In this podcast episode, Dr. Emily Amos shares her experiences traveling through Australia and delves into the complexities of meditation and mindfulness. She discusses the common struggles individuals face when starting a meditation practice, including discomfort and the potential for meditation-related harm. Dr. Amos emphasises the importance of understanding the cycle of behaviour change and the need for support when navigating the challenges of mindfulness practices. She advocates for a balanced view of meditation, recognising both its benefits and potential drawbacks, and encourages listeners to seek professional help when needed.

Key points:

• ​Dr. Emily Amos shares her recent travels around Australia.
• ​Meditation and mindfulness can have mixed evidence regarding their benefits.
• ​Many people experience discomfort when they first start meditating.
• ​It's common for the mind to feel noisy during meditation.
• ​Mindfulness is about being present in the moment.
• ​Discomfort can arise as we implement a sustained meditation practice.
• ​The cycle of change outlines predictable steps in behaviour change.
• ​How support from teachers can minimise meditation-related harm.
• ​Mental health professionals can help address issues arising during meditation.
• ​The importance of reaching out for support when needed.

If you would like to know more about Cheetah House you find that info here: https://www.cheetahhouse.org

Or if you would like to find a registered meditation teacher to work with you can do that via the Meditation Australia website.

------------------------------------

You can find more information on mindfulness and my work via my website- ⁠⁠www.dremilyamos.com⁠⁠

As always, I love to connect with you via social media:

Facebook: ⁠⁠@dremilyamos⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠@mindlifeme⁠⁠

Instagram: ⁠⁠@dremilyamos⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠@mind.life.me⁠⁠

LinkedIn: @dremilyamos

Insight Timer: ⁠⁠⁠Dr Emily Amos⁠⁠

Disclaimer: The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

To kick things back into gear on the mind.life.me. podcast for season 2 we're talking about what exactly is mindfulness? You've all heard about it, in fact most of you will have probably experienced it... and it's not always been a good experience for many people. So this episode I decided that a good place to start things off is to help explain exactly what mindfulness is and more importantly, what it isn't!

Let's talk about:

• Mindfulness as the practice of being in the present moment and noticing what's going on without judgment.
• Meditation as a formal practice that can help cultivate mindfulness.
• How normal it is for the mind to wander, and the goal of mindfulness is to notice when it happens and gently guide it back to the present moment.
• Bringing intentionality to everyday activities can help cultivate mindfulness.
• Cultivating the skill of being mindful to help in times of stress.

My short course ⁠Mindful Me⁠ is designed to help you to master mindfulness in an easily accessible, online format, available 24/7 with fantastic video lessons, a beautiful course workbook and plenty of guided meditations to help build your practice.

------------------------------------ You can find more information on mindfulness and my work via my website- www.dremilyamos.com

As always, I love to connect with you via social media:

Facebook: @dremilyamos and @mindlifeme

Instagram: @dremilyamos and @mind.life.me

Insight Timer: ⁠Dr Emily Amos⁠

Disclaimer: The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

I actually recorded this episode many months ago, then left it and did nothing with it for ages. Which is ironic given in this ep we explore the idea that achieving things, changing behaviour and basically being human- is really, really hard. I'm human, just like you. I struggle to achieve what I want to achieve sometimes too- so let's explore this together.

In this episode I talk about:

• Johan Hari's book Stolen Focus
• How the modern world is setting us up to fail in many ways when it comes to our attention and focus.
• How we can actually use the psychology of behaviour change to help us to do the things we want to do.
• Why self compassion (as I always say) is actually the basis for this cycle and what helps us to unlock our full potential.
• What is the 'first step' in changing behaviour?

My short course ⁠⁠⁠Mindful Me⁠⁠⁠ is designed to help you to master mindfulness & better manage stress in an easily accessible, online format, available 24/7 with fantastic video lessons, a beautiful course workbook and plenty of guided meditations to help build your practice.

------------------------------------ You can find more information on mindfulness and my work via my website- ⁠⁠www.dremilyamos.com⁠⁠

As always, I love to connect with you via social media:

Facebook: ⁠⁠@dremilyamos⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠@mindlifeme⁠⁠

Instagram: ⁠⁠@dremilyamos⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠@mind.life.me⁠⁠

Insight Timer: ⁠⁠⁠Dr Emily Amos⁠⁠

Disclaimer: The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

It’s been a little while since I released a podcast episode, so I thought this was a good time to talk about giving ourselves permission to be ‘good enough’. As a long suffering perfectionist, I’ve often struggled with this concept… as a doctor, I’ve struggled with it even more. I mean, who wants a ‘good enough’ doctor?!? So in my musings this week I’ve tried to capture a lot of the concepts and issues around actually allowing ourselves to be ‘good enough’.

• What does it mean to give ourselves permission to be #goodenough ?
• Does giving ourselves permission to be ‘good enough’ mean we stop trying to do better?
• How does giving ourself permission to be ‘good enough’ relate to behaviour change psychology?
• How can we apply the principle of ‘good enough’ and use to to drive our practice of self compassion?

