We all know instinctively that nature does something good to our souls. After all – we’re animals: we are nature. But being the clever monkeys that we are, we realised at some point a few thousand years ago that building walls around ourselves kept us pleasantly distanced from things like sharp-toothed animals and weather. AndContinue reading “The ‘be outside more’ challenge – 7 different tasks to do in nature and how it could make your life better”
Tag Archives: mental health
5 activities to improve your wellbeing during coronavirus lock-down
There’s nothing more annoying than some self-professed wellbeing expert telling you how to live your life in the middle of a government-enforced lock-down. Especially when it’s threatening your livelihood and riddling you with anxious visions of a summer spent in a darkened room spooning jam into your mouth under your face-mask because all those peopleContinue reading “5 activities to improve your wellbeing during coronavirus lock-down”
Don’t just do something, sit there: Using pandemic lock-down to make peace with doing absolutely nothing
Before I flew to Costa Rica to study yoga, before COVID-19 frightened the world into lock-down and everyone suddenly became oddly possessive of toiletries, I visited my favourite book shop (Much Ado Books in Alfriston) and collected a little selection of second-hand titles to take home in return for a donation of peanut butter andContinue reading “Don’t just do something, sit there: Using pandemic lock-down to make peace with doing absolutely nothing”
Losing my identity in the jungle
I feel like I’ve been here in Costa Rica for months. In reality it’s only been 5.5 days, and only four of them have been at yoga school, which is where I am now, by a beautiful brook in the jungle inhabited by iguanas, geckos, dragonflies, monkeys, sloths and about a bazillion unseen noisy littleContinue reading “Losing my identity in the jungle”
Make friends with inanimate objects, and 5 other ways to beat loneliness
Do you ever feel lonely? Before you curl up in a ball of despair thinking that you’re just a terrible/boring/strange person that no-one will ever want to spend time with, consider the following: 1. Make friends with inanimate objects Who said friends have to be human beings? Who said they have to be alive atContinue reading “Make friends with inanimate objects, and 5 other ways to beat loneliness”
Some Very Clever People have found that yoga actually changes your brain (in a good way)
If you like yoga you probably know that it makes you feel good. But did you know that certain parts of your brain (responsible for memory, decision making and emotions) actually start to measurably grow within 10 weeks of starting a twice-weekly yoga practise? A few months ago a bunch of Very Clever People fromContinue reading “Some Very Clever People have found that yoga actually changes your brain (in a good way)”
We’re all really bad at breathing and it’s probably making us crazy
A few years ago I was walking home from work (along the beach at sunset, in summer – it was really beautiful) and I started feeling like I was going to die imminently. I felt strangely light – no mean feat for me at nearly six feet tall, and my body suddenly felt very…otherly. ItContinue reading “We’re all really bad at breathing and it’s probably making us crazy”
10 real fears I have about becoming a yoga teacher
I’m not a particularly anxious person but I’m also not as chilled out about life as I’d like to be. Doing anything new is a bit scary because there are so many unknowns, and that’s when your mind (the little bitch) starts to fill in the gaps with terrible possibilities. If you’re in the sameContinue reading “10 real fears I have about becoming a yoga teacher”
22 small joys in life
Sometimes on my drive to work in the mornings, I gaze out of the car window (usually the front one) at passing fields and wish I was a horse. Horses spend a lot of time in the countryside eating. They’re occasionally ridden. They have nice hair. But then the very fact that I am ableContinue reading “22 small joys in life”
Mindfulness: what is it and is it good, or is it a load of bollocks?
Mindfulness definitely sounds like a load of bollocks. It’s the sort of word that sounds like it was made up by an American women’s magazine columnist in an article about how she went to find herself at a yoga retreat up a mountain in Goa. Surprisingly, this is not the case. The word mindfulness wasContinue reading “Mindfulness: what is it and is it good, or is it a load of bollocks?”
