Why don’t we slow down in Winter?

I used to work really hard then collapse on holiday, sleeping for the first three days on the beach, totally resistant to ‘doing’ anything.  A friend of mine, now retired, worked ridiculous hours, had regular breaks and insisted she was fine, but every holiday developed a bad cough which forced her to lose more than…

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In search of ikigai

“The Oxford English Dictionary defines ikigai as “a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living”. More generally it may refer to something that brings pleasure or fulfilment.”[1] It is a person’s own decision what occupations to pursue as part of their search for ikigai, because each of us…

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Reconnecting to body and mind through yoga

Yoga, an ancient art – outdated, irrelevant today?  Yoga has, no doubt, changed a lot from the original as the teachers over different centuries have taught it through the lens of different approaches, fads and belief systems, but its essence, I suspect, has stayed the same. What was the original aim of yoga though? A…

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The invisible world of the tree

Tree hugging has long been looked down up as a ‘new age’ activity. Yet as Carol M. Davis pointed out in her Fascia, Interoception and Self Care webinar with The Fascia Hub[i] in December ’20, hugging whether it be a tree or a person, stimulates the ventral vagus, producing oxytocin, one of the ‘happy’ hormones.…

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Hum your way to health and calm

Humming – the key to efficient breathing and calm OK, I know that hummingbirds don’t actually hum to make that amazing noise, but I’m allowing myself some poetic licence!  Leon Chaitow, now passed but very much a giant in the world of fascia when he was with us, wrote a charming piece called, Humming my…

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