Sophrology: A Journey of Conscious ☯️ Harmony

Make a DATE with yourself and take a fresh journey of self-discovery!

Sophrology offers an alternative holistic health approach to develop clarity of mind using this dynamic. Build better sleep habits and gain inner happiness. Learn to know yourself. 💪🏽🤍🤟🏽

About the Guest

Lani Puriri is a sophrologist based in Raglan New Zealand. She is a Mental Health Professional. Applying holistic strategies to determine human experience and behavior.
Website: https://www.sophrosolace.com/
FB & IG: @sophrosolace
Email: sophrosolace@gmail.com

About the Show

Podcast Host: Life & Leadership: A Conscious Journey with Dr. Michelle St Jane

A podcast for Global and Re-Emerging Leadership creating community/tribe, a circle of influence, transcendency of compassionate leadership in the world and wider universe. A unique destination for learning about Leadership + Conscious Stewardship + Legacy.

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Intro: You're listening to Life and Leadership: A Conscious Journey. The podcast that shares wisdom and strength. Join your host, Dr. Michelle St Jane's weekly conversation on how to have a positive impact for people, planet, and the wider world. If you want to live a life of intention, to be proactive with your time and bring your vision for the future to live one today at a time, you’re in the right place at the right time. Let's get started.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:00:40] Lani Puriri, a mother, a grandmother, a sophrologist, and cognitive behavior coach joins me in this episode. Lani is a sociologist who aims to help people reach a sophronic state of consciousness. This is an illumination from inside where people realize empowerment and responsibility for their own emotions, actions, and general wellbeing.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:01:10] It's in this space, you become liberated or creator of your life. Making conscious choices, enjoying happiness wellbeing through a consistent practice of psephology. Lani is combining these methods to help clients develop healthy relationships with themselves and others. Her company SophroSolace specializes in helping groups and individuals set objectives, behaviors, and accomplish goals.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:01:37] I believe health is my first wealth. My approach is wholistic and calls me into relationship with myself on every level. Sophrology, in my experience, aims to develop holistic harmony of all the elements that are made up of me. This nicely dovetails and combines my practices of prayer, contemplation, meditation, and yoga. Sophrology is a combination of Western science and Eastern philosophy.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:02:05] It gives me with a basic knowledge of my human structure. Imagine with clarity of mind, the possibilities are endless. Planning is passionate about empowering the individual and helping to transform cognitive thought processes. Authentic awareness creates conscious living and it's important for your daily life.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:02:27] Let's be empowered through authentic awareness, curiosity, and contemplation.

Lani, welcome. Can you tell us about your journey and how you became into sophrology and chose to be certified?

Lani Puriri: [00:02:39] I'd actually been researching a lot of different holistic and alternative health strategies for more than 20 years. I spent a lot of time doing that, then I stumbled across the sophrology frontier quite by accident.

When I learned the tools and techniques that were included in the Western and Eastern philosophies, which is what sophrology includes, I knew that it was for I was kind of stuck in the mud with my life. I cleared the clutter, and it opened my mind to new opportunities and.

Lani Puriri: [00:03:09] It's just been life-changing for me, and it's made me feel happier and healthier and more balanced in my daily existence. When you experience something like that, that's so incredible. You just feel like you have to share it. You have this overwhelming desire to share it with other people. So that's how I came into it.

Lani Puriri: [00:03:25] My certification, took a couple of years, I did it online because of course the climate and the situation we’ve been as meant I could not go to Switzerland to do some of the training. I stayed in New Zealand did it all online. I'm just in a really happy place now.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:03:43] Thank goodness for God like technology and the avenues open for amazing health strategies like this.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:03:49] I'm very taken with the holistic nature and have experienced training with you for eight weeks. I so appreciate the growth and the opportunity to expand my knowledge and also to pivot.

Lani Puriri: [00:04:12] Exactly. That's what it does. It basically just creates that clarity. You still have what you have. You're just able to manage it in a better way.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:04:20] Absolutely. From confusion to clarity is exactly right. I've been doing yoga since I was around 17. Recently I’ve found I am struggling with the positions.

