Join us on this transformative episode of the Breaking Point podcast, where my guest Zareen and I, explore mindfulness, meditation and their potentially life-changing power.

Founder of Inroseclinic, an organisation designed to aid people in their understanding of mindfulness and how to implement it into their daily lives. From her immersive month in India mastering 30 meditation techniques to building a thriving practice over the last seven years, Zareen reveals how meditation can release stored tension, emotions, and even pain through simple body scans and breathwork.

We break down transcendental meditation—including mantras and why it's an underutilised superpower—while tackling the "I can't meditate because my mind wanders" myth. Learn practical anchors like breath focus to build resilience, the science of heart-centred practices and electromagnetic frequencies, and how walking meditation suits restless minds.

Zareen and I then go on to discuss certain modern ways of living and how their antithetical naure could be impeding our self autonomy and life satisfaction. We delve into technology, social media algorithms, ultra-processed foods' and workplace bullying, whilst also addressing and Gen Z's rising anxiety and short attention spans.

Zareen shares client-led tips: prioritising tech detoxes and nature as overlooked antidotes, as well as weekly screen-free days, and personalised action plans. Whether you're a beginner craving a morning meditation routine or battling burnout, this is your blueprint to rest, regulate, and thrive!

Takeaways:

• Mindfulness can seriously change the game for your well-being, so why not give it a shot?
• Zareen's journey into meditation began with a month-long course in India, and now she runs a whole clinic!
• Stress often hangs out in common areas like the neck and shoulders, so check in with your body.
• The tech we use daily might be dumpster diving our mental health, so let's unplug once in a while.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of the Breaking Point podcast.

Today we are here with Zareen Chowdhury and Zareen is the owner or do you work at Inrose Clinic?

It's your clinic.

I'm the owner, founder of Inrose Clinic.

Perfect.

And in Rose Clinic, would you best.

Could it be best described as basically mindfulness well being clinic that encapsulates lots of other things which I'm sure we'll get into.

Yeah.

So I'm calling it Mindfulness based well being because I'm able to incorporate mindfulness into all of the services.

And how long have you been doing it?

So I officially set it up two years ago now and then I took the leap into full time back in June.

So it's been a slow burn.

But I started seven years back now where I first did my meditation mindfulness course back in India.

So have been building up over the last seven years.

Why?

So you went to India to learn about meditation?

What type of meditation was it?

So they basically taught me 30 different types of meditation, mindfulness, all of the breath work which I do in the sessions now.

So it was a really comprehensive overview.

I spent a month there and then was able to start practicing with other people afterwards.

And that's when you set up Inrose Clinic.

So you've been doing this for a while then?

Do you meditate yourself?

Exactly.

I do meditate myself for sure.

Really got into it when I was 20.

I was, sorry, I'm 34 now.

So back when I was 20, I randomly just found this video online and I thought, oh my God, this is amazing.

So I started to build up my own practice and now I will use meditation in different forms these days.

What do you mean by different forms?

So there's many different ways to be able to meditate.

Okay.

Some like the most basic is just sitting in silence, which I love to do.

And then there are other forms such as focusing on breathing, focusing on the body.

I can meditate whilst walking in silence.

So these are some of the different forms that it takes.

Yeah, because that was one of the questions actually when I was looking at the website, I saw a phrase that I thought was interesting full.

You know, it doesn't sound interesting, but I guess in the context of what you're going to talk about full body awareness in the context of meditation, presumably, what does that entail Exactly.

So how I see it is that the body naturally holds tension without realizing.

In our society, which is very busy people without realizing, as I say, they're holding on.

And then what I Do is give people space to actually notice in the body.

So say for example there are common stress areas like the jaw, neck, shoulders, stomach, where we're holding on.

So when people have these spaces they're able to just check in with how they're feeling.

Noticing actually I'm really holding on here.

And then it's about making that decision to relax the area more.

Maybe bring the breath there to help to relax the area more also it's just about like simply sitting in the space and then just noticing what happens naturally.

So how I see it is that I'm giving individuals the space to.

