The Power of your Presence
During this podcast episode we are joined by the fabulous Jo Stockdale from Well Within Reach. Jo supports and facilitates the competence and wellbeing of children, young people and the adults they become. She shares her science led perspectives on what it means to be in your own presence and what can sometimes get in the way of achieving it. Here are some of the key discussion points:
THE POWER OF PRESENCE
“From a young age - even from before children are born - with the right environment and right experiences and relationships, WE can make an enormous difference to who they become.” We are still at the very beginning of understanding the interplay between nurture and nature but what we are understanding is how pliable we are- especially children.
Wherever you are starting from there are always things you can do to improve the relationships with yourself and your children. One of the keys ways of doing this is through brain-body intelligence. Tuning into ourselves to be more aware of ourselves and others and what’s been mediated in the space in-between.
We live at such a rapid pace of life these days - technology plays a role in distracting us from the ability to tune in to ourselves and others. We have been conditioned to measure ourselves against set ideals and we end up comparing ourselves to what we think we should be doing - it keeps us out of our own presence and into said expectation.
We are becoming more like machines, juggling too many tasks that neurobiologically we are not designed for. Understanding that we have very powerful things going on in our nervous system, in our gut and our heart, that equally have information and intelligence to share - but in general we try to make sense of the world and make decisions with our brains (only) - it’s just one part of it!
When we are sharing the space with another person we need to recognise there’s a great deal of interaction happening (non-verbal). Plenty of science supports this with our brain and our heart having a powerful electromagnetic field & research has shown that human hearts pattern on each other! Your energy field around you is constantly mediating.
Jo talks about the flight, fright, freeze response and what happens during this with our brains. Basically when the amygdala takes over - it doesn’t think, its all about survival - it overrides the thinking part of the brain. Then the brain-body bio-chemistry produces adrenaline and cortisol stress hormones in response to the flight, fright, freeze response (sympathetic nervous system).
Being present helps to flush those hormones out of the body and activate serotonin - a stabalising hormone - so taking deep breaths is one way that can help to sort out brain chemistry and the nervous system.
To find out more about the incredible work that Jo does - please visit: www.wellwithinreach.co.uk.