Jennifer Aniston and Jim Curtis start their day by meditating together.

The couple - who have been dating for around a year - take some time for mindfulness in the morning because they believe it can have an impact on how the rest of the day pans out.

Jim told People magazine: "I wake up and I feed the dogs. I have coffee. Jen will pick the meditation and we'll do it. It changes your whole day."

The 50-year-old hypnotherapist was diagnosed with lesions on his spinal cord in his 20s, which caused chronic nerve damage and partial paralysis, and while he was "angry for a long time", he believes reaching acceptance of his health struggles helped him to find love with Jennifer, 57.

He said: "When I got to the point of loving my body and loving myself, I found this amazing relationship. A sense of self-love and acceptance is mirrored in your relationships.

"I just had this idea that at 50 years old, I would have a more substantial relationship, a serious relationship that would warm my heart."

Jim believes his whole outlook on love and life has changed in recent years, and he is keen to help as many people as possible.

He said: "I can accept love. I like to give love. What I've done is I've stepped into love holistically, in the sense of not just romantic love, but this loving compassion where my heart breaks open for the people I work with, and not in a bad way.

"I'm so happy to be able to be doing what I'm doing, to have the people around me, to be in this frequency, to have my animals, my dogs, to have the ability to be in the sunshine. And then, I think by spreading that love, people transform as well."

Jennifer and Jim recently made a rare public appearance together in New York, where she interviewed him ahead of the release of his new book, The Book of Possibility.

During the interview, he opened up about receiving his diagnosis, an experience he described as "an ultimate low".

He said: "I found myself in the hospital one night because I was having such severe pain in my body, and in a New York City emergency room, I was there for 13 hours, and it was maybe 2am and the nurse came, and I said, 'Is the doctor going to see me? What are you working me up for?' And she said, 'A diagnosis right there'."

He added: "And it was a really scary diagnosis."

Jim, who now walks with a limp, said he searched for information about the condition online while he was still in hospital and felt his body "freeze and seize up without the fear of what Google had to say about this".

He recalled telling himself "tomorrow, everything changes".

However, Jim said changing his outlook was a gradual process rather than something that happened immediately.

He added: "I'm not saying here that the doctor tells you to do something you should get up and leave. What I'm saying is that you don't have to live as the victim. You don't have to live in your suffering."

He added that struggles "can become your power as soon as you accept (them) and you love (them.)"