I am ready to celebrate! But it’s not what you think.

When I started my Remedial Massage practice, in 1993, a ‘business mentor’ said that it wouldn’t work in Swindon; I should go to Totnes or Glastonbury!

My thought was: relocating is not an option and people deserved pain relief in other towns too! 

 As Sean Stevenson put it: “don’t believe a prediction that doesn’t serve you!”

So despite the prediction and the difficulties life threw at me along the way, I followed my passion. Now I can celebrate 30 years in business  for the whole of 2023!

 

I want to celebrate with you as I truly enjoy what I do.  Helping people get better never feels like work and it now includes a lot more than massage. So I have devised 30 special mini retreats, available till 30th Dec 2023. 

Maybe you are ready for a reset or a reboot like with old computers to get them functioning better.

Just like I was told my business wouldn’t work, have you been told that:

 

If you work hard you will succeed, Computers will make your life easier, Doctors will make you better!  

This is what I heard as a child from parents, teachers, the media... However these didn't fit my experience of life. Trying harder just made me exhausted and frustrated at not making progress.

Computers haven’t really made my life easier.

My experience as a nurse helped me realise conventional medicine was ill equipped to deal with chronic problems.

I believed these, until I realised they were just stories.

We have been conditioned to believe that someone else’s way is the right way and often only way.  

How about in your life, are you lead by false beliefs?

We have been taught that in order to be liked we have to be good and behave. That generally means to listen and please others, rather than honour ourselves, our needs and values.

How often have you had a gut feeling and not followed through, then regretted it? This is because you were listening to someone else's path, not your own and staying true to yourself.

Ignoring such feelings and persistently sacrificing yourself can lead to frustration, anger, and overwhelm. Effectively what most people accept as normal stress. It arises because everyone else's wants and needs are getting on top of you. It might be the norm but that doesn’t make it normal!

Have a spa and relax!

Do you deal with it by ignoring it hoping it will magically vanish one day? Or maybe you go away for a spa day, or have a massage now and again. You might even think that going on holiday will make it better.

However, have you noticed that you relax there, but when you get home the same things still wind you up? Nothing has changed!

To me these are temporary avoidance. It's OK, they help recharge your battery but doesn't resolve anything.

You see, most spas and massages are designed as a generic product. They are not there to help you address specific issues and a holiday is a distraction and can be sometimes be just as draining.

Have the things you are doing to improve your situation stopped working or not working as well?

Doing more of the same and expecting a different outcome, is insanity, 

according to Einstein. 

Do you really want things to change?

Maybe you are ready for a completely different kind of retreat. One that can help you feel better for more than a few hours. One that can make a difference to your life. You might not need to do more but feel comfortable doing less.

YES, you can stop people-pleasing without your world falling apart!

Are you ready to put yourself first? (Yes you’ll probably feel guilty but this retreat can tackle that too.)

Remember, you can't take care of others if you don't look after yourself first. This is why you must put your own oxygen mask on, before helping anyone else (including your children!)

Do you want the courage and confidence to live YOUR life, rather than the one you have been told or believe you should live?

Because as the quote often wrongly attributed to Oscar Wild says 

“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken”.

 

Changing your relationship with yourself, will affect the one you have with food, money, work and ultimately your relationship with others. You can't change others but you can change yourself!

It is easier than you imagine because you already have all the tools you need. How do I know?  You are still alive! So whatever life has thrown at you so far, you have survived it!

Now you can choose to do more than survive and it starts with being able to love yourself. You can then love your life and others more, if you wish. The lack of alignment with our deepest self is the greatest cause of stress.

Ready to celebrate who you really are? Want to trust yourself, so you can have more of the life you want?   

The Body~Mind relax and regenerate mini-retreat is for you.

You will have a completely unique blend of physical treatments, as well practical approaches that will help you ease tension, find peace of mind and deeply relax. Like a complete physical, mental and emotional makeover!

 At the end, you will be able to think more clearly. Rather than simply patching symptoms that resurface over and over again, you will understand and be able to tackle the causes of your discomfort. Because only in a truly relaxed state are we most creative and best able to make good choices.

You will begin to feel yourself again, ready to own your life, in the knowledge that you are comfortable being who you are. A human being, not a human doing.

Not only are these 30 sessions unique to my birthday celebration, I am also giving the first 9 people who book a discount on the £300 price.

If this is not for you, but you would like to find out about other offers and events, I will be running over my celebration year, subscribe to my UPdates. 

