Have you ever tried making a resolution for the new year, only to feel like a failure a month in, when you suddenly drop your new healthy habit?

Anytime we set out to do something, we will encounter the opposite, the non-doing resistance. This in turn might be a stronger habit, whether simply by just keeping us in our comfort zone, or by paying off for a greater need. You can for example be in greater need of sleep, than running on a treadmill. Then staying home and getting rested will actually be better. So, how do we then do changes that last?

We focus on being, rather than doing.

We focus on a certain trait or virtue that we would like to feel. This feeling then becomes the actual achievement that open up for more ways of doing. You might for example have “fit” as a mantra and goal for next year. Then a multitude of ways will open up for you to get fit! The secret thus, lies in choosing a sacred word for the year to focus on, such as being more…. Integrious? Corageous? Grateful? Assertive? Patient? What is your word that you need to develop more of and would like to have more of? Choose one and let this lead your relating both with your partner, friends and co-workers next year and you will soon see how it grows, both in awareness and in progress!

(My personal theme for next year is “Posture”; ie how I sit, stand, walk and talk, pretty fitting for a dancer :-).)

Happy New Year!

May 2022 bring good health and harmony, laughter and joy, and personal treasures.

May it bring you a wealth of opportunities, of long forgotten dreams.

May you find inspiration to create and learn more.

May you feel love, both on the inside and outside, of yourself.

May you heal what is broken to a sense of whole.

May you find stillness and peace wherever you are.

Happy New Year!

On December the 21st, we have the longest night and shortest day in Sweden with only 6 hours of daylight. This darkness becomes an incentive to turn more inwards and honor the sacred feminine, yin. We can do this by resting and reflecting more, and perhaps even listen to our own shadow side that we might not want to show to the world as frequently. It’s a time of silence and stillness. And it’s also a reminder to cherish the hours the sun is up, even more. In other parts of the world, like Portugal and Hawaii, the difference between the seasons aren’t as prevalent when it comes to hours of daylight.

It’s all about our cycles, to live in tune with Mother Earth. We as women, have our monthly cycle, that is said to be reflecting the moon, and even sync naturally within groups of women. After our regular cycle has ended, the older women pass into the greater cycle with more wisdom. The seasons and hours of daylight.

What can you do to take more care of your dark, feminine side?

While Yoga has its foundation in Hinduism and Ayurveda, Qigong has its, in Chinese Medicine, Taoism and Feng Shui. Feng Shui translates to the school of wind and water and is a guide to enable a better balance between the elements where we live and work, so that the energy will flow better in our space. It can be used both for interior and exterior design, as well as for choosing location.

When we want to achieve something special, we can use the principles of Feng Shui to increase, or decrease, the energy in certain areas that symbolises areas of our life (such as career, relationships, communication, family, prosperity, knowledge, health or travel).

Telluselle Living Center is meant to be designed according to the five natural elements for such inspiration. Here is a great resource for tips you can use in your own home.

Once you have found your own inner peace and a sense of centeredness, you can become more aware of how you respond to others and why. You can also eventually learn to choose your own level of engagement, your own emotional charge, and thus, your approach. This can be especially visible (and a good place to practice) in how we enter. How we enter our own home, our workplace and nature, besides when we visit others. How are you walking? Rushing in, or from a place of holding it sacred? Which beliefs are you carrying with you? Are you feeling welcome and are you welcoming others? Are you too open or too closed? Try thinking about that and see how the results might differ in your interactions.

From a Lifecoaching perspective, we found our practice in a certain approach, or attitude, in our sessions with clients. Our foundation is built on believing in the client enough to help birth his/her own answers and solutions to their problems. We do this by fostering a mindset of genuine interest, a neutral standpoint, with support and a wish to do good. All in mindful presence with a Socratic dialogue.

Would you like to try?

Each teacher, instructor or healer, at Telluselle Living Center, will offer their services and classes based on a foundation of following a specific school, or path of lineage. At TLC we believe that nobody can, or should, be teaching anything that hasn’t also been taught, and shown, with a reference. This way we can strengthen the bond between student and teacher, master and apprentice, and thus build on proven experience.

This applies to all activities such as Qigong, Hawaiian Hula, Isadora Duncan, Lomilomi treatments and Yoga. All lifecoaches will be educated and follow ICF’s guidelines.

Would you like to join us or learn more? Send an email to hannah@telluselleliving.com

Are you striving for more meaning in your everyday life? Then have a look at your passion and purpose – the two fundamentals of Lifecoaching.

Passion is either to have a cause one strongly believes in and let that guide you. Or, passion can be something you love doing that lights up your eyes. What is that? You probably found it as a child but perhaps let it be forgotten or not prioritized. Take it up again! You can then either pursue it as a career, or let it be a favorite pastime.

The purpose is why we do what we do. It becomes a personal mission of a sorts. One of the most common ones is to want to help others. Let this guide you everyday and you’ll soon have both more direction and meaning.

