Miscellaneous
Today, we are talking about Mindfulness and I’ve invited Jill Freestone to tell us about her experiences with mental illness, chronic physical illness, and mindfulness. Jill is a Life Coach trained and certified through The Life Coach School. She also has an Elementary Education degree from BYU, music minor, and 24 years as a piano and flute teacher. Jill’s battles with anxiety, depression and chronic health problems led her to massive research, to take many courses and therapy, giving her the tools to heal and thrive. Because of this, she is passionate about sharing these tools. Mindfulness meditation, anxiety, depression, emotional regulation and family communication about mental wellness are her favorite topics. Her goal is to help moms manage their own mental health so they can help their children manage theirs. Let me just start by defining mindfulness so you know exactly what we are talking about. mindful.org says that “Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.” It’s something we all have the capacity to do, but that ability can sometimes get lost in the busyness of our lives, and there are specific ways to cultivate this skill and to retrain our brains to be mindful. We can practice mindfulness by practicing meditation while "seated, walking, standing, and moving (it’s also possible lying down but often leads to sleep); short pauses we insert into everyday life; and merging meditation practice with other activities, like yoga or sports" (source). This focus on the present moment tends to quiet down the parts of our brain that ruminate on regrets about the past or worries about the future, and as we practice mindfulness, there is neuropsychology research that shows that we are actually changing the shape of our brains - adding grey matter to the hippocampus where memory and learning centres are, and shrinking the amygdala, which we’ve discussed is like the fire alarm of the brain always alerting us that something is wrong (source). I have dabbled in meditation and I’ve been amazed by the research about it’s benefits, but I haven’t ever really kept up a steady practice, and that’s why I invited Jill here today. When Jill learned about meditation, she was desperate for change, and she dove in, completely immersed herself in it, as you’ll hear in the episode, and she says that Mindfulness Meditation literally saved her life. I think you’ll find Jill to be a super comforting and calming voice to listen to, and I hope you love hearing her story as much as I did! Show Notes: Jill's Mindfulness Resources You can find Jill at www.jillfreestone.com or at www.instagram.com/jillfreestonecoaching