It's like training themselves to get back into it as opposed to me telling them to do it.

So then they're able to be self sufficient and do it outside of the practice, if that makes sense.

Is that linked to nlp?

Idea of do you know what NLP is?

I've heard of it, but I've not trained in it.

Okay, I guess it's probably not actually because NLP is neuro linguistic programming and you're not really focusing on word link linguistic, you're focusing on the body.

Do we know why it is that we stall?

Or do you mean stall or do you just mean like if someone sits with a really tense shoulder, they store they tension in their, in their neck and shoulders or is it more like what Is that what you mean?

It's because of a lifestyle situation or is there something deeper to it?

I mean this is where it can get complex.

Right?

Because there are so many different ways to understand and view health in general.

But in terms of tension in the body, I can just simplify it and say it from a physical perspective of literally holding onto the tension.

So like for example, when I stressed I hold it in my neck and my shoulders and then I'll.

It may take me a bit of time to notice that oh actually I am holding on here and I can relax it.

But if you go deeper, we know that we store and hold emotions in the body as well.

And then psychologically when we're holding onto emotions, we're physically holding onto them too.

So having ways to release tension can really help to release, release and calm emotions as well.

So it is really linked in.

Can that be released through meditation?

I believe that it definitely can be released through meditation.

Is that an awareness thing putting your attention on the part of the body that feels tense?

Exactly.

So a lot of people who try and do this for the first time, they can notice that any pain or even discomfort tension, it can dissipate which Is, like, really amazing.

But I try not to tell people that this is going to happen to you.

This is going to happen to you.

Because everybody has their own individual experience.

Right.

So it's.

For me, it comes back to, again, just giving people that space and then the guidance, the gentle guidance into the space as well.

And presumably that's best achieved in a still state of peace and stuff.

What do you mean?

Well, you mentioned walking.

Presumably that isn't.

That's not the sort.

The form of the sort of meditation that can release tension or can it?

Yeah, that's a good question.

Because everybody's different, right?

So some people, they don't like to be sitting still.

They struggle with that.

So they wouldn't be able to sit still and try to get into a calmer state.

So walking would be beneficial for them to be able to practice it in a moving way.

So it really does depend on the individual.

But personally, I find it easier to do.

Excuse me.

While sitting.

Yeah, I agree.

I'm trained in something called.

Oh, it's called transcendental meditation.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Four years ago, I did a course and I was given a mantra and I had my little initiation ceremony type thing.

And it's, you know, I'm supposed to do it twice a day.

I don't.

And I'm not really very good if I can't immediately get into it.

But I really rate it.

To be fair, I think it's been.

I think meditation is such a underutilized asset and it's a shame that more people won't do it.

And it's exactly what you just said there.

Some people, their excuses, oh, I can't sit still.

Or actually, no, their excuses, I can't stop thinking.

And that's people.

Because people don't understand that actually, of course you can't stop thinking because the brain is a thinking machine.

It's not.

It's not the lack of thought that creates a meditative meditation.

Do you get people that say to you, I can't meditate because I can't stop thinking?

And if so, what's your response to that?

Because I'm sure you've heard that before.

So it's amazing that you found meditation as well and that it's been able to help you.

So that's super cool that you have a tool that you can go back to.

Just to answer your question, for me, it's really interesting because I. I studied this meditation and then I studied different kinds of breath work.

But what I found seven years ago is that when I would use the word meditation.

It would actually deter a lot of people.

So over the years, what I've done with my own practice as well is I've with the businesses, change the wording so it's accessible to all people.

So what I use, the terminology I use now is mindfulness.

So I find that this means that everybody can partake in it.

So the tools that I use are different kinds of breath work and the body scan, some silence, and we use sound.

And I find that this is really inclusive.

So it means that anybody can be involved in it.

And now there's.

I'm sure you're aware there's a lot of science which is backing up that this stuff really works.

Having breath work, say for example, doing 10 minutes of breath work, it like it literally works.

You can take your body out of stress state into a calm state.

So I think this was a big transition and change for me to be able to offer the wording in a different way.

