January is always a tough month. Even though the darkest day was almost a month ago, the cozy celebrations of yule and Christmas are now as flat as the new year resolutions. As I write this, we aren’t even halfway through January and I’m finding this month to be challenging in many ways. Firstly, I must resolve my guilt of wishing time to pass quicker as I know life is short and each day should be enjoyed but, also, I am really struggling with the darkness and cold at this point in the calendar. My go-to remedies for such times are falling short. Normally drawing up a couple of weekly timetables to present myself with a ‘you are here’ map of the time-space continuum is enough to pacify my impatience, but this only reminds me that we aren’t even at the half way point yet! I’m lucky too, I don’t have to wait until the end of the month to pay myself. I can do payday any time I choose (although I am so indoctrinated into corporate culture that I still wait for the last Friday of the month

On a dark and rainy Halloween night I recently rewatched one of my favourite films, Passengers. I have seen it a couple of times before and wanted to watch something I didn’t mind being interrupted by the trick-or-treaters. The story is of two beautiful young things full of hope and aspirations as they embark on a journey to a new life on a new planet. Awoken from stasis too soon and, knowing they will never reach their destination, they eventually find comfort and a new story in each other. Then it hit me. The true meaning of the film. I couldn’t believe I had missed something so spiritually significant for so long! Of course the film isn’t about Jennifer Lawrence’s fabulous swimsuit or Chris Pratts brooding brown eyes, it’s about enjoying our journey instead of focusing on our destination. Initially, our main character Aurora is furious that she will never reach her chosen destination and author her own life story, an emotion we can relate to whenever life, fate or the universes poli

I’ll get real with you all. I get overwhelmed really easily. I run my own business doing what is probably too many things from Yin yoga and Thai Foot Massage to Vinyasa flow and Deep Tissue Massage. I travel around for yoga classes, manage my own bookings, run my own website and do my own marketing. I wouldn’t have it any other way and know how lucky I am to have the privileges that self-employment brings but I often catch myself trying to be all things to all people and that’s when I fall off the tightrope. I know from speaking to many of you that I’m not the only one to feel this way and women especially can feel the burden of extra-curricular tasks. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any guaranteed solutions for you, but I do have a few ways of dealing with the suffocating paralysis that comes with this type of anxiety. Some may work and some may not. 1 - Breathing with feet on the ground. This is a short-term anchor but worth a try. Really check in with your feet. How do they feel?

You may have read that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something but where did this number come from and is it true? An original investigation studied violin students to find out how some became good while others became great. The study concluded that the best violinists knew how to rest and recuperate between shorter practice sessions instead of ploughing on through to clock as many hours of practice as possible. The famous 10,000 hours is often attributed to Malcolm Gladwell who built on this original study and deduced, after studying many different experts, that 10,000 hours was the golden number to become an expert. Collective society seem to like this. It speaks to our modern timeframe oriented culture where we are more interested in the result than the journey towards that result. Modern humans wear stress like a badge of honour so it’s understandable why a nice and tidy 10,000 hours has become a modern tick list exercise. Unfortunately, the most important aspect of

Have you ever felt a little bit different to the rest of the world? Maybe a little bit more sensitive? Like you need a bit more time to process and ground yourself before moving on to the next thing? I identify as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), a term coined by Elaine Aron to describe the 20% of almost all species on Earth that are born with a more sensitive nervous system. Its genetic, it’s the way we were made and I’m sure there are more of us out there too wondering why the treadmill is a little too fast for the life we want to live. Music and movies often have a deep effect on me. I’m still recovering from seeing Flow (a highly recommended Oscar winning animation film) a few months ago and my mum often tells the story of the time she took me to see Bambi as a toddler and I was the only kid still crying at the end of the film because Bambi’s mother died in the first frame (to be fair, why does Disney always need to kill a parent?). I have trouble watching the news because it’s all

I read the most fascinating article a few months ago. It detailed a family of orangutans living in Indonesia. The orangutans were going about their daily lives when the conservationists observing them realised that one of the members, an older male was eating something different from the rest of the group. The male orangutan was taking the plant, chewing it and applying it to a wound on his cheek. The plant was known by locals to be medicinal and antibacterial and was obviously known as such by the orangutan population too because this guy was using the plant to heal a large wound on his cheek. As humans, we seem to have lost so much of this innate intelligence. We no longer tune into what our body knows is good or bad. We ask expensive devices if we have had enough sleep or track if we are hydrated enough on apps owned by unethical billionaires. A slimming club leaflet might tell us if we are ‘allowed’ to eat something or not. My aromatherapy tutor recently told me of a study on essen