As I lay here in bed, on my day home sick, I find myself pondering - what is health? I think people would often define health as something like, the absence of illness or disease. But I disagree. I tend to consider health as the ability to fight illness, the ability to survive and thrive even with a disease. This can be applied to multiple aspects of life: physical, mental, emotional, even spiritual, relationships, and financial. Nothing functions at 100% all the time, but it is the ability to roll with the punches, to appreciate the good times, and fight through the bad times that constitutes health. Health is not a stagnant state, I see it more like a wave.

Look for progress, not perfection.

I tell my clients this a lot, and I can imagine some of them don’t want to hear it. These days, we are designed to look for a quick fix, a pill to take away any pain or suffering. Of course, no one wants to suffer. We all want a quick result, to feel better faster, now - but the reality of it is that change takes time. Just as it may take a long time for issues to develop, they may also take a long time to resolve; and sometimes they won’t fully resolve, and we need to learn to manage them.

In our daily lives, we often accumulate heavy burdens without proper tools to manage them. However, breathwork offers a powerful solution to release fears, hard emotions and beliefs that hold us back. This blog post explores the transformative benefits of breathwork, from handling stress and trauma to finding direction and embracing joy

When people ask me what I do, and I say the word “osteopathy” it usually requires a few minutes of explanation around “what is osteopathy”? People often reply something like “osteo… that works with bones, right?”, and although they are not wrong, it is far from a complete description. Osteopathy considers the body as a whole, which means its parts and pieces, as well as their functions. These pieces are looked at on their own, and in unity with their neighbouring parts, and the body as a whole.

Heart rate variability, or HRV, has become a big buzz word over the past few years, but what IS it exactly? And why does it matter to you? Simply put, HRV is the variability between each successive heartbeat. Our hearts should not beat like a metronome but in fact, should be able to speed up and slow down according to the body’s physiological needs. When we ask our bodies to do something physical, like climbing stairs or shovelling snow, our heart must work harder to pump oxygen-rich blood to areas that require it. Even concentrated mental tasks require more energy.

Breathing affects your whole body, and in some ways, your whole body can affect your breathing. Making efforts to slightly slow our breath, to expand the ribcage, or stabilize the core and open our airways can tell our body that we are safe.