April 11, 2020
Stephane Bensoussan Talks About Happiness
Stephane offers us valuable insight to stay grounded, centered and calm without getting caught up in the dramas that can sweep us up into fear mode.
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Conversation with Stephane Bensoussan, Health & Educational Psychologist, Director of Clinique PsySanté in the West Island of Montreal, Canada, Author and Inspirational Speaker who adopts a holistic and integrative approach to wellness. More info about Stephane Bensoussan. About Clinique Psysanté.
My latest Happiness Habits from the Heart interview was certainly a treat for me, I hope the wisdom nuggets it contains offers some sweetness for you as well.
I am happy to introduce you to Stephane Bensoussan, a dear friend who I have known for 25 years. Stephane is a Health & Educational Psychologist, Director of Clinique PsySanté, Author and Inspirational Speaker who adopts a holistic and integrative approach to wellness. He specializes in greeting individuals on their journey toward the integration of mind-body and spirit.
In times of challenge, it is easy to fall out of balance. Stephane offers us valuable insight to stay grounded, centered and calm without getting caught up in the dramas that can sweep us up into fear mode.
Stephane taught me about chakras before I knew what the word meant! He blends imagery, breathing and meditation with cognitive therapy to help us regain our vital life balance. He has always been before his time. With his guidance and the implementation of his precious wellness tools, I learned how to navigate my own life with greater ease and grace leading to more ups than downs. So much Gratitude 🙂
The best gifts are time spent with loved ones, so sit with a soothing cup of tea, alone or with a loved one and enjoy this thought-provoking and insightful conversation.
May you find comfort in knowing you are not alone. Helpful resources are available to get us through these globally changing times.
Enjoy and Be Well.
Stephane's Nuggets of Wisdom
3:50 What Happiness is not, what inner happiness is...
5:15 How Stephane gets into his happy place
5:43 How our own mind can create our suffering
7:37 Disconnect from the inner dialogue to feel better, here’s how
10:59 The importance of ritual and routine
12:36 Magic questions to set you up for a positive and powerful day
15:12 What is micro stress management?
17:12 Choose your time more wisely with mindful living
18:20 This one thing is an essential element to living well
24:33 Laura invites Stephane to guide us to navigate life’s changing tides
27:30 Guided grounding meditation
45:10 Be the guardian of your inner peace
47:35 Be emotionally resilient
48:48 Final words to keep in touch
Transcription of Stephane Bensoussan's Conversation with Laura
Laura: (00:07)
Hello and welcome to happiness habits from the heart where you will find conversations with people who live from the heart and choose happiness as a way of being along with wellness practice practices that can help impact your life and your overall wellbeing. I am Laura Wharf and I'm honored to be here today with my good friend and wholistic psychologist, Stephan Ben. Susan, welcome to fun. Okay, thanks for having me. Stefan is a holistic and health and educational psychologist and I'm so looking forward to having Stefan share his perspective on happiness and wellness with you. So give me a couple of opportunities here just to share a little bit about who you are. Um, Stefan is my soul brother. I think, um, we've always felt that soul brother, soul sister connection since we met over 25 years ago. Wow. Time flies.
Laura: (01:15)
It's the fan. You've always been somebody who is so dear to my heart. And um, you helped me a long time ago in my early twenties as well when I was going through my own life challenges and life turbulences. And you have a beautiful, unique way of integrating all the different psychological approaches. So you integrate to different cognitive, behavioral, psychosocial, physical, spiritual, social, um, aspects to your practice as well. And I think that gift that you have and your lifelong experience as a, an educational and integrative health psychologist, you have this unique ability to be able to gather these different tools that you have from your work as a clinical director in your clinic. See Santi as an author and as a thought provoking presenter and inspirational speaker, you've got this wonderful baggage that helps bring a wealth of knowledge to each one of your clients, his clients and audiences. And you know, just the right thing to say or to do or the tool to apply to whatever that person in front of you might be needing at that time. Thank you, Laura. That's beautiful. So I know that anytime that we have had conversations as well, you have a really wonderfully intuitive approach and I feel calm just being in your presence. And I feel at the same time as being calm, I always feel more uplifted and empowered after we've had our interactions.
Laura: (02:59)
Likewise, it's
Stephane: (03:00)
my pleasure to be here with you and I'm, I'm an excited to be able to share some of our, of our journey together and show some really cool tools with everyone.
