Simonays - Stress Management Consultant

02/12/2025

A very recent study tells us that in Victoria, workers lose an average of 5.7 days of work per year, due to distress. The highest in the country! Key demographics include 18 - 29 year olds, females, and people in certain higher-stress industries.
With all of the awareness raising around stress and psychological injuries at work, and increasing investments in HR, things still seem to be getting worse.
If you're feeling the negative, physical, emotional, immunological, or any other effects of increasing stress, come and join us for a session that will help empower you with some skills, and support, to take a stand (or a jolly good lie down, as the case may be)!
Thursday:
*Private breath and bodywork by appointment ($149pp, discount available for students, seniors )
*6.15pm - 7pm Reset & relax class ($15pp, limited availability)
*7.15 - 8pm Big breath class ($15pp, places available)
*8.30pm -9.15pm Virtual Chill Pill, Zoom class ($15 or what you can/want, places available).
Face to face classes at 21 Main Rd, Bakery Hill (in The Hub)
*Bring what you might need to feel comfortable - yoga mats, bolsters, cushions, blankets, tissues, drink bottles, and journals welcome.
Message or contact 0419181869 to book and receive payment and/or Zoom links.

Simon is a stress management consultant in Ballarat specialising in improving health & performance through Breath, Mind & Body Awareness.

28/11/2025

I have a few visiting hands-on bodywork sessions booked next week, which is lovely. For a long time it was the focus of my therapeutic work. What I am really enjoying now is connecting it to breathwork, and a host of mindfulness and somatic techniques to maximise it's ongoing relaxation potential for those who request it. It also allows the person in receipt of the session to develop a toolkit of practices to continue to work on their wellbeing.

It's been interesting to reflect on how my age, experience, and ongoing learning have changed the way I approach therapeutic touch. Many of the techniques are the same but many are not and the focus and intention of the work have made some dramatic shifts.

As I've discussed here many times before, we are a very 'connected' beings. Thoughts impacts, on our body and emotions, and this works in all directions. We are also 'handling' massive amounts of input as a result of our modern lifestyles. Interventions that facilitate a calming of our nervous system, impact everything. They send messages of safety, when they are done safely, and this can be a very powerful thing when it comes to healing.

If you would like to tap into this aspect of my work, feel free to make contact.

Send a message to learn more

25/11/2025

If it seems hard to focus right now, or your future goals and aspirations are not currently front of mind, or, your emotions seem to hit before the rational explanations that go with them do. Guess what? This is normal!
When you are suffering from chronic stress your cortex, the logical processing part of your brain gets sidelined and your limbic system, the emotional and memory centre of your brain, takes centre stage.
You are not broken, you are normal and demonstrating that you are well adapted.
For some tips on bringing your 'thinking' brain back online, check out these opportunities.
Thursday:
*Private breath and bodywork by appointment ($149pp, discount available for students, seniors )
*6.15pm - 7pm Reset & relax class ($15pp, limited availability)
*7.15 - 8pm Big breath class ($15pp, places available)
*8.30pm -9.15pm Virtual Chill Pill, Zoom class ($15 or what you can/want, places available).
Face to face classes at 21 Main Rd, Bakery Hill (in The Hub)
*Bring what you might need to feel comfortable - yoga mats, bolsters, cushions, blankets, tissues, drink bottles, and journals welcome.
Message or contact 0419181869 to book and receive payment and/or Zoom links.
www.simonays.com

17/11/2025

I have often heard people trying to help others who are stressed, by saying things like, "take a big breath", "just breathe", or "focus on your breath," as they try to facilitate some co-regulation. In a way it's wonderful advice as we intuitively know that controlling the breath can help control our emotional state. It's true, if you change your breath, you change your physiology, your thoughts, and the way you feel. This extends to influencing those things for those around us.
The trick is, learning "how" to breathe in those stressful situations, and learning to leverage that breathing with other, high value techniques to maximise the stress relieving qualities.
This is why I weave in anatomical and physiological details and possible usage scenarios while delivering relaxation flows.
I want you to come away with your own bag of tricks that will not only support you, but may be useful first aid or help for others.

