yoga & therapeutic thai massage
I’m teaching reduced classes during August due to summer holidays:
Monday 7 August class is ON, 7.30-9pm at the Hanover Community Centre.
Mondays 14, 21 and 28 NO CLASS.
NO Tuesday classes at Boulder Brighton during summer holiday, back September 5.
Wednesdays 2, 9 and 30 classes are ON, 9-10am @charlottewattshealth
NO CLASSES Wednesdays 16 and 23.
NO SATURDAY CLASSES IN AUGUST at Hanover Community Centre, back September 2, 9.30-10.30am
Barcombe Day Escapes
Gentle, nourishing yoga, walking countryside meditation, shared Thai massage and delicious vegan lunch in tune with the seasons.
Wintering: Dec 1 2024
The Liminal Space, with Ati Balding: 16 February 2025
The Paradoxes of menopause, with Kate Codrington: March 23, 2025
More info and book.
Kissimos, Crete, Greece
7 days of gentle mountain walks, birds of prey, unspoilt beaches and Cretan archeaology, with two sessions of yoga daily.
22-29 April 2025
More info and book
Dalyan, Turkey
7 days of unspoilt beaches, incredible boat excursions, relaxation around beautiful pool with amazing veggie food, with two sessions of yoga daily.
15-22 September 2025, with Charlotte Watts
More info and book
BOOKING NOW: Yoga, meditation and wild art journalling workshop to nurture women journeying through peri and menopause.
January 14 2024, 2-6pm, at Beechwood Hall, Cooksbridge.
In this nourishing workshop, we will explore meditation, breath, self massage and gentle movement practises to invite a more introspective, self-nurturing energy of this time of life. We will also explore wild art journaling as a way of creatively playing with self expression and identity as it shifts with throughout this transformational stage.
We welcome anyone who is moving through peri-menopause or menopause, or who is moving towards this stage, and would like to do so from a place of deep connection, acceptance and compassion. We aim to offer a supportive, non-judgemental expansive space where you will feel held and free to explore beyond the patriarchal notions of what this time of life entails. We welcome you to Maga.
When I first came across the term ‘Maga’, it felt like home. A place, or archetype, which follows the Mother (the stage of literal mothering a woman’s life or the bearing of other fruit, the productive ‘summer’ of life). While I’m all about reclaiming Crone as a positive and powerful time of life from the patriarchal downgrading of crone to wicked stepmother, witch (as a negative), or invisible and useless beyond reproductive years; with longer life spans, but at 50, it just doesn’t quite fit yet for me and so many women I talk to. Jane Hardwicke-Collins talks about Maga as:
‘the feminine version of Magus – the wise man, magician… a time of “integration and pulling through and pulling together the biggest pieces of my life work, my offering to the world.”
Where Mother is the Summer phase, Maga is the Autumn, and we can look to the seasons for guidance. It is a time of drawing in, regrouping, bringing in what we need for nourishment at a transitional time of life.
Book workshop, £50 for the afternoon.
book
Moyra Scott runs classes and art retreats. She developed her own processes, style of painting and a way of (WILD) Art Journaling. Moyra has her own painting studio and exhibits and sells her paintings. She also has a coaching practice with 1-2-1 clients and small group programmes (creative business owners, artists, designers, healers, photographers etc) and continues to coach and run workshops in the corporate setting (Reuters, UNV, UCL, Bristol Council, Kings College London, Cambridge University, Roche, Bayer among others).
Leonie Taylor is a senior yoga teacher and therapeutic Thai massage practitioner, teaching online (at Charlotte Watts Whole Health and Heart + Bones Yoga and in person. Leonie runs a weekly menopause yoga class.
Leonie is also a published author, having collaborated on Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health and co-authored Yoga and Somatics for Immune and Respiratory Health. She is currently writing her first solo project for Thames & Hudson, to be published in 2024.
During half term, only online classes will be running.
In person classes resume on June 5, see full timetable.
We explore why listening in to and cultivating compassion for your microbiome can affect your whole health, including your immunity and mood…
Written by Charlotte Watts and Leonie Taylor, co-authors of Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health and Yoga and Somatics for Immune and Respiratory Health.
When we explore a meditative yoga or somatic practice, we bring attention to the subtle body, our interior landscape, as a means of then expanding clearer compassionate connection to our environment. In scientific terms, this plays out in the relationship between our microbiome and our whole body-mind integration, and out into the world around us.
