Explorations for Trusting Safety play self care Aug 11, 2023

There are different ways in which we can reintroduce a sense of playfulness into our lives. Whether this is getting back to playing games we love, moving a little more within life or simply shrugging off some of our hardened edges, shaking up the well-trodden paths of daily life can feel liberating and joyful – two qualities that help us cope with the brambles we inevitably have to navigate, with equanimity and calm. Here are some ways you can notice your body-mind ready to unlock its playful side…..

1: Play as Gestures through the Hands

Our hands are our most important tool, with more connections between brain and hands than any other body part. How we use our hands shapes how we work, express and play and for many, tension in the fingers and wrists from constant contact with technology feeds directly into rigidity in the jaw, diaphragm and belly.

Our hands may reach for the physical connection that we feel as deep safety in the belly, or hold back from doing so; from...

Continue Reading...
The Benefits of Group Exercise exercise yoga Aug 04, 2023

We are built to move, but when the motivation comes from fitness or health, rather than as a bi-product of basic survival (procuring food, building shelters, keeping warm, defending territory etc) or celebration (dancing, ritual etc) it can be more challenging to get going on our own. We evolved in tribes and our physicality and psyche move between self-regulation and co-regulation – how we adapt on our own and how we do that in relation to others; we need both and they feed into one another.

The importance of relation

The social engagement system of mammals is often called the ventral vagal complex (the front or ventral aspect of the vagus nerve) and humans have more than others. It helps us to produce oxytocin (the ‘love molecule’) and experience bonding, safety, creativity, happiness and joy. Our ‘vagal tone’ or ability to drop into social states with easy breath, an open mind, tolerance of others, creativity, playfulness and wonder is also a...

Continue Reading...
Natural and Primal Movements exercise yoga Jul 05, 2023

Natural and primal movements that bring you back to healthy movement patterns

To talk of natural movement patterns, we first need to accept that as modern humans, we are often (if not mostly) in postural habits that have wandered far from our original design and function.

The word ‘primal’ is bandied around much these days, but what does it mean? We can view this terminology – used to describe movement, diet and lifestyle – from two directions; firstly the word itself stems from primary, that which came first. So something primal can be the original in terms of either our evolution as a an individual within that species.

Our personal evolution

This can relate to how we evolved from fish, to reptiles, to four-legged mammals, through to primates and still have the types of motions such animals do within our whole range. We also move through these same patterns from our foetal shape within the womb to the full expression of upright human within our own lifetime...

Continue Reading...
Tissue Release with a Spiky Ball exercise stress Jul 05, 2023

Spiky Balls are being seen more and more in shops and fitness studios, but what are they for and how do they work? Firstly, you need a good quality ball, some have shallower ‘spikes’ and a more forgiving surface, these are often referred to as ‘Pilates trigger point release spiky balls’ or ‘Prickle Stimulating Balls’. The texture and responsive surface of this type of spiky ball means that we can move into areas that intuitively feel of benefit, but we are able to move around, modulate and play with pressure and movement as simply feels right.

This is how these balls work on the myo-fascial system, the complex continuum of muscle and connective tissue (fascia) that creates the whole web of our bodies. Meeting this through the surface of the skin can help to reduce muscle tension, improve blood flow, increase body awareness and aid in injury prevention and rehabilitation. Loose fascia is a particular part of the superficial fascia, a web that...

Continue Reading...
Balancing for Physical and Mental Health Jun 22, 2023

Balancing for Physical and Mental Health

Balance is the ability to maintain the body’s centre of mass over its base of support. When this is all working as designed, the fully functioning balance system allows us to maintain clear vision as we move, orient with respect to gravity (ie continually gauge where we are) and determine direction and speed of movement. All of this in the blink of an eye, whilst making the automatic body adjustments to maintain posture and stability in changing activities and conditions.

The challenge that balancing brings constitutes a ‘good stress’ (eustress) for both mind and body. This is a stress (or provocation to a reaction) that prompts us to adapt, focus and have no choice but to stay with the task. It does not tip us over into survival mode or readying for a full-on threat (distress), but does help to raise resilience, where we can handle challenge coming in with more capacity to stay present and open to what the situation needs...

Continue Reading...
What does strength with ease mean? podcast yoga Jun 12, 2023

"What does strength with ease mean?" It's a fairly broad question which myself, Leah Barnett and Leonie Taylor have been discussing.

We have been considering this question within the yoga philosophy, coming from this yoga sutra Sthira Sukham Asanam (meaning “postures should be steady, stable, and comfortable”) as a guidance to this idea of ease or comfort and steadiness in terms of practise. The scope of answers to this question are extensive, especially considering that we all have different experiences in many different practices, whether they are still or more fluid, internal or external. This question is very contextual and open to interpretation. It can be considered in terms of where we are in the physical strength of a pose, or where we are emotionally in our lives.

Strength with ease can be looked at in terms of finding our own boundaries, both internally and in the way we meet the world around us. We...

