Actor turned meditation facilitator Maude Hirst, tells us how to handle the stresses of wedding planning Once a successful actor best known for her role as Helga in the hit TV show Vikings, Maude Hirst is now a meditation facilitator, wellness expert and founder of bespoke meditation company EnergyRise. Discovering meditation, yoga and energy healing changed her life for the better and she believes it can do the same for everyone. With a wedding on the horizon for Maude too, CWM beauty and wellness editor Kelly Andrews, caught up with Maude recently to find out more. Can you tell us about your journey from actor to wellness coach? It must have been a real life change for you. It has definitely been a wonderful but life-changing few years. The catalyst to discovering meditation and yoga was a horrible break up. I was approaching my 30s at the time, had recently finished filming Vikings and the break up left me questioning a lot of things in my life. I went on a cliché yoga and meditation retreat, and it was during this time that everything unexpectedly changed. I realised how disconnected I’d been from myself and my happiness. But the more I practised meditation and yoga, the more I discovered about myself. It sparked a feeling of joy and freedom in me that I really wanted to share with as many people as I possibly could. From there I began my training, which took me from LA to London and deep into the rainforest in Peru. After hundreds of hours of meditation and falling in love with the practice, my company was born and the rest, as they say, is history. Your character in Vikings, Helga, had to deal with some difficult issues throughout the course of the show, which must have affected you as a young actor. How do you feel what you now know would have helped you through the difficult task of bringing these matters to screen and leaving them there? I often think about how different my life back then would have been with the meditation tools I have today. Not just as an actor but as a young woman navigating the world. One of the many amazing benefits of the practice is the ability to process your emotions in healthier ways. I now know that when I’m dealing with something very emotional, the best thing I can do is to sit and feel into the emotion, which allows it to pass, rather than try and push it away. As a young actor dealing with very emotional subject matters, I used to feel them intensely on set but then avoid feeling anything off set. So knowing that it’s safe to feel emotions I believe could have helped me enormously. How have the practices you’ve developed changed your own life between then and now? My life has changed in so many brilliant ways. Firstly, through hours of meditation I feel I understand myself far better than I used to and have learned to trust my own intuition above all else. I went from a cycle of toxic relationships to now being engaged to the most wonderful, caring man. And lastly, I feel much less anxious and more playful than I ever have before. Just breathe © Justin Gardner 80
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