nourish
sustaining + replenishing yourself
held is a monthly newsletter centred around yoga + movement, and introspection + feeling. blending embodied practice with therapeutic self-exploration, we dive into different themes, ideas and respond to the world around us.
a few classes to choose from this month…
Sunday 8th December will be the rescheduled ‘pour’ class online
Saturday 27th December will be a free Christmas class to shake out the cobwebs in a late morning class
sign up for the 8th December class and bring a pal for free ~ all details further down…
what it means to nourish
Growing veggies really helped me settle my brain when going through difficulties. There’s something quite magical about seeing a tiny seed grow into something you can eat and sustain yourself with. It engenders a patience, a need to go slow and ease into things, an acceptance that what you thought you might receive is likely to look, feel, taste differently. The difference allowing you to see wonder in imperfection. In the unexpected.
I’ve been thinking about nourishment at this time of year, particularly when it is often now that we prepare for growth. Resolutions. Goals. Hopes. Where we think about the seasons ahead, using the darker hours and colder climate as a chance to allow seeds to settle and find their place in the soil. I like that idea of personal preparation. Of planting a seed and giving a bit of space and time for it to make roots and more time before it surfaces.
It’s also a time of year where we are encouraged to nourish ourselves, perhaps not in a helpful way, with messages telling us to consume and indulge. I am a fan of indulgence. A life well lived is one with lots of indulging. This indulgence is different. It’s wrapped up in consumerism, in capitalism, in privilege. It feeds into complex feelings and makes navigating food and bodies harder.
These feelings… it’s not you. If it feels weird and hard and tricky ~ it’s not you. It’s the system. It’s the well trodden narrative. It’s bullshit and painful and hard and inequitable and unkind. So indulgence and nourishment here is something outside of that. It’s about what things give you something good. What adds not subtracts.
When I think about bodies, I think about Aubrey Gordon and her words. In her book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, she says this…
“We need a world that insists upon safety and dignity for all of us—not because we are beautiful, healthy, blameless, exceptional, or beyond reproach, but because we are human beings.”
I’m not here to tell you to find love within yourself, to love your body as it is. It’s far more complex than that and there’s a a myriad of threads to unpick and understand whenever we begin to think about bodies. Body neutrality alone is a journey.
Instead, I want you to lean into thinking about what you want, what you need, what sustains and brings joy. Using the outside world as our compass, what could it be like to see this month and the next as times where we plant our seeds and let them sit. Where we hold space (to defy gravity, obviously) and time to just allow our hopes, our wants to begin on their paths. The path might be more complicated when we add recovery into the mix, when the here and now path might feel sticky but the future path allows for difference and better.
I want you to think about what you need from others, what pieces people can pick up, what roles they can play to help you nourish yourself during this time. What they can intervene in, what they can say and not say. It could be those around you, it could be safe spaces on the web, it could be people you love who aren’t close by. Ask for it. You deserve it.
You are bright and important and worthy of all of the things. I hope you know it.
And I hope you know all of the places you can go if you aren’t feeling it as much as you need to. I volunteer with the incredible BEAT Eating Disorders and cannot recommend their groups and safe spaces enough if this month gets tricky at any point.
nourish in motion
Moving our bodies with the intention of sustaining sounds nice and good but what does it actually mean in practice? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. A sense of creating shapes that make us feel connected to ourselves outside of the aesthetics. Working with our bodies and not against them. Every option allowing for us to play and try and not left with a feeling less or lacking.
Here are some different shapes to play with, maybe shift and change them and see how it feels.
Let’s begin…
How did that feel for you? What did you notice? As you played with side planks, what did you notice in yourself?
nourish through our minds
To nourish our minds, to add and sustain this part of ourselves involves being clear in our needs and our wants. We have previously dawdled and allowed thoughts to flow in, we have pondered with a particular recurring theme that has been coming up for us.
To nourish ourselves is to ask ourselves about our wants and needs, and to think about both how we feel about asking for these to be met and how we translate it something we can carry forward. It can be small. It can feel big.
Let’s begin…
How do you feel after spending your time thinking and exploring that way? What one thing will you nudge forward after today?
let’s pour
It’s with great gratitude to the patient souls amongst you that we are ‘pouring’ in December. Power outages meant we didn’t get chance to practice a few weeks ago, so it’s up for grabs again.
We’ll orientate the practice around a sense of flow, continuous and ongoing, with space to truly spend time with an intention or place of curiosity. Like this idea of pondering, we will be staying with an idea throughout the practice and exploring it together.
The practice will be intentional movement and can dialled up and down, depending on what you need from our time together.
We will meet at 7pm on Sunday 8th December on Zoom for 90 minutes. Get comfy; comfy clothes, blankets, cushions.
Open to all with options always to allow you to do your own thing. Sign up here.
sign up and bring a pal for free 🫶
This is especially for those mates who don’t fancy a studio. There’s something magic about being at home, in a space that feels safe and held.
Maybe you feel that way in another home ~ at a mate’s, with family ~ either way, head to where feels all of the feels and let’s practice together.
If you sign up for 8th December, you’ll get a free spot to give to a pal.
All you need to do is sign up and drop me a note to let me know who you’d like to add.
Easy as that lads!
christmas can be weird so let’s flow
Christmas can be complicated and it can bring up complicated stuff. It can also be lovely and all of those things too.
I am holding a free class on Saturday 27th December for 45 minutes at 11am GMT for us to flow + blow out the cobwebs. It’ll be a place for a reset, to tune back to yourself, to pause in the busyness of this time of year… a place to take whatever you need from it. And you’ll lie down a bit which let’s face it, is dead nice.
The link to join is here if you fancy it and feel free to pass on to anyone who might enjoy it.
want to be more held?
Paid subscriptions are on! A paid subscription of £5 per month will include (as well as the free newsletter each month):
an additional newsletter with a movement and introspection practice, sometimes just me, sometimes working with other artists, creatives and movement practitioners to give you something new to dive into.
one live online class that will be recorded and shared for you to enjoy outside of the live setting if you can’t make it. This class will be available for free subscribers to pay for (like pouring, there will be a sliding scale £5-10).
If you sign up for a paid subscription and you aren’t signed up to our ‘pouring’ class, you’ll get this for free and if you sign up after the class, you’ll get a recording popped in your inbox.