Not sure yet? Book a lifecoaching session to help you find out.

As we approach the holidays, let not stress ruin it for you. Set clear goals of how you want it to be, with whom, or with none! Decide what you would like to feel and know that most state of minds – and hearts – are a choice. We simply need to apply a different perspective to get there. As with most things, we need the opposite, or negative, to treasure the positive. We need darkness to appreciate light. We need grief to appreciate joy. And we need conflict to appreciate peace.

Just like with happiness, we can choose peace as a path. I found mine through remembering to live life as if I only had a short time left to live. It was the lesson I received after my mother had passed away and I found a lump in my own chest that needed a biopsy in 2008. What if? What would I do? I would want to go back to Hawaii… and did anyway! I also choose to forgive others and simply try to not leave anything unsaid or undone, when I go to sleep. With this comes peace naturally as the result.

I believe we are made of love, light and peace, so it’s our natural state, a treasure inside our core as humans, which we reach through meditation and breathing.

When it comes to outer peace, that too is a choice. When we focus on solutions and reconciliation, we can put our own opinion a little aside and be practical. What needs to be done? And what is really important? Let rather your needs be what steers you, than to win an argument.

Happy peaceful Thanksgiving!

The current motto for Telluselle Living Center in the making, is care about yourself, others and earth. I’ve chosen this to be the focal point for our planned activities, this way:

We start with self-care – caring about getting our needs met, to strike a healthy balance between work and play, socialising and solitude, and overall wellness.

When we have cared for ourselves, we can also care about others from a good place of not assuming better, but rather really be able to listen and support. Something we get to practice in our coaching groups, for example.

And finally, as we grow as a community, or simply grow in awareness of our own power, we can care about earth too. This means in our decision-making, and in how we look at our own place in the eco-system, appreciating nature. And how we dance in Her honor!

Some years ago when I set out to go live in the United States, I thought of how I wish there was a TV-show focusing on living organic, so I made a pitch in 2010 to OWN, when Oprah sought ideas. After all, I created the name Telluselle to become a brand for green wellness. Tellus is Latin for planet Earth and elle means she in French, which is my noble heritage. I still think it would be wonderful!

Imagine a TV-show once a week with weekly features presenting:

• Green inventions
• Extinct – visit place/animal/plant
• Fashion – fabrics, designs etc
• Food – bio, organic, local; farm and facts
• Energy – on and off the grid, cost, implementations and examples
• Home – recycle & reuse examples
• Indigenous wisdom around the world

Then more people could achieve green health and be Telluselle Living!

Photo: Creative commons

Instead of going to different locations for different practices, I’d like to offer them under the same roof, with a Hawaiian touch. All with an eco-friendly theme that goes deeper than just products. How I have visualised it can be seen in this sketch:

Can you see it in front of you in a park?

I started meditating as part of Qigong in 1995 and as part of Yoga in 2001. There are two ways to meditate:

1. To increase presence, by focusing on your breath
2. To visualize, either an imagination, or recalling memories

Sit with straight back on a pillow on the floor, and simply let yourself relax with closed eyes. Let your thoughts come and go and pay attention to your breath. You can try to breathe both faster and slower to find your new pace. Fill your stomach with air to ground you and your chest to feel. Let each exhale empty your mind, and let each inhale, fill it with a positive thought (you might want to use a word as an affirmation). After much practice, choosing your breath will enable you to enter the same consciousness whenever you want to. It is this peace we aim to carry out.

Mediation can be practiced in various forms. Here is one with a tree, and one during walking.

You’ve probably seen lots of posts about lifehacks or career development suggestions, and think of these and other healthy wellness tips, as life coaching. While these can be inspirational, life coaching however, isn’t intended to be a how-to guide. Lifecoaching is a method, and an approach to life, to stimulate personal growth. We believe that the client holds his/her own best solution and form our questions on a neutral ground, with genuine curiosity and interest, with no other agenda than your success.

Typically, a coaching session lasts for 45 minutes to an hour, and is conducted very much like an interview. You’ll be asked questions, but instead of trying to impress me, the coach, your answers are for yourself to become more clear about what you want to improve and how. It can be a relationship, a situation, a condition you live under, that needs change. You might have a dream you’d like to make into a goal or a problem to solve. With me as your sounding board, you’ll be provided with more questions to each answer, and several perspectives to compare with, as I summarize you. All made to increase your own motivation for action, that I follow up with you. A good time frame is to allow 3-6 months, with one session every other week.

Lifecoaching, and especially careercoaching, can also be conducted in small groups, where we go around the table for each person to share on his/her turn, while we can benefit from others’ experiences to inspire our own insights and will to create.

Ready to try? Contact me at hannah@telluselleliving.com

At Telluselle Living Center, it’s my ambition to host coaching groups, where one of the topics is to create green inventions and methods, ie how we can live a more organic and sustainable life. In this way, we become proactive, rather than just protest that not enough is being done to curb climate change.

