Sleep, Stress, Mindfulness

Sleep, Stress, Mindfulness

A bit like breathing, we often take our sleep and mental health for granted. We have lost a little awareness of ourselves to notice the signs – either in our environment or in our bodies – that indicate our sleep is being compromised or that the stress we experience is going unchallenged and is compromising our health, wellness and happiness. But everyone is capable of making simple adjustments to their routines and lifestyles to make significant improvements.

Stress is absolutely natural to us, in fact we need it to prosper and progress in our pursuits and humans have a sophisticated way of dealing with it. However, the modern era and London/City living especially provide us with stresses that we have not evolved to deal with. This has resulted in increasing anxieties and health issues which present in ways both physical, mental and emotional.

Although “Mindfulness” is possibly a term being overused and exploited by some, adopting a mindful practice is effective in empowering us to “…experience freedom from mental and emotional distractions.” and so reduce ongoing and health depleting “stress”. We have teamed up with Jim O’Neil (Psychoanalyst/Psychotherapist and Senior Teacher of Mindfulness Meditation at the London Shambhala Meditation Centre) to provide our clients with an authentic and highly experienced teacher to guide them through the process of beginning a meditation practice. Jim does this via workshops that we put on at Balance and of course up at the Shambhala Meditation Centre which is also in Clapham.

There is a fantastic workshop coming up in March 2019 “Pillars of Meditation”, learn more HERE: https://www.balancephysio.com/event/pillars-of-meditation/

For more on meditation read this article “On Learning How to Meditate” by Jim O’Neil

Balance is excited to be welcoming Ray Carbullido back to London and hosting him throughout March 2019 to share his work through a Sacred Movements Series, a unique series of integrative events that focuses on healing, spirituality and traditional martial / movement practice & how these aspects relate to modern everyday living.

There are 2 workshops (see below) and each week in March there are four classes each covering a different topic:

The workshops, both held over 2 days, will be:

Sleep is absolutely essential for good physical and mental health, repair and recovery, growth and development.

We all seem to know the benefit of a good nights sleep but at Balance we fully appreciate the effect it can have on health in general and pain and injury recovery specifically. By “good” we mean both sufficient duration and the highest quality of sleep. In fact most sleep research points to quality being slightly more important than duration.

However, with the challenges of increased but unaddressed stress, and the chronic movement deprivation modern humans experience our sleep is increasingly disturbed and inadequate for proper recovery. But when our sleep is disturbed we struggle to re-establish a pattern.

  • How do we achieve good quality sleep every night
  • How to sleep naturally without medication
 At Balance we do not currently offer specific Sleep services but we can advice you on good sleep hygiene practices or connect you with recommended specialists in our network. Speak to Jonathan or Trevor – see them in the Health and Wellness Team.