The Courtyard

The Haven Courtyard

Free Workshops, Live Events, and Pop-Up Happenings

Welcome to The Haven. You are invited to slow down and take a moment away from the self-destructive, hyper-active demands of a world that often forgets to take a breath.

Our Next FREE Courtyard Happening Is...

Using Coherent Breathing For Highly Sensitive Self-Regulation

With Emily Agnew

Tuesday 17th October 2023 (7pm UK)

How do you meet the challenge of HSP self-regulation? Coherent breathing is an ideal tool to regulate your sensitive nervous system.

I’m looking forward to being joined by my friend Emily Agnew from SustainablySensitive.com in our October Courtyard Conversation, where she will guide us through a gentle Coherent Breathing practice. I invited Emily because of her experience in helping highly sensitive people befriend our nervous systems and come home to ourselves in safety, connection and regulation.

We might sometimes try thinking our way to regulation with affirmations, logic, and reason, but when our nervous system is dysregulated, these options don’t always help. In fact, they can make our sense of disconnection feel worse.

I like finding ways to build our options so we don’t need to dread the impact of dysregulation. Wouldn't it be nice to rest assured that even when it happens, we can find our way home again afterwards. I know from conversations and my own experience that this fear means we sometimes avoid stimulating situations and environments and deny ourselves access to things that are really meaningful and important to us.

The world desperately needs highly sensitive people who can confidently navigate and partner with our nervous systems.

Coherent Breathing is a particular body-based technique that Emily uses to both rewrite inner circuits over time and respond to stress in any moment. She uses it for its evidence-based, simple, powerful, and safe techniques that can be picked up and used by anyone. It can be applied on the spot, anywhere, anytime, without anyone else even knowing you are doing it. And over time, through simple daily practice, it restores a healthy balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of your nervous system, making you less reactive generally.

Session Structure

Length: 60 minutes.

Location: Zoom

Cost: Free

Outline:

Introduction: Emily will start with some background about Coherent Breathing and how it can be used in everyday life.
Practice: She will then lead us through a short practice (approximately 20 minutes)
Discussion: We will then have time to chat about any reflections and questions.

As Emily writes in her article introducing Coherent Breathing, self-regulation is a central challenge for highly sensitive people. In addition to our characteristic emotional intensity, our brains are genetically set to process information in a deeper way than those who are not highly sensitive. This can lead to nervous system overarousal and dysregulation.

Dysregulation feels awful. It is unpleasant in itself, and it can drastically affect our ability to function well. As a result, we learn to dread it. Unfortunately, the dread of dysregulation makes it worse. We need effective ways to stop this downward spiral.

Join us on Tuesday October 17th at 7pm UK time to explore one way we might do this. We will record the session for anyone who can't attend live. Make sure you register ahead of time to be notified of the replay.

About Us

Emily Agnew does intensive 1:1 programs that help HSPs create a better inner relationship, a stronger spiritual connection, and better self-regulation. She discovered the importance of these three elements the hard way, having struggled with anxiety during her years playing the oboe professionally. Everything she teaches, she practices herself.

Emily is certified in Focusing and Inner Bonding®, offering a unique and powerful combination of these modalities in addition to regulating breath practices. She writes articles about the HSP trait each month for the Sustainably Sensitive newsletter. Visit www.sustainablysensitive.com to learn more.

https://sustainablysensitive.com/resources/free-newsletter/

https://sustainablysensitive.com/

Andy Mort is a sound artist, songwriter, and slow coach. He created The Gentle Rebel Podcast and founded The Haven to create space and sanctuary for weary travellers, tired of the pace and pressure of modern existence. Through the community and 1:1 coaching, he helps gentle rebels and sensitive souls connect with their creative spirit and find sustainable rhythms to build life on.

He has also been writing, producing, and performing music for over 20 years and is currently working on his fifth full studio album (the first under his own name).

Visit https://www.andymort.com to find out more

Previous Courtyard Resources and Events

The Change Quiz

We all follow internal scripts about embracing, instigating, and absorbing change.

The purpose of the quiz is to help you identify which aspect of change might currently be having the biggest impact on your life. I hope it will help raise awareness and provide breathing room around anything that is causing you uncertainty and overwhelm right now.

I would encourage you to reflect on the questions as you go. Let them speak to you and allow yourself to notice what you notice along the way.

Once you complete the questions you will receive three scores. One for each area: embracing, instigating, and absorbing change.

I will then share some potential practical steps you could take next.

