Mindful Sophrology

Day 6 of our Week of Wellness is special. I have family and friends who are ill with Covid-19 and I promised we would do specific exercises to help them breathe, to increase lung capacity and clear the lower lobes of the lungs of mucus. In this episode, we are going to do some more Lung Expansion Breathwork. This can help us train and strengthen our lungs before we get a respiratory disease, and i...

On day 5 of your Week of Wellness, we are going to do the Walking Meditation also known as Kin Hin. This practice is meant to train us to integrate meditative awareness into ordinary life and the most mundane activities, to anchor us and quiet our mind. It is a simple practice that gives us all the benefits of seated meditation: increased energy, equanimity, and awareness. There are numerous healt...

What can we do to keep our lungs as healthy as possible? Now more than ever it is important to know how to breathe correctly and train our lung function and lung capacity so we will be better equipped to fight respiratory infections if we do catch something. I researched lung exercises given by specialized nurses and doctors for COPD, emphysema, asthma and other respiratory diseases and I was plea...

On day 3 of your Week of Wellness, we calm our minds. It is National Stress Awareness Day which I find very appropriate with many of us in lockdown and most of us anxiously awaiting the US election results. I often get the remark: I can't seem to stop my mind, from thinking, from racing. I do not want you to believe this. You can stop your mind. And it is not that complicated. Through Sophrology a...

On day 2 of our Week of Wellness, we are going to discover our natural breathing pattern, how and where we breathe and make a start on learning how to work with it. It always surprises me how little people know about their own natural breathing patterns. How can we even want to perform different breathing techniques if we are not in touch with our natural breathing first? Today we'll be doing the...

This week I am offering you a Week of Wellness exercises. It is my opinion that we have a responsibility towards ourselves but right this moment towards all the health care workers and our fellow humans as well, to be or become as healthy as we can be. To boost our immune system and create as much physical and mental resilience as we can.  Today we start easy-peasy with the Arm Swing Exercise...

Social distancing is very unnatural for humans, this is why we see so much resistance against the restrictions worldwide. We crave human connection. Human connection is essential for our mental health. Research has shown that feeling socially connected increases our level of happiness, reduces stress, anxiety, and depression, and improves our self-worth and confidence. Me personally, what I miss t...

Who has not heard of the expression: what we resist persists? This is an abbreviation of psychologist Carl Jung's viewpoint that “ what you resist not only persists but will grow in size.”  Persisting thoughts are actually perfect teachers, and signals from our body  trying to alert us that ‘an important something’ is needing our attention and we can no longer continue the way we have be...

Hello lovely listener! In this episode, I guide you through a Mindfulness Meditation to release whatever kind of unnecessary tensions are present in your body, whether it is physical, psychological, or emotional tension. This time not by releasing them through the exhale, as we do in Sophrology, but by visualizing our tensions disappearing from our body and seeping into the earth. #mindfulness #st...

Sophrology is a method that is not only helpful for stress. It is also extremely beneficial for people suffering from chronic pain, fibromyalgia, discomfort from muscle contractions in Parkinson's, and so on. It provides you with your own set of personalized power tools to reduce the impact of your circumstances on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being. It is very comforting, satisfying,...

“𝑷𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒂”  Confidence is something we all need to overcome our fears and doubts, to perform to the best of our abilities and to move forward.  Now we are all born with huge human potential. I always say that there is this package of seeds of capabilities installed in us, just waiting, ready to germinate and grow under the right condit...

This episode I will guide you through a 15-minute Mindfulness Meditation called "Affectionate Breathing".  With everything that is going on, we could all use a little kindness at the moment. Kindness is an interpersonal skill and being kind often requires courage and strength. Darwin argued that sympathy and caring for others is instinctual and he did not associate our basic instinct to survi...

𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝑰 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒂 𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒓’𝒔 𝒅𝒂𝒚? 𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 - Shakespeare Sonnet 18  Comparison is the thief of Joy, Possibilities and Progress!  In this podcast episode, we discuss courage, confidence and that what holds us back regularly, “Comparisonitis”. A coaching client of mine wanted some clarity before making a major change in his life and not owning his self-...

In this episode we practice the Sophrology exercise we usually start with. Sophrology uses synchronized breathing and although breathing comes to us naturally, when we start to think about it too much our breath often goes up in our chest. Many of us still underestimate the power of breathwork whilst it is the one part of our autonomic nervous system that we can consciously control to get back to...

I like practical hands-on techniques that I can pull out of my hat the moment I need them. Because we never know when we might become triggered and our nerves hit. A deceptively simple but highly effective breathwork exercise that can guide us through moments of stress and anxiety is "Breathing through our Feet". It lessens the grip of our emotions on us, it allows us a little headspace and gives...

Welcome to a podcast that uniquely combines "mindset medicine" from both Mindfulness and Sophrology. My name is Carin van Buuren and I am a Sophrologist and a Master Mindfulness Practitioner. Most people already know what Mindfulness is but I get a lot of questions about Sophrology. In this episode, I will tell you all about this transformational holistic health method, in my opinion, one of the b...