​"I can't even touch my toes" is something I hear often in regards to people's complaints about their flexibility or lack thereof. It would surprise most people to know that the ability to touch your toes is a sign of hypermobility or of too much mobility. It's a part of the beighton score which is used as a diagnostic tool for hypermobility. Too much mobility may not be a good thing despite it being held in such high regard particularly in yoga circles and this ability appears to get you lots of likes and followers on Instagram. People with hypermobility tend to flock to yoga classes because they are "good at it." Meaning they have the flexibility to contortion their bodies into pretzel like shapes with ease and grace. The truth is people with hypermobility don't need the stretching component or the extreme end ranges of motion that many "advanced" yoga postures require and over the long term can be doing more damage to their body than good. People with hypermobility generally have poor proprioception which is the ability to sense where your body is in space, in order to sense and get sensory feedback they have to take their joints into excessive ranges of motion where they are stretching into already lax ligaments. Lax ligaments are not a good thing they keep you connected to parts you want to stay connected to and once they are lax there's no going back. The good news is we don't need to be able to touch our feet with our hands there are other more functional ways to pick things up off the ground by bending your knees and squatting and strengthening the posterior chain of your body while you are at it. If you do have the signs of hypermobility I wouldn't recommend taking your joints to passive and excessive end ranges of motion and I would highly recommend to build in strengthening and stability work to stabilise and strengthen the supporting structures.

​Encouraging and inviting people to tap into their natural, innate freedom of their breath is one of my favourite parts of my work. Whether it's through bodywork or via movement and self massage to release restrictions surrounding the ribs there's a palpable difference in the way a person moves and feels, their eyes soften and light up and their face softens and glows it's like tapping into a magic stream. I prefer to use Tom Myers term of a rib basket as opposed to a rib cage although when we have soft tissue restrictions around the ribs and in the primary and accessory breathing muscles the ribs very much feel like they are cages clamped down without the ability to move and expand in many directions. So why do the ribs get clamped down? There are often many reasons but some of the main ones are ongoing stress and anxiety, where we develop muscle tension and changes in breath rhythm, if we don't have the opportunity or ability to discharge it can often accumulate over time, if you are an athlete and have a major focus on stabilising the spine without any mobilisation work, asthma or any other respiratory disorders and simply a lack of micro and global movements in this area as there are often postural distortions from modern life that impacts the rib cage positioning, the muscles surrounding it and our breathing capacity. So what can we do about it? It depends on the cause of your restriction but for most people we can all benefit from finding a way of unwinding stress, whether that's dancing, practicing a deep form of relaxation such as yoga nidra or restorative yoga, walking, exercise, a way of discharging the accumulation of stress from your tissues. Everyone could also benefit from mobilising work in this area especially if you are an athlete, the upper back by design has less mobility than the lower back or the neck because of the attachments of the ribs, that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't work to enhance the movement that's available there in fact I've found that enhancing and refining mobility in the upper spine helps shoulder, neck and low back issues. If receiving bodywork isn't an option for you, then using balls, blocks or blankets to enhance the movement of each segment of the spine is a good option, alongside undulating spinal movements.

​I live my life in stretchy, comfortable clothes predominantly in leggings or yoga pants. On the rare occasion that I get "dressed up" in skinny jeans or other non stretchy clothing it makes me realise how restrictive general clothing is to movement and breathing. Most work clothes and general day to day clothing and shoes not only limit the WAYS we move but also affects HOW we move. Skinny jeans and other restrictive trousers affect our gait cycles and restricts our hip extension reducing glute engagement. They heavily restrict how we move our hips, pelvis and knees and you can forget about squatting down to pick something up off the floor, we have to change and adapt our movement patterns to fit in with the clothes we are wearing. If the waistband is restrictive around the abdomen, it squishes our abdominal organs, restricts motility and may increase intra-abdominal pressure which could lead to organ prolapse down below and hernias up above. The stuff we squish to get into the jeans has to go somewhere, it doesn't just get sucked in, it either gets pushed up or gets pushed down. I don't think there's anything wrong with the occasional wearing of skinny jeans but I would question how your clothing is restricting movement and breathing on a daily basis. Even things like socks and bras can lead to loss of localised movement in that area, if you've ever seen indentations in the skin after wearing them it means the skin, muscles and fascias are not able to move in an optimal way, bras cause even more havoc as they create a restriction around our rib cage, physically limiting its ability to expand in certain areas. I have some female clients that have such heavy indentations from decades of wearing tight, restrictive bras that the tissue doesn't move in that area at all. Take a moment to see how your clothes are restricting your movement, are you able to breathe fully into all parts of the lungs, are you able to side bend, bend over, squat to pick something up off the floor, are you able to get up and down off the floor? If not what ways do you have to adapt to do these things or do you avoid doing them all together?

