If you feel exasperated with nagging back pain or tight shoulders and neck, this blog is for you. These self-care tips for a healthy back demonstrate simple practices to release tight muscles and strengthen core muscles. While feeling stronger and more flexible on a physical level is a good start, no good back care programme is complete without breath optimisation and relaxation. After all, the mind and body are intrinsically linked, so repetitive and mindless exercises are not sufficient to deal with back pain. If you would like to learn more about back care, read to the end of the blog to find out about my new 5-week back care group class, starting this April.

We are living in difficult and worrying times. As if the global pandemic, the rising cost of living and the environmental threats were not enough, there is now also a shocking war to worry about, quite nearby. The macro situation may come on top of a personal challenge in your life. How can we stay calm and clearheaded when it’s far easier to be agitated and stressed? The ancient yoga philosophy says that inner peace is always within us. Although it can get clouded by fear, anger and worries, our inner peace is always there. Accessing this sanctuary regularly helps us gain mental clarity and emotional balance. There are many yoga tools that can help us reduce overwhelm, fear and stress, but this blog will focus on three yoga shortcuts to find inner peace.

Looking after our neck is never a prime concern until it starts to hurt. I found this out the hard way last year, when I felt tingling going down my arm all the way to my thumb. I now know that prioritising neck care is essential, because alongside the lower back, it bears the full force of wrong postural habits. The neck is a vital passage between the head and the rest of the body: the breath, blood, nerve impulses and nourishment all have to pass through this delicate structure. At the same time, the small cervical vertebrae and muscles have to carry the heavy weight of the head and move efficiently. Let’s have a look at how the neck is structured, what can go wrong, and what we can do to look after it now. 

“40 and falling apart” was the first blog I ever wrote. It claimed that at 40, your body starts telling you what you’ve been doing in your life. Little did I know what 50 was going to bring! At 50, I have to use my yoga practice to support my body, rather than the other way round. Attention to posture has become important, same as upper back and neck care. With this blog, I’d like to give you some tips to be the healthiest version of you. These yoga tips to stay healthy and well will not make you stand on your head or bend like a pretzel. This is yoga for better blood circulation, deeper breathing, better balance and mobility, and less stress. It is yoga that helps you feel more confident and happy. 

Here we are, after almost two years, still immersed in a pandemic. This second time round over Christmas, it may feel a bit harder to find joyful activities, laugh and have fun. Being healthy, and surrounded by family or friends is our greatest blessing. But as we enter our second Christmas with restrictions, let’s focus on finding pleasure in small things. Without concerts, plays, parties, travel and restaurants, these small pleasures give us a different source of joy. They are also simple and fun ways to find focus and calm.

When faced with a health challenge such as back pain, what you do every day counts, and how you start the day is very important. Starting with a morning yoga routine prepares your back in the best possible way for the day ahead. If you think about it, you already have a morning routine: the way you get out of bed, move to the shower and eat your breakfast all involve movements that may or may not benefit your back. This article will walk you through a morning yoga routine for a healthy back. You can do this practice every day to maintain a pain-free, flexible and strong back. These movements are suitable for general lower back stiffness and mild back pain. Doing the movements in coordination with the breath will also soothe the nervous system and set you up for the day with a calmer and more focused mind. 

I can’t really claim that my children are devoted yogis, but they have inevitably had to put up with yoga as a solution for just about everything, such as exam stress (“breathe!”), stress and anxiety (“breathe and connect with your feet!”), core strengthening (“this is a better way to do it”), and back pain… unfortunately also back pain. Over the years I have warned my children about the consequences of slouching until I myself slumped down in desperation. For young people the consequences of bad posture are not immediate, and all their friends slouch or practically lie at their desk… Unfortunately, at some point the chronically rounded spine has had enough, and the consequences are bound to be painful and limiting. My children both have a yoga mat in their student accommodations, not necessarily out of choice. But at least they can practice when their back hurts, or just lie on it. Below I explain the yoga poses my kids are taking back to uni. They are not only useful for students but for anyone who has to sit for many hours.

You may have heard that yoga is good for your back. After all, it releases tight muscles, improves flexibility and is excellent for stress relief. Every time you try a class, however, your back seems to hurt even more. Before you decide that yoga is simply not for you, please read on. Yoga can be beneficial for back pain, but this blog will discuss four reasons why a general yoga class can make your back pain worse. It will also explain why yoga therapy is a better option if you have back pain. With yoga therapy, you learn how to relieve your particular back pain, and this empowers you to feel happier, stronger and more confident.

Whether you are suffering from knee pain, back pain or hip tightness, tight leg muscles are often part of the problem. This blog focuses on the importance of stretching leg muscles to relieve lower back pain, but this kind of stretching is equally important if you don’t have back pain. I will demonstrate the easiest positions to stretch various leg muscles and also explain how to do this efficiently. Depending on the position and the method, your stretching efforts will be effective or have no impact at all.

It usually comes unexpected, although you probably had a small voice in the back of your mind warning that you should not lift that weight, or that three hours driving non-stop is really too long… But you did it anyway, and your back ‘seized up’. When you strain your lower back, part of the healing will just involve time. However, there are several things that can speed up the recovery. In this blog I discuss how to heal more quickly when you’ve hurt your lower back.