Laura: (03:08)
Great. Well, you know what, let's just dive right in. Stefan, I'll give you an opportunity at the end to talk a little bit more, or even now if you feel that there's something that you want to share about what you do, we can infuse that into these, um, lifestyle questions that I want to explore for you with you. And we're living in some challenging times right now. So I think this is really timely to impart some of this knowledge that you've gathered over a lifetime, uh, of your integrative approach so that people have tools and techniques that they can use when they're feeling imbalanced in some way. So let's begin first by defining, I'd love to hear your perspective on happiness and wellness. How would you describe happiness? So
Stephane: (03:50)
there's different definitions of happiness. The way I see happiness as, it's not something that comes from outside, not some gift or some toy or something that we can purchase at the store or on Amazon and all of a sudden we're happy. I mean, it'll give us a little bit of joy for a little bit of time, but it's not an over last thing. Long lasting happiness or happiness is something when you're, when you're looking at the diet of Lima for instance, or some of the Tibetan monks, they always seem to have a smile on their face. And it's not because they have all these material possessions and it's not because they have these incredible jobs where they live in beautiful mansions or, or high level condos. There's an inner happiness within them. There's a sense of contentment that comes from living our purpose, living our passion, and just feeling a sense of connection to ourselves and a connection to earth beneath us and connection to all people around us, across the world.
Stephane: (04:48)
Um, that sense of unity, um, that we can develops through different practices, which we'll talk about today, brings us, can bring us to that state of happiness. So it's not a state where I have to do something in order to be able to feel happy. It's really just about going inside and connecting to that heart opening, um, activity in my mind that brings me into balance, brings me into wholeness. So for me, when I, how do I feel happy? Yeah, how do I get to that happy place? It's really just about I stop whatever I'm doing and I try to tune into, first of all my breath and to cut out the mind. Um, we're taught in our world very young to think and to understand and to learn and to analyze. But we're not really taught to just introspect and just to be present with what's going on inside of ourselves.
Stephane: (05:43)
And I really feel that if we get caught up in the stories that our mind is trying to tell us, then we're bringing us into all kinds of different, scary, anxious places sometimes. Um, because the mine is capable of incredible things. As a psychologist, I can tell you, we can change the world. We can change your life just with our thoughts. But we can also create a lot of internal suffering for ourselves and the people around us. If when we start, uh, if we continue believing what our thoughts are saying. So I'm working on a new book right now. I wanted to share that with you more. It's called get out of your mind and get out of your mind. It's really just literally coming out of our mental, uh, thought processes that are happening. And I'm bringing this into our story. So happiness for me means coming out of the stories, whatever the stories may be.
Stephane: (06:38)
So for instance, these days with all this virus scare that's going around and we're watching the news and we're, we're thinking and we're afraid, and we're imagining all kinds of scary scenarios, which are pretty much, I'm not saying that they're not realistic or possible, everything's possible, but because the mine is getting into it so much, we're building these crazy scenarios, these what we call catastrophic thoughts and images that brings us into fear and brings us to the panic. And those stories may happen. Hopefully they won't. But the point is, by getting caught up into the story, we're not in touch with what's going on in sight. And what I would encourage us to do is to, instead of thinking and allowing the thoughts to continue and taking us away, let's stop those stories. Let's not be the thoughts. Let's not let the ego, which is the mind that takes us into all kinds of scary places.
Stephane: (07:37)
Let's not let the ego take us into that road of suffering. Well, let's stop. Let's breathe. Let's focus. Let's ground. And we're going to do a little bit of that today in our exercise that we're going to, I'm the lead, um, just to kind of disconnect ourselves from emotion, disconnect from stories, connect from fear and disconnect from media and everything else that's happening around us and come into ourselves ground, connect to earth, breathing peacefully. And as we connect more and we allow for the space in our organs to kind of stretch and to move through breathwork, through yoga, through stretching, through whatever practice behind, even just walking that will help us to feel more centered. And when, when we're centered, that's when we can connect to her heart and think of and feel all the things that we're lucky to have been grateful for. And I think the gratitude is one of the things that I use alive to be able to recognize how fortunate I am, how lucky we are in this world for so many different reasons.
Stephane: (08:46)
Um, but connecting to that inner gratitude and a sense of connection to the earth. Now I can bring in my to family, friends to community, to the world at large. And even if I'm not necessarily reaching out to a thousand people every day, I feel that internally that I'm still connected. I mean, look at us, you and I, we've been sort of connected for over 20 years and it's not like we speak on a daily basis, you and I, but every time I connect to you, Laura, I feel like you're like a soul sister. Like I've known you for such a long time and it doesn't take long to reconnect energetically. Cause I think of you, you think of me, we're in each other's kind of energetic world. It doesn't have to mean verbal every single day. So those are some of the things that I do. Um, and hopefully we'll be able to share it and impart some of that, that knowledge today.