Back to your question.

If somebody asks about meditating and if they don't know how to meditate, I think it's again, it's about remembering, as you said, that the mind just wanders naturally.

So this is part of the process.

But then it's coming back to.

We can use the word anchor or focus or intention.

So whether that's breath, whether that's anything they want to recite in that head, whether it's the sound of my voice, it's just having something to come back to, remembering that being, being in meditation, you know, the mind will continuously wander.

Then it's about building up that practice of coming back to the self and building on that, because this is really key with attention and focus as well.

So, yeah, I think it's.

Yeah.

And how do you describe it?

How do you build up that ability to come back to the self?

Is the breath the most influential?

Cool.

So I would personally say that the breath is extremely influential.

I don't know if it's the most influential, but how I see it is that there are stages that we can use to get into this calmer state.

So by spending 10 minutes focusing on the breath, this will naturally allow your mind to calm down because you're fully focusing on the breath.

And then once the mind is calmer, the body will become more relaxed and then it's easier to get into like a more silent state if that's something that you want to do.

Again, it comes back to what your intention is at the start of the practice.

Now, with the sessions that I run, we focus on the breathing and then coming to the awareness of the body and then we have the little bit of silence and then we have sound as well.

We also come to the heart center at the end of the practice as well.

And now it's super cool because there's a lot of terminology and understanding out there how powerful the heart is and how it's the strongest electromagnetic frequency in the body.

So I really love this angle of how science is backing up how amazing these tools and practices are.

Does the electromagnetic, what do you say, electromagnetic frequency or something?

Exactly, exactly.

Does that link into the concept of manifestation and things like that?

I know that's a very rogue topic.

I mean, yeah, there are a lot of teachers out there who definitely link these things together.

So it is definitely a thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Well they know that horses, I'm pretty sure horses are able to sense your heart rate or your something within like a six foot radius.

So if you walk up to a horse, it can feel your energetic frequency.

I don't know if that's the right terminology, but it could feel something and it's not, it's not hearing, it can't hear your heart, but it can sense something.

So I, you know, I, I know it's as you sort of kind of alluded to, it's considered a bit woo wan, a bit fantastical.

But I completely believe that there's something in that energy and frequency and stuff like that.

Let's talk about the different facets of for well being.

I saw on the website there's like you've got nutrition, spirituality and loads of others.

How do you work about deciphering yourself through them and your clients through that, talk people through those assets.

So my background is in mental health, employment advice and well being.

So it's working with people to look at where they're at with their employment, but then also their general well being.

So I've always had this understanding of holistic, holistic health which means to me that there are all of these different factors which influence our health and if one is affected it means that our whole health is impact.

So if we do something for one of these different elements, for example our spiritual health, then it will help us with our overall general health.

Now I incorporate these into the holistic health coaching that I'm doing.

So what we do is I have a lot of questions and reflections related to the different elements of holistic health.

We'll give it to the client and then they can go and ponder, reflect on it.

And then what we do over the sessions is I Give them the space to go into where they want to within the model, what's sticking out to them using motivational interviewing techniques.

And then what I'm able to do is I spend a session on the stress signals.

So coming into body again, noticing where the stress is in the body.

And I'm able to add this into the offer as well.

So into the session structure.

And then.

So it's.

So the outcome is then the individual have a greater understanding of their overall health, what's affecting them.

And then we create actions so they're able to work on, work on areas where they want to work on, identify strengths as well.

So there'll be things that are going well for them too, just to be able to.

Yeah.

Focus on.

On them from a wider angle.

What are you.

You mentioned it, there was one.

It's one of the questions.

What do you mean by stress signals?

Do you mean real life stimulus in specific situations or do you mean more sort of physiological reaction?

So in this session it is practical.

And then also we'll go into like how they are being affected by stress currently.

But then what we do is we do a body scan in the sess.

So then it's about noticing where we're holding stress in the body.

So when we're able to notice where we hold the stress, then outside of sessions, just in normal life, we're able to then pick up on this area and maybe come out of it quicker.

So it's giving us a greater awareness of our body and how we're influenced by different factors.