As always, you can connect with me in a variety of ways:

My website: www.dremilyamos.com

Where I teach online courses as well as online meditation and yoga nidra classes.

On Instagram: @dremilyamos

On Facebook: @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

This has always been a big background thing for me, none of us probably talk about it enough though- how the fear of making a mistake can drastically temper our dreams and actions. Fear of making a mistake can be debilitating in our decision making in the present moment, stopping us from even doing anything. This episode I'm talking about  

• How this concept not only affects those of us who work in healthcare but also the perfectionists and worriers of the world (even more so if you happen to be all three!). 
• How our fear of making a mistake in the future can seriously affect our behaviour today. 
• How this future based thinking (and fear) relates to mindfulness and learning how to be in the present moment. 
• How to take the first step towards making a decision and committing to an action, despite the fear of making a mistake. 
• How this fear of making a mistake can even affect us as parents! 
• How much time we can regain in our lives by learning how to be more aware of this tendency and choosing to reinvest this energy into being more mindful. 

The beautiful article by Dr Jonathan Ramachenderan I refer to in this episode can be found here. 

You can find more information on mindfulness and my work via my website- www.dremilyamos.com 

As always, I love to connect with you via social media: 

Facebook: @dremilyamos and @mindlifeme 

Instagram: @dremilyamos and @mind.life.me 

Disclaimer: The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site and podcast is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

After last episode, we know a bit more about stress and how it cycles through our body- so how does that affect other things? Like sleep for example? In this episode I talk about: How our body sleeps. What are the hormonal drivers of sleep and how do they relate to stress hormones? How stress can affect our sleep and what we can do about it. How mindfulness works to change our relationship with our thoughts and improve our sleep. As always, my 7 Days of Mindful Self Care mini course is absolutely FREE and a great way to help kick start you towards slowing down and learning how to rest.

If you're enjoying the podcast I would absolutely love for you to review and share it with others to help spread the word about the importance of mindfulness and self care in all of our lives. Please don't get to the point I did and burn out before you do something about it- make these important changes today.

My short course ⁠⁠⁠Mindful Me⁠⁠⁠ is designed to help you to master mindfulness & better manage stress in an easily accessible, online format, available 24/7 with fantastic video lessons, a beautiful course workbook and plenty of guided meditations to help build your practice.

------------------------------------ You can find more information on mindfulness and my work via my website- ⁠⁠www.dremilyamos.com⁠⁠

As always, I love to connect with you via social media:

Facebook: ⁠⁠@dremilyamos⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠@mindlifeme⁠⁠

Instagram: ⁠⁠@dremilyamos⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠@mind.life.me⁠⁠

Insight Timer: ⁠⁠⁠Dr Emily Amos⁠⁠

Disclaimer: The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

Holding space is a term used for creating the space within ourselves to process thoughts and emotions. It may seem self explanatory, but if it were so easy, why do so many of us struggle to hold onto uncomfortable feelings?

Instead we distract ourselves from them with extra stimulation (if you haven't already listened to the Stimulation Addiction episode do it after this one!) or we end up discharging our own emotional pain onto others inadvertently.

In this episode I talk about:

• What holding space actually means?
• How we can learn how to do it for ourselves?
• How we can teach our kids how to hold space too?

I also talked about a couple of resources in this episode that I'd love to share with you:

The Colour Monster- by Anna Llenas

Passing Clouds- by Kate Oliver

I also mentioned my upcoming Mindful Me: Mindfulness & Self Compassion training that you can sign up for via my website.

As always, you can find me via my website:

https://www.dremilyamos.com/

or social media:

Instagram: @dremilyamos

Facebook: @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

Episode 8

In the last two and a half years I've spent a lot of time reflecting on my own path to burn out and the lessons I've learnt from it. I've taken some of those lessons and built upon them to have a bit of think about why it seems that so many of us are struggling with chronic stress and burn out? The last few years have been (and continue to be) really challenging, but is it just that?

This episode, I talk about:

• My own experience of burning out and what I feel contributed to my path there.
• Some of the hard lessons I've learnt in my recovery- including the importance of rest.
• How learning how to complete the stress cycle is the key to dealing with chronic stress.
• The danger of saying "I can't" and having a fixed mindset.
• The difference between growing capacity and respecting our limitations.

Mentioned in this episode, is my 7 days of Mindful Self Care course that you can sign up for absolutely FREE here.

As always, I would love for you to connect with me via social media as well:

Instagram: @dremilyamos

Facebook: @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

This episode was a lot fun to record. Katie Cortes is a midwife, sleep consultant and mum of 4, so she knows a thing or two about the ‘perfect mother’ myth. Like me, she loves a good chat and could easily solve the worlds problems over a cup of tea! Together we’ve taken it upon ourselves to decide not only- where this myth comes from? But also what we can do to banish it from our lives?

So if you’re a mum of little or big kids, join us as we chat about:

- letting go of the guilt.

- learning how to be kind to ourselves as we ‘learn on the job’ as mums.

