How we eat and nourish ourselves has a marked effect on how we react to the world around us. When we are at the whim of blood sugar highs and lows, we can tend to lurch towards fear-based stress responses more quickly.
What we drink also has a profound effect on our nervous system and reactions. Our most important drink is water and dehydration can trigger anxiety. This happens as hormones are unable to reach their destined locations because of poor blood flow. Water loss can cause muscles may tense up and our brains may experience weakness or changes as a result of water loss. Panic attacks can become more likely as dehydration is linked to some of the triggers; light-headedness, muscle fatigue and weakness, headaches, feeling faint and increased heart rate.
In this blog we explore how best to hydrate and ways that can also provide extra help for soothing and calming the nervous system to quieten tendencies for overwhelm, fear, worry, anxiety and the...
Sometimes only a sweet fix will do and we need to honour and go with that! A health-giving form that incorporates digestive-supporting elements allows us to enjoy that soothing guilt-free, relieving any extra internally generated stress. In this gorgeous smoothie, the sweetness is from bananas that provide potassium for nervous system regulation and tryptophan for brain-happy serotonin production.
This smoothie can make a great breakfast if you struggle to eat first thing, but need help regulating your energy and sugar cravings up to lunch.
The ingredients support our body-mind health in a variety of ways, including these which support female hormone health and as you'll see, also link into how body system work together continually:
bananas - soluble fibre (inulin) keeps bowel movements regular, very important for balancing hormones/ the amino acid tryptophan makes serotonin for mood, appetite and sugar craving regulation/ potassium helps regulate body fluids and calm the...
This blog accompanies the Whole Health programme 30 Days of Meditation - click here for more details and to sign up
The audio at the top of this blog is the 15 minute meditation from Leonie Taylor on Day 5 of that programme: Following the Breath to support the content below.
Mindfulness of Breathing
Mindfulness is the dedicated practice of experiencing the present moment; as it is, without interpretation or judgement.
Mindfulness is used regularly as a route into meditation as starting with present moment experience helps us move away from impressions and projections we bring from the mind and past associations. As our breath is a constant, rhythmic presence in our lives, it provides us with both a cycle to follow and a guide to the state of our nervous system at any given time. Conscious attention on the breath, and particularly the soothing exhalation when stress speeds up our whole system, can also help bring us down from...
This blog accompanies the Whole Health programme 30 Days of Meditation - click here for more details and to sign up
The audio at the top of this blog is the 15 minute meditation from Day 1 of that programme: What is Mindful Attention? This question enquiring into mindful attention is to notice the quality and nuance of our experience in any given moment, without judgement. This is a the essence of any aspect of yoga and other meditative arts. The meditation that accompanies this blog can help foster presence in a still practice, but also feed into awareness in movement, action and relationship with others.
Below we explore ways of meditating (not just sitting!) - also explored in the blog Meditation Positions - but first some let's look at how we can weave still and moving practices into our lives for awareness of the whole human spectrum of experience.
Meditation and yoga postures
Meditation is part of the eight-limbed path of yoga...
This blog accompanies the Whole Health programme 30 Days of Meditation - see here for more details and to sign up
Meditation is not just about sitting
Images of meditation are widespread, often giving the impression that simply sitting serenely is what it's all about.. but meditation is steady, focused, mindful attention - as explored in Whole Heath - and this can be explored in many positions; it is finding ease, comfort and a place where awareness can be cultivated that is the guide for where you need to be at any time.
Although most meditation images are seated, if you don’t often sit cross-legged, this can initially create more tension in the neck, shoulders, chest, back or hips and dominate the experience. It is better to be fully supported in a way that allows the whole body to rest and the chest to open easily or you can feel like you are swimming upstream rather than flowing with the river. There are enough undercurrents to meet without...
Reducing too much reliance on grains in our diets can help us turn to alternatives that provide less potential for agitating inflammation and more brain soothing healthy fats, like coconut flour and almond butter. These muffins are a great snack or breakfast-on-the go option, where the protein and dense nutrition in the eggs and nuts works alongside the cinnamon for blood-sugar balancing.
As a sweet treat, they satisfy without setting off future cravings. There is no sugar added and if they don’t taste as sweet as you’re used to (or want!), bear with it – our taste buds change their expectations within a few days and this can also help us turn to less sweet foods as self-medication.
Serves 12
Prep time: 5-10 minutes
COOKING TIME 20-25 minutes
INGREDIENTS
4 medium bananas (adjust amount depending on size of bananas)
4 eggs
2 tbsp coconut oil
½ cup/125g almond butter
½ cup/65g coconut flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
½ - 1 tsp...
The podcast above supports the information below, and you can scroll down for the Kind Resilience meditation.