Thursday:
*Private breath and bodywork by appointment ($149pp, discount available for students, seniors )
*6.15pm - 7pm Reset & relax class ($15pp, limited availability)
*7.15 - 8pm Big breath class ($15pp, places available)
*8.30pm -9.15pm Virtual Chill Pill, Zoom class ($15 or what you can/want, places available).
Face to face classes at 21 Main Rd, Bakery Hill (in The Hub)
*Bring what you might need to feel comfortable - yoga mats, bolsters, cushions, blankets, tissues, drink bottles, and journals welcome.
Message or contact 0419181869 to book and receive payment and/or Zoom links
www.simonays.com

15/11/2025

We had a really productive few days last weekend with Naidu Theatre company, working on Threads the musical. Kris on costume design and production, and me on wellbeing support workshop delivery.
Along the way, we were privileged enough to see a rehearsal in Woolgoolga and a rehearsed performance in the Dorrigo Rainforest Centre. It was all go, but all good!
If you're keen to see its progress or grab a ticket for their performance, you can follow along here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1CdL1LHZjw/

15/11/2025

Our eyes are super important to our overall health. Any visual disturbance has an impact on our whole self. Difficulty picking up or processing visual information causes our system to feel less safe. This leads to a cascade of fight or flight, nervous and endocrine activity that negatively impacts on things like heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, breathing rate, rhythm and volume, muscle activation etc.
It is not at all uncommon for sufferers of back and neck pain to have an issue with the movements of their eyes. It could be convergence insufficiency, issues with stable gaze, smooth tracking, or saccadic movements. As well as the above mentioned mechanism, muscle imbalances can occur as we adjust our position and posture to compensate for any visual deficits.
Now given that excessive screen time has been shown to fatigue the eye muscles used to converge, or bring our eyes together and that many of us have screen time heavy jobs, it is likely that we are contributing to our stress load and along with that, postural pain, just by not being mindful about this aspect of our working lives. Screen time also reduces our blink rate, leading to additional fatigue and discomfort.
To make matters worse, many of us are sitting while we do this work and sitting as we know, has its own damning evidence when it comes to wellbeing outcomes.
Implementing some simple, brief, semi-structured practices throughout your day, that involve your eyes, breath and movement, has the potential for huge payoffs across your organisation as far as output and wellbeing goes. And, I’m here to help you do it.
www.simonays.com

12/11/2025

Stress can be good or bad, but chronic stress is proving to be more harmful to our well-being than most of us might imagine!

Stress Undermines Brain Circulation, Increases Dementia Risk - Neuroscience News https://share.google/lQM6AZZiTOiVa5Q89

Simon is a stress management consultant in Ballarat specialising in improving health & performance through Breath, Mind & Body Awareness.

11/11/2025

Breathe in and feel the expansion, breathe out and notice the recoil and release. Move your awareness around your body as you gently focus on you. Exchange judgement for curiosity and learn to cultivate positive emotions.
You are worth it!
Thursday:
*Private breath and bodywork by appointment ($149pp, discount available for students, seniors )
*6.15pm - 7pm Reset & relax class ($15pp, limited availability)
*7.15 - 8pm Big breath class ($15pp, places available)
*8.30pm -9.15pm Virtual Chill Pill, Zoom class ($15 or what you can/want, places available).
Face to face classes at 21 Main Rd, Bakery Hill (in The Hub)
*Bring what you might need to feel comfortable - yoga mats, bolsters, cushions, blankets, tissues, drink bottles, and journals welcome.
Message or contact 0419181869 to book and receive payment and/or Zoom links
www.simonays.com

04/11/2025

Your nervous system is processing so much more than you give it credit for. It has been estimated that your senses manage up to 100,000 times more, at any time than your thoughts can compute. It's no wonder that our system gets overstimulated and eventually shuts down in order to give us a break.
This often happens by way of illness; physical, mental, autoimmune, etc.
It can be beneficial to do your own reset from time to time, in order to help prevent one happening of it's own accord. That is exactly what these classes aim to help you with.
Thursday:
*Private breath and bodywork by appointment ($149pp, discount available for students, seniors )
*6.15pm - 7pm Reset & relax class ($15pp, limited availability)
*7.15 - 8pm Big breath class ($15pp, places available)
*8.30pm -9.15pm Virtual Chill Pill, Zoom class ($15 or what you can/want, places available).
Face to face classes at 21 Main Rd, Bakery Hill (in The Hub)
*Bring what you might need to feel comfortable - yoga mats, bolsters, cushions, blankets, tissues, drink bottles, and journals welcome.
Message or contact 0419181869 to book and receive payment and/or Zoom links
www.simonays.com