- how we can recognise ingrained patterns of behaviour in ourselves that might contribute to the ‘perfect mother myth’

- how vulnerability and self compassion can help our kids to side step the guilt we’ve internalised.

- where self care comes into it all.

You can connect with Katie via her website https://katiesbabies.com.au/ or on social media via Katies Babies

As always, I would love for you to connect with me via social media as well:

Instagram: @dremilyamos

Facebook: @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

Are you one of those people who has had "start meditating" or "practice mindfulness" on your to-do list for ages but not quite got there?

Well this is the episode for you!!

So many of us expect ourselves to be able to jump straight in and practice mindfulness perfectly, so much so that when we find it difficult it can be easy to give up. In this weeks episode I talk about:

• How this desire to practice perfectly can actually get in the way of us practicing at all.
• How everyday things you're already doing can be stepping stones into your mindfulness or meditation practice.
• That we still still need to be aware of our tendency towards stimulation addiction even with mindfulness and meditation.
• Most importantly- what you can do about it!!!

As always, I'm here because I want to bring my love of mindfulness and meditation to the world so if these are things you want to learn more about you can catch my Mindfulness Masterclass- a short 30 minute video with bonus meditation and mindfulness worksheet- via my website: Mindfulness Masterclass

I would love for you to connect with me via social media as well:

Instagram: @dremilyamos

Facebook: @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

Is it actually a luxury to be able to take care of ourselves? Even more than that, is it a "luxury" to burn out? This week I've ventured into thought provoking territory as I reflect on: 

• How our deeply ingrained patterns of thought and behaviour might make self care seem luxurious. 
• Whether or not "burning out" is just a form of unrecognised privilege? (Please listen to the whole ep before you judge me on this one!) 
• How the modern world actually predisposes us to suffering from burn out. 
• Why our addiction to stimulation is what drives the difficulty in implementing sustainable self care practices. 

Lots of really big questions this week and I would really love to hear your thoughts on them- so please reach out via social media @mind.life.me to get involved in the conversation! 

If you want to get a jump start on being kinder to yourself as you try and master self care- then check out my FREE 7 Days of Mindful Self Care course available via my website: https://www.dremilyamos.com/7-days-of-mindful-self-care

Follow me on social media: @dremilyamos 

Disclaimer: The information provided on the Mind.Life.Me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

So I talk about this a lot. This idea that for most of us, our bodies and minds are simply addicted to the constant stimulation that being busy provides us. It takes time to wean ourselves off this addiction to stimulation.

In this weeks episode I talk about:

• What exactly stimulation addiction is.
• Why it feels so uncomfortable to meditate when we suffer from this.
• How our stress system works and why it is important to learn how to turn it down every now and again.
• Why terms like Adrenal Fatigue are becoming so common now days and why someone trying to sell you a supplement to 'treat it' is probably missing the actual point.
• How meditation and mindfulness are actually amazing tools for not only weaning ourselves off stimulation addiction but also your overall health moving forward.

As always, you can connect with me in a variety of ways:

My website: www.dremilyamos.com

Where I teach online courses as well as online meditation and yoga nidra classes or you can download your FREE 7 Days of Mindful Self Care course.

On Instagram: @dremilyamos 

On Facebook: @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the mind.life.me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

I've never been much good as asking for help when I need it, I'm more of a "stick my head in the sand and tell everyone (including myself) that I'm fine" kind of person. Then I burnt out and really needed help.

So I've learnt some lessons about how to do a better job of asking for help and in this ep I talk about:

• How we often mistakenly fall into the trap of classing people as either givers or receivers of help, but rarely both.
• What basic needs are and how sometimes we do actually need other peoples help to fulfil them.
• That most of us are happy to be asked for help, but not comfortable asking for it for ourselves. What gives with that?!?
• How meditation and mindfulness can actually help us to do this better!

There is another cheeky meditation slipped into this ep so take care if driving or perhaps put it aside for a time when you can sit and relax.

To learn more about mindfulness check out my masterclass or my meditations on Insight Timer.

I'd love for you to connect with me via Instagram @mind.life.me and @dremilyamos

Disclaimer

The information provided on the mind.life.me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health care professional in the event something you have read or heard here raises questions or concerns regarding your health.

Financial self care is a relatively new term that encompasses the idea that taking care of ourselves is actually about more than just physical health. Jess Brady is a financial advisor who specialises in working with younger people to put in place financial systems and plans that support their long term goals.

In this episode we talk about how:

• Talking about money can be especially difficult for women.
• We can learn to talk about money in a guilt and shame free way.
• We can support our future selves by putting in place systems that help us now.
• To beat the overwhelm and just get started.

The amazing resources page referred to in the episode is from her platform Ladies Talk Money and it is well worth following them on insta as well via @ladiestalkmoney

You can connect with Jess via her website www.foxandhare.com.au

or social media: @jessbrady_financialadvice or @foxandharefinancial

Disclaimer

The information provided on the mind.life.me. podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided on this site is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified financial or health care professional in the event something you have read or heard raises questions or concerns regarding yourself.