I’m not one for New Year's Resolutions, instead, I tune into how I want to feel and the person I want to be, and I use those intentions as stepping stones to guide me towards my aspirations and goals. These are the two most important things to focus on if you want to stick to new habits, achieve your goals, and create the change you wish to see in your life…

Stress is an everyday process your body is designed to flow in and out of, but that doesn’t mean it’s any more pleasant when it does show up! Learning to recognise your body’s unique nudges allows you to consciously (and compassionately) respond to what you’re feeling and rebalance rather than unconsciously reacting to your experience.

This week Big Love Movement turned 3. Three years since we were about to go into lockdown, I decided it would be a fantastic time to get Big Love Movement off the ground. I saw it as a nudge from the Universe and it worked, we’re still here and growing.

This week marks the Spring Equinox, a time of new beginnings and a New Moon. I love this time of year but until recently I had no idea how significant it was to me…

If you want to change how you are feeling; your emotions or the stress cycle you are experiencing whether in trying to fall asleep at night or at any other time of the day you need to change your physiology. The best and simplest way you can do this is by altering how you are breathing because your breath has a direct impact on your nervous system, they are linked.

We unintentionally hold tension in our bodies for a few reasons… For the most part, protecting and guarding happens around the delicate parts that we want to keep safe or away from harm. Think about your heart, lungs, and sexual and reproductive organs; often, this will be apparent in your shoulders and hips (surrounding areas) causing tightness or stiffness.

Creating tension in our body is something we unintentionally, or unconsciously do all the time.

Where you place your awareness is where you place your energy. If you are in pain where are you placing your attention? On your pain.

When you focus on the pain you are feeling, the feeling of pain gets amplified.

This can be exhausting and suddenly your pain is not only physical, it’s emotional too.

Two of the most important things you can do to help yourself create and stick to your intentions and new habits are to reduce your stress levels and get good quality sleep. For some of you, me included this is going to pose a problem because getting a good night’s sleep consistently and feeling less stressed day to day are two of the biggest challenges you might be faced with right now.

How do you want to feel in your body and mind? What ONE change do you want to see or feel in yourself this month? Whatever word you chose to capture how you want to feel or the change you want to see, think about what it will be like to feel or be that way… How would you walk, talk and interact with people? What would you do differently?

Getting crystal clear on what it is you want to feel/be more of this month and why it will benefit you and impact your life creates an empowered intention and something you can connect to more easily, every day.

Are you feeling festive or frazzled? When you are so busy it can be hard to wind down and de-stress because your body is fired up and not able to fully rest and recover. This is where mindfulness can be helpful and has been proven to reduce stress. Mindfulness gives you time to reset and rebalance and helps shift your perspective. Here are three simple ways you can practice mindfulness over the festive period to help you feel calmer and more centred.

It’s the Autumn Equinox, (in the Northern Hemisphere) the time of year when we sense the shift in the seasons, our moods and our lifestyles… It’s when plants and trees are slowing down as sunlight decreases to get ready for the colder season ahead. We too are being called to slow down and turn inward but how we choose to do that nowadays is somewhat confusing in today’s hectic modern world.

"Why is it so difficult to make time for myself?" Does this sound familiar to you? I know it does for me! This sentence has been said to me in many ways, many times over the past few weeks, it's something we all seem to struggle with. I know this feeling all too well, and although nowadays some would call me selfish with my time, my well-being is patting me on the way!

September is when I start to reflect on what I wanted from and for myself this year, it's a time when I renew my intentions and have a deep desire to make these next few weeks and months really count! If you feel the same it’s easy to see how easily you can get caught up in the hustling energy and become impatient. It’s when we allow ourselves to get swept up in the doing that we lose a sense of why we’re doing it in the first place.

When we say, “don't get your hopes up”, it’s almost like we are limiting our own belief in things being better, in things improving or something changing for us. Let's all agree that getting our hopes up is a rising of our vibrational energy. The energy within us is what influences our mood and the way we are in the world. When our vibration is high, we feel more switched on, we feel alive, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to dull that down.

I want to say I didn’t have a plan and that people didn’t call me mad but neither of those things is true. There was definitely a plan and people definitely called me mad, bonkers and brave. On a side note, I think brave is the polite way of saying “You’re mad”, or maybe, “You’re mad but you inspire me anyway”. All I knew was something had to change because I was so stressed.

It’s possibly the thing I love most about nature; the visual reminders that things change and the realisation that nothing natural is meant to stay the same… I often wonder when we let go of the idea that we get to change and be seasonal too?

Does feeling self-conscious mean you resist doing something that you know will do you good?

Feeling self-conscious can be about your mood or how you feel about your body, it might be about how you feel IN your body if you are working with an injury or feeling less mobile in your body. Feeling self-conscious can be about many things and it’s the mix of thoughts in your mind and feelings in your body that makes you want to avoid doing something new.

Self-confidence is an emotion that influences you on all levels because your emotions are a bridge between what you think in your head and how you physically feel in your body. It’s no wonder then that confidence is so interwoven with your wellbeing. Confidence isn’t skin-deep, it’s soul-deep and cultivating more of it is a practice of self-love.

Grounding has become a daily practice and one of the most important things I do to support myself when feeling flustered, anxious or overwhelmed, whether I am worried about an experience or an event in the future it is a simple practice self-care that works by bringing me back into the present and helping to reconnect to my body.

How to find focus and consistency with your health and wellness intentions.
Do you have the best intentions only to lose interest within the first few days or weeks of starting something new? Are you initially enthusiastic about making changes to your lifestyle yet life seems to get in the way, and nothing seems to stick? Have you ever found something you loved yet fallen out of practice? Have you lost your rhythm, or perhaps, never really found it? When it comes to your health and wellbeing we all have the best intentions but how can we keep ourselves focused and consistent?

Your mind is highly intelligent and incredibly creative. You experience over 6,000 thoughts throughout the day paying attention to only a few which are often either the most unhelpful ones or the all-singing, all-dancing ones. We humans like to play to extremes. Notice I said, ‘experience’…
It’s important to consider a mental thought as something you experience, observing your thoughts and being witness to them rather than allowing your negative thinking to run the show!