the Henny Flynn podcast

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ There are geographical places in the world where the distance between heaven and Earth collapse s *.  They are called 'thin places'.  It's a term that comes from the ancient Celts and there may be places you have been in your life that have felt like a thin place - where you've felt that distance between heaven and earth contract.  And for me, times of change ofte...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Every year, Susan has a word. A word that accompanies her on her journey through the year. This year it’s resonance . It sparked a series of thoughts, because at the time she shared it with me we were both feeling into the new year.  We were both also feeling bombarded by the often frantic demands of the emails and social posts telling us it was time to BEGIN, tim...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Just as we can become 'nose blind', (made famous by those adverts that highlighted how we can stop smelling things we've been accustomed to), this episode is a canter through the idea that we can also become 'stress blind'. And that (sometimes) when we spend some time away from the source of the stress, we return and suddenly realise how dominant that sense of str...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ My guest today is Katty Douraghy. Her memoir, The Butterfly Years: A Journey Through Grief Toward Hope , details her personal journey through grief.  Katty is beautifully honest about the complexity of her experiences, and along the way, I also share some of the stories I told myself when my own mother died. It means this is another deeply tender conversation. And...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ "In any relationship, the outcome of highest service to each other - and the world around us - is authenticity and love. If we stifle one, the other is likely to falter." This phrase landed fully formed in my head in the middle of the night.  I scrabbled for my phone to hold onto the words, lest they did what most midnight thoughts do… and drifted away or morphed...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This episode is about how we can be drawn by things we think we want but they can sometimes seem impossible to attain. Like moving jobs - we might find ourselves often retelling the same story of how we 'should' be doing something else / hate what we’re doing / want to move on - but year after year find ourselves still working in the same way at the same place. An...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ I can’t take credit for today’s title - it came from Anton, as he was listening to me reflect on something from my past. (He’s good with words!) The concept of SYSTEMIC behaviours, beliefs, attitudes etc is part of my training. They're something I look for to support clients in understanding what’s informing their experience of the life they live. Through coaching...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This one is a bit of meander through my mind! Sorry about that... It comes from something I noticed a long time ago, when I first began my own journey of waking up to who I was inside all the stories and beliefs I carried. There's often lots of focus on feeling unworthy / not enough - but it rarely seems we talk about what happens if you feel you’re too much. In t...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This episode ended up being about lots of things.  You'll hear I wasn't sure what the title was going to be until we were part way through. While our attention was broadly on the idea of 'ageing' - I wanted to keep the field wide open, to allow whatever arose.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the scope expanded as we went... Ageing. Regrets. Family. Grief. Love. Friendshi...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This episode was inspired by two mistakes I made this weekend... and how compassion helps us through. And you might like to know that when I first loaded it up, I completely forgot to include the usual intro. It is human to err indeed! Support the show *** A piece of quiet Your weekly pause - a calming relaxation practice, every Wednesday. A few minutes to settle,...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This Bonus episode was recorded live with a wonderful audience. FLOW Journaling is my preferred approach to Journaling and the approach I recommend for everyone embarking on this year's JOURNALING QUEST. We begin with a relaxation practice to help settle us, before we dive into the WHATs, WHYs and HOWs of FLOW Journaling. And we end with a journaling prompt to pra...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Another deeply personal episode. This time we're exploring fear. One of the truths we observe is that the FEAR itself is real, but the stories we attach to it may not be. I am transcribing this episode so please take a look at the podcast shownotes (on hennyflynn.co.uk or wherever you love to listen) for more of the detail and wisdom in what Susan shares with me....

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Sherry Jibb is a yoga teacher, wise woman and the founder of the Happy & Healthy in Midlife Summit.  We met this year when she invited me to be a speaker at the summit and in the course of our initial conversation it quickly became clear that she is a very special human. Early in this conversation, Sherry shares that her father is dying.  She is at his home wh...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This episode begins with the reflection that... When I attach to the fear of what others might think of me I stop BEING. And start acting as I think I ‘should’ This attachment to what I think others might think is an old, deep story for me and it can feel like it’s hard wired into our nature - as pack animals we need to have a degree of awareness of others in orde...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Have you ever found yourself doing something on a whim? And then a while down the line felt it may not have been the right step for you? Perhaps reflecting it wasn’t worth the effort, the money, the time, the energy? Or, have you ever found yourself NOT doing something... and a while down the line reflecting how doing THAT thing actually it could have been in your...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ By the time a thought has reached our mouth the SUBCONSCIOUS work that underpins that thought has actually been going on for some time. I find this idea immensely powerful - and empowering.  I also find it deeply hopeful. It says to me that we are ALREADY far further along the path than we may at first believe ourselves to be. Have seen this play out on so many oc...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ This episode could simply be called 'August didn't go as planned'! This is my reflection on what happened, and how I ended up realising everything was actually ok. Ultimately it brought me to the renewed realisation that... When we deepen our awareness of what we’re feeling RIGHT NOW and explore what sits behind THAT, behind the mundane; the stuff we often ignore...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Having a coffee this morning, I suddenly realised I didn’t want to drink any more or take another bite of my half-nibbled square of chocolate. So I put them both down. In the past I would have finished them.  And even now that’s still an UNCONSCIOUS response I definitely see in myself.... continuing to consume, even though it’s not the thing that serves me. And th...

Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the podcast that's all about deepening self-awareness with profound self-compassion.  I'm Henny - an author, coach and retreat host - and I'm curious about our inner landscape. About what it is that shapes and drives our thoughts, feelings and actions. And I love exploring ways we can change our conditioned responses, behaviours and patterns, with endless tender...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ A reading from My Darling Girl , set to music (with credit for its sweeping beauty to Scott Buckley, details below). This piece is a love letter to those times when we feel we might be drowning in the doubts that swirl around us. It begins... Sometimes we cross the river of doubt with ease, skipping across the stepping stones, landing softly on the other side. And...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Once again, I'm back with the inimitable Susan McCulley. A wise woman with an enormous heart. Today, we're talking boundaries. - how we can create them - what makes us break them - how we can learn to keep them - how we can find ourselves treading on others' - what respecting boundaries really means AND - the inevitability of feeling guilty when we hold our bounda...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ A few years ago - an idea for a book called ‘small pleasures’ came to me. It was intended as a collection of all the things that can give us a great sense of well-being, even though in themselves they might seem slight. The idea drifted about and occasionally I’d add another one to the mental list. But I couldn’t quite see how the book would look and feel, or how...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Today’s guest is the inspirational Udo Erasmus. He’s the founder of Udo’s Choice and author of the book Fats That Heal Fats that Kill, which has sold over 250,000 copies. And he’s shared the stage with people like Deepak Chopra. So, when his team approached me about him joining as a guest on the show I was intrigued to hear more. His personal story began with inte...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ How do we connect memories with emotion that then influences our actions? If you remember the nursery rhyme about Dr Foster, you'll know that he went to Gloucester but because of one bad experience, involving a very deep puddle... he never went there again. My own realisation of how a 'bad' experience almost stopped me going to a garden centre again (I know!), hel...

Tap to send me your reflections ♡ Tanya came to her life work as a leadership coach after years in an outwardly successful but ultimately unsatisfying career in advertising.  She suffered, a lot, from a myriad of “not good enough, not smart enough, not ready” beliefs. Any success she enjoyed she chalked up to someone else having made a mistake. She thought it was just a matter of time before they...