Welcome to our Mid May newsletter

First up, we’d like to continue our thanks to you all for your wonderful support. We are beyond grateful – our community is beautiful. Our online studio is here for you and we hope our weekly newsletter offers some insight and ideas to make your week’s a little more peaceful and a lot more fun.
This week we are encouraging you to really connect to how you are feeling, finding joy in the small things and turning to nature for support. We have put together classes to suit your mood. Learning to move for your emotions can be really powerful. Fawz Farhan gives us some May foraging tips, Kasia shares her playlist to bring our studio into your home and lots of other treats – including the yummiest cookies.

MOVING WITH YOUR MOOD

How are feeling? Take a second, feel your feet on the ground, find your centre and take a deep breath. How are you feeling?

It’s easy to lose yourself at the moment. Days are flying by and before you know it, a week has gone and you’re back clapping on your doorstep. Routines are important at the moment but taking time to connect to how you are feeling in the moment is crucial.

We’ve put together three Moods and classes to help you move with how you are feeling. Mood 1 helps you ground yourself. Mood 2 is more for stress management and Mood 3 is to help you release tension building up in the body and mind.

Mood 1: feeling disconnected?
Wednesdays at 7am – rise well – Sunrise Flow with Lydia
Thursdays at 9.30am – find your wholeness – Mandala with Kasia

Thursdays at 12pm – ground yourself – Forrest with Sarah
Sunday at 6.15pm – share and connect – Kirtan with Dan

Mood 2: feeling suffocated?
Fridays at 9.15am – move with your breath – 26/2 Hatha with Jo
Sundays at 11.30am – find your balance – Flow to Meditate with Francesca
Mondays at 8pm – unwind and relax – Yin & Nidra with Alice

Mood 3: feeling wound up?
Tuesdays at 9.30am – release and centre – Ashtanga with Imir
Saturdays at 9am – feel the fire – Power Flow with Aina
Sundays at 5pm – feel into yourself – Vinyasa Flow & Restore with Kasia

For our full timetable and to book

Click Here

FORAGING FOR BOTANICALS IN MAY

by Fawz Farhan

Elderflowers: use as a tea to ease hayfever or make a refreshing cordial or if you’re more adventurous champagne (summer in a glass!)

Nettles: has natural antihistamines so another to drink as a tea with elderflowers, or make an iron-rich tasty soup

Three-cornered leeks (also called wild onions): use like spring onions in salad, in stir fried or in a soup. Bulb, stems and flowers are all edible

Cleavers (also called goosegrass or sticky willy): chop up and leave to soak overnight in a cafetière in water with a couple of slices of cucumber and drink as a cold infusion to support the lymph and immune system

Nettles and three-cornered leek soup

Around 20 nettle tops (young tender leaves at the top of the bush)
2 big handfuls is three-cornered leeks
1 potato
Add 100ml cream to taste (optional)

Chop and fry the three-cornered leeks in oil until wilted
Add cubed potato
Add 1litre hot vegetable stock
Bring to the boil and then leave to simmer until potato is soft
Add nettles leave to wilt
Season with salt and pepper and add any green herbs to hand (I add fresh marjoram)
Stir in cream and serve with crusty bread

Visit IG @allbeingwellproject for more ideas and recipes using seasonal botanicals.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

These absolutely yummy cookies are super simple and super fun to make. The only problem is, is that they disappear too fast. Our recipe is gluten free but use what you have at home. Small experiments are fine. Try using your favourite nut butter or just use double the peanut butter. They will still be yummy.
Makes 16-20
Ingredients
250g of gluten-free plain flour
1 tsp gluten-free baking powder
pinch of fine sea salt
125g organic peanut butter
125g organic hazelnut butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
250g organic maple syrup
5 tbsp organic flavourless oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate broken into pieces or buttons if you have them

Method
1) Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3½. Line one large or two small baking trays with baking parchment.
2) In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. In another larger bowl, mix together the peanut and hazelnut butters, egg, maple syrup, oil and vanilla extract. Stir until well combined.
3) Pour the flour mixture into the nut butter mixture, add the pieces of chocolate and stir briefly until only just combined.
4) Scoop heaped tablespoons of the mixture on to the prepared baking tray(s), leaving a 2cm gap between each as the cookies will spread as they cook. Bake for 10–12 minutes, or until they begin to crack slightly all over. Leave to cool for five minutes on the tray(s), then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

BEING HUMAN POEM

Even in a time of a global pandemic, we are still pushing ourselves to do more and feeling guilty for not being our most productive. We just need to look at nature to see how much healing can be done in a time of rest – but we have to allow ourselves to rest.
Life isn’t a tick list of achievements and goal setting, it’s about being present and finding joy in the small moments.

The Girl Who Didn’t Stop
by Beatrice Robertson

Let me tell the tale
Of a girl who didn’t stop;
Who climbed on every mountain
Without a pause when on the top.

She’d dance in every blade of grass
Until each one was covered in dew;
The sun knew her by name
But the silver moon did, too.

For a fear had settled in her bones,
A fear of sitting still;
That if you’re not moving forward
It must mean you never will.

So in time, her dance got slower
And she looked at all she’d seen;
But found gaps inside the places
That she’d never fully been.

For she was a human doing,
Human moving, human seeing;
But she had really never taken the time
To be a human being

KASIA’S PLAYLIST

Give yourself some studio vibes by listening to this enchanting playlist put together by Kasia.
Spotify Playlist – Flow

PODCAST RECOMMENDATION

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Chatterjee
No 94 Is Everything You Know About Depression Wrong? With Johann Hari

A really powerful podcast exploring the many causes of depression. Johann argues that being depressed or anxious does not mean that you are crazy, weak or broken, rather, that your natural phycological needs are not being met.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief—for our own lives not being as they should?”
― Johann Hari

THANK YOU FOR READING OUR NEWSLETTERS

We are here for you, please get in touch and keep practising.

LOVE from the YOGA HOUSE team
& Kasia x