26.03.10 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (1)
Feeling de-inspired, maybe even discouraged by this course I am doing on ‘management and communication’ I’d like to write about softening sadness. We were discussing the ways of the multinationals in this specific case Nestle who is quite shamelessly cutting down rainforests to make Kit Kats. This exploitation of natural resources by Nestle was brought to my attention by Greenpeace who have decided to stimulate people to express their discontent with these practices. Nestle’s behaviour, exploiting rainforests for financial gains, made me feel quite angry.  When I looked at this more deeply, as Thich Nath Hanh so eloquently expains in his book answers from the heart, I noticed that I was angry but most of all I was feeling sad. Sad that Nestle’s people are willing to exploit rainforests for euro’s, money,  that just made me feel disheartened.  As I cycled through town, I reflected on this matter and decided I’d prefer working towards a happy goal instead of working from anger.  It’s just not a nice process working from and with anger, to me it makes much more sense to work towards alternatives and make this into and inspiring and affirmative new direction as opposed to fighting . This is not to say I care any less about the shameless behaviour of certain multinationals, such as Nestle,  but it makes more sense to inform people about their behaviour so they can make their own choices as to whether they want to support such practices or choose alternatives.
There are so many great alternatives out there already, I’d like to share a few great resources with you
For fair clothing
kledingchecker
for fair food and which companies to support (and possibly avoid)
fair food
want to read something on the subject
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/
and the book Cradle to Cradle
21.12.09 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (0)
I find hope in the darkest of days , and focus in the brightest, I do not judge the universe
Dalai Lama
13.11.09 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (0)
I’m confident you will have heard about I.Q. Â measuring your intellectual abilities and E.Q. your emotional thermometer, which has been introduced by Daniel Goleman which may give you an indication of your interpersonal skills . But what about your F.Q?
It is of course helpful and wonderful if you are helped by your intelligence and if you’re in tune with others due to your social or emotional awareness and there seems to be another factor which plays a significant part.
It can be summed up as F.Q.  Faith and how much faith you feel you have.  Faith can be helpful to you in a number of ways. Having faith can help you to feel optimistic about your future plans, your relationships and  your personal growth.  Just imagine having faith in love, how would that be helpful?  Having faith in love offers you the opportunity to shift your focus from ‘keeping your relationships safe’ so to speak to feeling safe in your relationship, whether it be with a partner or a friend and that will allow you to focus more on what is going on in the present moment. You will have more energy to focus on making your partner or friend feel happy and appreciated and to really enjoy his or her company. This will naturally make them treat you in a more kind, appreciative way too.
Even though Faith sounds wonderful sometimes you may or may not at times feel a little sceptical about having faith. Sometimes break-ups or other situations may lead you to feel it would be a better idea to have a little less faith. We see this in giving up on romance after a nasty break up.
Having faith however will help you to deal with these tough situations  because having faith will mean that you’re more open and aware of opportunities that come your way which can help you to improve your situation. By having faith others will also probably feel more inclined to help you. It may be easier to help someone who is willing to grow and change.
If you feel you want to improve your level of faith how can you go about it? Having faith is not an ‘all or nothing at all’ deal so you can start anywhere you like and practice having faith in situations so that your level of having faith can improve to the level you’re comfortable with.
16.06.09 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (1)
We are going to enjoy Summer yoga classes in the parc this year! They will take place from 8 to 9.00 on wednesday’a at the plantsoen in Leiden! The investment will be 7,50 per class. Feel Free to join this summer yoga class, we will practise flow vinyasa yoga and also do some acroyoga 
.
We will start our classes on the 1st of July, the classes will be on the following dates
- 9th  july
- 15th  july
- 22nd  july
- Kate in France
- 12th  august
- 18th august
- 26th august
To practice you need comfortable clothes and a yogamat or a beach towel, for yogamats see www.yogashop.nl
Namaste, Kate
  Â
11.05.09 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (1)
My love and I were talking about the differences between Dru and Vinyasa Yoga, which we love. One of the things is that Vinyasa seems to be a bit stronger in the practie, really what we call ‘working in a pose’ which is to say that you actively and yet subtly try to deepen your pose by actively getting involved in the pose. Refecting a different part of the spectrum there are also Vinyasa poses and Dru poses which allow you to explicitly ‘not work’ in a pose, to acively ‘not work’ and by ‘not working’ to allow your relaxation to deepen and to flow into your body just like tea diffuses in hot water. This ‘not working’ can leave you feeling nourished and revitalised.
