Reframing Lent

March Seeking inspiration for this post, sunshine, snowdrops, daffodils and blue tits inspecting the bird box in my garden all turned my thoughts to Spring and new starts and my spirits soared.  Then I remembered Lent with its fasting, suffering and penitence and wham, my mood dropped like a portcullis.  “Why do I have this

What is love?

February In 1392 the poet Chaucher linked St Valentine’s day to romantic love by declaring it to be the day birds chose their mate. Things have snowballed somewhat since then with an estimated £1.9 billion spent in 2016 expressing love on this single day in the form of flowers, confectionary, cards and so on. Is

Make New Year Resolutions stick

December / January How to avoid being one of the 66% of adults who break New Year resolutions within one month or less.    Attach pleasure to the new habit, pain to the old:  Humans seek pleasure and avoid pain (Freud, Tony Robbins, many others).  As you pull on your gym kit, if you are

If “sitting is the new smoking”…

November If “sitting is the new smoking” what can we do if our work requires it and the sofa beckons during long Winter evenings? Dr. James Levine coined this phrase having spent 30 years studying the harmful effects of too much sitting.  Articles in The Lancet in 2012 and this year show physical inactivity is

It’s not just the cold making us blue

October The loss of the light evenings limits many happiness inducing outdoor activities to weekends. Once the clocks go back on the 30th it is dark by 4.36pm triggering our brains to make us sleepy and ready for bed when most of us work till 17:30 or later. Less exposure to sunshine lowers vitamin D

Misophonia

A client came to me recently who had misophonia.  I did not have any experience of working with misophonia so did some research to find out where there was some expertise, where I could suggest this client go for support. I put this sheet of suggestions for what to do together for them and wondered if it