Laura: (09:42)
I'd love to. And uh, I'd like maybe if you can lead a five or 10 minute grounding exercise so that people can actually feel it for themselves of what that is. Now, you talked about when you are too much in your mind, and I love the title of your new book. Um, I can't wait to be able to get that into my hands. So getting out of the mind and into our body and into our heart certainly is a skill that we need to learn because I think just telling somebody, Oh, relaxed or take a deep breath, you know, it is a certain sense of conditioning that happens, has to happen. Relaxation is something that needs to be practiced so that we can tap in to these inner currents to be able to go into relaxation. So you mentioned that you are able to then get out of your mind, drop down into your heart, get quiet and tune into your breath and I'd love for you to share how readers do, how our listeners are going to feel that. But can you talk a little bit maybe about your wellness rituals or practices? Is this something that you bring into your day? First thing when you wake up to get your mind in the right directions that you're not getting caught up in the media messages and negative thought processes. Can you walk us through maybe about how you integrate these wellness practices into your day? What that looks like for you?
Stephane: (10:59)
Sure. So for me, one of the most important things is ritual and routine. And we are conditions too. We're creatures of habit, right? We're conditioned to follow through certain habits. And when we follow through those rituals, it makes us feel safe. It makes us feel somewhat in control of our world, even though we may not be, it gives us a sense of where do I go now if every day I have to reinvent myself and decide what I'm going to do from moment to moment and living spontaneously, that can be good. But it's also very ungrounding. So my first thing when I wake up in the morning is find listening and waking up not to the alarm clock, but to kind of either if I have the luxury of waking up to the sunlight or just waking up when my body feels like it's time to get up, that's one.
Stephane: (11:47)
Um, or we're waking up. If I do have set an alarm, which is just some sort of soft music that kind of brings me back into consciousness in a wakefulness, I don't want to get up and listen to the news right away. I used to do that. Um, and that was very ungrounding for me. Um, so what I do now is, is more softly getting up. Generally my brain is still kind of in another world when I'm getting up and I need to really kind of focus on just walking, doing my thing in the bathroom and just kinda grounding, um, that way. So getting slowly back into my world. Um, and then my espresso helps in the morning. Uh, have a glass of water or Nespresso to kind of kind of bumped me up and then I'll go into a little bit of movement. So it could be, I want, have my breakfast right away.
Stephane: (12:36)
I'll do a little bit of movement, whether it's stretching or walking or my yoga. Um, when the studios are open, I'll go to practice in the morning. If not, I'll do something, something at all. But really something to kind of get into my body. Um, for me sitting in the morning first thing and doing meditation doesn't work for me, doesn't mean it doesn't have to work for others. For me, I need to have movement and get moving, get things moving a little bit in my body. Once I've gone and energy flowing and I can feel that that's when I can sit and kind of ground and then connect to the earth and so forth. And then at that point I'll kind of ease into my day and work a little bit on, um, was that my intention today? What do I feel like having, what am I grateful for?
Stephane: (13:22)
What is it that I want to feel at the end of the day? How do I want my day to go through? So creating a sense of purpose and working from a place of meaning is really important from, I don't want to just do anything just for the sake of passing time. I find precious times, probably the most precious commodity that I have. So I'm always like, is, does this serve me right now? Is this something that I really need to do in this moment? What is it that I feel like I wanted you or I need to, um, as opposed to the things that I feel like I have to do now. The things that, you know, we obviously there's things that we have to do in life, but it's really about choosing when we get to do them as opposed to feeling obliged to do them. And that might seem a little bit different.
Stephane: (14:12)
Um, for people who like to be efficient and organized and straight. I, I'm not the most organized person. I am not the most, um, uh, Richard in that way. I like to kind of have a flow where I'm tuning into what I feel like even though there's an agenda, even though there's things that I need to have it done, it's organizing myself to be able to tune into what is it that I feel like right now and when do I want to do this as opposed to when we would have to do this. So listening to my inner voice, listening to my intuition, and allowing myself to be guided that way. And throughout the day, whether I'm working with clients or if I'm writing or if I'm returning emails, it's really about centering myself before each event. So at the top of every hour, let's say I'm seeing a number of clients back to back for instance, um, I always kind of bring into my awareness of, okay, I let go this person that just left my office.
Stephane: (15:12)
I come back into my space, I ground, I rebalanced myself, and then I'm welcoming the next person into my space. Um, anytime I leave from one building to another building or one building to my car, for example, uh, I'll take just 10 seconds. It doesn't have to be long just to kind of disconnect from the activity that I'm doing to the next to me that I'm doing. So I call that micro stress management. Um, you know, back in the 80s, we were telling people we'll take an hour every day to just kind of breathe and we do a relaxation and meditation exercise and it's good advice. But I didn't find that a lot of people at least to follow because they would come back and say, I just didn't have the time. Right. So, and that was including me too. I didn't have that one hour just to stop life and do everything just internally.
