Happy Friday!

Firstly, apologies for the hiatus. It was a busy Christmas getting our new puppy settled in, and I’ve also managed to finish my book, Metamorphosis. I’ll be publishing it independently next month, and sharing more behind-the-scenes colour on the self-publishing process (which I find fascinating!). 

1. The heart’s electromagnetic field is so strong that modern medical equipment can measure its frequency from up to fifteen feet away. I’m working through Energy Medicine by Jill Blakeway, an acupuncturist and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. She explores HRV, or heart-rate variability, training, which is something I’m really interested in. Our breath, heart rate and autonomic nervous system are closely connected. When we can match our breathing rate to our heart rate, we are in ‘resonance’ and we can access our parasympathetic (rest & digest) nervous system much more easily. This is very handy in an age where our stress levels are chronically elevated. For more information on HRV you can visit the HeartMath Institute. I have one of their HRV trackers, which I clip onto my earlobe when meditating. It links to my smartphone and gives me real-time feedback on how effectively my meditation is helping me to go into resonance. 

2. There is a particular pace of breathing that puts us in resonance. Following on from the point above, Blakeway cites Dr Leah Lagos, who explains that 5 full breath cycles per minute is the optimum rate to create the most heart rate variability: each inhale and exhale should last 6 seconds. Her advice is to try to estimate this yourself rather than counting aloud or looking at a device, which can stimulate the sympathetic nervous system.

3. The art of conscious parenting, or more fundamentally, consciousliving. With all the processing and intensity modern parenting involves, I suspect many of us are not bringing a huge amount of consciousness to it. This presentation (available as a podcast) by Dr Shefali Tsabary at a Mindvalley event in LA is exceptionally entertaining and eye-opening. Her premise: we’re putting so much of our own crap onto our kids because none of us really knows how to be conscious, to just be. We are intent on making them into high-performing products because we’re so trapped in the matrix of this capitalist world. True conscious involves baring our souls and dropping all our labels. It’s a fab listen and she has a 30-day digital course available on Mindvalley too – I may well sign up. She has a book on the subject too.

4. I learnt a lot more about the basics of the law of attraction. I came to the manifestation ‘bible’, The Law of Attraction by Jerry and Esther Hicks, very late. I loved it. It’s written in the form of a Q&A. If you’re not familiar with the Hicks’ background, Jerry has been compiling a list of his queries about the universe since age 6. His wife, Esther, began to channel the words of a non-physical group entity which called itself Abraham during her meditations (as I understand it, Abraham is a group of people from the Other Side). Over several decades, Jerry has asked Abraham questions on all manner of things, especially around how the law of attraction works, and Esther has dictated all of their answers. The results are fascinating.

Have a great weekend! Sara

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