I hope you have all had a great Summer Break over July and August. I suppose the weather wasn’t the best it could have been overall, but at least we had a few bright days among the rainy ones…

Of course, it is September now, and we have our brand-new 2024-2025 year to look forward to, and a brand-new term’s worth of classes to pick up after the Summer Timetable. Not all Face-to-Face Classes are running yet this week however — it is a phased restart due to a couple of reasons beyond our control — please see below to check if your class is back this week.

I am sharing a lovely gentle stretch routine with you today that can be done just sitting on a chair. 

Enjoy — it’s perfect for a Sunday morning, a lunch break, or generally if your body feels tired and stiff.

Always work appropriately for your body, and keep away from pain.

Last week I wrote about the Life Pie and one of the sections was ‘Time Out’. This can be such a powerful section of the Life Pie because it affects almost every other part of the Pie.

If you are a business owner or if you work for yourself it's a really difficult section to keep in balance, because it's difficult to switch off from work when your work drives your life.

This has always been a huge problem for me, and even when I am away from home on holiday I inevitably take my laptop and check in with emails, etc.

One of the things that does help me to switch off from work is doing something I love, and although I love what I do, if I don’t take time out from it I end up in ‘Burn out’ with my energy levels and my performance suffering, then I feel like I am letting people down.

It's very easy to find yourself in this kind of situation, and it’s not necessarily paid work that creates it — it can be anything from caring for a relative, to voluntary work, it can take over life and you may very well love it, but it can start to affect health — then gradually your love for it can turn to resentment.

So when I talk about doing something I love it has to be something completely separate from work. Something that you want to do rather than you need to do, and making it just about you for you.

Once you start to really take ‘time out’ and make it just for you, and you find something that does this for you, you will know if you really love it because time will vanish, and psychologists describe it as encouraging the growth of the rational brain as you become fully immersed in whatever it is you are doing. When this happens it becomes very difficult for the emotional brain to take over and fill the brain with negative thoughts.

When we start to think about this its then simple to see how important proper ‘time out’ is for our health and wellbeing.

It's time to think about what ‘time out’ means for you — something that you want to do, that you can fully immerse yourself in, that is just for you.

Have a great week folks — keep moving, looking and feeling good.

WIth love 
Jane xx