To be proactive, is part of non-violent communication, where we lead the way by showing how we want it to be, rather than opposing what we don’t like. This way, is also the foundation for reconciliation, and making peace in conflicts. It gives us room for creativity, when we get to consider a third way instead of taking sides. It’s this creativity, we can harness and develop through round the table discussions. We’ll start by defining examples of how we can live individually, in community and in society. Then we’ll try this, and support each other to endure the process and grow. All based on wanting to create green health.

Other topics for small groups, can include virtues and compassion, recovery and going through changes. What would you like to be supported with?

For many years, as a horseback rider growing up, I’ve cultivated a relationship to Mother Earth, that I thought I’d share with you. To me, each straw of grass, each tree, and each animal all consist of life energy, a spirit that permeates all. It’s through this spirit we are one. Even the little pebbles and sand are remnants of a creative energy (the volcanoes). We’re all part of the eco-system.

In Hawaii, one can say that we share breath (Ha as in Aloha) which is the same thing. Everything alive comes from the same source, which in turn is the source of our food, and thus life. Next time you go for a walk, remember this. Tune into this feeling by remembering we all breathe the same air. In spirit!

In Portugal last year, during Covid-19 restrictions, I still had the opportunity to practice Isadora Duncan dance through Instagram and Zoom with teachers in NYC. I soon felt my shape improve and it became a little like when I was in my 20’s. It became a blessing to stay put inside my room.

Here is a short sequence where I practice.

When we are feeling cold, we hunker down and raise our shoulders against the wind. And against any harsh words or even the total seclusion by a bully. If we let it go on for a long period of time, our bodies will condition this posture as our normal one. Changing it to an upright position might even give us sore muscles, just like a massage can release the emotion encapsulate within the tension. It’s this, that is part of our muscle memory.

Luckily for dancers, our motions can likewise be repeated enough to become like an automatic reflex, especially helpful in our performances on stage when our nerves might temporarily block our minds. It’s also then we learn how to trust our bodies, and ourselves.

Which stories are stored within our bodies and what is it we want them to tell?

It’s this that is the foundation of the kind of dance classes I would like to host at Telluselle Living Center:

Hawaiian Hula

Westafrican

Isadora Duncan

5rhythms and Ecstatic

These all share a danced connection to nature, taught through generations, describing the relationship between spirit and man, inspired by myths of gods and godesses. For rites and relationships, harvest and heart, we dance barefoot to explore and express the natural beauty of our souls, liberated in this dialogue.

May I have this dance?

One of the ways Lifecoaching works, is through our attention to conditions. We understand that in order to fulfil a goal, we must have the right conditions, such as resources (time, money, contacts, knowledge etc) but also a good environment and culture, with a strong will. But, one of the things I hear the most, is how a client, or potential one, doesn’t know what he or she wants. What can be done then?

Here is where the different steps come in. By going through what we have, we can see possibilities easier. And then by setting boundaries, we create space within, to both think and feel with less intrusion by others’ opinions. With this space, we are given room to maneuver and thus steer the direction of our lives better. We can make decisions that are informed, not only by outer information but our own.

The benefits of coaching thus are:

• More distinct choosing
• More solid decisionmaking
• More understanding of self
• More clarity of needs
• More balance in life

Ready for more? Contact me for a free coaching session to try!

I started practising Medical qigong in 1995. Qigong means “extraordinary effort of energy” and is a series of motions that we do with synchronised breathing. Each motion corresponds to a meridian – that is how our energy circulate throughout our bodies, and its organs. Each organ in turn, corresponds to an emotion that function as a layer of that organ. For example, kidneys and fear are linked together with water, and liver and anger with fire. Then, each organ effects the other as the natural elements do, in cycles. This is the foundation of Chinese Medicine and thus, also applicable for acupuncture and acupressure. All designed to help us to be in balance.

To me, qigong was a lesson to slow down, as well as learn how to meditate and open up for feeling energy. It later has become a way to rejuvenate myself and free up creativity to get my inspiration flowing. Most of all, I now can take with me the ability to inhale, or exhale, in sync with a motion more deliberately that works well for both yoga and dancing, or even walking, letting the breath lead.

Qigong is best practiced at sunrise or sunset, or noon or midnight, to be in sync with yin and yang, and can be done both outside and inside, preferably barefoot.

How does one eat to support wellness and good health? Most diets out there seem to be occupied with decreasing weight rather than creating strong and healthy bodies. For me, who never had any issues with gaining weight, it’s simple. It should look and taste what it is, preferably organic and/or locally produced.

I eat glutenfree, lactosefree (simply usually avoiding bread and dairy products) and half-vegetarian. That means, I also eat egg, fish and chicken. I avoid sauces and creams, stuffings and mixes, frying and spices. Food should taste good on its own and be the source of energy we need to be active. I drink about 1 1/2 – 2 liters of water every day.

To me, everything is about feeling well. And the better we feel, the less we need to think about it.