The importance of the gut environment – the microbiome – on all aspects of our health, including psychological, is being increasingly researched. We are home to trillions of bacteria and, in a healthy digestive tract, 80% friendly, 20% pathogenic. The beneficial or probiotic bacteria help keep harmful bacteria as well as colonisers like yeast in check. Low probiotic bacteria levels are associated with depression and fatigue states, whereas a healthy gut flora can modulate the hypersensitivity that may come from chronic exposure to stress. Our microbiome is now believed to be a large part of the signalling mechanisms up through the gut-brain axis, where its communication plays a vital role in healthy brain function.
‘Beneficial’ bacteria and mental health
“Every emotion has a biological correlate”
Gabor Maté (2012)
The psychobiome refers to the role that gut bacteria play in our mental health. Not only does stress affect the physiological function of the gut but it also changes the composition of and reduces the microbiota (gut flora). This can then be relayed via the ‘microbiome-gut-brain axis’.
There are so many ways in which gut microbes are thought to affect the brain that are key to appropriate immune responses.
Probiotic bacteria can cross the blood-brain barrier as part of our emotional landscape, including those gut feelings from the Enteric Nervous System (ENS)
Where some gut microbes secrete messenger molecules that travel through the blood to the brain, other bacteria may relay signals to the vagus through cells in the gut lining.
It is no coincidence that many people with mental health issues suffer from digestive disruption. Research has demonstrated significant improvements in depression, anger and anxiety, as well as lower levels of cortisol, among otherwise healthy adults taking a daily probiotic, which suggests that chronic stress can change the diversity, quality and health of microflora in the gut
Gut bacteria are key to proper immune system development and maintenance and microbial imbalances can promote inflammation and affect hormones
Skin deep
Within the field of psychoneuroimmunology, it is theorised that modern stressors are directed towards our guts and brain, leaving our immune system barely aware of our skin and other parts on the periphery.
Where the gut interface is around 98.4 square feet, the skin is 328 square feet! Every inch of the skin contains over 2.5 million bacteria. Toxins, stress, processed sugar, too much alcohol and harsh sanitising products can all affect the skin microbiome and how it works as a healthy boundary. The self-massage of floor work in yoga brings attention to the periphery and redirects the immune system back out to the skin, our first-barrier defence.
Microbiome as microcosm
Although the microbiome may seem separate to our own, larger self, there is a parallel between the microbiome’s relationship with the body and the yogic connection of the individual self with the larger consciousness (samadhi), reweaving our innate place within, not separate to, the natural world as ‘other’. We evolved symbiotically with our microbiome.
10 ways to help your gut microbiome flourish
1. 40g per day of fibre from vegetables supports a healthy microbial environment
2. Varied seasonal fruit and veg supports our variety of microbial species
3. Polyphenols found in seeds, berries, green tea, brassicas and coffee fuel microbes
4. Intermittent fasting (less snacking!) allows microbial replenishment
5. Fermented foods contain live microbes
6. Artificial sweeteners and processed foods reduce gut diversity and metabolism
7. Vitamin D, absorbed through sunshine, maintains microbial homeostasis
8. Exercise positively affects gut microbiota
9. Over-washing and antibacterial products can damage the microbiome
10. Antibiotics and even paracetamol, ibuprofen and antacids can disrupt microbial function. Only use when necessary
Qi Gong moving meditation
We can use this meditative practise to tune in to the connectivity of our inner and outer landscape. These patterns of movement from Qi Gong retrace the boundaries of the subtle body (about 12 fingers out from the skin), our peri-personal space.
1. From Tadasana (Mountain Pose), with soft knees, bring the hands up in front of the belly, the hara: seat of awareness and intention. We can bring attention here to the wisdom inherent in out gut
2. Bring hands up in front of the heart space, with a bowl-like holding of compassion, elbows and shoulder blades soft. Contemplate the gut-hear-brain axis
3. Expand the arms to the side, shoulder height
4. Raise the arms above the head, palms forward, reaching up to the sky
Slowly bring the hands down behind the skull, following downwards around the front of the chest
5. Skim the hands from in front of the belly around the hips, knees bending softly, dropping the hands around the outside of the legs over the top of the feet
6. Bring the hands, palms facing away from each other, up through the midline between the legs on the slow, curling ascent, palms coming together at the belly, feeling the entirety of the body.
For a deeper dive, see Yoga Therapy for Digestive Health and Yoga and Somatics for Immune and Respiratory Health.
There are no classes on the following dates in May, otherwise full timetable as usual.
Saturday 8 May
Monday 9 May
Monday 29 May
Slight changes to usual class dates over the April/Easter holidays as follows:
NO CLASSES:
Bank holiday Monday, 10 April, at Hanover Community Centre
Tuesdays 4 & 11 April, at Boulder Brighton
Wednesdays, Yoga for Menopause, 5 & 12 April, at Hanover Community Centre
Bank holiday weekend Saturday 8 April, at Hanover Community Centre
All other classes are as usual, look forward to seeing you after the Easter break if not before.
