Read our posts about soul

21Apr

Help Beat Depression by Reading Poetry

Rachel Kelly

depression, mindfulness

Soul

We are sent what we need. So it proved recently when I finished an eight-week mindfulness course with the inspirational Anna Black, teacher and author of Living in the Moment with Mindfulness Meditations. I suspected she believed in the healing power of words as she had introduced several poems on our course. As I was leaving her class one rainy Tuesday evening recently, I told her that I shared her enthusiasm for poetry.  It transpired that she had written a dissertation looking at the therapeutic role of poetry in the teaching of mindfulness as part of her Masters...
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11Apr

Culture Tip: The Martin Creed Exhibition

Mona Tabbara

Soul

Turner prize winner Martin Creed’s boundary annihilating art has been brought together for an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in the first major survey of his work. Creed’s irreverence bleeds into every aspect of this multi media exhibition. From listening to music in the lifts to watching  a girl defecate on screen (we’ll get to that later), What’s the point of it? is an immersive, and at times invasive, cultural experience. Creed’s art endeavours to celebrate the unsung heroes of daily life. He deconstructs and rearranges our everyday experiences to allow the...
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07Apr

Celebrating Springtime

Jackee Holder

wellbeing

Soul

Spring is the season of hope where we see the early signs of the labour of the winter months come to life. What a good time to notice the parallels in our own lives. Whether our New Year hopes and plans have failed or stalled, spring reminds us that there's still time to start over again. Spring is here I woke up this morning to find the patio outside my kitchen door scattered with big, thick, clumps of fiery green moss, fallen debris from the guttering where the magpies are making their nests, the first hints that spring is on it’s way. Researchers are...
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03Apr

Feeling Present & Grounded in the Now

Caroline Goyder

mindfulness, psychology, wellbeing

Soul

Plant your roots and find your wings: how to slow it down and use mindfulness in daily life to enhance your wellbeing and move forward
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31Mar

Arianna Huffington: "It's not all about money and power"

Welldoing

wellbeing, women

Soul

Arianna Huffington is founder and former owner of The Huffington Post. Her new book Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Happier Life  is out now. What’s wrong with the current definition of success? Our definition of success right now is based almost solely on money and power. And so to succeed, we lead lives of overwork, sleep-deprivation and burnout. These are actually considered badges of honor! We voluntarily drive ourselves into the ground, if not the grave. This idea of success can work—or at least appear to work—in the short term....
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24Mar

Writing a Diary Saved My Life

Jackee Holder

creativity, wellbeing

Soul

Imagine getting to the end of your life and there's no record of who you are, where you've been, no trace of the range of emotions, feelings you’ve experienced at various points or stages of your life. What if your memory slowly melted into candy floss, too soft to recall the intricate, sometimes simple and other times significant details of your past life? Leaving you without hard evidence and data of what you’ve lived through, the obstacles you'd overcome and the success you'd achieved over the years? A point brought home in an advert I clipped out of a magazine for...
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21Mar

Culture Tip: The Pale Fox at Chisenhale Gallery

Camilla Nicholls

creativity, culture

Soul

The Pale Fox, the first UK solo exhibition of the French, New York-based artist Camille Henrot, is currently on show at Chisenhale Gallery a publicly funded space that garners awards and frequently punches above it’s weight in terms of its programming and outreach work with local communities. On the day I saw the show there had already been a visit by members of the East End Women’s Institute and the gallery was filled with comprehensively tall-haired students from Wimbledon College of Arts. Henrot was awarded the Silver Lion for most promising artist at the Venice...
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14Mar

Culture Tip: The Book of Mormon

Claudine Levy

culture

Soul

The next morning my cheeks are aching. A solid two and a half hours of smiling is hard to beat, and that’s exactly what The Book of Mormon induced in me. From the makers of South Park, the musical charts the progress of Elder Cunningham and Elder Price, two Mormon missionaries sent to Uganda on a divine quest to baptise as many people as possible. It simply feels gloriously unacceptable.  This musical is camper than a Carry On film, and so self-aware it almost hurts. It would be easy to piously reject jokes about rape, racism and Aids, but once you embrace the...
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14Mar

Knitting Therapy

Rin Hamburgh

creativity, stress, therapy, wellbeing

Soul

The feel of soft yarn between your fingers, the rhythmic click-click-click of knitting needles, the satisfaction of watching your work growing inch by inch while at the the same time your breathing slows, your body relaxes and the cares of the day slip away with every stitch. No wonder knitting is so popular. People knit for four main reasons - relaxation, stress relief, therapeutic qualities and in order to be productive. The rise of this old-fashioned hobby over the last few years has very little to do with thrift - after all, you can buy a scarf on the high street...
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11Mar

Self-soothing: Coping with Stress

Gerrilyn Smith

anxiety, counselling, emotions, stress, therapy

Soul

Sometimes it’s the simple things that can be the most effective. Connecting to our senses promotes wellbeing and relaxation through our sight, sound, smell, and touch. Learning how to manage the everyday and extraordinary stresses of life is a vital skill – one that everyone can develop simply and easily with minimal expense. While there is little that can be done to take away the risk factor, stress - including traumatic events - is increasingly part of everyone’s experiences. While you may not be able to avoid it, you can do something to mitigate the risks and reduce...
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