Stephane: (16:02)
So what I prefer doing is micro stress management, taking a few minutes every hour or as often as I need to within that hour to just to kind of connect and my breathing. Sometimes I hold my breath. So am I reading, come back to diaphragmatic breathing and then what am I thinking about catching myself to making sure that I'm only having thoughts that serve me, that are supportive of me and that are meaningful to me. If they're thoughts that bring me into drama, then I choose nothing. Changing those thoughts. Likewise that people are talking about stories or rumors or you know, they're talking about another people. I either leave the conversation or just change the subject or choose to disconnect from that cause I don't really need to have that in my own GPO. Same thing, but it's not serving me. So same thing with the media. You know, if I'm watching something that is interesting and stimulating and I feel like I'm learning and I'm growing and I'll tune out and if it's something that makes me, makes me afraid or it makes me go into all this drama that may be happening in the world, I disconnect from it.
Stephane: (17:12)
So a lot of conscious choice and a lot of conscious awareness of how am I about to spend my next moment. And that's what I called mindful living. Um, bringing our awareness to momentum moment awareness. What's happening right here right now, whether it's in my breath, whether it's in my posture, whether it's in my back, whether it's in the space around me, whether it's how you're doing and what's going on for you according to what I feel and what I'm picking up in terms of your vibration. Um, so I'm aware of all these things and I'm using all my senses to really feel into what's going on right here right now. And that helps me to stay grounded and present. Um,
Laura: (17:58)
so Stefan, and then how did you get to that point? Because you, I know you well, but I'd love to be able to share with our listeners too, to get to that point of being such an Intune listener to your feelings and sensations and emotions so that you can navigate your day in such a way where that it's serving your highest good, those people around you.
Stephane: (18:17)
It's a great question. I'm not sure I have an exact precise answer, but what I could tell you is that, you know, the focus on the breath for me is essential. Um, most of us aren't breathing or aren't grieving properly. Uh, we hold our breath and the breath is central to everything that's going on in the world. Like if you're talking about the coronavirus, it's dense. It's, it's affecting our lungs, right? It's, it's a pulmonary virus. And what's the message behind that? It's really what we're, what we're as medical experts is thing is that we need to expand our lung capacity. We need to be able to breathe fresh air. We need to be able to get the muscles around the lungs to be strong, to be able to withstand any kind of affection that affects their lungs. So if we're sitting on the couch and we're hardly breathing and we're not moving much, then then those kinds of infections will affect us that much more.
Stephane: (19:15)
So hence the importance of walking and deep breathing and diaphragmatic breathing and exercise and yoga and all the things that make us use your lungs is important. So just to come back to your question, the first thing that I work on is am I breathing? How am I breathing? And I want to make sure that I'm always breathing from my belly. So my belly should be coming in and out as my breath comes in and out. So if I'm breathing and my belly kind of swells a little bit when I'm breathing, Oh my read, my tummy pulls in. So I'm using my abdominal muscles sometimes to kind of stretch. And well and stretch and um, to be able to get the air. And though it's not breathing and so much from our chest like that, a lot of us breathe like that. And what that does is it does get oxygen into the body, but very quickly, and there are receptors in the lungs that send a message to the nervous system, short brain that says I'm in danger.
Stephane: (20:22)
So just breathing in from our chest automatically produce this, what we call the stress response. And then people get anxious and they're anxious, not necessarily because of what's going on around them, but because of breathing from the chest. So if you could do like five or six graphs yourself from breathing in and out of your chest, only you will start feeling a little anxious. You might your pulse and be a little bit clammy and sweaty. Your mind's to start to race. You're going to feel your heart's racing a little bit more. All of this is just because of chest breathing. So if we're aware of that and we can just bring ourselves to awareness of that, my breathing in and out my belly and sit down, like from the belly, we have the Vegas nerve that sends a message to the brain up the nervous system to say, Hey, everything is good.
Stephane: (21:10)
So if I'm reading some belly, the message is I'm safe. So the brain releases relaxation, chemicals, endorphins to the body says, okay, everything's safe, let's relax. So just a few moments of slow breathing. It doesn't have to be super deep, but regular breathing from the belly and not from the chest really helps to make us feel first of all safe, um, grounded and helps connect us to the natural rhythm of life. So the rhythm of breathing for me has to be the symbolically related to the ebb and flow of the tide at the beach. So if you're standing at the beach and your washing was watching the water come in and out, right? The little waves coming in on the shore and retreating while the ebb and flow of that water should be similar to the ebb and flow of our breath. In and breath out.