Secret confession: I have to talk myself into meditating, prayer, and contemplation not so much, as I like sitting still and calming my mind. Thank goodness for things like HeartMath and sophrology. As you rightly pointed out, moving from that confused state, stress state, to clarity is so beneficial.

Lani Puriri: [00:04:50] That's what makes sophrology so unique. You mentioned the positions and you mentioned sitting still. That's not what we do in sophrology. We have meditative strategies that are called dynamic relaxation exercises, and include dynamic balance breathing, gentle movement, and visioning.

When most people think about meditation, they imagine that they're sitting cross-legged on the floor with their palms on their knees in a still position for the period of time that they choose to meditate.

Lani Puriri: [00:05:20] That's not how we do that in sophrology. We practice meditation, standing, sitting, walking, lying down with your eyes are usually closed, sometimes you can open them.

We do this because the more you practice in positions that you use in daily living the easier it becomes to access peace of mind and daily. Sophrology actually combines all of those Western and Eastern philosophies and allows us to connect with the anatomy and physiology of the body so that we have a scientific understanding of the body. We know what we're doing when we're doing those movements and we're not stuck in sitting in one position for the entire time.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:05:58] That has been a huge blessing and being able to continually be moving my body. It was able to show me that I move a heck of a lot more than I realized. I'm more active at certain parts of the day than others. I was getting a bit judgy, had to correct my thinking that I’m couch, potato and that I needed to move.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:06:21] When I started tracking, I was like, oh my gosh, I actually moved quite a bit, but it's more centered for certain parts of the day that are more suited to my bio rhythms and my needs.

Perhaps a brief history and where sophrology originated from Lani?

Lani Puriri: [00:06:43] Sophrology is the root word. It means constant harmony. Sophrology is actually the conscious harmony of the structure of human existence, which includes mind, body, spirit, breath, and consciousness.

As a sophrologist, I study humans, the mind, body, spirit, breath, and consciousness to identify human experience and behavior. I'm working with you. We work at a holistic level because you are more than just a physical body.

Sophrology was actually developed as a treatment by a man named Professor Alfonso Caycedo (1932-2017) in the early 1960s. Professor Caycedo was a neuropsychiatrist treating patients in Spain after the civil war with pharmaceuticals and electric shock treatment which obviously wasn't helpful nor working very well.

Lani Puriri: [00:07:33] He went searching for something that aligned with the more natural structured, simple. He started speaking with his colleagues in the medical field. He travelled across Asia with his wife who was a yoga instructor. Combining the Western scientific research and the Eastern strategies of yogis and Buddhism that he discovered he formed the holistic treatment.

Lani Puriri: [00:07:58] He called sophrology based on the Greek terminology. That's basically where it comes from. It started growing across continental Europe, mainly in France and Switzerland. In fact, it's used by the Swiss Olympic team and in many Swiss hospitals to prepare patients for surgery and other procedures that are covered by the Swiss health insurance.

Lani Puriri: [00:08:23] It's very strong and mainly in continental Europe. It’s starting to grow in the UK. It's slowly making its way across the world in English.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:08:36] I did not know what sophrology was, but I had that aha moment that intuition that quiet voice saying, please do this.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:08:46] Sophrology has contributed to an evolution or transformation that is more kindly suited to what I need at this age and stage. You're talking about Olympians and people facing surgery. Who else can benefit?

Lani Puriri: [00:09:02] Basically it's an all-ages strategy because we all have a human structure. It benefits everyone.

Lani Puriri: [00:09:09] My specific focus is on the 50 plus demographic because I want to work with people in that I can use my life experience with and share in some of the things that I've experienced as I've come through my life and then worked with and where I've come to know. I know in my 60th spin around the globe that I wanted to help people discover who they've become as they've lived through careers and family and decades of experience.

Lani Puriri: [00:09:38] I want to work with people who are my seniors. I love engaging with them and helping them to enjoy living to the very last breath. I think that that's vital and important to have purpose and meaning for every day that you wake up in this world. That's where my focus is, but honestly, it's an all ages.

