Sarah is a certified practitioner of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a therapy and self-help technique which uses tapping on acupuncture points to clear negative emotions and patterns of behaviour. She is also a Heartfulness trainer and is married with three children.

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Sarah Naylor

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<h4>
 SARAH NAYLOR
 shares her personal emotional journey from poor self-esteem and negativity
 to love, confidence, clarity and purpose in life. The wonderful thing is the
 ease with which it happened.
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 Over the years I’ve been practicing Heartfulness, I’ve experienced countless
 positive changes in myself, which others have noticed and commented upon. I’ve
 gone from being fearful and depressed to generally happy and relaxed. From
 feeling lost and muddled, with poor self-esteem, I’ve developed confidence and
 clarity. A life which felt rather lonely and pointless now feels filled with
 love and purpose. The amazing thing is that I don’t seem to have done very
 much to enjoy these benefits.



 There is a popular belief that in order to change yourself and clear negative
 traits and behavioral patterns, you need to roll up your sleeves and work
 hard, devoting time, analysis and willpower. It’s almost as though you are a
 sculptor dissatisfied with your work, and you have to chip and carve away at
 yourself to smooth off rough corners and reshape certain unattractive parts of
 yourself. It takes effort, sweat and tears.



 With Heartfulness it is different. As we practice the simple components of
 Meditation, Cleaning and Prayer, old patterns and unhelpful behaviors simply
 dissolve and fall away – at times without us even noticing. Aside from these
 practices, all that is really required is our attention and willingness to
 look at ourselves honestly.


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 Taking a few moments each night to review my day from a calm and
 heart-centered place, I see that moments of discomfort and failure generally
 spring from one simple cause: reacting with the ego, rather than responding
 from my heart. Something happens. I react with like, dislike or fear, which
 often prompts me to take misguided action. Sometimes my ego feels threatened
 by criticism or a comment, and I try to resist the truth by arguing and making
 a case to show myself in a better light.


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 Either way, the cure is simple. Pause. Connect with my heart. Allow whatever is happening just to be – including any discomfort I may feel about it. Instead of action, do nothing, and notice what is unfolding inside me.
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 Either way, the cure is simple. Pause. Connect with my heart. Allow whatever
 is happening just to be – including any discomfort I may feel about it.
 Instead of action, do nothing, and notice what is unfolding inside me.



 The magic of pausing and accepting instead of reacting has made the most
 dramatic and profound change to my personal relationships and family life.



 Others relax and become more receptive. There is more connection and more
 love. Arguments are avoided. My teenage daughter tells me something. I feel
 like reacting with a lecture, with fear, with defensiveness. I pause. Love
 flows into the space I’ve allowed. She feels it. She listens to what comes
 from that place of acceptance and love in a way she never listened to “Mum
 nagging.”



 I find doing this both harder than I expected and incredibly liberating. When
 we receive criticism instead of going on the defensive, or when we allow
 something to be without demanding it be different, it can be surprisingly
 painful. We confront the gap between what we wish for and what actually is. We
 are trying to avoid feeling this pain when we attempt to change others and
 hide aspects of ourselves, whereas allowing ourselves to experience reality
 opens up a walled off, “stuck” old part of ourselves. Another layer of
 “baggage” comes up to be cleaned away, and there is inner progress. Instead of
 having to work at changing myself, it is as though I am in the hands of a
 master sculptor. The more I stop resisting and trying to change things myself,
 the more effortlessly I am remolded into something more beautiful and useful.


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 Our desire to be comfortable and have things a certain way denies reality and
 takes an investment of energy and action. It’s a relief to stop this futile
 effort. To replace the fruitless “doing” with the restful “nothing,” and to
 get such rich results from it seems nothing short of amazing.



 I believe that therapeutic intervention can be wonderfully helpful at times to
 unravel and clear specific emotional issues, in the same way that using
 particular herbs or foods can support good health. However, the simple
 Heartfulness practices hold a secret key to extraordinary personal
 transformation, no matter how ordinary, flawed, or lacking in willpower we
 think we are.


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