You can also find some self help videos on my Youtube channel.

 

In order to get the most benefit you will need to commit to a 2 day, one to one, experience.

 Day 1:

Morning: You will be focussing on a reflective practice setting your intention and planning what you want from the retreat.

Prepare your lunch and evening meals. Ensure your home will be a nice place to relax in the evening and next day.

Afternoon: At 1.30pm you will join me, at my practice, for a 4hours treatment tailored to your needs.

It will include:

 -Clarifying your morning preparation about you intention for the session. Explain what you would like to achieve at the end of day 2.

- A physical assessment (Eg. gait, posture, mobility, blood pressure)

- An optional foot spa, a 90 min full body massage and/or other body work to release physical tension.

-Address, release and give you tools and techniques to deal with your most pressing cause of stress.

Evening: You will return home and continue to relax, eat the food you prepared that morning and sleep in the comfort of your own bed.

 

Day 2:

Morning  you will have time to reflect on what is really holding you back and what you are ready to change. 

Afternoon: a zoom call will answer any question that may have arisen and addressed the issues you have uncovered.

This process will:

Help you see the wood for the trees, by getting some clarity on the things that are truly getting in your way. Often not the things you think are the problem.

You will be able to put into practice easy techniques to help you get a better night’s sleep and improve your life.

Help you feel contented and more yourself. Feel more confident that you can own your life in the knowledge you are comfortable being who you are: a human being rather than a human doing!

Commitment:

You will need to have cleared your diary of commitments for the day of the treatment and the following day so you have time to process all the changes.

  

As I mentioned, there are only 30 retreat sessions available between now and 30 Dec 2023.

The first 3 to book will get over 30 % discount at £210

 The next 3 will pay £230

And 3 more get £30 off at £270. 

 

To book or for any further information, get in touch.

Until next time, be well, be you. 

Julie Nicholls Body~Mind Coach

Erase 5 words from your vocabulary to transform your life.

“Whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right”.

 Henry Ford

 

What we believe becomes!  

 

You might even recognise some of your limiting beliefs.

 But if you listen to the language you use every day, in general conversation, with others or your internal monologues (Yes! We all have a chatterbox in our head), you will discover a lot more about how language is affecting you and what you believe.

When, as a teenager, I picked up Scott Peck's book; ‘The road less travelled’, and read the first line of part one: “life is difficult”; I thought “You're not kidding”.

Although I agreed with the statement, as that was the way I felt at the time, I decided I did not want the rest of my life to be like that. 

I saw no reason why it should be that way. Foolish of me may be, I made it my mission to find ways of making life easier for myself and others.

Along the way, I discovered two things about the impact language has on us.

-      Firstly, the words we use give us an insight into the way we think, believe and respond to the world.

-      Secondly, when change the vocabulary we use, how we perceive what is happening and what we create in our lives changes almost without effort.

So, if like me, you would like an easier and better life, here are five words, you probably use on a regular basis, which you can erase from your vocabulary. 

 Find out what you can replace them with and begin to transform your life.

 The first thought you might have is: OK I'll try and see what happens.

1) Try

 Actually if you do say that, nothing will happen!  Next you might think OK then ‘if at first I don't succeed try, try and try again! 

 That won’t help you either, because “TRY” is the first word to delete from your vocabulary.

 What the expression fails to convey is, if you don't succeed, consider what you might need to change and see if it works any better. 

 Otherwise you will be modelling Einstein’s definition of insanity: 
 “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome”.

 Try implies failure. 

 As you realise if I said: ‘I tried to learn to drive’, you know full well I didn’t pass my test and probably had more than one go!

 Try also implies effort. Effort is hard work and causes tension in the body, thus making your life more difficult.

 Neither failure nor effort are helpful if you want an easier or better life.  So you can use words such as explore, investigate, play, taste, see if... instead. 

 

2) Don’t 

 Secondly, have you ever told yourself: “DON'T FORGET XYZ” and then realized you did forget it?

 This is normal. 

 The brain can’t recognize a negative statement. 

 If I say to you, “don't think of a pink elephant”, you had to think of the pink elephant to recognise what it was you were not meant to be thinking about. At that point it’s too late, you have thought of it.

 So any phrases that begin with don't followed by an action tend not to get the desired reaction.

 Don't forget...can be changed to remember.

 For something like “don't run” etc, describe what you to see happen, in this case walk. Don't scream could become: speak more quietly, and so on.

