just when they were just getting into their stride, they died.
It just gave me a little shiver and spurred me on a bit -  Get on with living and appreciating the life I have.
If not now, when? Now, feels a good time.
Care to join me?