Following the heightened energy and social vibrancy of our Inner Summer, Inner Autumn is about turning inward. Energy begins to wane, and focus becomes more internal and reflective. It is this time our inner truths may surface courtesy of our inner critic, and we are no longer tolerant of what does not serve us. This inner critic can trigger emotions like anxiety, rage, grief, and irritability. I like to rename PMT as Pre-Menstrual Truth!

Those final days waiting for baby to arrive can in some ways be the most challenging. You are on maternity leave and there is nothing else really to do other than wait for labour to begin! It can be hard to know what to do with yourself and how to be. Here are some of my tips I share with clients about managing those final days:

In pregnancy we spend so much time thinking about and planning for the birth and preparing everything the baby might need, but very often we don’t have much in place to care for our own needs once baby is here. We also tend to think about investing in support in pregnancy and birth and buying things for baby but not setting a budget for the help we need for postnatal recovery. Believe me, you are worth investing in and your recovery is important for the welfare of the whole family so it is not being selfish!

Our menstrual cycle is the barometer of our overall wellbeing. If we are struggling with our cycle, it is often showing us that something in our lifestyle is not working for us. We may feel that something is wrong with our cycle and it needs fixing in some way. However, I have noticed that if we try to improve our lifestyle rather than trying to fix the cycle itself, very often the difficult symptoms improve or resolve themselves.

If you are pregnant or ever have been, you will know that very often the first thing people ask you is when is baby due? So ingrained in our culture is the idea of a due date, it may often be one of the first things we do ourselves. Yet we don’t recognise that the very idea of a due date is artificial and that setting one is in fact a medical intervention in itself.

Today for the ‘nth’ time I have heard from medical sources that nature never intended us women to live beyond our fertile years and that therefore menopause is a modern condition that we ‘suffer from’.

I am furious such nonsense is being peddled as the basis for official medical guidance, which tends to see menopause as a condition of deficiency that needs to be fixed by HRT  - ‘to replace what’s been lost’. I’m not against HRT at all when it is an informed choice based on an individual’s specific case history. I’m against women being told their body is inherently unable to manage menopause because nature never meant for us to survive.

Ladies, we are not deficient, we are coming into our power!

Did you know that you can only generate Vitamin from sunlight when your shadow is shorter than your actual height?

This means that even on a sunny days, we are unable to make any vitamin D through sun exposure at our line of latitude in the autumn and winter months.

I was aware that hypermobile people can be attracted to yoga as they often have much more joint flexibility... so, my intention was to learn more about the condition to better care for my students. What I wasn’t prepared for was a big revelation about my own health problems following the birth of my daughter!