Dealing With Unpredictable Change (With Charlie Jones)

Over-Empathy Workshop

We develop scripts and strategies from an early age to help meet our innate need for safety and belonging. We respond to the emotional energy in the environment around us, learning quickly what we need to do (and what we shouldn't do or feel) in order to maintain a perception of balance and safety.

Some people might develop over-empathy as a survival strategy. If a person has been exposed to an environment of fluctuating emotional energy, they might have taken on the responsibility of soothing, harmonising, and regulating other peoples' feelings. Relegating and suppressing their own deep needs and emotions.

Meeting our human need for safety and belonging starts within. We can't get there by taking unwarranted responsibility for the emotional energy around us.

You can watch Marika's workshop by signing up below.

Serenity In The Trenches

We are living through a strange and difficult period of history right now. The news is full of stories that reflect and sow yet more division, hatred, and fear. Everywhere you look there is tumult and uncertainty. And the future feels uncertain at times. Both as a society, and for us as individuals as we try to navigate this ever changing reality.

We feel lost and confused. What is our purpose? Where should we focus? How can we find meaning in our lives?

There is an appetite among the introverted and highly sensitive creative people I work with, to see the world with new eyes. And to bring this vision into practice through eyes of love, connection, and gentleness. In other words, true strength, courage, and power. This is the path to self-acceptance, true belonging, and living a life of meaning and passion.

I asked some friends of mine the following questions:

What positively drives you in your day to day life?
How do you know when it's time to recharge your batteries?
What is your go-to source of self-care and rest?
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change about the world right now?
If you could share just one message, what would you want people to know, believe, or feel about themselves?
Knowing what you know now, what would you say to a younger version of yourself by way of encouragement, reassurance, or inspiration?

Serenity In The Trenches is a collection of their responses, and an invitation to think about your own answers too.

If you are feeling a bit hopeless and helpless right now I'd love to invite you to check this free series out.

Face The Wall

Are you currently living in the shadow of one of life's looming walls?

This workshop will help you identify new and old sources of inner-strength to help you break down those obstacles that keep the light out.

Maybe there's a specific obstacle, struggle, or future event that is blocking out the light right now. Perhaps you're aware that something feels wrong but you don't know what it is or how to deal with it.

We can't compare walls with other people. What we see as a wall might seem like nothing to someone else, and the thing that they are scared to confront might be a picnic in the park for us.

In this Courtyard workshop we explore three keys to tackling our wall:

The Courage to Acknowledge It
The Bravery to Act on It
The Strength From Past Stories

Hunting for Confidence

True confidence grows when we can build life on foundations of authentic safety and trust.

Do you wish you had the confidence to take meaningful risks in your life?

This workshop is a chance to think about an area of life you want to feel confident in and look at it through six lenses. It will give you simple and practical ways to build confidence in your situation or project.

Sign up here to get immediate access to the workshop:

Marketing From Abundance

Nurture Tranquility and Calm When You Find Yourself in Urgency/Panic/Hustle Mode

I was thrilled to have friend and fellow gentle rebel, Sarah Santacroce with me in The Courtyard. She is a like-spirited entrepreneur who shares my passion for building online businesses in gentle and unconventional ways.

If you're like us, you probably feel exhausted by the pressure to keep up, be everywhere, and engage in scarcity marketing tactics. These ideas might often be proven to work, but at what cost? Integrity, unity, and authenticity. This might not matter to some people, but if it matters to you, come and check out this conversation.

In the workshop, we focused on gentle marketing and maintaining a sense of calm amidst the pressure to hustle and act urgently. We discussed the impact of scarcity marketing on our personal and business well-being and explored ways to ensure that our marketing efforts align with our values.

How can we stay true to our natural energy, rhythm, and sound when developing relationships and growing ourselves and our businesses?

How might we maintain clarity, focus, and meaningful boundaries in a world that bombards us with trendy "must-follow" tips and strategies?

You will find a replay of this Courtyard Happening in The Haven Library. Sign in to access it or register for your Haven Pass here.

The Inspiration Wheel

The Inspiratory System is made from different sources of inspiration: People, Media, Education, Connectedness, Place, Play, Movement, Art, Rest

We breathe in the spirit of the world around us. And we breathe out whatever that does after we’ve processed it. And so the life that we express is a mirrored reflection of the stuff we expose ourselves to and experience. Whether we are thinking about it or not.

But we CAN be intentional about it. And we CAN raise our awareness, notice what we are breathing in and see the affect it is having on our lives.

I would love to invite you to consider these areas so that you can identify potential inspiration blockers lurking in and around your life right now. This will help you pay attention to what you want to make space for more of and the impact of the current state of things on your bigger picture and aspirations.

Check Out The Inspiration Wheel