I'm Charlotte, a breath and nervous system coach working with professionals on focus, sleep, and emotional resilience. People often assume my job is teaching them to breathe a specific way every day for the rest of their lives. It's not (or at least not quite!) This piece is about what breath coaching actually changes, and why the daily practice is rarely the point. What people expect when they sign up for breath coaching The goal of breath coaching isn't to build a lifelong daily breathwork practice. Well, not necessarily. That might sound weird coming from a breath coach. But hear me out. When people sign up for coaching, they usually think the goal is some version of: Learn the techniques → build a daily practice → breathe slowly for 20 minutes a day forever And sure, that's part of it. The techniques work. The practice helps. Most clients keep some version of it going long after we're done because they like it. BUT what actually shifts is rarely the breathwork itself. It's everything that happens because of it. Three clients, three very different shifts One client, Jack, a commercial director, came into the program with bad sleep, anxiety he'd come to accept as "just how I am," and this deep...

Expanded awareness is one of the simplest — and most underrated — tools for nervous system regulation. It takes seconds, requires nothing, and has a direct physiological effect. Here's how it works and why I'm obsessed with it. I've long been fascinated by this concept of 'expanded awareness.' Fundamentally, most of us walk around in a chronically narrowed state of awareness — tunnel-visioned, locked onto whatever we're doing or thinking about. When your awareness is contracted like this, you're essentially living on railway tracks of habit. You can't get off the track because you're so tunnel-visioned. (Like you, looking at your screen right now.) Expanded awareness is what happens when you stop doing that narrowing. It's so simple, almost suspiciously simple. Like right now, I can ask you to become aware of the space above you, and the space around you. Let go of your attention on these words and on the screen, soften your gaze, and let your awareness expand as far as possible in all directions. If you notice something shift when you try that, even subtly, that’s expanded awareness. Another way I love doing this is by using sounds. Notice the furthest away sound that you could hear in any direction. Let your sense of hearing...

In this article, we’re exploring a hugely underrated feature of our brain—our imagination—and how we can train ourselves to use it to get better at pretty much anything we want. One of the most remarkable features of our brain is that we can imagine things that aren’t real. It’s a wonderful capacity, one that comes with a price: Most of what we imagine is negatively skewed. Because of our brain’s negativity bias, we spend most of our time ruminating and catastrophising. We’re hardwired to be pessimistic. But instead of mindlessly sticking to these default settings, we can learn how to use our imagination in a way that’s intentional and productive, and works for us instead of against us. We do this through a practice called mental rehearsal, mental imagery or visualization, and it's one of the most valuable skills you can develop. As sports psychologist Jason Skelk says, “If you’re not visualizing on a regular basis, there’s no way you’re living up to your full potential.” A practice of visualization and simulation Mental rehearsal is the cognitive process of purposefully creating and simulating experiences in your mind. So sitting down with your eyes closed, you’re creating a vivid mental video where you’re engaging all of your senses...

My brain doesn’t do so well with chaos and uncertainty, and so it doesn’t help that I have an itch to move to a new country every few years. A couple of years in New York, a longer stint in Singapore and then, feeling the pull to be closer to home (Belgium), over to London. Just as we were settled in (Apartment - check! Billing address changed for all my online subscriptions - check!), my partner and I realize it’s not the right place for us. This felt incredibly disorientating. We just went through an entire moving process. So then where is the “right” place for us? Is there even such a thing? After a few months of inner turmoil and long walks talking about what matters to us, we decided to move to Lisbon. We have no social network here, no family. We don’t speak the language and can’t say we know much about the country. But something about the place just felt right, and we decided to trust that gut feeling this time. The months it took us to make the decision and pack up and move again were riddled with uncertainty and overwhelm. There’s so much admin to figure...

You know that moment when you're three slides into a presentation and suddenly realize your shoulders are practically touching your ears, your jaw is clenched, and you have no idea when that started happening? Or when you walk out of a meeting feeling completely drained, but you can't pinpoint exactly when or why your energy shifted? If you're nodding along, you're experiencing something most people deal with daily, but are unaware of: Living disconnected from an incredible sensory system that could change how you handle stress, emotions, and decision-making entirely. The 6th sense you never learned about We all know our five senses, right? Vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste. But there's a 6th sense that's just as important for your day-to-day experience: It's called interoception—your ability to accurately detect and interpret what's happening inside your body. Heart rate, breathing patterns, muscle tension, that flutter of adrenaline before a difficult conversation, the subtle shift in energy when you're about to hit a wall. These are just a few examples of the countless signals your body sends you every day. One study found that people who could accurately detect their heartbeats (a measure of interoceptive awareness) performed significantly better on tasks requiring emotional intelligence and decision-making under pressure. (So quite literally:...

Powered by
►
Necessary cookies enable essential site features like secure log-ins and consent preference adjustments. They do not store personal data.
None
►
Functional cookies support features like content sharing on social media, collecting feedback, and enabling third-party tools.
None
►
Analytical cookies track visitor interactions, providing insights on metrics like visitor count, bounce rate, and traffic sources.
None
►
Advertisement cookies deliver personalized ads based on your previous visits and analyze the effectiveness of ad campaigns.
None
Powered by