It was 1999 and I was studying sports medicine in the US. One fine morning my alarm went off and I found that I could not get out of bed. I had absolutely no strength in my abdominal muscles to raise myself into sitting position. I looked into the mirror and I had purple rashes […]

Having seen skeletons and spider webs hanging in front gardens and children dressed up as scary witches and devils, Halloween brings a sense of spookiness around and taps into one of our primal feelings – fear. It seems to be everywhere I look. I open my email and I receive message about spyware programs, I […]

As I mentioned in my last newsletter- Breath is THE most important tool for healing and cikitsa (therapy). The breath that we start to work with first is the Out-Breath. The out-breath on a physiological level activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for our body to become calm. It also releases the unwanted […]

Breath is THE most important tool for healing and cikitsa (therapy). Yoga is a a practice of involving not only the body but also the mind. This link is the BREATH. T.K.V Desikachar says Breath is the intelligence of the body and becomes our tool for prevention of many different ailments in many different ways. […]

Robert M. Sapolsky in his book entitled ‘Why don’t Zebras get Ulcers?’ explains, “if you are a Zebra running for your life, or the lion sprinting for your meal, your body’s physiological response mechanisms are superbly adapted for dealing with such short term physical emergencies. For the vast majority of beasts on this planet, stress […]

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake.” Jon Kabat-Zinn In my last blog I spoke about being mindful, and I stated, “mindfulness cannot be fully explained in words, as it needs to be experienced to be known.” Even the quotation above does […]

The last two weeks have been pretty tough as my girls are on school holidays but my work needed to continue, sending newsletters and seeing patients. Finding time to perform my daily yoga practice at home was proving to be nearly impossible. I sensed a loss of control over my situation, leading to stress and […]

Ever heard the phrase “the calm before the storm”? I believe we often find ourselves in the storm before the calm! And it’s largely down to stress. In the past we’ve utilised the natural mammalian mechanism which allows us to act fast by releasing a stress hormone. It’s called the fight-or-flight response and is a […]

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein (Nobel laureate, 1921) Albert Einstein, the theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, strove to find answers to some of life’s most fundamental questions, and to do so he had to open his […]

What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps? The answer is … a river! (From JRR Tolkien’s, ‘The Hobbit’) But was does a river have to do with happiness? It’s all about flow. Despite the twists and turns of […]