Stephane: (22:07)
So when you're watching the tie, it doesn't just stop there and does nothing. There's always a little bit of movement, sometimes a bigger movement, but there's always inevitably flow. And that's how parallel symbolically we need to be making sure that we're breathing in and out slowly, rhythmically into our Valley consistently. And suddenly what I teach clients who are afraid is that if you are consciously breathing from your belly and you're only breathing her belly, not from your chest, you cannot actually elicit fear. So even if something really scary happen right now, let's say ignore man was coming in, barging into your group and pointing a gun at you. If you're reading from your belly, will not be afraid. You will stay safe and grounded. Now the moment you [inaudible] take a chest breath, boom, that's it. That trigger is the fear is sponsored. And then Brandon and then you freak out. Hmm, okay. But reading from the Valley allows you to stay in a place of control and safety. And that for me is the most important thing that I do throughout the day to make sure that I'm kind of in my body. I'm kind of in control of things.
Laura: (23:21)
So during those emergency moments, then we just have to say, hang on a second, I just need to do some deep breathing, breathing or not. So you actually have to stop them. You have to stop. No, stop the arm robber. Hang on. I'm teasing. You know, Stefan, you have such a skillful approach of doing guided imageries and and over 25 years ago you offered a course called a journey to higher awareness and that was the first group class that I ever did with you and I'll never forget it. Those images that you guided us through this, this journey of exploration within this internal journey is still with me vividly today, and this is over 25 years ago. I'm sure that we did that course. I kept the pamphlet, actually I came across it not long ago because I wanted to show you, I still had it because it had such a positive, powerful impact on my life of learning that we have access to this whole inner world and that our thoughts influence our physical wellbeing and that this connection between the intricacies of the mind and the body is the breath as you say.
Laura: (24:33)
And that, you know, we have control over our emotions when we learned that we can monitor our thoughts and monitor our breath and make choices of how do I want to be and how do I want to show up in this world. Like this is really life changing. And so I'd love for you to be able to perhaps do a little journey to guided awareness and however it speaks to you right now for five or 10 next five or 10 minutes for our, our listeners, um, through the breath and perhaps any kind of imagery or visualization that might be helping us navigate the flow through change.
Stephane: (25:08)
Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Let's keep in mind for those who aren't familiar with, with meditation or mindfulness or imagery. It's the brain is, as I mentioned before, a very powerful tool. And if we've visualized something, if you close your eyes and imagine something, there's all kinds of things going on in our body from our heart vibration to the cells of our body, to the organs within ourselves, which are receiving and they're kind of listening into our conversations. Um, so every cell in our body, every system in our body is being mobilized with the images that we use. So when I invite you to think about your roots and sending roots and visualizing like your tree, and you're sending roots in the ground that even though it's kind of symbolic, it's a symbolic imagery, there is something pretty special that happens on a physical level and on an energetic level within us and around us.
Stephane: (26:09)
So you're talking about the effect of the mind on the body. And I'm talking, you ask the mind and the body of your shirt, but also mind, body and spirit around us. So our whole energetic field, electromagnetic field around us shifts as a result of these images and thoughts and ideas that we're placing into our heads. So we're balancing our mind, we're balancing our body, we're balancing thing, our energetic field around us. And that allows us to interact with the world in a very different place. So someone, for example, is energetically stable and rounded. It's already calmer, is already feeling more state, but comes across as feeling more confidence already. And then when stuff happens, drama happens in the world around, we're able to counter it. So all of that is from that sixth sense. And some people who haven't done imagery before, it feels like, well, just, well, it wasn't that I wasn't using your imagination.
Stephane: (27:08)
Well, yes you are. But when you're using your imagination, especially with an awareness and a consciousness that's brought insight, there's tremendous shifting and changes that happens on a physiological level, not you will feel after you practice it. So even if you're a skeptic, just to do it and then see how you feel after, just do it. Just do it. I'm ready. Okay. So let's go through a grounding meditation. And this is one that I do on a daily basis. There's many different varieties of grounding meditations, but especially in these turbulent times, that's really important to stay grounded and not get drafted or pulled in all kinds of different directions by the media and the stories that we hear. So the grounding meditations when I do every day, and I encourage, we all do every day. Um, so I invite you to get into a comfortable seated position that can be sitting on the floor or on a block or on a bolster or sitting on a chair if you're comfortable that way.
