Our knees are remarkable joints, like bridges connecting two mighty structures - the thigh bone (femur) bone and the lower leg (tibia). Unlike the skull or pelvis, there are no big bony walls in the knees, instead, they rely on ligaments, tendons, muscles, and fascia.
Read moreHow to Live Longer
I feel I may have to write ‘spoiler alert’ if you are planning on watching the documentary on how to live longer as I am about to break it down and give away all the secrets.
Read moreLoneliness
As a child, making friends was easy. You'd walk up to someone in the playground and say, "Will you be my best friend?" They said yes, and Bob's your uncle*, you had a hopscotch* partner for life. However, it gets a little more complicated the older we get
Read moreBackache, Pain & Yoga
You’ ll find a slew of studies. Just to share one I looked at was a review of 10 studies involving a 967 chronic low back pain patients. The results showed strong evidence that yoga can provide short-term relief in terms of pain, back-specific disability, and overall improvement... More and more studies are raving about the benefits of yoga.
Read moreInversions
And although all these benefits are fabulous, the main thing I want to say about inversions is that they are fun.
I defy for anyone to tell me they didn’t have a whale of a time as a kid trying to do a cartwheel, handstand, wheel, rollie-pollie…
Read moreTaking Stock
Have you ever felt at odds when you heard yourself answering the question ‘What have you been up to’? That realisation that you thought you would have answered differently, but the reality takes you by surprise?
Read moreBunions, Onions & Yoga
What do Marilyn Monroe, Oprah Winfrey, Camilla Parker-Bowels all have in common?
What do the Dutch call knobbel op de grote teen, the Portuguese joanete and the French oignon?
From my ‘extensive and highly scientific’ research on the humble bunion, do more yoga and loving your feet more is the way forward. I can help you with the first part, you have to do the second part.
Read moreA Dreadlocked Fierce Warrior
The emoji on my phone representing yoga is someone in a lotus position. If you ask me I think Warrior 2 is a far better choice. I feel it's a more popular pose, accessible to most people. It’s a deceptively simple pose, which can make even the hardened yogi cry for mercy.
Read morePersonalising Meditation And Some Science
Not all meditations are the same.
Not all meditations are right for everyone.
But meditating is good for everyone according to the neuroscience...
Are you someone who could count your heart beat without checking your pulse? Or someone who has no idea what's going on that even if you had a heart attack, you wouldn't notice?
Read moreSleep Hygiene
One thing I will say is that sleeping well, isn't always about just sleeping well. It's not just about lavender sprays and dim lights…
Read moreFeel Like A Superhero
Sometimes it’s the smallest shifts - a smile, standing tall, or even a superhero pose - that change how we feel and how others see us.
Read moreFascia- Dance The Fuzz Away
Every night when we go to sleep the interfaces between our muscles grows 'fuzz'. In the morning when we stretch, this fuzz melts. That stiff feeling in the morning is the solidifying of the tissues. Just like a cat stretches every time it awakes from a snooze, so should we. This 'morning stretch' melts that fuzz that is building up throughout the whole of the body.
Read morePoo to taboos
I had never heard of Deborah James who recently died from bowl cancer, but hearing the BBC newsreader, announcing in his best BBC accent that we should ‘check our pooh’ made me snigger like a 7 year old. It felt so incongruous, this great British institution saying the word ‘pooh’, when we all know they should be using the term 'number twos' instead.
Read moreReflections on Legacy: My Father Sandro Paternostro’s 100th Birthday
Reflecting on my father, Sandro Paternostro, on what would have been his 100th birthday. A pioneer in television journalism, he left an incredible legacy. This piece explores the meaning of legacy and how we’re remembered.
Read moreCreating a Habit
There are some things that are 'just a habit'. I don’t have to think about it, it’s automatic. Teeth brushing, making coffee in the morning, starting a yoga practice with a weird stretch and a yawn. Somethings became a habit without releasing it – a glass of wine at the end of day, a croissant on a Sunday, dancing outside in a thunderstorm. I have no idea at what point these things became a habit.
Read moreThinking with your feet
I recently heard a ‘top tip’ from a teacher that struck a chord with me. 'If you are ruminating, then ground down on your feet". This got me thinking... (I am aware of the irony of this sentence).
Apart from the fact it is so ridiculoulsy simple I can't believe I wrote it down, we all know this intuitively. It is literally a no brainer. ;-) It makes perfect sense to 'get out of your head' into the opposite direction.
Read moreTen Back Pain Facts
We've all had a niggly low back at some point and like me you began to think the worst.
My thoughts generally go something like this “It'll get so bad, I won't be able to teach yoga. I won't be able to earn a living. I won't be able to buy food. I'll have to cook my own liver to stay alive…”
You get the gist. So before our thoughts get out of hand, I thought it useful to look into back pain. (Though I did get a little lost researching 'why humans love to catastrophise?'* and 'can you eat your own liver?'**)
Read moreTo P or not to P
I had heard about the connection with the heel and the bladder, but didn't understand how it worked, so have gone down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to find out more…
Pee-pee, wee-wee, tinkle whatever name you have for urination, we all do it, we always have done it and sometimes we do it when we don’t want to do it.
Asking Why?
When I was a little girl I liked asking “why?”. My mum would answer “Warum, warum? Weil die Bananen sind krumm” which means “Why? Why? Because bananas are crooked”.
Read moreCan you wag your tail?
In a recent workshop the teacher told the class to have ‘an anterior tuck of the pelvis, but counter nutation of the coccyx’.
For some people this sentence is easy to decipher, for others it requires some investigation. I have translated it into Sandra-speak for those who would like some deciphering.
‘Stick your bum out, like a duck waddling sexily and at the same time tuck your tail under like a scared whippet dog hiding his tail’.
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