​I had a long time off exercise, especially during my twenty's; I had better things to do (or so I thought). So after very little exercise and two children later, you can imagine I had put on a few inches, which made me feel terrible about myself. Rather than doing anything about it I found myself complaining about how I looked instead and my general mood during this time was also quite low.

As a screen acting teacher I love exploring new techniques to aid my class members into becoming better Actors and it was through this passion to help actors; that I stumbled across one of the most beneficial life tools yet!

After presenting my 'breathing technique' class to several classes including children from 7 years to adults, I received significant feedback about how the exercises had such a positive effect on people's lives.

"I knew I needed to start consciously making an effort to use the techniques myself".

I was already blown away by the breathing techniques when I first discovered and developed my "breathing techniques class session", so I decided to start trying the techniques myself during situations were I felt particularly emotional. I wondered if I could use the techniques to change my emotion using the methods I taught in class, in the heat of the moment. Not just to create an emotion, I also wanted to know how quick and effective they were in everyday life.

Being a very busy mummy of two toddlers (aged 2 and 3 years) and running 3 companies, as you can imagine life can be a rollercoaster of emotion and I'm often looking for ways to help me deal with life more effectively. Like most people sometimes my emotions get the better of me and I've found that these exercises and 'understanding my breathing' has really helped me take back control of my emotions.

Sometimes in life we find things difficult, whatever the emotional response is, just make sure you take time out to think about it. It's important that you calm yourself, be still, make time to mediate or do some exercise (running, walking is great). You must change your intention to the best, go to a place of love and surrender to the situation. What I mean by that is 'let it be' then think about the why? Why did that experience happen? Why did I respond like that? What did it change in you, did it make you want to change things? If the answer is yes then do it, remember that the world is good and that you should go about doing good until there's too much good in the world. Pick yourself up and fight for what you believe in, life is about being happy and enjoying the experience, it's important that you do that for yourself.

Peace and love to you and yours.

Something happens, it could be personal it could be work related, but it happens, it's bad (or immediately that's what it appears to be). Life's ups and downs WILL happen regardless of what we do to prevent them, the most important thing to do is learn how to deal with life so you can get the most out of it.

My old self didn't have the best coping strategies, to tell you the truth they were none existent. I'd picked up many negative habits as most people do and I'm so grateful they are behind me now, and I'm hopeful my learning can now help others.

How much can we learn about life from young children? Some may say nothing, after all what could they possibly know about life? They don't have a job, responsibility or anything that important to deal with and they haven't stepped in to the 'real' world, but that can be a good thing too. Think about it, they are dealing with life as 'naturally' as they know how, using emotions to show their parents how they are feeling and to get what they want.

Obviously the older they get the more they mix with different people, their habits and behaviours develop from there peers. But it takes a life time for them to fully develop bad habits like many adults have.

The last few weeks for one reason or another, reminded me just how powerful emotions are, I've seen first hand in myself and others just how harmful negative emotions can be. Empathising with negative emotion is where the rocky road can really begin, it can start a bad day, lead to long periods of negative emotion and even depression.

So what do you do when those negative emotions seep back in to your life. You know 'those' days that slap you around the face unexpectedly, everything's going well and then for one reason or another something knocks you off balance and you feel low, angry, anxious or something along those lines. 
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So you're having one of 'those' days, you know the ones, when nothing seems to be going right or you feel like you have too many things to handle.

Frustration? Anger? Low mood? The defeatist attitude starts to set in and you generally can't see the wood for the trees as they say!

Challenges are good they help us grow and develop personally, people ask for their lives to change or complain about how miserable they are with their current circumstances then face challenges and change with the same energy.

What I have learnt is that through every challenge I have faced; good (or the ones that hurt) I have always grown personally and that it changed me, which enabled me to deal with things that little bit better in the long run.