So there's the physiological aspect, noticing it earlier, being able to step out of it easier.

And then we would talk about what is influencing their stress and if there are any things that can be done to support them with that at the moment.

And nowadays what do you find are the most common things people theorize are impacting their stress levels the most?

It's a really good question.

I mean the obvious ones are the technology.

I was literally going to say that.

I was literally going to ask you if you thought about adding use of technology as one of the things that you ask people.

Because I think that that needs to be something now that is like widely accepted and considered as technology is a negative or technology is a medium which could become quite negatively impactful on your life.

So.

Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but carry on.

Good, you're good.

I say while staring at my laptop with my personal phone and worktop right next to me, the TV on the right hand side.

It's very difficult to get away from them.

Obviously, they're tools that are helpful and that support us with our work.

But as I'm sure you're very aware how the tech is being designed, that we're on them constantly.

And I mean, it's actually quite scary because it's having a real detrimental impact on our brains, how we're able to think.

People are getting more stupid, to put it bluntly.

And the robots are just making it so easy for us with all of the AI.

So it's being done in such an intelligent, manipulative way.

It is.

So I think this is another reason why things like mindfulness meditation, just stepping out from the computers, it's actually, like, necessary for our brains to train out of being on them constantly.

The amount of times we're picking up our phones in general, and then the numbers are just going up if you look at the stats.

So, all right, I'll calm down on this, move on to the next thing.

Yeah, I.

But this, I want to add to that just because you.

You touch on, like, I think about it quite a lot recently, the algorithms on these social media apps, like, I think that they're capable of working out what's going on in your life.

I don't know how they do it.

I don't know if they're watching what you do and other things, they're seeing what you've search up, they're taking.

They're collating all this different information from you and then they're.

I don't know if they put you in a psychological category or they're building bespoke algorithms for people individually.

I think it's at the point where they now build bespoke algorithms for us as individuals.

And then they create a stream of content that they know is going to play on your emotional chords in the context of what's going on in your life at the moment.

Like, because you know how Instagram have got the reels button.

Every time I click on that reels button, I get a reel that is relevant to what's going on in my life at the moment.

And how I'm feeling triggers me in a way that makes me want to click off but carry on watching.

And then it's almost at the point where they put them in a specific order that entices you to keep watching.

They put them in a narrative order that is relevant to you.

I can't work it out, but I feel like there's some really bad stuff going on with these algorithms and we are at the mercy of them.

And I think it's I think it's because no one knows what's going on.

And the, the perfect excuse with, for these social media companies would be, oh, we just feed back to you more of what you consume.

And I don't think it is that.

I think it's.

It's something else.

Yeah.

So that is not ideal.

So technology.

Yes, but other things keep going.

Yeah, I'm really with you on that one.

It's.

It is really scary how this is happening at such a fast rate as.

Well, if you look even like 20, 30 years ago, how much has changed in such a short period of years ago?

And it's in.

I mean, even in five years ago.

What did.

In five years ago?

TikTok.

There was no Instagram reels, I don't think.

Or maybe.

No, I think there was.

It was TikTok.

It was like lockdown.

TikTok would just show you what everyone else, I think, was watching at the time.

It didn't show you content that was tailored to you as such.

Or maybe it did, but it obviously wasn't anywhere near as smart as it was.

So imagine what it would be like in five years.

I think we'll just kick back and social media would die.

That's what I'm hoping we knew on that one.

And I hope for that.

Literally.

Yeah, yeah, we'll put a date in the calendar and check that.

Yeah, literally.

Anyway, I've interrupted you twice now, so keep going, you're good.

Okay.

So we talked about technology, the impact of thermo, and then this massively feeds into mental health as well.

So I'm a big advocate of mental health.

So I think that it's important to take time out from away.

Away from the tech and the number one antidote, nature.

That's how I see it.

And then just coming back to your question about other impacts of stress.

Me, you're asking like causes of stress, right?

Yeah.

That people say, I think this is affecting me.

