Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 9 i Gathered

When it comes to money and wealth, there are two things that, for our family, I know to be true: we do not have much money and we are very rich. It might seem a little bit baffling, but both are true. My husband recently heard an interview on Radio 4 that suggested, based on our income, that we are in fact quite poor. While I have no delusion that we are wealthy, I was surprised to discover this – I definitely wouldn’t describe us as being poor. I had to find out more. With further investigation, I found some government guidelines which do, in fact, show that our family is in the poorest 20% of all UK households. But I also discovered an article in The Guardian newspaper that…

Before we get into the details of the digestive system, let's start by taking a moment for this breathing exercise. Wherever you are, take a 3-minute pause. Inhale deeply, thinking about expanding your breath all the way across the base of your ribcage. Then, as if in slow motion, draw your breath up, imagining it touching each rung of your ribcage all the way to the collarbone. Slowly, matching the duration of your long, languid inhale, exhale as slowly and purposefully. Repeat for 3 minutes. Then let the breath settle to a natural rhythm for a few moments. “Yoga teaches us to cultivate steady breathing, activating our parasympathetic nervous system” When it comes to using yoga to aid and maintain a healthy digestive system, we have to look at our…

There is something so satisfying about making your own soap. The creativity of experimenting with recipes; mixing and matching aromatherapy oils that calm mind and body; looking to nature to add a botanical touch with lavender, rose petals and other herbs. Then there is the practical element: not only do homemade soaps beautify both body and bathroom shelf, they’re also free of the preservatives that traditional shower gels often contain, making them naturally much better for your skin and the environment. They also make thoughtful gifts! Sweetly scented I absolutely adore the many properties of aromatherapy oils, so I always add a few drops of my favourite scents to my soaps. My favourite combinations are lavender and bergamot for relaxation, rosemary and lemon to clear the mind, and geranium, lavender…

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken crockery with gold. Glittering lacquer is used to stick the pieces back together, rebuilding the pot or plate, so it is rejuvenated rather than repaired. It’s now considered even more beautiful because of its twinkling uniqueness. This ancient craft stems from wabi-sabi, the wider philosophy that celebrates imperfection as a natural part of living. In her book, Wabi-Sabi Wisdom, author, life coach and speaker Andrea Jacques (kyoseiconsulting.com) explains that its world view ‘places value on the imperfect nature of life’ and embraces qualities such as roughness, simplicity, modesty and age. Refreshingly, it celebrates what actually is. Not what might be, what could be, what we want it to be, but exactly how it is, with all of life’s rough edges – be…

You scroll through a picture-perfect Instagram feed. What do you think to yourself? A Why isn’t my life like that? I need to try harder. B That does look nice, but I also know that it’s highly edited. C I’m totally OK with aiming for average. You fail an assignment. How do you react? A I’m a failure as a person. B That’s a shame, but there’s lots I can learn from this experience. C Who cares? “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new – Albert Einstein” You’re writing a text as you walk, and you spot a typo. You: A Stop walking and omit all grammatical errors for fear of looking incompetent. B Hit send – it was only a small mistake, and it still…

While some may claim to be 21 year after year, the truth is that you only reach that magical milestone once. Each significant marker along the adulthood journey beyond that brings the opportunity for more responsibilities, wisdom, challenges, stories… and grey hairs. Being blessed with another birthday might be cause, of course, for a big celebration. For some, the passage of time is a gift in and of itself. For others, that simply isn’t the case. Fear and anxiety around ageing firmly takes hold and there’s a sense of denial about which decade or drop-down box you now find yourself in. When a milestone is approaching, these good or bad vibes can easily be exacerbated. Whether you’re happily heading towards it or hiding your head in the sand will come…

Although I never daydreamed about meeting Prince Charming, I grew up assuming that I would one day be married and raise children. Within my family divorce is highly contentious, and when I married my husband in 2010, I fully believed it would be for life. So, when our marriage came to an end, embarking upon the process of divorce felt like a fundamental failure of my entire worldview, an admission of defeat and a source of intense shame. It took a friend remarking what an incredibly positive thing her own divorce had been for me to realise this was only one side of the story. The other was having had the wisdom to acknowledge that, despite all possible attempts to save it, my marriage was no longer working. It was…

Picture the scene. You’re serving up your evening meal and instead of using a generic plate from a matching set, you opt for your favourite, rustic, home-made dish – instantly you savour your food more and your dining ritual is complete. In a quest to get back to basics and embrace the individual, more and more of us are rejecting mass-produced products in favour of quirky, one-off pieces. And our new-found desire to go offline and flex our creative muscles instead means that an increasing number of us are rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty with some clay. Thanks to the surprise success of shows like The Great Pottery Throw Down on Channel 4 and the rise in open-access studios such as Turning Earth (e2.turningearth.uk) in North…

We all want to be happy, to take joy in the little things that make up our daily lives, as well as those big, momentous ‘happy’ occasions like weddings or birthdays, or those once-a-year holidays where we relax and remember what it is that really makes us tick. The trouble is, happiness is hard to define, and what makes one person happy might not be the key to another’s happy place. But what if you could focus on doing a few simple things that would let you be the happiest version of you? Happiness coach Samantha Clarke has created a 14-day challenge to help you achieve just that. Each day, she takes us behind the ways she fills her happiness pot, based on her ‘B.E. H.A.P.P.Y. FIRST’ model, with a…

Most of us have experienced stress at work at different times in our lives. We may have turned the pressure into a positive by making a big change, or fulfilling a career goal. We may also have adopted stress-busting habits, such as keeping active, empowering ourselves by taking control, and using our support networks to help us relax or problem-solve. But sometimes new jobs, promotions or changes in workload mean an increase in stress and, before we know it, the negative effects of stress have crept up on us. According to the Health and Safety Executive in the UK, every year over 11 million working days are lost due to stress, yet we are often reluctant to raise mental health issues at work. A recent study by Accenture found that…

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re going to be found out? That you don’t ‘deserve’ this, that you’re not good enough, or you don’t belong? It’s thought that around 70 per cent of us suffer from these feelings, known as Imposter Syndrome, at one time or another. Included in this are many successful women and men: Meryl Streep and Maya Angelou have both been open about experiencing imposter syndrome, and even Albert Einstein suffered during his lifetime. ‘Imposter Complex’ was first identified more than 40 years ago by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. They recognised that we tend to think we’re the only ones having this experience precisely because that sense of being an imposter means that we keep the feeling to ourselves, so we go…

Our daily lives can often seem like an endless round of work, family and commitments. We rush around without noticing our surroundings, or find ourselves so consumed by our thoughts that a day just flashes by. We commute on the same routes, drive the same roads and walk the same paths, passing buildings and scenery without really taking any of it in. In other words, life can become a blur. In addition, we’re constantly bombarded with hundreds of images on television, the internet or adverts on the sides of buses. We snap away at endless subjects, not wanting to miss documenting any part of our lives – whether it’s a cup of coffee with fancy latte art, our new living room décor or the holiday beach at sunset. We use…