Stephane: (28:14)
And that's fine. Just make sure that if you're sitting on your chair, your feet part lacked against the floor. Um, so that you're connected to the ground. I'm not sitting on a stool is not a good idea for this exercise. You really want to be grounded to the floor. So if you are seated, um, make sure that your, your seat has a bolster underneath you so your knees are kind of pointing down as opposed to pointing upwards. And that helps. Yeah, that helps. And that kind of makes sure that your, your posture is nice and tall and strong and allows energy to flow up and down your spine better. So let's start with um, our hands can be together, like holding like fingers together, like index and thumb together, kind of holding and just kind of resting on our lap. And we're just kind of grieving. So notice first of all, if you're breathing and if you're not breathing, it's probably a good idea to start breathing
Speaker 3: (29:22)
[inaudible]
Stephane: (29:22)
and then just kind of feel the sense, feel the your body, feel your seat. So your sitting bones on the chair question
Stephane: (29:35)
and then just kind of work at trying to find a tall spine. So you may want to kind of move a little bit and sway a little bit until you fine a tall spine going up. Imagine that someone's pulling you from your hair to the top of the ceiling and you're lengthening, lengthening your spine upwards, getting taller. So we're reconnecting to the breath. And although this is an exercise in stillness, stillness, doesn't it mean absence of movement? We're always moving around a little bit here and there. Adjusting posture movements are key to this. So focusing on the breath, breathing in and out of the nose. So full breath then with their nose. Full breath out through the nose. And again, two more times. Breath in through the nose. I know.
Speaker 3: (30:51)
And then
Stephane: (30:59)
bring awareness to your shoulders. Slightly retreating backwards. [inaudible] humble chin. So slightly focused. Same on what's in front of you, long that's fine. And keep that breath moving in and out of your body at this point to an end, to all the sounds you hear around, you can feel a little sound. It sounds like all the lights are the uh,
Speaker 3: (31:40)
[inaudible]
Stephane: (31:41)
talking in the background. Subtle little sounds here. Tune them to us so you agree thing in and out fluidly and won't allow your eyes to close if I'm not closed on Friday. And through your breath, feel the expansion of your abdomen and rib cage as it breathing in and out. So we're still tuning into our breath throughout the rest of the exercise. If you have a thought that brings you elsewhere, notice the thought. Let it go and come back to your body, to your breath, to the sensations you feel. We're not trying to block any thoughts or ideas to come in or that's going to happen. We accept that, but simply don't give too much attention to the thoughts. Whatever the thought is, let it go. Come back to your breath. Come back to your seat. Come back to our exercise. So now from your seat, allow yourself to imagine at the base of your spine, your tailbone, right where your Cox sticks to your tailbone. And imagine that you can extend that tail kind of like a root of a tree stands into the earth. So you're going to kind of imagine that root pushing through and reeling a hole through the floor underneath you and sending the root through the floor, all the way down into the earth beneath your building. There's still a briefing, and I know your nose and your battling.
Stephane: (34:03)
Allow your visual image of that route extending deeper and deeper into the ground, into the earth beneath you. Visualize that root getting stronger, digging deeper. We're talking about 30 meters deep and why 40 meters deep and wine and 15 meters deep in water. These are very strong, powerful brews that you're sending in to the earth and allow those roots, that root. Now just imagine that it's extending outwards. It's breading, it's making baby roofs all around. So you have roots extending in front of you, spreading in front of you, spreading behind you, behind your seat, spreading to your left and right sides of you all over the earth, underneath your body.
Stephane: (35:09)
Imagine those roots gripping the earth and the rock bedrock underneath you, wrapping itself around that Vedra feeling safe, feeling strong, feeling secure. The strength of a tree is the strength of its roots. And you have powerful, strong roots right now because there's a lot of beautiful soil and earth energy around the roots. The roots have the ability of [inaudible] minerals and vitamins and earth energy into its root system. So this is a process called osmosis, and we're going to imagine that our roots are kind of absorbing earth energy, water, nutrients, vitamins, minerals into the roots and observe kind of a golden Brown light. So the school and ground light is not being pulled into your root system. And every time you're inhaling, you're kind of vacuuming it up a little bit and you're kind of pulling it into your body all the way up through the long roots and pulling it into your seat, pulling it into your back and imagine that that golden Brown light continues to pull in. So the idea is match the breath with the visual. Every time I breathe in, okay, earth energy is being pulled in. Every time I breathe out the energy, the light kind of set up and the tissues around breathing in there rises a little bit forward, a little bit higher grade out. It kind of settles and deepens into the tissues, organs around. So let's do this together. Imagine that earth energy being pulled into your risk system, coming in, balancing your seat, balancing and filling up this golden Brown light into your pelvis.