Lani Puriri: [00:09:56] All needs from sports, careers, school, for medical fields, just everywhere. It's because we all have that human structure and that human existence typologies forever.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:10:08] That's wonderful. I really appreciate that. I have been doing yoga since I was 17. I remained a beginner Yogi.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:10:19] I had never gotten to the headstands and the intricate poses. I enjoyed that level so much. I really appreciate with sophrology being able to build my meditation practice and my contemplation. I've been able to go prayer and that's hugely powerful because doing all those things differently, this has given me a holistic avenue into combining them into a session.

I've heard you say gratitude as the parent of all virtues. What do you do the most overrated virtue?

Lani Puriri: [00:11:08] When we talk about love. There are so many different facets. With Valentine's day, for example, we look at this as a romantic holiday and that we're meant to do things for that significant other. Then some of us don't have a significant other.

Lani Puriri: [00:11:27] I think that a lot of people say, “it's all about love.” Love, I think is a little bit misunderstood.

I think what we need to have a look at is compassion and the essence of compassion. When you look at compassion and the essence of compassion, you recognize that is the essence that connects us. I become connected to you through love, but it's the essence that's in the universe.

It is within and without. What is within is also without, and so for me, I would have to say in love is so overrated, misunderstood and used in contexts that maybe aren't as deeply connecting as what we need to be focused on.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:12:06] That's really interesting. Valentines and Christmas are two annual events I do not like. I do not like this focus on materialism.

Funnily enough, with the love languages, I have come to realize that for me, love is a verb. It's something you do. It's not necessarily about the gifts, it's the doing as opposed to the empty platitudes or the saying, or just because it's Valentine's day, you get into the love square, right?

Lani Puriri: [00:12:42] I come from a space of raising children and for Valentine's day, for us, it was more about just sharing the love.

Lani Puriri: [00:12:48] So heart sandwiches and notes and lunchboxes. Like making cookies for the neighbors and just doing things like that. It's all about the essence of it and what connects us and what brings joy and happiness to each other. For sure.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:13:03] Could you tell my global audience about the services that you offer?

Lani Puriri: [00:13:15] I offer one-to-one coaching and counseling sessions. I offer group sessions for families, corporate business, caregivers, as well. For schools, et cetera.

Basically, I'll customize a course for any group that has a specific initiative that they'd like to accomplish.

Lani Puriri: [00:13:32] The thing was sophrology is that it's just about your structure of existence. So, it's your body. We don't extend anything outside. We don't go looking for anything external. So, there is no special clothing. There's no mat, there's no fragrances. There are no external objects. I'm able to work with people online, all over the world and also face-to-face here in New Zealand.

Doing the one-to-one sessions are actually really beneficial. My first session with any person that I work with is to do at discovery and exploration, and we go through all the questions and all the domains of life to discover where you're at and where you want to get to.

Lani Puriri: [00:14:14] Then we work on understanding:

What your values are?

What the core structures are within you?

Those things that move and motivate you through life and the reasons why you do the things that you do.

We make decisions created on value-based living. Then we're able to engage with our goals more fully, and our objectives. Engage the whole passion of daily living.

[00:14:42] Dr. Michelle St Jane: Being valued, state myself. That was an inside benefit of embedding my values, exploring my values, updating, and engaging with my values through this holistic method. My biggest takeaway was reconnecting my mind and my body and my mind.

[00:14:59] Dr. Michelle St Jane: I'm a triple AAA workaholic. If I let it get, I’ll very happily work until I'm beyond exhausted. My body is screaming at me, but with sophrology, I've had the opportunity to align and be awake and have been both engaged. I liked the fact that is practice sitting down, standing up all the things that you do in your day-to-day living.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:15:23] You're not in one place, static you're in motion. I get to experience the calmness to serenity. Where my heart and my body and my mind are aligned. That has been so beneficial.

Lani Puriri: [00:15:36] During the meditation, we actually talked about taking an integration pause. And taking that integration pause is actually integrating what we're doing within the session.

Lani Puriri: [00:15:47] Our meditations start off with a balanced breathing and a body scan, and then coming into attention relief. Then we stop. We pause for about 15 seconds. We integrate the physical sensation of that. By doing that repeatedly, we do that with every session, that's how we start them. And we do that repeatedly and we come into a realization of how our body feels.

