Embracing Your Summer Recharge
- By Fiona Shaw
- •
- 04 Jun, 2025
- •
Navigating Expectations for Genuine Well-being
As the days lengthen and the energy shifts towards summer, there's a natural inclination to anticipate a season of relaxation and travel. For many, summer signifies a welcome break from routines, offering the promise of rest and rejuvenation.
However, alongside this anticipation, summer can also bring its own set of unique pressures. The seemingly endless highlight reels on social media, the idea of a "perfect summer," or the internal pressure to "make the most of every moment" can inadvertently create stress. Whether it's planning holidays, managing school holidays, or simply feeling the urge to keep up with what others appear to be doing, the season of relaxation can sometimes feel anything but.
The Importance of Authentic Recharge
At its core, summer should be a time for genuine mental and physical recharge. True well-being isn't about fitting a specific mold or achieving a picture-perfect ideal; it's about finding what genuinely replenishes your energy, reduces stress, and fosters a sense of inner calm. When we fall into the trap of external expectations, we often miss out on the very rest our minds and bodies truly need.
Strategies for a Calmer, More Meaningful Summer
Here are some strategies to help you embrace a summer that truly serves your well-being:
- Practice Mindful Disconnection: Our digital devices are powerful tools, but constant connectivity can drain us. Consider scheduling intentional breaks from screens each day. This might involve a specific hour without your phone, keeping mealtimes device-free, or dedicating certain evenings to unplugged activities. Giving your mind space away from the constant influx of information can significantly reduce mental fatigue.
- Reconnecting with Nature and Movement: Leverage the warmer days to step outside. Spending time in nature – whether it's a walk through a local park, a stroll along a nearby beach, or simply enjoying your garden – has scientifically proven benefits for reducing stress and improving mood. Couple this with gentle movement, like walking, cycling, or light exercise, to enhance both physical and mental vitality.
- Cultivate Genuine Connections: While digital platforms can keep us nominally connected, prioritize real-life interactions. Invest time in meaningful conversations with loved ones, share experiences, and enjoy the richness of in-person companionship. Quality over quantity in relationships is key to fostering deeper satisfaction and emotional support.
- Embrace the Power of Stillness: In our busy lives, downtime is often seen as unproductive. However, allowing yourself moments of quiet reflection, gentle contemplation, or simply "being" without an agenda can be incredibly restorative. This stillness can be where creativity is sparked, and inner clarity emerges.
- Harness Your Inner Calm: If the pressures of summer begin to feel overwhelming, remember the power of your own mind. Techniques that cultivate inner calm, such as focused breathing, progressive relaxation, or even exploring the gentle guidance of hypnotherapy, can provide profound relief and help you navigate stress more effectively. These practices empower you to reset your nervous system and respond to challenges with greater serenity.
Your Summer, Your Well-being.
Ultimately, a truly successful summer isn't about checking off an external list of "perfect" activities. It's about prioritising your own peace, choosing activities that genuinely rejuvenate you, and protecting your mental space from unnecessary pressures.
Allow yourself the grace to simply be, and to genuinely recharge.
Hopefully you’ve found it a really positive experience and are looking forward to the future smoke free.
For many though, this is the start of a sometimes lengthy process, with lots of ups and downs.
Maybe you just can’t get rid of that craving no matter how hard you try or maybe that’s no longer a problem but you find yourself wondering what to do with your hands now they’re not occupied with a cigarette? If you used smoking to help you relax or cope with stressful situations you might find yourself feeling more anxious than normal or just generally feeling less able to cope.
These learnt behaviours can be a real bugbear, especially when you’re trying so hard to do such a great thing for your health, so consider giving hypnotherapy a try. Many people think hypnotherapy just makes the act of smoking an unpleasant one but actually we can do so much more.
Using hypnosis we can make smoking something you don't enjoy but we can also stop those behaviours in their tracks so you no longer need them or rely on them. We can teach you techniques to handle difficult situations, keep you calm and use coping mechanisms that don't require cigarettes. Also, if you want to use other methods of support, like patches, at the same time then there's no reason why not.
It’s also never too late, so don’t be disheartened if Stoptober came and went without you. Ask yourself if you want to quit smoking and if you can answer an honest ‘yes’, then you can do it! If you’re not sure, then maybe now just isn’t the right time for you, so ask again in a month or two.
Sounds simple?
That’s because it can be, it’s worked for many people before so why not give it a try and see if it works for you?
From October 2019 we will have a quarterly newsletter, full of information, helpful tips and things we think you'd generally like to know.
The first issue will be out within the next few days but if there's anything you'd like to see included in a future issue, drop us a note via news@tlhclinic.co.uk
Read all about it * In line with regulation, our newsletter will only be sent out to people who have specifically opted to receive it, so if you haven't already requested a copy, just send an email to news@tlhclinic.co.uk with SUBSCRIBE as the subject and you will automatically be added to the database for future copies. *
We take your confidentiality very seriously and any email addresses supplied will be used for this purpose only and will not be shared externally with any 3rd parties.
It's a small action that can turn into something incredible.
Check out www.dkms.org.uk for all the details, you can register there and they'll send you a little swab kit you can do yourself at home.
Once you're done, give yourself a big pat on the back, you could be on the way to changing the life of someone who needs your help along with the lives of all their friends and family.
One small thing guaranteed to boost your mood!
A lot of people are curious about this and it’s a recurring question both in and out of the therapy room.
Regression, or looking back into your own past, is often used during hypnotherapy sessions as it helps us explore the route of a problem and create deep and lasting changes from this initial starting point. This is such a powerful and useful technique, I feel there would be a huge part of the hypnotherapy toolkit missing if we didn’t use it and for the majority of clients, the benefits are huge.
Sometimes it can be a daunting prospect if you’re anxious about something from your past, but this is discussed at length beforehand and we wouldn’t use any form of regression unless you were comfortable with it.
Now, that’s about this life and things that have happened in our current lifetime, so why would we be interested in a ‘past life’?
Well ... for exactly the same reasons.
Occasionally, a client can struggle to reach the initial cause of a problem or sometimes they can identify the root but it doesn’t appear to sit well along their current timeline. Wherever it’s found, we can deal with it in the same way and again the benefits can be enormous.
Of course, some clients are just curious and want to participate in a session specifically exploring a past life to find out who they were or might have been previously and for those people that's absolutely fine.
So, I suppose my point is ... why are we concerned if a past life is real or not?
It is and will continue to be a fascinating and widely debated topic but my own opinion is this ...
... Whatever your thoughts on past lives and past life regression are, if it helps some people, which it most definitely does, does it actually matter?
