Updated on March 16, 2023

Mental Health
The term mental health is one that many are familiar with these days. The good thing, is it takes the taboo out of therapy in countries that haven’t yet fully embraced self-development as a positive thing.
But I want to look at the term mental health and why I find it in part, limiting.
It’s wonderful to have awareness and understand our patterns and behaviours. And it’s great that our society wants to make sure we’re mentally healthy. What I’m interested in though, is knowing that we’re healthy on all levels.
A holistic view on mental health would be to ask ourselves how we’re doing emotionally, physically and spiritually as well. We deify the mind and though the mind is a great tool, it should be the servant and not the master.
Mental Health Requires Emotional & Physical Wellbeing
The mind is often the last on board. Most of our experience happens in our physical, emotional and cellular body. The mind’s role is to find a way to process all of our experiences and somehow make sense of them. Most often our mind is in reaction to our experience, which means it’s unconscious. When we begin to learn about our beliefs, patterns and behaviours, for example, we learn how to make our experiences more conscious and therefore can choose how we want to respond rather than react to something.
But on a deeper level, we have to build the awareness of how we are feeling within our experience. Our emotions are messengers that are constantly trying to communicate with us and our sensations in our body act as a barometer to how we’re feeling.
Affirmations Need Feeling
If we only stay in the realm of the mental, we’re looking at ourselves one dimensionally. Also, a thought that isn’t attached to a feeling, becomes empty words that don’t have much meaning to us.
We might say affirmations, for example, but the mind can easily learn by rote, go on repeat but no affect is felt because the mental thought only goes skin deep. The mental needs to be tied to the emotional for us to change our experience. A thought alone gives us a mental awareness but doesn’t help us necessarily evolve the pattern we’re wanting to grow out of.
Staying With Our Entire Experience Not Just The Mental
If we look at mental health holistically, we can look at the story our mind is telling us, the beliefs that go with that story and the patterns that manifest out of them. From there we have to drop in.
We go into the body, into the sensations (barometer) and the emotions (messengers) within those sensations. Deep in the emotion we find a memory which leads us to the wound. Once we reach the wound we can go directly to the unmet need and finally give ourselves what we’ve been needing for most of our lives.
We then learn to alchemise our experience through feeling. Which means we give ourselves the feeling that we have been missing. We think it’s external validation, approval, love etc. Really, whatever we’re yearning for from the outside, is an indication of what we need to give to ourselves (and embody) on the inside.
This is part of the process I take my clients through when I guide them back home to their true, Authentic Self.
Mental Health Must Include Emotional Health
We cannot truly have mental health unless we include our emotional health. Just like we have IQ, our EQ is equally important. When we take a holistic perspective, we realise that we actually have three brains, or three centres of intelligence: the mind, the heart and the gut. But that will be a separate blog post so stay tuned!

Updated on February 16, 2023
Self Love
Self Love
Self love is one of those terms we hear a lot about but might not fully understand. There are many misinterpretations of what it means, too.
Many people believe that self love is something you acquire, when you’ve got all your shit together and you’re at your best self. Self love isn’t a destination it’s a journey. Let me explain…
Self Love Is A Way Of Being
Self love isn’t a place that you arrive to once you’ve done all the inner work. Sure, we embody self love much more once we’ve gone in and done the work but self love is a state of being that we need to learn to drop into as we’re doing the inner work.
Self love doesn’t just show up when we’re happy and positive and feel good about ourselves. It shows up most especially when we feel like crap. When we’re down on ourselves is exactly the moment when we need to call upon self love so that we can feel that: no matter what we’re thinking, feeling or experiencing, it’s ok.
Self love says, “No matter what, I love you, I’m here for you and I want you to know that it’s ok to be you.”
It’s About Non-Judgment
Self love is ultimately the practice of not judging ourselves. We’re very used to being self-critical and that stems from the majority of us (I’d say 99% of my clients) carrying this belief that we’re not “good enough.” If we feel not good enough or unworthy, it’s only natural that we would judge and criticise ourselves. So self love is the part of us that is gentle and kind and doesn’t judge us no matter what we’re going through. It’s the practice not only of not judging ourselves, but giving ourselves love.
It might sound simple but we haven’t been taught how and we’re certainly not in the habit. So though the practice actually is simple, the challenge is in continually showing up for ourselves in a new, more loving way.
Love As The Container
What if love were the container? Because love can hold anything and everything. It can hold you when you feel sad, angry, depressed, tired, like you’re failing at life. Love, just like we’d like to imagine our mama’s arms, can hold us in all of it. The tears just as much as the smiles.
When we move through the experiences of our lives and hold them in the lap of love, there isn’t any judgment. There’s only the experience and the opportunity that lies in that experience to learn, heal, grow and evolve.
When we place love as the container for our experiences, there is no right or wrong, good or bad, success or failure. That alone relieves us of so much suffering and encourages us to be more loving with ourselves through the hard times.
Let Self Love Be Your Best Friend
The easiest way to often connect to the state of being of self love is to learn how to talk to yourself the way you’d want a best friend to talk to you. With love, patience, presence and kindness. A best friend listens and tries to understand our experience with empathy. Wouldn’t we want to do this for ourselves? To know and feel that whatever we’re going through, we’ll be there by our side, loving us through it?
That’s the practice: Keep showing up with kindness. Listen to yourself. Give yourself what you need. Stop judging yourself and let yourself know that there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re human and being human is a vulnerable kinda thing. Hold yourself like you’d hold a child. Love yourself like you’d want a parent to love a child. It’s ok, you’re perfectly imperfect as all humans are.
The greatest gift you can receive in this life is to be uniquely you! Accept your full self and you’ll find that self love will be there to hold your hand along this crazy ride we call life!