Continue Reading...
Movement to Support Detoxification Jun 01, 2023

Movement plays a vital role in our body’s natural detoxification functions. Understanding the various ways in which we clear out toxins from all cells and tissues (making space for nutrients to come in) illustrates how a sedentary lifestyle can leave us feeling sluggish, stagnant and somewhat ‘stewing in our own juices’.

The factors that affect your detoxification capacity

If you are making change to your nutritional habits for the new year, then it is vital that you bring in movement habits and patterns that allow these adjustments to fully rid yourself of the waste that builds up.  Every day our bodies are bombarded with toxins from both outside (exotoxins) – the polluted environment, medications, alcohol, cigarette smoke, car exhaust emissions and toxins from within the body (endotoxins) – the by-products of nutrient breakdown, hormones and bacterial waste products from the intestines.

The liver is not the only organ of detoxification, each cell...

Continue Reading...
Respiratory & Immune Support at Home – focus on the breath breath covid19 support immunity self care wellness yoga May 24, 2023

Breath awareness

Bringing awareness to the quality of your breathing can support your immune potential, as well as your respiratory health. How we breathe is inherently linked into our immune system, as both our respiratory system and immunity are both orchestrated by our nervous system; as well as communicating with all other body systems e.g. digestive, endocrine (hormones) and circulatory.

This is reflected in our external relationship to the world – our nervous system is linked to internal thoughts and then portrays this by what is happening in our outside world. This is connected to how safe or unsafe we feel – our nervous system changes our breath and immune responses according to whether we go into mobilising fight-or-flight modes (sympathetic nervous system) or calming rest or digest modes (parasympathetic nervous system).

Breath and immunity

Our breathing is linked to our immune system in many ways, including:

• The respiratory system filters out,...

Continue Reading...
Increasing your self-soothing capacity mindful self care wellness yoga May 18, 2023

If you are feeling the heightened stress of expectations of achievement, constant decision-making and information overload, you are not alone. In this age of disjointed social groups and generations, building awareness and practices that help soothe our frazzled systems is more important than ever.

Self-soothing is the mechanism our bodies use to bring us back down to calm, after or even during the jolt of stress. This can mean the space to decide the most compassionate and helpful reaction in a crisis or feeling all systems back to rest after being revved up and reactive. When we’re in chronic stress and life has become one big hyper-vigilant ‘constant alert’, we can feel we’ve lost this route back to settling down and finding the peace we need for recovery.

Without healthy self-soothing abilities, living in continually heightened states can be exhausting, lead to whole host of stress-related symptoms (anxiety, insomnia, IBS and weight gain to name a few)...

Continue Reading...
Five Surprising Ways Exercise can help Digestion digestion yoga yoga teacher May 04, 2023

In her book Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health, Charlotte Watts explains the connections between how we move, how we feel and the deep mind-body connections with digestive conditions. Here she explains how any form of conscious movement has the potential for unravelling the loss of internal movement and stress in tissues that play such deep roles in conditions such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) and diverticulitis.

Five key digestive factors can be affected by trauma, chronic stress, sedentary habits and postural issues, and in turn relieved by some simple movements:

  1.  Gut motility

Action throughout the whole digestive tract relies on peristalsis, a wave-like, spiralling muscular motion. This is the basis for ‘gut motility’, that if seized, interrupted or spasmodic, can be the basis for many digestive issues. The speeding up or slowing down of gut motility is a feature of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) where a go-slow means...

Continue Reading...
Compassion for Health and Wellbeing health self care May 04, 2023

Listening to our hearts

“The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.”
― Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart

Compassion is an intrinsic part of Buddhist and yogic cultures, where there is an emphasis on feeling a deeper connection through non-violence and kind attention to the present moment. Metta Bhavana is one of the core Buddhist meditations and translates (from Pali), with Metta meaning loving-kindness and Bhavana to cultivation or development. With our tendencies for self-criticism and judging inner voices, this practice is gathering interest and respect from Western ideologies and researchers. For those practising it is not news that the practice sows the seeds to take a more...

Continue Reading...
Turn your world upside down health yoga Apr 26, 2023

Turn your world upside down - simple inversions to support heart and circulatory health

We inherently know that ‘putting our feet up’ is a restful place to be, but fully changing our perspective on the world can have even greater repercussions for our heart health and stress-coping capacity. In this article we explore supported inversions that can offer a truly calming space in your day.

Many people associate inversions as more acrobatic, like the handstands, shoulderstand and headstand seen in so many yoga pictures. But whilst these more dynamic postures have their benefits, to reverse our usual relationship with gravity so we don’t need to hold up our body weight, offers a soothing and releasing mind-body effect. 

Whichever way we practice inversions, placing our hips above our head, aids the lymphatic flow so important for immune function and detoxification. This fluid system that runs throughout the whole body alongside the bloodstream. It relies on our...

Continue Reading...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8