I mean, my background is biased because I've been working in mental health services, so I've understood individuals quite a lot from the work, work environment, how much stress happens in the workplace and how they're negatively impacted.

So I'd be working with clients who.

The most common things are bullying in the workplace, harassment, and things like mental health.

But then how this is made a lot worse by being in work.

So.

And it's really complicated because how somebody may interpret an action, the other person may not see it in a negative way, but because they've got this anxiety, it's.

Their anxiety has Gone up.

They're seeing everything in a negative way.

So I'm very influenced by, by my background in that, I think.

And it can take like such a toll on mental health as well.

And then just thinking again about work is that with many businesses, like the demands, the KPIs, they're getting a lot higher.

And to be able to find an organization that really supports you, supports your health and well being is like super important.

What sort of workplaces were you dealing with people from?

Was it specific or was it just general?

Literally everywhere.

So it was based in Kensington and Chelsea.

So the clients would come through, talking through these.

So it was.

Yeah, literally everybody we would talk to from every industry.

There were common industries though, like teaching, like the more high pressured jobs as well.

But also teaching's pretty high pressure nowadays.

Did you say kitchen teaching's pretty high pressured nowadays?

Teaching?

Exactly, exactly.

So yeah, people who are in jobs like this and then a lot of people are working through agencies as well, so they're not directly employed.

So then there are a whole barrage of challenges with this as well.

Yeah, no, exactly, yeah.

And then carry on then.

Another thing which is bringing about stress is like nutrition and lack of nutrition in the supermarkets.

So this is something that I like to preach about to people around me, whoever will listen and how so much of the supermarket food is just not real food.

So just being able to feed ourselves can be quite challenging if we're trying to do out and.

Sorry, if we're trying to go out and do that, trying to eat out.

And then also if we're staying at home and then we're cooking at home, obviously we need to put time aside to do that, do meal prep.

So just basics like this can have such a big impact on our stress levels as well.

Yeah.

I think nutrition is unsurprisingly and undeniably a huge, huge aspect.

Probably in a manner in which we don't actually understand the buildability to which is impacting us.

Which is.

Which is a real shame actually and quite worrying.

But at the same time the human body is pretty good at extracting gold from or extracting wheat from chaff, isn't it?

So in that sense we're pretty lucky.

But we definitely are nowadays pushing it.

I think it's something ridiculous.

Like 70% of food bought now is ultra processed, not even processed, ultra processed.

Which, you know.

Yeah, it's something.

Right.

Isn't ideal.

Right.

A couple more questions.

I saw something really interesting.

I think it was on your Instagram about this three to one positive to Negative emotion bias.

What's that?

I've never heard of that.

That's worrying and interesting at the same time.

Sure.

So I studied with the British Mindfulness Academy, I think it was a good few years back now.

And I learned some really interesting things with them.

So what this is about is how the brain works.

Okay.

So it's that we're a.

What we need to do is a simplified version is reinforce a lot of positivity because the mind is generally more negative.

So it means in order for us to have positive thoughts and be more positive, we need to put the work in to be able to reinforce it.

So, for example, some people, they will feed themselves a lot of positive thoughts.

Okay.

And they've worked on that.

Maybe they've done therapy or maybe they've just been in environments where their family's extremely positive so they're able to naturally get into these positive states.

A lot of people have not had that environment.

Most people, they will have this negative bias.

So it's really about.

Yeah, being able to reinforce positivity.

Noticing positivity, where we can reframing negative things and understanding it from a different perspective.

It's about the whole autopilot of allowing our mind to be on autopilot or just coming out of autopilot and consciously being aware of our thoughts, what we're saying and what we're doing, really.

So does it involve recognizing a negative emotion and then consciously purposefully bringing to mind three positive emotions to counteract the negative, or is it.

Is that what it means?

So if you break down.

So you've got the thought and the emotion.

Right.

So what we want to do to build more positivity is we want to attach the thought and the emotion.

Emotion together.

Because when the thought and the emotion are together, then this is.

Allows us to really get into the energy of positivity with something in mind, as opposed to just a feeling only.

So this helps with an intention as well.

