How My Late Mother Inspired My First Wellness Retreat

How My Late Mother Inspired My First Wellness Retreat

My First Self-Love & Wellness Retreat Take Time Out Before You Burn Out Many of you who have met me in person or follow my writings know that I lost my Mother to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma when I was 24. Even though nearly 16 years have passed, her influence on my life still permeates each and every day. My mother was a most wonderfully warm woman, who never thought twice about helping anyone. She was generous and thoughtful, quick to laugh and smile and she was always ready with a helping hand or a soothing cuddle. As I meet more and more women throughout my work, I think of

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Benefits of Meditation to Reduce Anxiety

Benefits of Meditation to Reduce Anxiety

Reduce Anxiety with Meditation Oprah and Deepak do it. The Beatles were huge fans. Russell Brand does it daily. Even Ellen DeGeneres, Clint Eastwood and Hugh Jackman do it. Yes, they all found meditation. I discovered meditation nearly twenty-five years ago, to aid in my stress and struggles through the beginnings of adulthood. Now, using Meditation Therapy, I teach others how easily this ancient practice can significantly plant the seeds for health and healing in modern life. What’s Good About Meditation? The benefits of meditation have been thoroughly researched and documented by world class research institutions such as Harvard University,

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10 Tips to Stress Less Now!

10 Tips to Stress Less Now!

Stress Less Now! Stress is now the number one underlying cause of all illness and disease in modern society. If you’re not sure what stress actually is or how it affects the body (physiologic responses) then check out my article on What is Stress that also includes 10 tips for promoting the Relaxation Response. Over-stimulation, achievement, demands, stimulus, finance and relationship challenges, children and lack of exercise…. the responsibilities all adds up. If we’re not stopping regularly to recharge our minds, bodies and spirits, then chronic stress hormones begin to damage the body and lead to illness and disease down the track. You

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This One Thing Can Change Your Life

This One Thing Can Change Your Life

Change Your Life With This One Thing It has always amazed me how the Sun has an ability to not just warm my skin, but blanket me in an invisible sense of positivity, joy and gratefulness for being alive. There are so many small yet significant occurrences that happen around us every day, just waiting to provide a little more happiness, purpose and ease in our lives, if only we’re paying attention. It’s in these little moments of awareness, attention and acknowledgement, that we find some of life’s precious lessons: When a loved one smiles at you and let’s the

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FREE ONLINE SCREENING “Lose the Stress, Lose the Weight”

FREE ONLINE SCREENING "Lose the Stress, Lose the Weight"

Lose the Stress, Loss the Weight It’s here! The online world premiere of Jon Gabriel’s newest documentary film, so I wanted to be sure you didn’t miss out: Watch Now! World Premiere of Tapping for Weight Loss (online for 10 days!)* “Lose the Stress, Lose the Weight,” is a powerful film created by Carol Look, Jon Gabriel and 12 remarkable (and brave) volunteers who are struggling with stress-related weight gain. In my professional and personal experience, stress is the #1 issue we all need to work on to achieve weight loss and well-being long term, so I can’t think of a more effective approach than learning stress management tools you can do at home (alongside

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How Mind-Body Stress is Causing Your Weight Gain

How Mind-Body Stress is Causing Your Weight Gain

Stress and YOUR Belly Many of you know how passionately I feel about educating everyone on STRESS – understanding what it is, your personal stress triggers, how your body responds to YOUR stress, and ways to induce the relaxation response regularly in COUNTERACTING your stress response. Stress affects our whole body – functions and hormones – especially our weight. And weight is something that we all have issues with at some stage in our lives. Cortisol, also known as THE stress hormone and the FAT storing hormone, is a major contributor to our excess belly fat when we’re chronically excreting stress hormones that

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The Most Important Message You’ll Read Today

The Most Important Message You'll Read Today

The Inside Job Do you ever look in the mirror and make a point of finding something positive about yourself – instead of only seeing the bits you don’t like and want to change? So many people wait for the right moment or circumstance before they allow themselves to be happy: “When I’m thin, I’ll be happy. After I’m married, I’ll be happy. When I’m driving that car, working in that job, feel like I deserve it… then I’ll be happy.” How would you like to: > look in the mirror and love your reflection? > feel positive about yourself and your life?

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Women’s Wellness & Meditation Retreat Sneak Peek + Q & A with Viki

Women's Wellness & Meditation Retreat Sneak Peek + Q & A with Viki

Women’s Wellness I am very excited to announce that my first Women’s Wellness & Meditation Retreat is now confirmed and set for October 10th – 13th! This has been many years of dreams and hard work and now finally I can bring my life, work and personal experience all together in these 4 special days to share with you 🙂 To make it very easy to get a sense of the purpose, aim and intention of my Women’s Retreat, we recorded a short Q & A video, plus an even shorter personal tour video of the beautiful venue, Woodlands of Marburg.