Stephane: (37:24)
Continue breathing in and out. Allow that golden Brown light to spill into your legs and settle into all your legs and feet, pulling in under the energy up in sheer Ballenger abdomen. Next breath. And imagine that energy coming up into your chest. Continue breathing and filling the chest. Feeling the throat and shoulder area is golden. Run light. Visualize that light's spreading down your shoulders, down your arms, all the way down to your fingertips. Continue breathing and and allow that earth energy to flow up into your head, neck, and head, all the way to your crown. As soon as you're breathing out, feel that I'm just settling into your body, into your being. Keep breathing and let that energy through you and push through the crown of your head and kind of spraying this golden Brown light all the way around you, around your aura like a volcano spewing its love up. It's pulling this earth energy up into you, filling all cells systems of your body and then coming out on releasing it above you and all around you into your aura. Allow that a visual to continue for your or another few moments. Keep working that image. Keep working the breath. Allow yourself to settle with that energy and just out loud. Say the following affirmations.
Stephane: (39:38)
I'm safe. I am safe. Well, I belong. I'm strong. I'm grounded and secure. The breath moving. Feel the energy inside of you. What's going on right now? It's happening in your heart. What's happening? Sure. Breath. How's your posture right now? Okay. Can you breathing? Being aware of the breath. Allow yourself to open your eyes gently. Generally look around you without moving your head. Just your eyes. Feel the space around you. You know what it feels like to be grounded. It feels thick to be in your body, to be connected to her. The feeling strong and secure. Magine living our day like this. From this place of grounded
Speaker 3: (41:35)
from a natural flowing breath into our Valley
Stephane: (41:41)
more the mind is not so solicited. We're experiencing life, not thinking through life. The more we cultivate this type of practice, the more we're actually changing the structures of our brain on a physiological level. There's all kinds of grain parts that change, that grow, that allows us to feel like we can respond to things as opposed to react to things. And these are principles and mindfulness that we learn when we practice mindfulness meditation. So see if you can hold onto that energy for the rest of your day. I hope you are able to connect and feel that
Laura: (42:41)
the fan. That was beautiful. Thank you. And I love that experience your way through life instead of thinking your way through life. And if that was, that would be big takeaway for so many of us. And that one that rang true for me because I think we all need to learn to feel more. We're so used to thinking and being busy in our minds, but to tune in to that sensory experience is just, you know, I feel in my body, I feel a little heavy right now. I feel that, Oh my body could probably use some rest this afternoon, you know, and I feel that, um, the sense of calm and lots of space, no mind almost and pulsing kind of moving through my body is really in tune with my circulation and energy. So that's a, a really profound guided imagery and meditation that brought me back to when I first met you and I was learning from you. So that's a [inaudible] a lot of fun to sense that again.
Stephane: (43:40)
Yeah, that's a powerful meditation because it does work on the root and when we work on the Groot, it actually helps to rebalance our circulatory system, our immune system, and actually helps rebalance minerals and vitamins, believe it or not, in our body. Um, we're working with anything systemic. I'm so glad. Lymph system and immune system, but we're also working on strengthening bones and there's a lot of physiological magic that happens as a result with just a grounding practice like this on a day to day basis. [inaudible]
Laura: (44:17)
I'm going to return this one. I still have your CD so we can talk about that a little bit later. But that was a different version of it and I love the imagery of the golden light. I literally felt like those baby roots were kind of going almost like pillories all through my body, filling my entire body and I felt shivers of that light coming in. It was, yeah. Really nice. Thank you. So you know, through these you mentioned, you know, we're going through these challenging times right now and sometimes turbulent and there may be chaos in our environments and it's learning how to maintain the calm, almost like you're the center of the storm. So staying that calmness in that chaos that may be going on around us. So for us as human beings to stay well and more resilient during times of change, would this be a meditation or a technique that you would offer and are there others?
Stephane: (45:09)
Yeah, this is a really important one to do on a daily basis. Again, just to kind of make us feel grounded because with all the chaos that's going on and the fear that's happening, we're being pulled into getting into our minds and turning and spinning. And what's what's important to do is to come out of the mind, get out of your mind like my book is, and go into your body, feel your body, feel the connection with your, and that's already going to make us feel sick. So the chaos is still going to happen outside of us, but we don't have to bring the Coulson inside of me. I have to guard my sense of inner peace. Um, that's the thing that we have the control of. We don't have control over what happens out there, but we have control over our thoughts. We have control over the way that we think and the way that we feel and what's going on in my body that I have control over.
Stephane: (45:58)
So let me keep that piece inside of my heart and guard it very carefully. So anything that tries to innovate me energetically, um, I'm going to be very strong about, no, I'm not going to let this affect me. I'm going to focus on my brother and I focus on my grounding. So that's a, that's an important practice to do. Um, for sure. Also, just, just one other important thing I feel is that when there's crisis, when there's chaos out there, a lot of our habits change. Um, our rituals change or routine changes. We don't, we might not even have her or do you, and it's important to come back to because we are creatures of habit. We need to come back to creating rituals that serve us. So giving ourselves appointments with ourselves. For example, every morning I do yoga at eight o'clock in the morning for instance, or I'm going to do some sort of walk walking, um, I need to eat us. So kind of organizing our schedule, even if it's an agenda that we have with ourselves, scheduling things really helps us to feel a sense of, um, rounding and control.