Lani Puriri: [00:16:11] How our body feels stressed and how our body feels when it's relaxed. And because we're doing that in positions that we find ourselves in daily, we actually start to train our brain to recognize when we're stressed and when we're calm and my experience. I can be in the kitchen preparing dinner, or just doing something in my regular life.

[00:16:30] Lani Puriri: And all of a sudden, I notice my shoulders are tense or my jaw is tense. Or when you're like trying to open a jar or do something. And you're like, all right, And you recognize I don't need to be this tense when I'm opening this jar, I can just release my mouth and calm down. We actually start to develop a relationship with the body for now, the body is speaking to us and saying, Hey, calm down.

[00:16:53] Lani Puriri: You don't need to be tightening your jaw when you're trying to open it up. So, we hear that because of the integration pauses that we do in the meditation and the continuation of that, the consistent practice of allows us to build those neuropathways in the brain so that they are that kind of information.

[00:17:11] Lani Puriri: And those kinds of messages can be accessed anytime, anywhere, all throughout the day,

[00:17:16] Dr. Michelle St Jane: that [00:17:17] has been a deeply thing. And outcome of learning this practice and expanding my knowledge and proficiency with. Salami. What is the most surprising thing for you? That's come about that you didn't see coming because you moved into the area.

[00:17:31] Dr. Michelle St Jane: So, so

[00:17:32] Lani Puriri: what I didn't see coming was the subtleness of it. It was quite immediate. So, my six weeks into my talking about integration pause. So, when we're doing the integration pause, we're sitting in the integration position and that's basically sitting upright in a chair with your hands placed on your thighs.

[00:17:50] Lani Puriri: And this is a position that we integrate. Six weeks I was frantically rushing off to do something and I needed to put petrol in the car and didn't have time for that but had to do it anyway. And so, I jumped into the car after doing so I was with my partner and I sat down in the passenger seat and off, we went down the road and all of a sudden, they realized, why am I so calm?

[00:18:12] Lani Puriri: And I realized I was sitting in the integration. That I had trained my body to be calm in the [00:18:18] integration position. So, it's just the subtlety of it. And that's when I noticed as I've come along and now to be where I'm at today as a suffragist. And I'm continually studying and working with people, I've just noticed how clear and calm me.

[00:18:32] Lani Puriri: Every situation and how easily I'm able to deal with life as it comes and goes. And it's not that anything changed. And I still have daily challenges and I still have aches and pains in my body, but it's all in how I'm dealing with it. Now it's just so calm and peaceful and settling. And actually, because I have a relationship now with my body so that when my body is feeling pain or discomfort, I can actually talk to that spot in my body and be like, it's okay, we're going to work through this together.

[00:19:01] Lani Puriri: And what do you need? And what do I need and how can we do this? And so having a relationship with the cells and the structure of my existence, being able to find peace and clarity of mind and manage my life better. And then the subtlety of all. It's just incredible. How it just so [00:19:19] subtly just works for you.

[00:19:20] Lani Puriri: And why was speaking with a client yesterday? And I've been working with her for 10 weeks now. And she was at a place where she had no interaction with one of her children. And that was really important for her to have a goal, to have a relationship with her child, with her daughter. And she mentioned to me yesterday that she is walking every day, she goes out and walks and I said, that's wonderful.

[00:19:41] Lani Puriri: You walking by yourself, are you going with someone? And she said, I'm walking. Big smile on her face. I'm walking with my daughter every day, her and her daughter now going walking. And this came from three years of no contact whatsoever. And 10 weeks later, she's now walking every day with her daughter.

[00:19:57] Lani Puriri: And I said, where do you think that comes from? And she said, it comes from this topology training. And I can't believe how quickly it's happened for me. She said it's been lifesaving. It's built a relationship with my family. I'm calmer and more confident, and I just have strength and hope for the future.

[00:20:13] Lani Puriri: And that was just so gratifying to me to know that in a 10-week time period, she's come from that space to [00:20:20] this space and where she's at now.