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How I let go of holiday stress & returned to energy, balance & breath

How I let go of holiday stress & returned to energy, balance & breath

Breathe, Relax, Let Go! Happy Wellness Wednesday Friends! 🙂 After the chaos and energy-focused Christmas and school holidays, I realised how much I had compromised my daily self-care practices for other “stuff” that really weren’t a priority. Did you do that too? As soon as I realised my energy, enthusiasm and moods were diminishing I took the warning signs to heart and immediately returned to my heart centre and breath. I knew I was missing and needed my daily self-care of meditation, full breath and mindfulness to keep on top of my self-talk, exercise and food choices.  So I shifted priorities to nourish myself first, and very soon balance

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How to Combat Stress in Daily Life + New Toowoomba Meditation Classes

How to Combat Stress in Daily Life + New Toowoomba Meditation Classes

To Fight or Flight ? Understand your stress responses  PLUS 10 Tips to combat stress in daily life! Stress: A pesky little word that gets tossed around a great deal in modern day life. We stress about things, we feel stressed by stuff, and situations are stressful… But do you really understand stress, and more importantly, how it affects your body? To combat stress, our bodies have a built-in protection mechanism called the Fight or Flight response. Normal day to day interactions aren’t likely to cause us physical harm, so most of the time our body is (or it should be!)

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Stress Kills! Find Your Triggers and Take Action!

Identify Stress Triggers & Take Action Throughout my work with individuals and groups as a Meditation and Stress Therapist, I see first hand how little the general public are aware of the physical symptoms of their stress. This is such a terrible shame seeing as stress is the number ONE underlying cause of ALL modern illness and disease! SHOCKING! Stress has become the go-to word to describe a myriad of emotions, feelings and situations in our lives. How many times have you heard someone say: “I’m too stressed to deal with this” “I’m so stressed out” “Life is really stressful at the moment” How many

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NEW Meditation Term & Stress Management Classes in Toowoomba

NEW Meditation Term & Stress Management Classes in Toowoomba

Weekly Meditation Term 3 Monday 15th July to Monday 16th Sept (10wks) One Whole Hour of Quiet, Calm, Peace & Happiness! Breathe, relax, feel safe, let go. Learn more about your Self, your stress and your strengths…  BOOKINGS REQUIRED! Regular weekly classes incorporate various styles and traditions of meditation for relaxation, breathing, stress management, pain management, healing, confidence, visualisation, self-esteem and affirmations to deepen your practice and connection to self, and reinforce your learning with regularity, greater insight and promotion of the relaxation response. Meditation is a wonderful practice in mind-body awareness, self-connection and emotional healing. Classes are 1 Hour duration and

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Watch my MindBodyFood TV interview on Managing Stress

Watch my MindBodyFood TV interview on Managing Stress

Stress-related Conditions CAN Happen To Anyone No matter who you are or what you do for a living, we all experience a degree of stress. Are you feeling down, anxious, tired, overwhelmed.. everyday, ordinary people can easily be overcome by prolonged stress when we ignore the signs and symptoms from our own body and mood. What can you do about it to help yourself and manage your stress before it leads to stress-related conditions, illness and disease? Take a 15 minute break to watch this interesting and humble interview with Steve Lynes, Owner of Fitness Works Gym in Toowoomba, to learn ways to identify your own levels of stress, and

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Stress contributes to 90% of the diseases we suffer from today

Stress contributes to 90% of the diseases we suffer from today

  “Stress contributes to 90% of the diseases we suffer from today.” ~ Dr Bruce Lipton (Developmental Biologist) This quote and medical fact is the reason I spend so much time educating my students and clients about the Stress Response and how it affects their mind, body and spirit on a daily basis. Meditation promotes the Relaxation Response and is one of the best antidotes to stress there is. Meditation is an achievable and beautiful pathway to self-awareness, inner peace and stressing less for healing and health. The Term 2 Monday Evening Weekly class began last week and has grown 3 times the size since

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Ho’oponopono Meditation: A Way to Healing and Forgiveness

Ho'oponopono Meditation: A Way to Healing and Forgiveness

Ho’oponopono.. Pronounced “hoh OH pohno pohno,” it is the ancient Hawaiian system of healing, problem solving and transformation. If you’ve been carrying around guilt, blame, regret, anger or shame… perhaps practising Ho’oponopono for forgiveness, is just what your mind, body and spirit need. In Hawaiian the word means “to make right or to rectify an error.” This may not necessarily be something literal that you have done. An “error” can also be a memory (or memories) of emotions, words, situations and behaviours that replay in your subconscious mind and feed your limiting beliefs. By practising Ho’oponopono, we are able to open our subconscious minds to

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