It’s become an annual season ritual that I love - collecting elderberries from my garden the hedgerows and making them into a delicious immune tonic Elderberry Syrup. It signifies the turning of summer to autumn for me, and starts me thinking of the Autumn and Winter seasons ahead.
Even if you have never stepped foot on a yoga mat before, you could well be drawn to yoga during pregnancy, as many women are. Pregnancy yoga provides a safe and supportive way to move your body in pregnancy, working with your pregnant body as it grows and changes. But pregnancy yoga offers *SO* much more than just some exercise appropriate for the pregnant body. Here’s 10 brilliant benefits - even in lockdown or when socially distancing
Smoothies can be a fast, simple and delicious way to pack in lots of tasty goodness in an easy to make and grab drink that’s packed with nutrients, vitamins and minerals. Make up a batch in the morning / night before and you can sip through the day or take it out with you too.
And also at the end is a ‘smoothie formula’ to follow so you can create your own. So get blending and enjoy!
This year I have made a commitment to myself to really connect in more with the changes throughout the year. To live with more seasonal wisdom, to feel and be more present to the world around us that we are of course just a tiny, tiny part of. I’m aligning with this through my own yoga and self-care practices, and also in my yoga classes, workshops and day retreats that I offer to you. So this is the first in series of blog posts month by month where I’ll explore and share with you things you might also like to watch out for, take notice of and be present to.
All with the aim of hopefully allowing you to feel more aligned with the world around you, and help you notice more that’s changing all around you if you only take the time to pause and see it as this year unfolds. To help you appreciate the the moment you are in, instead of stumbling through the year, stuck in your own head, and wondering how on earth another year has passed, seemingly unremarkably.
This turmeric and ginger jar of sunshine is liquid gold! Making a beautiful warming drink with it to start my day is just perfect at this time of year. It's zingy with ginger, lemon and raw cidre apple vinegar, fragrant with cinnamon and cardamon, deep with musky turmeric, sweet with local honey, and with a spicy kick from black pepper and turkish chilli. 😋 😋 😋 🍋🍯🌶 🍠Bloody great for boosting your immunity and keeping colds at bay. There are so many colds around right now 🤧 Here’s the recipe, enjoy!
The thought of New Years resolutions can be in themselves hugely stressful. At a time when we are often already pretty frazzled by Christmas, now having to think about some kind of major transformation for the new year is really not the most brilliant thing to do for yourself. The pressure for the festive season then leads onto the pressure of new years resolutions.
So, lets take a moment to regroup. Lets not hit ourselves with ‘shoulds’ and put more pressure on ourselves. How about instead prioritising some self-care and set some simple intentions for the year ahead. Here’s how:
In all of my yoga classes in York starting in January I’m going to be introducing you to some simple but effective meditation techniques. There are so many ways to meditate, you can do it in many different positions, you can use different senses and objects to meditate on - we’re going to explore all of this.
So here as a little aperitif is a simple energy boosting meditation - I thought you might need at this time of year! Have a go and see how you find it. Of course any questions just let me know. And I hope you can join me in my yoga classes from January to explore meditation techniques more.
It’s that ‘most wonderful time of the year!’ Celebrating with food and drink, eating and drinking and catching up with friends is a lovely thing to do at this time of year. So here is a lovely seasonal, celebratory mulled wine recipe (or make a mulled apple juice if you are pregnant or not drinking - I obviously couldn’t leave out all my pregnancy yoga and hypnobirthing folks!).
Celebrating National Poetry Day 2018, here are some beautiful poems about pregnancy and motherhood. As the great French Obstetrician Michel Odent says, pregnancy should be spent gazing at the stars and reading poetry - so here’s some perfect pieces to read and inspire your wonderful, awesome, powerful women.
