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For many of us breathing is an automatic activity, one that we don’t have to think too much about. "Thank goodness", I can hear you saying, because you have enough on your plate!

However, breathing is fundamental to your ongoing health and work performance. If you are eating well, hydrating your body and allowing enough time to sleep but still struggling to feel fully awake, mouth breathing could be the culprit. Some signs you’re mouth breathing includes dry mouth, bad breath, teeth grinding, night waking, snoring and dark circles under the eyes.

"Mouth breathing occurs if you breathe with your mouth open or with parted lips."

What mouth breathing does:

1. Reduces your energy: even though mouth breathing allows up to 6 times the amount of oxygen into your respiratory system, it doesn’t get to go where it needs to and as a result has to come back out again. For oxygen to be transported in our blood it needs carbon-dioxide, so having...

As humans we have become less connected to nature and as a result risk losing our essential health buffer.

When you have a busy work week and a family to care of, any opportunity to take care of yourself is precious. One of the easiest ways to do this is to step out into nature and let it do the rest.

How it works

When something happens and we perceive it as a threat, or we are asked to do more than we perceive we're capable of then we experience stress, i.e. a mismatch between what we can and have been asked to do. Once we have this thought our sympathetic nervous system, the ‘fight or flight’ branch of our autonomic nervous system, is activated. When we experience nature, our parasympathetic nervous system is activated, ‘the rest and digest’ branch of the autonomic nervous system, and its activation counteracts the already activated sympathetic nervous system. When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated more than our sympathetic nervous...

One of the joys of mindfulness is that you can do it anywhere! You don’t need to sit in silence for hours, chant mantras, or even close your eyes. Mindfulness means bringing your complete attention to the present, where you are right now, not distracted by memories of the past or anxieties about the future.

Right here, right now.

Here are some great mindfulness principles you can use to practice mindfulness no matter what time of day or where you are. These suggestions will help you to stay grounded throughout your day so that you can transition to your evening easier.

Breathe!

Before you start a practice, notice where you feel your breathe most vividly. No matter where it is, attempt to move your breathe towards your belly with each subsequent breath. This will help you to send a calm message to your body, even if you don’t feel stressed.

You can use the 3 Breaths technique to anchor your awareness firmly in the present. It’s so easy you can do it right now...

With all of the wellbeing information available online at the tap of a finger, there’s a risk of becoming overwhelmed by it all. We are constantly exposed to new information on a daily or even hourly basis at times. Wellbeing intersects with so many parts of our lives and the research on how to maintain or improve it is exploding at the moment.

What if you could distil what’s out there into 3 wellbeing principles?

Regular amounts of sleep

It is often said that preparing for the day starts the night before. 95% of the population needs between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, how much are you getting? Sleep is not the lack of awake-ness. Sleep is an important biological process that the brain needs to lay down memories, consolidate learning, and remove toxins that have built-up from the day. Consider going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day, weekends included.

Sleep deprivation can impact your cognitive functioning, compromise your immunity to...