Many people feel burnout and anxiety. They are always in a rush. This week's guest has turned over to a new page and left the anxious and stressed-out corporate lawyer life.
Lara Wharton, with Listen Lightly, helps people learn how to relax their nervous system, get more in touch with their bodies, and take care and love themselves through simple practices that anyone can do, anytime, anywhere.
Join me and Lara this week to learn about all things relaxing. Lara will talk about a few of her relaxing techniques: cannabis-assisted meditation journeys, yoga nidra, and meditation.
I am excited to have Lara on the show so we all can learn the importance of rest and calming the nervous system for our health and happiness.
Lara helps people learn how to relax their nervous system, get more in touch with their bodies, and take care and love themselves through simple practices that anyone can do, anytime, anywhere.
As an anxious, stressed-out, always-in-a-rush corporate lawyer, developing a consistent self-care practice and regularly relaxing her nervous system changed her life. It brought her a sense of unwavering inner peace, much more patience, the ability to recover faster from "set-backs", a healthy, energetic body, and a sound sleep every night. Watching these changes take place within herself, she decided she had to share these incredibly powerful yet simple practices with others.
Lara’s teachings and guided meditations are based on the latest science on how to relax the nervous system to release tension and emotional blockages in the body, allowing your physical health to improve while mindfully releasing the mental and emotional tensions that are holding you back from living the life you dream of.
Lara guides a broad range of techniques depending on what is best suited for each individual client, including mindfulness meditation, yoga nidra ("yogic sleep"), yoga, reiki, visualization practices, chakra energy work, ayuverdic medicine practices, breath-work and cannabis-assisted meditation journeys.
She has completed thousands of hours of training and practice in mindfulness meditation, yoga, yoga nidra, reiki, psychedelic sitter training/harm reduction and integration, Buddhism, neuroscience and psychotherapy. As a lifelong student and nerd relating to consciousness exploration and well-being, she continues to study and, most importantly, to practice daily so she can strengthen her inner peace and self-compassion, and help her students strengthen theirs. She offers private and group sessions, healing retreats that provide deep restorative rest, and teaches in corporate settings through workshops and weekly sessions.
Listen Lightly Website: www.listenlightly.com Email: lara@listenlightly.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/listenlightly
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/listenlightly/
Save the Children - Ukraine Emergency Fund https://www.savethechildren.org/us/where-we-work/ukraine
What inspired you to pursue this calling?
I was unhealthy in mind (anxiety), body (back pain) and spirit (was unhappy with my job as a corporate securities lawyer). I started meditating more regularly. I healed all of my pain and the daily anxiety I had experienced with mindfulness, gentle yoga and deep relaxation practices. I learned that my nervous system had been on edge for most of my life and by releasing tension from the body and mind, I felt so much better. I saw the stressed corporate world around me and knew my colleagues could benefit from these simple practices. I started teaching basic meditation techniques and the feedback from my colleagues was immediate and incredibly positive. I’m really good at calming people down, at making people feel comfortable and helping them to relax. I love helping people relax and wake up! And luckily people find my voice very soothing.
One inspiring story you can talk to readers about.
I had severe lower back and nerve pain, to the point I couldn’t walk for months and it took 2 years
to be able to function properly. It came out of nowhere when I was a 26-year-old student yogi in my final year of law school. I was told I had a bulging disk that was hitting a nerve that couldn’t be fixed and I would have to live with the pain forever. I learned how common that was and refused to accept that. Using mindfulness meditation, gentle yoga and relaxation techniques, I realized the inflammation and pain were caused by an unresolved emotional wound I had never paid attention to. By practicing these relaxation techniques I share and self-compassion, and learning how to process emotions stuck in the body and witness and release them without tightening or avoiding them, I was able to cure my back issues and significantly reduce my anxiety. Now these symptoms, when they arise occasionally (though rarely now), are simply messengers to me to soften and to be gentle with myself, and are no longer debilitating, terrifying sensations that cause me to stop living my life.
Do you have a message about the importance of healing that you would like to share with our listeners?
Healing can be done anywhere, anytime. It just takes awareness and gently softening into openness. Not clinging or holding on to anything, in the body or mind. However, to remember to do it and incorporate it into your everyday life, it’s important to do regular relaxation and self-care practices to train the body and mind to soften (and to remember to soften). Eventually, it happens spontaneously and doesn’t require as much effort. In the beginning though, finding relaxation practices that work for you and practicing them consistently is vital.
What is your tip for living a happy and fulfilling life?
Regular relaxation. Check-in with yourself daily to see what you need. Self-compassion and gentleness through this process of life.
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