Write Your Life

Roger Bergner Dip. CH – Clinical Hypnotherapy

Unmanaged stress causes excessive strain on our immune system and makes our body-mind vulnerable to disease. Clinical research shows that 80% of disease is stress related with prolonged periods of stress leading to chronic health issues. Stress impacts on our lives in every corner, causing car accidents, job loss and can especially damage relationships.

As it turns out meditation affects the body in exactly the opposite way that stress does, it triggers the relaxation response with all accompanying benefits; a lower heart rate, reduced blood pressure, increased circulation, emotional restoration and so on.

Mindfulness meditation in particular, brings the mind to a calm state whereby the constant chattering of the thoughts slows. The body follows suit allowing all of the major systems of the body to function effectively once more. As your mind clears you are able to more easily tap into your natural creativity, your intuition and insight.

Thinking is good, it is a normal and powerful human trait that is beneficial when directed appropriately. Anxious feelings are good too, just like all feelings have a purpose that is perfect for that moment. They serve as powerful signals from the body to the mind with specific messages designed to wake you up to your thinking and beliefs.

However, excessive thinking isn’t good and neither is excessive anxiousness as these two states unchecked are the cause the debilitating stress and anxiety that many sufferers feel.

Meditation has been helping people to de-stress, release uncomfortable emotions and to achieve clarity & focus for thousands of years. It helps to break the habit of your endlessly flowing thoughts, creating space for more awareness and choice in your day to day life.

Regular meditation will allow you to train your mind and come back to your senses, back to this present moment. As you experience space between the excessive thoughts, you’ll begin to slow the incessant monkey mind and experience stillness and peace.

Your body-mind, on re-entering the present moment, drops the old story line that you’ve been running.

You may be aware of the story I mean... perhaps yours is an old disempowering regret that causes you to feel bad over and over again, or perhaps your story includes an imagined failure in some fictitious future that also feels terrible?

As you learn to bring this practice into your daily life, you’ll begin to experience many benefits, some subtle and some very obvious within a short period of time. You’ll find yourself more positive, optimistic and able to think more clearly and calmly in what would have been stressful situations in the past.

Meditation can take many forms with the most well known being Transcendental Meditation, Vipassana and Zen. The styles of meditations number in the thousands, so it’s more practical to consider meditation in types, namely, intentional, attention or contemplation based meditations. Throughout my programs, workshops and classes, you’ll utilize each type in various formats, although I like to give an emphasis to mindfulness practices, which are attention based types of meditation. The simple reason being is that attention based practices offer greater inroads to presence, in coming back to the truth of each moment.

While the functions of the various styles and types do vary, the resulting experiences within the body are often very similar, as the relaxation response is triggered in each case. The bodies parasympathetic nervous system is activated, relaxing the muscles, lowering the heart rate, decreasing levels of cortisol and adrenalin.

Cognitively and emotionally, the different styles have differing intensity of outcomes but the principal movement of energy is the same. It is one of awareness; where recognition, release, allowing and moving through of any cognition or emotion that has been unhelpfully stored or that remains unprocessed is experienced, either subtly or less so.

All mentioned styles will bring you closer to your true essence, to peace and acceptance, so ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you practice, just that you practice.

Mindfulness is about becoming present. It is a coming back to your senses, as a practice and in the moment but without the typical flavouring of your often unconscious ‘story’. Mindfulness is a key tool for building awareness and coming into this moment, as well as for letting go of the past AND powerfully creating your future.

Below, Jon Kabat Zinn’s definition sums up mindfulness simply;

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgementally”

Mindfulness is best practiced both formally and informally; by setting up a daily habit of seated practice (mindfulness meditation) AND by utilizing the skills throughout your regular day to day activities. An informal practice could be something as simple as practicing being mindfully aware while driving to work.

Either formal or informal practice can be effective on their own, but integration and regularity are the keys to mindfulness’ most powerful benefits.

Thousands of clinical and research studies have been taking place into mindfulness and meditation practices over the last 50 years. Over and over again the studies show benefits that are real and measurable as well as relative and experiential.

It is proven that meditation lowers the heart rate and reduces blood pressure. Your adrenal glands also produce lower amounts of cortisol, which according to some researchers, may directly be contributing to weight loss.

Practicing mindfulness and meditation also brings about improvements to the attentional capacities of the brain and an improved emotional regulation. Basically you are teaching the systems of the body to think clearer and feel better.

Research shows that those who meditate regularly find it easier to give up damaging habits such as gambling, smoking and over eating, as well as drinking and other drugs.

It has been shown using an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that even the solid brain matter in areas of the brain known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection such as the hippocampus, have grown in size and density after an 8 week mindfulness program.

Thankfully, mindfulness and meditation is receiving recognition inside mainstream medicine now, the role of meditation in the treatment and prevention of disease is recognized by the Australian Medical Association as well as The Royal College of General Practitioners.

Excluding during times of war, children experience far more stress today than in all previous generations, especially during high school throughout their final years.

It is important for students of all ages to learn effective mind management tools to assist them in coping with stress and anxiety when it arises. Given the immense pressure exerted upon year 11 and 12 students around exam times, they certainly need it!

Once they begin to practice utilizing the power of the mind in the right way, they will begin to see their true unhindered potential arise with school results to match!

Learn meditation with your colleagues!

Work life balance is critical. With a balanced and clear headspace, room to breathe appears during the workday. The results include better decisions, more efficient work practices, fewer ‘mental health’ sick days and greater enjoyment and engagement for all staff.

Mindset is everything. If you are a business owner or manager, allow your employees to understand that work is also the place they go to grow in awareness and personal empowerment.

Even practicing meditation a little bit, you will begin to recognize benefits.

I would suggest beginning with 20 minutes every day, perhaps 10 minutes in the morning, and 10 in the evening, with the intention to build up your practice to 40 minutes to an hour. This may sound difficult at first, but believe me, after a short time of practicing for 20 minutes a day, you’ll want to extend your practice!

However much time you can dedicate to begin, with regular practice you will begin to directly experience some of the following;

• Inner Calm & Peacefulness


• Greater Focus & Clarity


• Increases Awareness


• More Efficiency


• Greater Flow in Creativity

After learning key skills you will have greater mental resilience and will be better equipped to respond rather than react to life’s challenges when they arise. You’ll find you can manage pressure skillfully without feeling stress.

Your mind is your instrument. Once it’s ‘in tune’ you can make beautiful ‘music’ with it and make wiser choices as you begin to understand and manage your mind more efficiently.

Importantly you’ll have a way to find peace and wholeness.

In this stressful world you need a way to come ‘home’, a way to re-energize and inspire yourself with powerful new insights that you can bring back and apply in your daily life. We all do.

Private Mindfulness Consultation: 1 hour $120
Pension/Student: 1 hour $80
Couples: $160
Mindfulness & Meditation Class: 1 hour $20 casual – (Around $120 for an 8 week full term investment)
MBSM workshop: 2 day weekend $247

Stress Resilience or MBSM ‘Work-Life Balance’ Workshops are also available on request. Please contact me for information relating to any session or program.