My new breakfast inspiration and ritual is all about simple, nutritious and delicious. I'm using the school holidays and the less stressful, calmer and slower mornings to get a better breakfast inside me. My usual cornflakes(my fall back breakfast for speed) is just so dull. So much so that I'd often just skip breakfast all together. So all change. Here’s my Peach Melba Chia breakfast pot. Light, simple yet full of goodness. Great for Summer, and so many possibilities to change it up for what you love ‘ have to hand.
With so many different styles of yoga, and perhaps a general understanding of yoga being 'movement', people can sometimes be unaware of the deep stillness in some styles of yoga - not just in the mind but in the body too. Having a deeper inward focus and time to reflect and enjoy the real feeling of your body taking different shapes, and releasing them, slowly can be so very enlightening. It can be deeply transformative, and can show you so many things about yourself. It's the practices of Yin and Restorative yoga that I bring together in my weekly Slow Down yoga classes, and monthly Slow Sunday yoga workshops, that I truly believe can benefit us deeply in the crazy, busy, modern world. It’s perfect a form of self-care for body and mind. Read on to find out more.
Yoga is an ideal pregnancy exercise - mindful, holistic and gently dynamic. The postures support the body through the various changes of pregnancy and prepare it for childbirth. It's inward focus naturally encourages a deeper connection with your pregnancy and unborn baby and helps you develop the inner awareness and strength that will carry you through the child-birth experience.
Here are some tips on how to make the most of your pregnancy practice:
Doing a little bit of yoga often can make a huge difference to you. It doesn't take a lot to start a home yoga practice but it does take discipline. Just 5 minutes a day will make a big difference. As a yoga teacher who makes their living from teaching yoga in a yoga studio, why am I encouraging you to practice at home? Well because it will help your practice and make you feel great - and I want you to feel great, simple as that! So here I share some advice on ways to start yoga at home. Try it out for a week and see how you feel.
Vagus what? I often mention the vagus nerve in my yoga classes, particularly in my Slow Sunday workshops and Slow Down Yoga weekly class. As stimulating the vagus nerve can help our body to come into its 'relaxation response' and that exactly what we are looking for in these yoga classes and workshops - relaxation, calmness and rest in the body and mind. There's a lot of talk about it from wellness experts and since scientists began discussing its incredible significance, especially pertaining to inner peace and decreasing stress in the nervous system. Lets take a look at how we can trigger the vagus nerve and help our nervous system to calm and rest and help to optimize our health.
Sip on these winter cupfuls and you’ll radiate warmth - perfect right now. A warming and soothing spiced almond milk - great if you I feel a little under the weather, and a deliciously quirky take on a festive favourite. Enjoy, and of course let me know how you get on.
Hygge is not the secret of personal happiness, not is it the only reason the Danes are consistently ranked as one of the world’s happiest nations. But while Hygge may not be a miracle cure for discontentment, it does have a really positive impact on the daily life of the people of Denmark and therefore probably has something to offer the rest of us too. What follows is simply a compilation of hygge inspired things that could add to your store of happiness. They are not authentically Danish, and I cannot promise they will make any difference to your sense of well-being. But as most of them require nothing more than a few small, pleasurable adjustments and a slight shift in thinking, there is little to be lost in giving the ideas a try...
When you are pregnant it's so important to find some time to really connect to yourself, to your heart, to your intuition and to your baby. And to spend some time each day relaxing and just 'being' - enjoying this amazing and special time in your life. Clinical research even shows that taking 15 minutes a day to relax leads to better outcomes from both mum and baby. Read on to discover my FREE online Pregnancy Meditation & Relaxation, for a beautiful way to do this, and have some time for you each day...
The clocks go back this weekend. Good news you’d think, in that we get an extra hour in bed. That might be great news on Monday morning when you effectively had an extra lie in, but the tricky bit starts that evening when you may not feel sleepy at your usual bedtime. By the middle of the week our natural rhythms are likely to be knocked a little out of sync and getting up on time becomes harder to do. It’s a bit like giving ourselves a mini dose of jet lag.
Here are some tips on how to handle the time change without it messing with your sleep patterns...