To best get an idea of resilience means, consider the following question; when something challenging happens, how well do you recover?
Resilience is the how well we bounce back after adversity. Life will always present us with joys and sorrows and we need to feel one to be able to experience the other in a fully-rounded emotional spectrum. Resilient people have the ability to meet change and difficulty as opportunities for self-reflection, learning and understanding how the circumstances or events may be part of their growth and self-development.
Resilience is not something we are simply born with or not, but a skill that can be learnt and cultivated. Our brains have an innate capacity for rewiring according to habit (neuroplasticity) and resilience is part of a learning new attitudes from perceiving challenge as failure or catastrophic, to being able to...
Coriander is known for its ability to eliminate toxic metals such as mercury and the garlic and onions contain detoxifying sulphur, a mineral that we need in great amounts to eliminate toxins and wastes from the liver, as well as all cells individually. Citrus and olive oil also have plenty of liver-supporting components and this salsa can be used to pep up salads to eat plenty of greens and soluble fibre for moving out toxins.
Serves 6-8
Prep time 10-20 minutes (plus a couple of hours to let the flavours marry)
INGREDIENTS
4 large tomatoes (or if available a mix of large tomatoes and cherry or plum tomatoes in a variety of colours)
25g/1oz. bunch coriander leaf (cilantro)
1 small red onion
1-2 green chillies
½-1 small garlic clove
Zest of ½ lime
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp salt
1-2 tbsp. olive oil
METHOD
- Finely dice onion, chillies (deseeded) and garlic (mince/finely grate this if possible) and add to a bowl with the lime and salt. This will ‘cook’...
Many of us know when we’re started to feel the effects of stress – we can ‘feel it in our gut’. Like many cop shows where the lead detective gets her or his ‘hunch’ from these gut feelings, we are continually responding to the continual ebb and flow of input from deep in our belly. Exploring how we tune in to these messages is the basis for the mind-body connection at the heart of yoga and how we can navigate the noise of the modern world without ‘losing our heads’.
Gut feelings are always there for us to access and if connected, listen and respond to, but it is an endemic part of our modern ‘thinking over feeling’ culture to often push down, ignore or dismiss those voices from below. This is where we respond from our conditioning, from what the primal branches of our nervous has deemed safe or unsafe from the ages before around seven years old, when all experience is processed literally and unconsciously. Before we learn...
Beetroot (beets if you are Stateside!) are a stalwart of liver support, as they contain the highest amount of a substance TMG (tri-methyl glycine) that is crucial for detoxification and other conversion processes that take place in the liver. The kick of horseradish belies the substances that it contains that help the liver heal and regenerate. It contains significant amounts of cancer-fighting compounds called glucosinolates, which increase the liver's ability to detoxify carcinogens; substances that prompt our production of cancer cells.
Having this dip to hand a few times a week can support all liver processes, including metabolism and blood sugar balance.
Cooking time: 1 hour (although you can opt to buy pre-cooked beetroot if you would like to make a quick dip)
Prep time: 10-15 minutes
(serves 4-6)
INGREDIENTS
4 beetroots (approx. 250g/8oz.)
10-15g/ ½ oz. fresh rosemary
50ml balsamic vinegar
1-2 tbsp. olive oil
½ tsp salt
2-3 tsp fresh grated horseradish (if unavailable...
Mindful and Embodied Exercise for Soothing Anxiety
The modern world has us stuck up in our heads, with the result of losing the body awareness that we need to register a sense of presence and safety. Learning how to release self-protective holding patterns in the body can help unravel both the physical and mental tension that can create anxiety.
Many therapies that address the mind and mental health are now recognising the need to bring embodied awareness or embodiment into practices; recognising that we can only fully come to relaxation states when we have a sense of where our body is in the here and now. A recent study into CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) – the most widely accepted treatment for anxiety, panic attacks, depression, eating disorders and other mental health issues – put forward that “integrated embodiment approach with CBT enhances outcomes across a wide range of emotional disorders”, recognising the limitations of a process that only...
We explore how we’re hard-wired for craving – from sugar to screens – but can develop practical tools to consciously override this primal stress-induced reactivity and find other ways of self-soothing.
Desire and aversion
From the moment we are born, we seek what gives us pleasure - it is deep within our primal make-up to desire and to use this as motivation to seek and obtain what we need. As babies, reaching to suckle provides the impetus to self-coordinate and move to find nourishment – and our first reward for such behaviour, the sweetness of milk, sets up associations that we take through life.
As we grow, quick-fix foods are often wired into our neural networks as this comfort or reward, so deeply sown into the wiring and internal drives of what soothes us. These might replicate this first sweet taste, or we can shift towards other substances (or behaviours) that complete such loops – bringing us back down to relief when we feel...
