Psychology & Behaviour
20 articles
A Softer Way to Begin: Introducing the Words & Contemplations Podcast
Words & Contemplations starts her podcast journey, bringing you blogs in audio format as well as meditations, gentle practices and talks. Come along for the journey; we'd love to have you tune in.
More tagged “Psychology & Behaviour”
What You Consume Matters; Food, Ideas, Beliefs & The Story You Live
You are the creator of your experience. Everything you consume—food, ideas, thoughts, and beliefs —shapes not just your body, but also your brain, your mood, and your reality. We used to read stories that took us into imagined worlds. Today, we scroll through feeds hoping something will make us feel. However, passive consumption creates noise, doubt, and fragmentation. This blog invites you to become active and choose what you consume, so your mind, body, and spirit are lifted, not drained.
Listening Beneath the Mind: Yogic Practices to Heal the Samskāras That Shape Our Lives
We all carry stories that feel so familiar they might as well be our own voice — the subtle doubts, the quiet assumptions, the emotional reactions that rise before we even have a chance to choose differently. In the yogic tradition, these inherited imprints are known as samskāras: subliminal impressions carved into us through repetition, experience and unexamined memory.
Lived Wellness: Moving Beyond Consumption to Everyday Being
In a world where wellness is often sold as “buy this product,” “subscribe to this service,” “follow this influencer,” it can feel like well-being is something external that you purchase. But what if true wellness was the opposite? Lived, found, built from the inside out, free and accessible. What if it wasn’t about what you buy, but what you do, what you think, what you become?
The Yogic Path of Remembering: Seeing Beyond Samskaras and Old Narratives
There are moments in life when you realise that what you are reacting to is not the situation in front of you, but the echo of something much older.A familiar sting.A tightening in the chest.A story your body remembers even if your mind has forgotten its origin.
Life Lessons in Your 30s: Wellness, Growth, and Finding Yourself Beyond the Surface
A reflection on wellness, wholeness, and the quiet lessons that keep arriving. Your thirties are a middle ground, old enough to know better, young enough to still test the edges. Somewhere between who you thought you’d be and who you’re becoming, life starts to whisper its truths. This is the decade when awareness deepens, priorities shift, and the surface begins to crack in the best possible way.
Meditations as Portals: Shifting the Mind, Soothing the Body
We spend much of our lives replaying the past, thoughts become familiar, feelings become habitual, and the body begins to live in cycles of memory. What feels like “just the way things are” is often simply a loop of remembered emotions.
Beyond the Past: Rewriting the Stories We Live By
There comes a time when we begin to notice that the patterns repeating in our lives are not coincidences; they are mirrors. The way we love, react, protect ourselves, and withdraw often stems from stories we didn’t consciously choose. They are scripts written by earlier versions of ourselves, shaped by our experiences, emotions, and beliefs.
The Things I thought I needed (and what I actually found)
When I set out on what I half-jokingly called my adult gap year, I had a very clear picture of what I was chasing. I wanted adventure. Something new every day. A change of scenery. Access to incredible things for my photography.
The Multi-Dimensions of Wellness Part 2: A Gentle Guide to Living Well
Wellness is often spoken of as a set of practices or a checklist of what we should do, but in truth, it is far more subtle, far more intimate than that. It is the quiet tending to our inner landscapes, the noticing of our energy, our thoughts, our relationships, and the spaces we inhabit. In the first part of this exploration, we wandered through the many dimensions of wellness—physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and beyond. In this continuation, we move from awareness into gentle application. How do we invite these dimensions to speak to us in our everyday lives? How do we bring wellness into the rhythms of our days without it feeling like another task to complete?
On Retreat with Your Yoga Teacher: A Journey Back to Yourself
I have been practising yoga for about eight years and teaching for the past eighteen months. When I finally felt it was my time to guide others along the yogic journey, I also knew that my own practice was far from finished. My curiosity and hunger for growth led me to immerse myself in three Moksha Yoga Teacher Trainings. After completing my 200-hour training in Bali in January 2024, I continued with a 110-hour Meditation Teacher training, and then dove into Yin and Sound Medicine simultaneously.
Exploring How Culture Shapes Your Experience: A Reflective Guide to Wellbeing and Place
There are places in the world that make you feel whole, grounded, and deeply nourished, and there are places that quietly take from you, chipping away at the equilibrium you’ve worked to cultivate. It can feel as though the culture of a place seeps through your skin, shaping your energy and attitude before you’ve even noticed.
20 Moments from The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer
A journey inward to awareness, stillness and freedom. Some books arrive like whispers. Others arrive as gifts. For me, The Untethered Soul was both.
Journaling Prompts: Redefining Value & Worth
Without any expectations, write the answers to these questions. Write freely and as if you are talking to yourself, someone safe and silent. See what comes up with out judgment, but curiosity see where these questions take you.
From Burnout to Balance: How Yoga and Meditation Help You Reconnect with Yourself
I’m sitting in a café in Ubud, Bali, thinking about where we’ll go next. But then it hits me—we’re not traveling in the conventional sense. My husband, my partner in adventure, is working much like before, just with a changing backdrop and longer breaks. And me? I’m building something of my own that weaves all my passions: writing, photography, yoga, and meditation.
How To Use Challenges To Welcome Change
As I move through what seemed in the moment to be one of the most challenging yet eye-opening experiences of myself to date, I realise that it is not that this challenge is any better or worse than any that preceded it; it is me who has altered the way that I feel it, witness it and let it control me. I feel awake, even brought alive by this challenge, more so than ever before. I realise that the challenge will soon be irrelevant and that all that has happened was always going to. All that was in my control was my choice of how to let it affect me, how I chose to respond, and how I wanted to be perceived, remembered and heard. There is true power in choice, awareness and understanding.
9 Books For Psychological & Spiritual Growth
It’s all about finding the right book at the right time. I have said it before, but it is taking on a life of its own; every time I get to the end of a book, I am a little more open, a little further along my path and a little deeper into my journey. These recommended books combine philosophy, ancient wisdom, spirituality, meditation, health and well-being. It’s an incredible reading list and I wanted to share it with you.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
One day you will look back upon the things you believed and it will seem as if someone else’s voice was directing you. The voice inside will evolve if you let it, allow it the space to learn from your mistakes, and test the theories that the child version of you learned to believe. Trust, be brave and create new beliefs for yourself to live by. Once you start to listen, you’ll embark on a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you.
Sensitivity and Introversion - Susan Cain's book Quiet
The overarching message that I got from this book was that you can unleash the power in the quiet and learn to be more of yourself in the not-so-quiet. Social and other so-called extroverted activities are learnable skills that can be scaled gradually so all introverts can enjoy both the solace and the social, in a setting and environment that nurtures them. It’s ok to be the person looking for the most interesting conversation in the room,
The Multi-Dimensions Of Wellness Part 1: Understanding the Whole of Who We Are
Living a wholesome life with good stable mental health is what we all dream of, isn’t it? Why is it that when you google wellness or well-being you are met with long-form complicated articles, fluffy images with soft pink colours or centres for massage and facial treatments? It’s no wonder we all seem so confused.