A Mindful Month

January, a new start. Welcome to the new year.

If you’ve read my blogs before, you know that I am not one for new years resolutions. Why add more pressure to your life?

Instead I like to think of intentions. Intentions feel more gentle, they offer less chance for failure if we don’t ‘stick’ to them like resolutions. Intentions are a way to offer some direction, but with space for curiosity and time to explore the journey we we make our way towards them.

This year I’ve created a ‘Mindful Month’ to start the year. A little prompt for each day to find a mindful moment to re-connect to yourself, to take a pause, to do something that brings you some joy and as a result will bring you into the present moment. More happiness, less stress.

Read the blog here and access your free download to stick on your fridge…

Yoga and Wellbeing, Yoga PracticeSarah CloverJanuary 1, 2024yoga tips, mental health, top tips

A gentle welcome to the new year

Welcome to 2023! I'm looking forward to the year ahead with its seasonal rhythms, annual events and of course the unknowns, how will this year unfold?

A quick new year post for you where I share Michael James Wong's beautiful 'A Travelling Prayer' to inspire a gentle and mindful start to the new year.

Yoga and Wellbeing, Yoga PracticeSarah CloverJanuary 13, 2023yoga quotes, mental health, yoga practice

Senbazuru - learn to fold a paper crane

Senbazuru - learn the Japanese tradition of mindfully folding paper cranes.

Folding a paper crane is said to bring peace, hope, healing and happiness. The practice of folding a crane brings mindfulness and pleasure through creating a little bit of time in the present moment.

Find out about Michael James Wong’s beautiful book about the tradition, and learn step by step how to fold your own paper crane and bring some mindfulness to your day in this blog post.

Yoga and Wellbeing, Yoga PracticeSarah CloverDecember 13, 2022Meditation, mental health, yoga practice

Patience and Cowrie Shells

Ever since I can remember I have spent time on the beach looking for shells, pebbles, sea glass and treasures. It was a holiday ritual with my family every summer when we visited the Moray coast in Scotland, many happy hours were spent marvelling at what the tide brings in.

One of the little shells I look for is the European Cowrie, or in Northern Scotland the 'Groatie Buckie.' The process of gentle and mindful searching for these little shells brings peace and calm.

In my latest blog, find out how beach combing is yoga practice, and the significance of the cowrie shell world wide.

Meditation, Yoga and Wellbeing, Yoga PracticeSarah CloverNovember 10, 2022Meditation, mental health, yoga practice

50 Ways to Meditate

I've recently started to swim a couple of times a week. I've always loved swimming, but never made it a regular hobby. I took my boys to baby swimming classes from about 6 months old as I know how important it is as a life saving skill, and also how much fun children (and adults!) have splashing around, jumping in and generally mucking about in the water once they are competent swimmers.

But there's something else that I notice when I swim, it's a quietness, a focus and an ease. When I swim it takes me to that quiet space of being that happens in meditation or deep relaxation. My mind quietens and I can just be with the action of 'swimming', of being in the present moment.

In this blog I talk about how we can use the hobbies and activities we lobe to drop into meditation, we can all do it, find out how…

How to begin Postnatal Exercise

Your pregnancy and birth may have been pretty smooth sailing and you want to begin to explore your new postnatal body and how to find your way back to fitness. Your pregnancy and birth may have been hugely challenging physically and mentally and you don't feel very much like you any more, or really connected to your body. Or you may be somewhere between the two. The important thing is to be where you are right now and start there.

Postnatal fitness classes are a good way to meet other parents and do something for you now that life seems to be all about baby.

Find out more about how postnatal yoga can help you and how to choose the best postnatal exercise for you.

Emerging

Our way of emerging from Covid restrictions is all so dependent on our individual circumstances, how Covid has affected our working and family lives and our daily activities over the past 18 months. Our health and mental well-being has been tested sometimes to extremes.

For me personally, I've taken a slow and steady approach to the lifting of restrictions in July and August. We've seen family, finally had grandparents staying over again and met a few friends. We've been to a few events, camping, to a family wedding and more recently on holiday to our family cottage in Scotland. I'll be honest the amount of people at a few events and places was a little overwhelming at first, even outside. But I'm slowly getting used to being closer to more people I don't know.

In this blog post, I talk about what I've been doing these past few weeks, how I'm preparing for classes from September and what you can expect to find if you join us this September as I ensure that our yoga community feels safe and comfortable in class as we move forwards together, enjoy reconnecting to our weekly yoga class and minimise the risk of spreading infection as best we can.

Yoga and WellbeingSarah CloverAugust 30, 2021mental health, yoga class

My Meditation Journey

Today, 22nd May , is World Meditation Day. I wanted to share with you my meditation journey, how meditation is simple and effective and maybe inspire you to try it!

15 years ago in a California yoga studio, a shift in my yoga practice happened. One day on the mat I experienced a deep resonance as I moved in a sun salutation, like I had become one with the movement and the space around me. It felt amazing and I realised that yoga was not just a physical movement experience.

As I journeyed through my practice, widened my knowledge and trained to teach yoga I came to realise that what I had experienced in that California yoga studio was a meditative state through movement.

Meditation was something I was intrigued by, had sat and done guided by teachers and using recordings. But I didn't really understand what meditation was supposed to feel like, where it was supposed to take me or if I was doing it right. Recordings were lovely and relaxing, but there must be more to it than just following them and feeling rested. I wanted to really know how to meditate.

Four years ago I joined a meditation teacher training with Mick Timpson at Beanddo, Manchester. I didn't plan to teach meditation, just deepen my understanding of it. The accessible meditation tools I learned underpin every meditation I do, and actually everything I do in daily life. Read on to find out more about my meditation journey, why I teach meditation and how meditation might help you too.

Pause

In yoga and meditation, we learn various techniques and tools to help calm the body and the mind, to re-balance, to find ease and to find 'a pause'.

These last few weeks have in many ways been 'a pause' for all of us. Whether our daily lives and activities have changed a little, a lot, or perhaps not at all. We have all been given an opportunity to stop and reflect. This in itself is a practice of yoga.

Waiting

"Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.” Ekhart Tolle

We all find ourselves waiting. Waiting for this phase in human history to be over, for the solution, for the answer. When we project ourselves forward into a future we cannot know, we are missing what is happening NOW.

So how do we get to the now?

Occasional Thoughts Blog

07977093373• sarah@breathingspace-yoga.com