Updated on February 16, 2023
What Does Authentic Mean? – The Meaning Of Authenticity
What Does Authentic Mean? The Meaning Of Authenticity
My work is based on authenticity and I’ve been guiding individuals back to their Authentic Self for well over a decade now. But along the way I’ve heard various misinterpretations of the word and several people that have asked me, What does authentic mean? So I want to take a moment to clarify what authentic means (at least to me).

Authenticity Is About Being Your True Self…It’s About Being You!
Many people confuse being authentic with being your “perfect” self. That you’re only authentic when you are happy, positive and you have your sh** together. This isn’t true at all.
Being authentic is being your true Self. Getting to your true, Authentic Self is a journey and process that requires you to peel back the layers of the onion, stripping back aspects of your personality which include your false beliefs, habitual patterns, coping mechanisms etc.
Your true Self lies at the very core of your being. It’s the essence of who you are. Think of it this way:
Your True, Authentic Self Is The Canvas
Your true, Authentic Self is the canvas. The paint you slab on it are your thoughts, feelings and life experiences. Some of the drawings you paint are your wounds, your false self-beliefs, the identity you created in order to cope and survive in life, your relationship patterns, the tinted lens you see life through.
But you, your true Self, is always the canvas. The essence of who you are, which is, has been and will always be, worthy, loveable and significant, is forever there. It cannot be taken away from you. You cannot lose it. We just sometimes forget about it and get caught up in the layers and muck of paint we’ve pasted upon it over the years.
Just Be You
At the core of being authentic is the idea that you just get to be you. That no matter what you’re feeling, thinking or experiencing, that it’s ok…it’s ok to be you.
So if being authentic to yourself in this moment means I feel tired and down, then that’s your truth in this moment and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Authenticity is about being in our truth. The reason why much of the time people are not being authentic, is because they’re not being truthful about their experience. They might answer, fine, instead. At worst, people put on a mask pretending that they’re someone who they think is a better version of who they are. Someone happier, more successful, less scared and anxious etc.
Authenticity asks us to just be real. To be true, most importantly to ourselves and then of course with others.
In Conclusion, What Does Authentic Mean
Be you. No matter if you’re feeling scared, insecure, down and deflated, being true to yourself is what will bring you peace.
When we’re at peace with ourselves, we’re no longer judging how we feel, what we think, or what we’re experiencing. We rest in a place of complete self-acceptance, holding ourselves with love. And that can even mean that we feel ok with not being ok. Does that make sense?
It’s always coming back to the truth of how we feel in any given moment without judgment, shame or blame. We get to just be us and feel safe, loved and accepted as we are. Doesn’t that sound nice?
That kind of peace within ourselves is what, in the end, brings us happiness. Not an external happiness that wears a smile as a mask, an internal happiness that feels truly at home, comfortable in our skin.
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