Trauma and distress become lodged in the body, so often it is useful to combine physical movement with a talking therapy to support recovery. Yoga is one way to do this, and in the video below Bessell van der Kolk talks about this. When considering taking a yoga class or creating your own practice as … Read more
Often I hear self-care described in terms of what we can do. We can balance work with rest and play. We can care for ourselves through nutrition, exercise, socialising and getting support when things are difficult. Acting to manage life in this way is important, but I believe there are other aspects of self-care not … Read more
This is a video from the School of Life that points to some of the challenges modern life hands us. Whether you agree with what it says or not, it’s worth looking at to get you thinking about your lifestyle and what you believe.
Modern life can often be stressful. If it is stressful over a long period it can lead to fatigue, burnout, health and relationship problems. Without proper self-care, rest, relaxation and time, even the most resilient of us will reach a stage where we fall apart. The most common cause of long term stress is working … Read more
Evidence from research suggests that mindfulness style meditation helps you relate to your thoughts and feelings in a non-judgemental and non-reactive fashion. This can bring you to a place where you are more able to observe how you are in the present moment with compassion, hold emotion better, and be less harshly critical of yourself, … Read more
You can think about the human personality as a number of layers, each folded around early ones, rather like an onion. At the centre are the youngest parts of you, on the outside you older parts. While the skin we present to the world is adult, at our centre we still carry a part of … Read more
I recently took a trip up a road once described as the “most dangerous road in Europe”. It is the road that leads into the mountain region of Tusheti in the Georgian Caucasus. The road is a rough track with many hairpin bends and sheer drops, rising up from the Georgian plains to a pass … Read more
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary … Read more
It’s tempting to look at a new piece of technology, such as Facebook, and think of it as either a ‘good’ thing or a ‘bad’ thing. I’m certainly guilty of trying to decide on those terms, rather than thinking about if and how I want to engage with something new. I think everything has a … Read more
Today I reflected on how much I like to be home. I wonder what ties us to places, lets us feel comfortable there, soothes us and gives us our ground? I don’t think this is a parochial ‘mine is better than yours’ feeling, but rather one of familiarity, as if we vibrated at the same … Read more
