It is my belief that there are three pillars to good health and wellbeing
How we eat | How we breathe | How we move
Amazing as they are, our bodies are not just chemical factories that process all foods to the same life-support stuff. Different foods provide the raw material for energy and body structure, and a host of micronutrients support the intricately balanced workings of our myriad internal systems including our immune system, hormones, nervous system, digestion and waste management.
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It’s a beautiful system, but modern lifestyle factors and events outside our control can disrupt the balance of these systems, leading to poor health and disease. For example, what we might dismiss as aging may sometimes be the result a long-time accumulation of imbalances that become more noticeable over time, but which can still be rectified.
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How (and what) we eat may be a major part of this. We are all unique of course. Some people fare best on a diet that would not be optimal for someone else, and different people constitutionally have different “weak points” – predispositions to imbalance in particular organs or systems – and consequently different nutritional needs.
How we breathe can have a surprising impact on our wellbeing. Poor breathing patterns can affect vitality and stress levels, cause bad breath and even make us more susceptible to respiratory infections.
How we move affects not just our athletic fitness, but our state of mind, the ability of our bodies to eliminate waste material and toxins and, over time, helps us to maintain stability and mobility as we move into later life.
ABOUT ME
I can pinpoint the beginnings of my interest in wellbeing to when I was 17, and I picked up a book about meditation at the Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong.
I practiced T’ai Chi and Qi Gong for over a decade in my 20s and 30s, and after a diagnosis of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis in my early 40s, took up yoga primarily as a way to support my breathing musculature. After a year or two I took my first yoga teacher training, and am now an advanced yoga teacher with 500 hours of teacher training.
For many years I worked as a computer software engineer but during the COVID epidemic I started to formally study nutritional therapy and am now a fully qualified Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist.
Although I do not offer it as a service, I am qualified in Thai Yoga Massage.
I enjoy rock climbing, flying trapeze and learning static aerial skills, and try to walk every day among the Stroud hills and valleys.