Laura: (47:11)
Yeah, that's really helpful. And so if we are starting to conclude then this conversation, do you have any final thoughts or nuggets about how we can start to integrate those tools into our daily life to be well and happy? And that's what we're cultivating here through these tools is to improve our level of wellbeing and our health and our happiness. And so what would be an integration tip?
Stephane: (47:35)
So we call this emotional resilience, right? The ability of getting through situations of crises or difficulties with grace. How do I get through, um, stress around me? How do I work through difficulties, conflict, things like that. And, you know, the most important thing in my mind, and this is what I try to practice this, you know, what's going on in my mind, what's going on in my thoughts, what's going on, uh, on a mental level and see if I can detach myself from that and just come back to living and experiencing the world. And when we do that, we inherently learn to trust the universe. We inherently learn to feel like there's some power that's, that's bigger than us, that's, that's stronger than us, that helps to guide us and move through things. So it's not just through prayers, not just through setting intentions and setting promises, not connecting to God that's connected to God this way. Coming into ourselves and the inside out. Exactly. So coming into ourselves as opposed to going outwards, let's come in. Where's first and then come out.
Laura: (48:48)
Yeah. That makes me think of your empowerment spirals. And, um, you know, I'd love to share with our listeners a little bit more about how they can learn what you do. Your clinic is in the West Island of Montreal in Canada and uh, you are an author of a couple of books and you've got a lot of other resources as well. Can you share a little bit about how people can get in touch with you or know more about what you do either online or live?
Stephane: (49:10)
Absolutely. So we do have a face to face clinic. People can come see us that um, we do offer sessions on zoom and on Skype or people who are non-local or people who prefer being, you know, at home. Um, so they can reach me through my website. Uh, Stefan, Ben, susan.com and they can also reach us through the, the clinic, which is kidney C, Santa Fe, Montreal. Um, we have a number of physical offices spread out across the Metro area, but we are, um, like I said, we are available to others who are outside of that region. Um, the phone number to reach us in case people do want to reach us as five one, four, five, four two six, eight, eight, eight. Um, and my private email is defend at [inaudible] dot com S T E P H a N e@psysant.com. So those are some good links. Thank you. Thank you. These are some of the ways of reaching out. Um, my book will be hopefully coming out in the next few months. I'm excited about that. If people are interested in reserving a copy, you can always just email me and I'll make sure to keep you on that list.
Laura: (50:24)
[inaudible] or your other book is [inaudible]. It's written in French, but you specialize also in helping people navigate their health challenges living with cancer.
Stephane: (50:34)
Yeah, that's also another book that I'm almost finished translating. So as soon as that gets done, we'll be publishing nine one as well. So that's, that's those are, that's a beautiful book to have resource book for people with cancer that needs a little bit of extra support from all kinds of ways. Psycho spiritual, um, ways of coping with cancer, but also, you know, naturopathic remedies, homeopathic comedies, yoga postures, and anything that can help people deal with the symptoms as those who do with cancer.
Laura: (51:06)
Hmm. Well, you're doing so much good in the world, Stefan. I know everybody that has had the opportunity to work with you has since that firsthand of the, the wellbeing that you transmit and that's definitely received and I already feel different since the beginning, since we got on. I'm feeling more grounded, more relaxed. It's a wonderful feeling just being with [inaudible]. So I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join in this platform of the happiness habits. And I put this out to you, the listeners, those that are tuning in right now reflect back of some of the wisdom nuggets that Stefan has just shared with us. And think of one thing that you could integrate into your day of what he shared, either through his own personal weird rituals and wellness habits or the grounding meditation that we did together. What was the one thing that really touched you or the one statement that was thought provoking for you or that felt empowering or, um, shifting in some way for you and then bring that forward into your life? A habit takes time. So I would suggest trying it on and practicing it for the next, how long should we practice that, Stefan? Do we say the seven day or the 21 day or the 90 day?
Stephane: (52:23)
I mean, I, I just say keep doing it until it's there. You don't have to think about it till it integrates till it integrates. Exactly. I'm doing it regularly without having to worry about it.
Laura: (52:32)
Perfect advice. Great. Well, thank you. And, um, look out for all of the defense links that'll be included just to here on this webpage at ha. Laura, a school of happiness.ca happiness habits. I'm Laura WARF signing off from the school of happiness and Stefan Bensoussan from clinic [inaudible] and, uh, we wish you well, I must say
Speaker 3: (53:00)
Thank you.
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