In our daily lives we may use both approaches, and we may tend to empasize the first, working hard to achieve results. This may work wonderfully, and, you may also want to create some room for yourself to try out the softening approach to see if you can reach your results in a more relaxed way.
Say you’d like to change a certain apect of your behaviour, you could allow yourself to decide on your new behaviour and then to relax into it, calmly, explicitly ‘not working’. No SMART goals, no targets, simply diffusing yourself in this new behaviour gently untill it becomes a part of you. Allowing yourself to move towards your goal by being gentle, and learning through opening up to new things in a gentle way, always learning that there are new maybe more positive ways to see things, experience things which may feel better. Being kind towards yourself, knowing that you are learning and giving yourself some practice time. Remembering that it is only important that you feel you can choose the way you want to be, and you can achieve that through practice.
15.04.09 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (0)
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.�
Dr. Seuss
12.03.09 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (0)
We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something.
Judith Butler
25.10.08 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (0)
Today I’d like to look at quite a pivotal concept namely being flexible and creative enough to be the way you want to be and keep that in mind when you feel like resorting to less than optimal behvaiour.
Somteimes when our buttons are pushed so to speak we may feel inclined to resort to options like ‘feeling frustrated’ ’saying something which really isn’t very reflective of who we are’ ‘feeling annoyed’ ‘feeling stressed’ there is quite a wide and diverse repertoire of choices and they may not bring out your best qualities.
 Today as I was working with someone who was showing what I would define as ‘authorative’ behaviour I found myself for a moment ‘playing her game’ as a good friend of mine would put it. I was momentarily drawn towards reacting to her “frustrated state of mind” untill I saw somebody smile at me. I instantly thought “why should I waste my energy on this nonsensical behaviour’. Why should I ‘play her game’. It’s helpfull to keep in mind that when people behave in a frustrated fashion they may be feeling stressed about something and it shows in their state of mind. Through their behaviour it becomes transparent that they are not feeling great.
This may sound crystalclear however when we find ourselves in a context where we feel triggered we may forget that the person(s) we are dealing with are often just acting out their own stuff which has nothing to do with usat that point  it becomes easy to let it go.
 Staying relaxed,  if that is one of the things you would like to be, is more important than getting annoyed. So by staying relaxed we are reflecting our own values and not someone else’s.
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05.10.08 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (1)
Why do you love the people who you love? Maybe you know maybe you don’t. Even with all the research that is being done in pheromones , the biochemistry of love and even though we have images of the brain of people who are in love and those who are not we cannot tell why we love a certain person and not somebody else.
It would open up a wide new range of possibilities if we could simply choose who we loved or even fell in love with however life is more fascinating than that at the moment .
So let’s look at romantic love. Why is it that some couples stay together for 20 years and others last 2 weeks. And more to the point what do you want it to be like for you and how can you achieve that. To be honest I think all you can do is be loving and allow yourself to be loved and enjoy the relationhip for however long it lasts.
 Thousands of words have been poured over this subject so I’m going to keep it short.
One of the key elements of maintaining a loving romantic relationship seems to be being loving towards each other, consistently.That is to say that you keep your focus on what matters, what matters is that you are in love or love this person and therefore you want to treat him or her well so that he or she will feel happy and loved. Therefore even if you feel a little less loving , maybe you’re tired or stressed or even hurt , keep in mind very clearly what the bottom line is: is this loving behaviour , will this create a loving state in myself and this other person or not.
You are not only loving to be kind towards the people you love, it is also a very nice state to be in for you as a person. When you behave like a loving person it probably will (Â but do feel free to try this out for yourself) make you feel great. That then will make you feel more self loving because you can love yourself for being such a loving person even when the going get’s tough.
 There is no point in taking out your frustrations or stress out on anybody least of all yourself. It may be worth your while to learn a techniqe like meditation, or yoga or having a latte and a newspaper, whatever does it for you, to learn how to let go and relax. So that you’ll be more loving more of the time and become a true ‘”loving person” and “loved person”
 Keep in mind that allowing yourself to be loved it important to. It is a very kind thing to do to allow somebody to love you and to enjoy that sense. It creates a balance between giving and receiving.
29.09.08 / NLP / Author: kate / Comments: (0)
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do.
Dale Carnegie