3) Should 

 “SHOULD” is the next word that creates difficulty in our life. It prevents us from experiencing the world as it truly is.

 Whether you think something should or shouldn't have happened, the reality is, it did! 

 Only when we accept the reality as it is, can we begin to move forward and get on, otherwise as I recall in Red Dwarf, Kryten said to Rimmer; “you're living in an unreality bubble Sir!”

 We use should (or shouldn’t) when people, (or things) don’t behave in the way we want them to - including ourselves.

 Even if we don't realise it, they have their reasons for behaving the way they do.  

It's generally unconscious on the part of the human - always deliberate on the part of an object or animal of course ;-).  

 Expecting the world to behave other than the way it does, is as Byron Katie puts it like expecting a cat to bark!

 If you think you SHOULD do something, whose ‘voice’ is that?  

 Yes! It might be the one in your head, but who is it that initially gave you the idea of what was correct or not?  

 Is it the media, a parent, a teacher, or a boss may be?  

 Should, means there's an internal desire to conform to an external pressure or request. If we believe the statement to be true we end up feeling guilty.

 Who said that request is actually right for you in that environment?  

For example in the UK it is not considered polite to eat with our fingers, yet in India it is, (as long as it’s not the left one!). So who is right?

 Consider using the word ‘choose’ to do or not do something instead. 

 This puts the onus on you to take responsibility for your actions, rather than feeling you don't have much of a choice or that you only do it for fear of punishment if you don't.

 

 4) The fourth word is: Why.

 You may be familiar with Simon Sinek’s ‘Find your why’ and how powerful that can be.  

 However, asking someone WHY they have done something tends to switches their brain off.  

 When kids ask their parents “why this, why that...” often the answer is simply ‘because I say so’ with no further explanation.  

 It is difficult to find an answer at such times, because it is usually more than one thing that determines the reason why something is the way it is, or why someone does something. 

 A certain set of circumstances might need to come together at exactly the right time to make it happen, just like rainbows.

 Instead ask various questions starting with what, where, when and how.  

 These are more likely to give you an insight into what was going on in the person's brain, at the time they took the action, and find a way to get a more satisfactory outcome for both parties.

 My husband kept asking “Why do you keep leaving drawers open?  Why don’t you just shut them?”

 Had I merely responded to the ‘why’, my answer would have been ‘because I did, why? ’ His answer to ‘why’ would have been because he wants to know! 

 Neither particularly helpful to being able to understand each other.

 Being asked why also made me feel like I was wrong, when I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. It implies a ‘should’ as mentioned above.

 What I was thinking was, “It would save me time having to shut it and open it again, now he wants me to waste my time.”

 That made me less willing to want to shut the drawer. 

 So, instead of just asking why, I asked him what his issue was with it being open. 

 He shared his concern that he might not realise it was open and hurt himself.  An amicable short discussion followed sharing our thought on the matter. 

 I am not entirely sure what changed, whether he has not seen me leave drawers open but he hasn’t asked me to shut a drawer since and I am not sure I always shut them!

 

 5 Hard/ difficult

 Take a moment to close your eyes and think about things that you find hard or difficult.  

 Notice what that does to your energy levels, your enthusiasm, your confidence, and desire to do them. 

 When you feel this way, rather than focus on how something is hard or difficult ask yourself:  

• What could be easier?  
• What could be softer?
• How can I make this more fun?

 Listen for the answers and ideas you come up with. Implement them and see what happens.

As you become more aware of the language you’re using, you’ll begin to hear phrases such as:

• somebody or something is a pain in the neck, 
• put your back in it, 
• you had a gut feeling, 
• it broke my hearted
• ... 

All of these types of phrases are the ones I listen out for with clients.  

They give me clues as to the deeper reasons they experience pain in a particular area of their body or feel the way they do. 

 Helping me understand how they are experiencing the world. Reflecting that back to them and exploring how they learned to perceive the world that way helps them heal and make their life easier.

Enjoy listening to yourself and others and don't forget why you shouldn't try hard!

Oops! I really mean: Remember when you can choose to explore an easier life!

Our brain believes everything we say and so this becomes our reality. Make sure it is one you actually want!

Until next time, BE WELL 

Julie Nicholls ​Body~Mind Coach  LCSP(Phys), IEMT, former RGN Tel: 01793 495551

To book a taster session:  http://bit.ly/3I5pPbe

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