I'm fascinated by the power of touch, how some touch can be healing and some touch can be abusive, how one persons touch can literally take your breath away and someone else's can turn your stomach, how you can yearn for a special someone's touch and yet inappropriate touch by somebody can feel like an invasion on the deepest level. Out of all the five senses touch is essential for life, we can't survive or thrive without it. As a massage therapist I'm endlessly intrigued as to what affect my touch is having upon any one specific client, what is happening to the skin and the layers underneath that I'm touching and what deeper effects are occurring because of my touch. When we say we are touched by something it goes beyond the level of the physical. Touch is similar to a fingerprint each persons is unique and holds a certain quality. Depending on the intention of the person doing the touching it can feel beautiful or it can feel creepy or anything in between. On training courses it always amazes me how each individual persons touch is completely unique like a signature, we will all be learning the same technique but each persons touch will all be so different. On one training course we did a round robin where we got to experience working on lots of different bodies and later on that day one of the ladies came up to me and said "that was you who massaged my thigh wasn't it, I could tell it was your touch." Touch can be such a beautiful, transformative experience but it all comes down to intention. A hug, a hand being held, a massage, stroking a dog, holding a newborn baby or child close to your chest, being in the arms of a loved one, a reassuring hand on your arm and skin to skin contact all create a sense of intimacy, a bond, fosters trust and joy and deepens connections with those around us. ​

​I heard the phrase "she's a real yogi" this morning and I felt myself cringe inside. I can remember a time when I used to aspire to be a "real yogi". A time when I felt I had to rise above my emotions because spiritual people don't get involved in such earthly experiences as feeling pleasure and pain. When I was constantly feeling shame for not being spiritual enough, not kind enough, not open enough, that I didn't dedicate enough time to my practice, that I wasn't perfect in every aspect of my life, that I wasn't enough. Nowadays I'm much more interested in being a real human with all my humanness and messiness. Being a real yogi often doesn't give freedom for mistakes, for messy emotions, for being the realist version of yourself as you're often too busy with your veil of spirituality wrapped over you, an aura of superiority over mere mortals that don't have a spiritual practice, that don't drink green juice and talk chakras, energy and crystals. I've been around enough teachers and "spiritual" people to realise that once you're elevated up on that pedestal it's a long way to fall down...and they do, every.single.time. Give me being a real human where I can experience the full experience of a human life of irritation, anger, jealousy, joy, sadness, elation, anxiety and happiness without it being frowned upon because you're "spiritual" and you should "rise above it" (whatever that means). Give me a real, juicy, messy human experience, totally grounded in reality, with no pretences and no airs, where I can acknowledge the whispers of my emotions as the important messengers that they are. Where I can mess up sometime because I'm human not some highly enlightened spiritual master. That I can have an off day and not be the most kindest version of myself possible and it's not the end of the world because it is all a part of the human experience, where we fail and we experiment and we learn and we grow and we fail again and experiment some more and hopefully learn and grow some more.

Can you imagine a life devoid of positive touch....horrid right?
Skin hunger...ever have that craving where you just need to be touched, where you want someone to wrap their arms around you in a beautiful embrace, where someone has held your hand and in that gesture you know everything is going to be okay or where at the end of a stressful day stroking your dog or cat begins to melt your tension away? We need touch, like we need food and water we can't live fully without it.
We can live without sight, hearing, taste and smell but we can't live without touch.
Babies deprived of touch have been found to have behavioural and developmental delays, people recover quicker from illness when receiving positive touch and the elderly have better health when touched regularly.
The power of touch has always amazed me from when I was small and my mum would hold me when I was upset and everything would seem so much better, like in that moment she was holding all my troubles for me or when I would get a headache and my dad would hold my head and how something would shift. My journey of learning about touch began when I was 20 years old as I embarked on my massage journey and has never ended.
When you slowly sink down through the layers of skin, muscles and connective tissue, you are touching much deeper than those layers, we are multi faceted beings and we carry around all our experiences in our body's and minds.
Every day I see the power of touch unravel those deep places of holding, feel their breath deepening and their eyes begin to stop fluttering as their mind begins to still and you can literally feel the change under your hands and that's before you add any fancy techniques for pain relief etc it's the simple power of touch.
You can't force your way into someone's body, you create an invitation...you pause and wait and if the invitation is accepted you can sink through the layers a little deeper. The more you use force or try to control the tissue the more that tissue will fight back. You just have to let the body guide you.
The power in the power of touch is that it's not a solo act (unless it's abhyanga) and that's where the beauty is...in the exchange, you are both the giver and the receiver...how cool is that?!
You can't touch without being touched...
So for today satisfy your craving for touch through a big embrace of a hug with a loved one, book yourself a massage, spend time stroking your dog or cat or borrow one to stroke, receive your daily quota of recommended touch for health.