So if we set an intention, then it will help us to reach into that state.

So, yeah, we can simply do something like that.

We can use the same thought and emotions three times, four times, and just reinforce that thought and feeling together.

Okay, I'm going to practice that because I think that'll be quite helpful.

Yeah, for sure.

What's.

I suppose this relates to the whole difficulty.

There's difficulties that people are having.

But what's the most sort of frequent advice that you give people?

Is there like, do you tell someone?

Right, let's focus on this first.

This is like a key fundamental of your life.

Presumably it varies for every person but I don't know, are there any commonalities of things that you find yourself advising people to do?

I mean how I work is that it's always led around the client.

So they're the ones who will tell me what's up and then I will go in on the coaching model and then support them in that way.

So I'm biased to them.

Right.

So if they're saying that they want to focus on for example their mental health or their.

Then it will be about me identifying what's coming up for them, reflecting things back to them and then it's about co creating to be able to support them.

But the most common things that I'm seeing are it's really, it's coming back to this, to the tech again.

So it's short attention spans, inability to focus and just needing a break really.

So needing a break from their busy schedules and working for people who are just super busy, super stressed and they, they need time out to just like rest and regulate I like to call it.

Yeah, there's.

Have you seen this whole thing that young people now struggle, are experiencing anxiety when they filling up petrol or something and young people like so many young people now are experiencing anxiety and really sort of, I guess to be fair, if you just learned to drive, going to fill up your car with petrol is a slightly daunting.

For some people it would be.

But more and more young people are becoming anxious in ways that previous generations just weren't.

And I do think a lot of that has got to do with technology zapping not only the social skills but also the social bandwidth from people and just taking away their energy.

I don't know, enforcements that they would use.

Yeah, the technology, the technology is getting pretty bad to be fair, isn't it?

That's.

Yeah.

And the short attention span as well apparently.

I saw this thing the other day that short watching, short form content could be more damaging to the brain than drinking alcohol.

And I don't know how reliable that is, but that's an interesting bit of research to come out.

I remember when I was, I read a paper about the damaging effects of like Facebook and apparently these tech sort of billionaires and tech entrepreneurs are continually handed bits of information and research articles and data that say just how damaging their platforms are to people and they just ignore them.

Obviously they just ignore them.

But I remember when I heard that I thought that was really interesting.

Apparently Mark Zuckerberg used to get handed them a lot and he basically eventually said, right, I don't want anyone to give me any of these things, any of this sort of information anymore.

We're done, I've had enough.

And those are the people that are in charge.

So, yes, it's worrying.

Technology has got a lot to work for.

Thing is, it isn't actually technology.

I was thinking about this as you were talking.

Like, washing machines haven't made people's lives worse.

Kettles haven't made people's lives worse.

It's just social media.

Like this.

I guess this is kind of social media, but this, it's the degree to which the thing that the, what would you say the medium that you're using is alive in its own sense.

How much more autonomy has, does it have?

Like Instagram is sending you notifications when you haven't been checking it enough.

It is doing things in a.

As if it's like a, an actual entity.

Whereas a camera or a dishwasher has a limited scale or bandwidth, things that it can do and therefore it's less invasive and less controlling over your life.

So I think that's what it is.

It's the degree to which the social media is alive in its own right that impacts us negatively.

Do you want to talk about anything else before we finish up?

Anything you want to address, anything you're interested in talking about that we haven't discussed?

Good question.

I mean, I feel like we've touched on a lot of good points when we were talking about stress.

I think it can definitely be related to this holistic health wheel because there are stresses in each areas and all the elements of holistic health now.

So it's really about, I guess, understanding where we're at now and being able to be honest with ourselves and to see, you know, what is in our hands, what can we do to protect ourselves, really.

So, for example, there's even apps out there now where you can control your technology.

Or we may know that we need to have a tech free day every week and go and be in nature because this can help to reset some of what we're doing for the rest of the week.

So I think it's important to come back to the positives and know that there are things that we can influence and we can control and that we, it's important that we come back to, to the positives, to support ourselves and those around us really.