[00:20:21] Dr. Michelle St Jane: Thank you for sharing that. And I think it beautifully encapsulates that having this relationship with our hip hop. The spirit, bringing all the parts of ourselves to give that we're actually loving ourselves into being and the other songs we can't love another.

[00:20:36] Dr. Michelle St Jane: Sophrology is a wonderful avenue. You mentioned the relationship with yourselves, and people don't realize that our heart, our selves have intelligence, and the body speaks, and you've opened. Wonderful conversation with me, with my body. And I have been in different to discover, showed me how to open the door and do that.

[00:20:56] Dr. Michelle St Jane: And it's rather joyful when things are being endured, there is a joy in working together, as opposed to say, why is this hurting?

I do not make my heartbeat. I do not make my lungs breathe. My lungs decide. I am more than this bag of bones, water working together in harmony. There's been the separation across time, space, and generations. Sophrology helps me bring me back together. For I am extremely grateful.

Lani Puriri: [00:21:35] As you mentioned I do not make my heartbeat, or my lungs breathe. That's true.

Speaking of the essence within it's about identifying what that essence is and being able to label it for yourself. That's something else as a sophrologist that I'm able to do because everyone comes from a different space in regard to how they identify spirituality.

Lani Puriri: [00:21:54] Speaking of it as an essence and then you determine what that is and you label it, how you choose to label it. Something, someone is making your heartbeat, is making your lungs breathe. Those are the things keeping you alive from the moment of conception until the day that you take your very last breath.

Lani Puriri: [00:22:13] 24/7 around the clock nonstop. Continuously being our greatest cheerleader, heart beating, lungs breathing. We're going to get through every single day and we're going to do it together. What is the essence within you? Identify that and then embrace it.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:22:30] If you move into the position of the self-witness, you've got your endocrine system, your limbic system, you've got all these things going on. They do so with, or without you until our last breath. That moves me into such a space of gratitude. Learning how to communicate with myself. How do I work in cooperation, collaboration, and community?

The ego was like if I exercise more, eat right, do this it or that. Now I know it's about being in community and unity and collaboration and cooperation and not thinking I'm the boss of it all.

Lani Puriri: [00:23:05] Like you say, working in collaboration. There are auto-immune things that can happen because of accidents or the environment, the pollutants that are in the air or the foods that we're eating or things that we're doing, but to work in cooperation the body and do the best you can to help the body to do what it's meant to be doing.

Lani Puriri: [00:23:23] Whatever's happening with your body, what it wants a body, what the body wants to do, the structures and the body wants to do is keep you healthy and keep you comfortable. We are the ones that are responsible for that, by the things that we expose ourselves to outwardly and what we take into the body.

Lani Puriri: [00:23:43] We experience life through the five senses, and then that has an effect on the systems and the structure of our existence.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:23:50] I'm so grateful for you being a wise woman in the world and contributing on such a level and having been a beneficiary.

Lani Puriri: [00:23:59] I'm grateful for you. I love every journey that I go on and it's so great because every journey is unique because we're all such unique individuals. I've enjoyed my journey with you and the things that we've discovered and learned together.

Lani Puriri: [00:24:12] I learned something with every client, and it's just energizing and catapults me into the next universe.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:24:20] Sophrology has been such a blessing in my life. I will have all on Lani’s social channels and contact details and everything you need in the show notes.

Dr. Michelle St Jane: [00:24:33] We are very blessed to have you out in the world, sharing your knowledge, experience, and hope.

Lani Puriri: [00:24:38] Thanks, Michelle. I appreciate the work that you do as well.

[00:24:54] Outro: Dr. Michelle St Jane is a conscious steward as meaningful leadership in the world and the wider cosmos. Tune in every Thursday for real talk around life, leadership, and your conscious journey. Be ready to create and cultivate your dreams and wholehearted desires. Your support is valued. Please follow, subscribe, leave a review and a rating. More importantly, share with your connections.

Reach out. I am interested to hear from you.

Do you have a topic you'd like to explore? It would be great to have your feedback.

Dr. Michelle St Jane

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