Join Charlotte, Leah and me for a 10-day programme to greet this time of moving outwards after the winter, towards renewal and growth. Each day offers a 30-minute physical practice (of a meditative, mindful, somatic manner), a 15-minute meditation and a 15 minute audio on an aspect of life to support our capacity to support ourselves…
Sign up for the FREE 10-day programme and get a whole month to explore all of the Whole Health offerings. Go to Whole Health and use coupon code CWH100 at checkout.
And of course I have in-person classes and spaces for therapeutic Thai massage too. Get in touch to book in.
Join us Wednesday 21 February, 7.30-9pm upstairs at the Hanover Centre, for a very special session of Yoga for Menopause with midlife mentor Alexa De Castilho.
Following our usual explorations in movement, breath and meditation to come home to our bodies, Alexa will lead us in a Journaling and journeying session, both being ways to heal the past, grow your nervous system capacity, move forward a to find safety, regulation and growth.
Journeying is designed to be a mix of exploration and acknowledgement, meditation, visualisation and hypnotherapy based on neuroscience, using our senses as well as imagination and energy alchemy.
We get to transform our inner ecology.
The hypnotic brain wave created in the journeying allows you to bypass your analytical mind and change your subconscious, connecting and forming new neural pathways and experience. As you journey, you’re creating your new reality because the brain does not know the difference between real and imagined. By strengthening this new visual reality you have created in your journeying, your inner ecology starts to transform. Growing new synapses and new pathways makes them new gateways and beliefs.
95% of our life is lived in the subconscious, as though we are on autopilot..
We wake up and the rest of the day is a series of learnt behaviours, decisions and conditionings we learnt from the ages of 0-6. We only live 5% of the time in our conscious mind. So within our journeying we re-imagine and reprogram some of the conditioning we have adopted, stored in our subconscious, so we can begin to move, behave and choose from a place that is deeper aligned to our present truth.
Like gardening, we are pruning what no longer serves and allowing the new to grow and flourish, changing your inner landscape.
We work on the ecology of self, where you are the medicine. The deepest work often doesn’t require us to go as deep as we might think.
A common misconception is that the harder, deeper and faster we do the work the sooner we heal. But the nervous system doesn’t work like that. The incredible thing about our autonomic nervous system is that it speaks a non verbal language. Meaning it communicates with us through sensations, imagery, emotion, movement.
Exploring big experiences to find healing – like intensive retreats, cold plunges, forceful breathwork or even intensive talk therapy – may make you feel like you come back to square one, or you just feel stuck all over again, Our nervous system doesn’t work like that: It craves slowness, gentleness, space and time. We can experience so much depth and transformation with so much less activating work.
Get in touch to book your place if you would like to explore how Alexa journies to change your inner ecology, which inturn transforms your outer reality.
Classes are £12 drop-in for the first class, then £70 for 6 consecutive classes. And please share with others who you feel would benefit from the support, some space to explore and rest within a lovely, inclusive community.
Booking now for weekly sessions, £12 drop-in, £70 for 6 consecutive sessions
book
Our special guest for this week’s Yoga for Menopause is
Rachel Boon, Naturopath, Herbalist and women’s health specialist. Rachel helps peri and post-menopausal women navigate their ever-changing hormonal landscape and lived symptomatic experiences, either alongside or without HRT.
In this special session, Rachel will cover five menopausal nutritional friends and foes, so you will all leave with a few takeaway gems that will go on to enhance your menopausal experience, wherever you are on your journey.
If you’re not a regular to our group, Wednesdays 7.30-9pm at #hanovercmunitycentre, you’re very welcome to join us – DM to book your space. We meet every week to share experiences of our perimenopausal and menopausal journey through focused, often theme-based discussion, in a non-judgmental and inclusive environment. We then explore practises from physical yoga asana and Somatics practices, self-massage (I am a therapeutic Thai massage practitioner), meditation and breathwork, all of which can dramatically reduce stress, which exacerbates any symptoms you might experience.
I’m so looking forward to our special session, it’s going to be an enlightening discussion – Rachel and I are equally passionate about reframing menopause as a transformative journey where women are given proper information and support in order to make responsible choices and lifestyle shifts.
Classes are £12 drop-in for the first class, then £70 for 6 consecutive classes. DM to book in. And please share with others who you feel would benefit from the support, some space to explore and rest within a lovely, inclusive community.
Booking now for weekly sessions, £12 drop-in, £70 for 6 consecutive sessions
book