Understanding the menstrual cycle is one of the most important tools for your health as a cycling woman. The fluctuations in hormones that you experience each month have profound impacts on your physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing. Living in alignment with your menstrual cycle is also a deep spiritual practice which will help you to connect with your self on a deeper level. Understanding the menstrual cycle phases as inner seasons Your menstrual cycle can be broken down into four phases, each with their own energy and personality: Menstrual phase Follicular phase Ovulatory phase P ..read more

One of the questions I get asked the most by women is how can I get my period back? I get it, missing periods can be worrying. Even if you are not trying to get pregnant, irregular menstrual cycles are a sign that something is not quite right with your health. It’s always a good idea to visit your doctor first if your cycles have been missing for 3 months or more. They may carry out an ultra-sound scan or check the levels of hormones in your blood. This will allow them to see if there is any medical condition which could be causing your missing periods. In many cases, missing periods (aka amen ..read more

Most of the clients that I work with in my nutrition and women’s wellness practice come to me because of hormonal imbalances. Sometimes this is obvious, for example a woman who has missing or irregular menstrual cycles. Other times it is less clear, she just knows that something is not quite right and suspects it is hormone related. But what are hormone imbalance symptoms that you should be aware of as a woman? What are hormones? Hormones are chemical messengers which govern many of the processes in your body. They are released from endocrine glands such as the hypothalamus, pituitary and ovar ..read more

Do you think you have a slow metabolism? Maybe you struggle to lose or maintain a healthy weight without extreme diet and exercise? Or you feel constantly tired and sluggish like you are not producing enough energy? If this is the case you might benefit from supporting your metabolism with some simple lifestyle changes. Here are some symptoms of low metabolism to watch out for! Common symptoms of a low metabolism Here are some of the symptoms of a low metabolism that I see most often in my clients: Feeling cold, especially in your hands and feet Basal body temperature below normal Low energy ..read more

PCOS which stands for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is one of the most common hormonal conditions affecting women. It is thought to affect 1 in 10 women in the UK although many do not show any symptoms. Nutrition can play a key role in managing PCOS symptoms. However there are a lot of arguments about what the best diet for PCOS is. In this article I will summarise the current research on nutrition for PCOS. Symptoms of PCOS Some of the most common PCOS symptoms include: Irregular or missing periods Anovulatory cycles Hair loss (male pattern baldness) or thinning Excessive hair growth on the ..read more

This week I went to my first face to face yoga class since finding out I am pregnant. Until now I’ve been practicing yoga at home following a beautiful program for pregnancy by Salina at Kukoon Yoga. I’ve also been using the tools I’m learning in the pre and postnatal yoga teacher training with Bliss Baby Yoga. I am about half way through and enjoying so much! But this week a friend was teaching a flow and restore class here in Athens so I decided to join. Finding a yoga class for pregnancy is ideal but it is safe to go to a regular yoga class if you feel comfortable adapting the practice to y ..read more

Following on from the recent post I shared about how to live the Yamas in pregnancy, today we are looking at the second of the eight limbs: the Niyamas. In pregnancy yoga there is a big focus on movement and breath which are amazing tools to support us during this time. But the yoga practice offers us so much more! Yoga can help us to develop a mindset and lifestyle practice to support ourselves through pregnancy, motherhood and beyond. The Niyamas are the inner attitudes we are encouraged to cultivate as part of a yogic lifestyle. There are five Niyamas: Saucha, Santosha, Tapas, Svadhyaya and ..read more

In a recent post, I shared my experience of the first trimester of pregnancy as a yogi. If you have read that one you will know that I had quite a wild ride with first trimester symptoms. I’m now in the second trimester and thankfully feeling much better! I have more energy to reflect and express my experience and how the practice of prenatal yoga helped me to get through this challenging time. Today I want to focus on the Yamas and how they fit into a prenatal yoga practice. The Yamas are the first of the eight limbs or facets of the yoga practice, as described in the yoga sutras. Yamas are e ..read more

This post is inspired by someone I spoke to yesterday but I’ve been asked similar questions many times before. Often it comes from women in recovery from Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (HA) who are on the journey of recovering their natural menstrual cycles. They have changed their diet, cut back on exercise and gained healthy weight. But still they experience binge eating episodes which impact their physical and mental health. They are left wondering “why am I still binge eating?” when they thought they were doing everything right. “Characteristics of a binge eating episode can include eating much f ..read more

How do you think a yogi experiences the first trimester in pregnancy? Before experiencing pregnancy myself, I thought that having a regular yoga practice and a healthy diet would make that dreaded first trimester easier. I hadn’t thought about it too much really as this pregnancy came as a (welcomed) surprise. I had assumed that I would experience fewer of the many symptoms common in this trimester. Well, how wrong could I be! It turns out that how we will move through the first trimester in pregnancy really is something we can’t predict. It really seems like pot luck as to which, if any, and ..read more