Curiously Connected

04/08/2025

04/08/2025

25/07/2025

25/07/2025

Highly recommended

You are the steady Earth
You are the flowing Water
You are the burning Fire
You are the expansive Air
You are the still EXPANSIVE Space

Coming Home - An exploration of yourself through the lens of Elemental Yoga Theory & Forest Bathing

Yoga Weekend Intensive August 22-24th 2025

15 hour yoga intensive to look deep into yourself through the lens of Elemental Wisdom. Through vinyasa yoga, pranayama, meditation, mantra you'll quietly tune into the conversation you're body is in with nature.

Leave feeling more in tune, more connected, more peaceful within yourself and the world around you.

Hands on assists, alignment workshops, how to of pranayama, meditation and a led Forest Bathing session - part retreat, part training, all expansive ✨
Friday 5-8pm
Saturday 10-5
Sunday 10-5 includes Forest Bathing

This weekend intensive is ideal for:

Yoga teachers seeking to gain in depth knowledge of Elemental theory and implement it into their teaching repertoire with a theory-informed foundation

Anyone interested in understanding how philosophy met with the physical practice of yoga, meditation and pranayama supports physical, emotional, and energetic balance

Those looking for understand how to move, breathe and be in relationship to nature.

Those curious to explore a full weekend dedicated to themselves

At my studio in Grantown on Spey and Forest Bathing in local woods.

3 spots left

07/07/2025

Look out for what will be fabulously nourishing and inspirational retreats from these two wonderful human beings!

Meet the founders and hosts; let us first introduce Ben Starkie.

Ben, and his wife Faye, live at Earnhill and have created the retreat centre over the last 3 years.

Ben has 30 years experience as an outdoor guide having worked as a mountain leader, expedition organiser, raft and paddle sports guide and a canyon guide. He went on the found an outdoor adventure company, Vertical Descents Ltd.

He is the founder and Director of Water Rescue Scotland where he advises outdoor professionals and industry on water safety.

He has always been interested in health and wellness. Working outdoors all his life he has personally felt the benefits of physical activity and of the connection to nature.

He became interested in the use of cold water as a form of therapy in 2020 and recently qualified as a cold water therapy coach. He is also a breath work facilitator.

In his spare time Ben enjoys family time, travel, carpentry, paragliding, ski touring and anything else involving mountains !

07/07/2025

Healing can involve spending time on the edge of discomfort, exploring sensation and feelings that may be feared, disliked or ‘too big’ - the healing comes when we are held with a sense of safety, allowing your nervous system to remain regulated - changing perspective with the possibility of a new experience

27/06/2025

It may seem somewhat strange, but going where many therapies don’t go is one of the significant values of craniosacral therapy. The mouth, tongue, muscles of the face and tongue hold so much physical and emotional tension… Releae can be both powerful and quite exquisite ❣️🙌

🌟 2 years of headaches gone in one session?! Here's how... 🌟

We're at the end of Day 2 in a small but perfectly formed CST2 in Brighton. Today the students learned how to work with the nasal bones, cheek bones (zygoma), upper jaw (maxillae, vomer and palatines) and how to treat teeth!

I still tell the story of treating someone who'd been taking pain killers for headaches four days a week for the previous 2 years.

I'd asked what had happened right before the headaches started... she couldn't remember anything significant.

So she came for a session just to see if CST could help. A we were working her body drew me to her teeth, and she suddenly remembered she'd had had a root canal go a bit wrong - 2 years ago. 'In this tooth?' I asked pointing to one in particular.

'How did you know?' she asked (pretty amazed it must be said!). Because it was kind of screaming once I tuned in...

The body really does communicate with us.

I treated the tooth, the headaches stopped.

I saw her again 5 years later at a wedding and she told me she'd never had another one since that day.

I love being able to share these actually very simple skills and help more people help more people!

🧡✋🧡🤚🧡
www.upledger.co.uk
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18/06/2025

Chronic stress can throw off our natural breathing rhythm, triggering issues like hyperventilation, breathing discomfort, and even panic. Over time, this cycle of stress and disordered breathing can keep our nervous system in a constant state of alert, making it harder to feel calm and in control.
But there’s a way to break the cycle. Breathing techniques that increase CO₂ tolerance have been proven to stabilize breathing and reduce anxiety. By training our breathing, we can restore balance in the body’s stress response, helping us feel more grounded and resilient against daily stressors. This approach doesn’t just ease symptoms temporarily; it creates lasting stability in both body and mind.
👉🏼 Learn more www.integrativebreathingtherapy.com

02/11/2024

Comparison of Craniosacral Therapy and Myofascial Relaxation Techniques in People with Migraine Headache: A Randomized Controlled Study
"For the participants in this study, CST and MFT techniques reduced migraine headache, temporomandibular disorder level, drug consumption, and functional disability levels, and increased cervical region ROM. These results suggest that CST techniques could be considered in migraine treatment as one of the clinical practical applications within the framework of a certain protocol."
Click on this link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1556370724000208

23/10/2024

Such great advice — and…. craniosacral therapy can support optimal fluid movement within the brain to help this process.
If you have never experienced the calming and deeply nourishing effcets of this subtle, yet profound therapy - give it a try!
Reported benefits:

🌱 Very calming

🌸 Re-establishes connection with self

🌱 Improved sleep quality

🌸 Improved ability to fall asleep

🌱 More grounded

🌸 Improved vitality

🌱 Improved sense of regulation - emotionally and physically

If you have experienced craniosacral therapy - please pop a note of your experiences in the comments below!

Did you know one night of lack of sleep drives inflammation of the brain?

Light from TVs, bulbs will be detected through the eye and send signals that to the brain that it’s daytime.

The glymphatic system will not relax without darkness, with incomplete stages of sleep come the increased risk heart disease, and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis

If you are suffering from any health issues, don’t discount low quality sleep.

The reason is that we have an inbuilt dishwasher system that clears the brain of toxins at night. It’s important because the neural signals tell the rest of the body how to operate, so if toxins build up in the brain.

During deep sleep your brain relaxes and allows the release of CSF via tight junctions and communication with the ‘glymphatic’ system.

The glymphatic system is a fluid-transport system that accesses all regions of the brain. It facilitates the exchange of cerebrospinal fluid and interstitial fluid and clears waste from the metabolically active brain.

It exports fluid and solutes from metabolically active neural tissue. The organization of brain and ocular (eye) fluid flow can be divided into four distinct segments.

The first segment of the brain glymphatic system includes CSF production (purple arrows) and circulation in the subarachnoid space (SAS, light purple arrow).

This is why it’s very important to make sure you limit blue light exposure to your eyes after dusk.

Light from TVs, bulbs will be detected through the eye and send signals to the brain that it’s day time. The glymphatic system will not relax without darkness, found in the complete stages of sleep.

Other interruptions are breathing. If you breathe through the mouth at night, the brain has to monitor the airway, make sure to breathe through the nose, to help this system clear properly and pump CSF up the spine.

Blue light blocking glasses are one tool. Mouth taping is another tool. Watching the morning sunlight, with deep nasal breathing, helps to tell your nervous system to relax 12 hours later!

Do you feel like you wake up tired or unrefreshed?

16/10/2024

Always good to have the back up

This pre-registered systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis examined the effects of receiving touch for promoting mental and physical well-being, quantifying the efficacy of touch interventions for different ways of administration.

01/10/2024

Background Neck discomfort is a frequent problem that can impair quality of life and make it difficult to perform daily tasks. Pain from neck strain is not limited to the cervical spine; it can also radiate into the skull and result in a headache of cervical origin, known as cervicogenic headache. C...