Balancing Chronic Fatigue Living with chronic fatigue means balance is needed across all activities to avoid favouring one particular task during a day or week and falling into the boom and bust cycle. Across your daily routine, consider what types of activities you are doing. E.g. 30 minutes of home admin like banking, a left…
Tai Chi Qigong for Menopause As a Tai Chi and Qigong instructor who is going through menopause, I wanted to share my experience of using these ancient movement practices to support my symptoms. In 2024, aged 48 years old, I started experiencing hot flushes at night along with night sweats, which progressed after a couple…
Hypermobility Support Programme Tai Chi, Qigong, meditation and relaxation practices can help support the hypermobile body. Whether you live with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Hypermobility Joint Syndrome, Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder or other Hypermobile Syndromes. It is possible to learn how to stabilise the joints, self manage pain, self manage fatigue, learn the skill of pacing, develop…
Hypermobility Syndromes Zoom Class In May and July I will be giving a series of talks and demonstrations on Tai Chi and Qigong to the members of the ‘Hypermobility Syndromes Association” live on Zoom. This is a wonderful opportunity to share Tai Chi and Qigong as effective self management strategies to manage the symptoms of…
Self Managing Chronic Illness Your Guide to Self Care “I’m not interested in competing with anyone. I hope we all make it.” By Erica Cook. This article looks at the impact of chronic health conditions on every day life and offers suggestions for ways to self manage alongside or outside of Western medical treatment. I…
Nourish Through Breath Part 1 Learn to Breathe Better for Health Welcome to my breath work programme, helping you breathe better for optimum health. Breathing can be done anytime, anywhere, by anyone, in fact you are doing it right now. Except are you breathing properly? Does your breathing support your health? The aim of this…
Chronic Health Tai Chi Livestream Online Group Class UK Join our Tai Chi, Qigong and meditation online class for relaxation and health. Open to all abilities, the lessons include seated and standing movements, guiding you through gentle tension relief, physical relaxation and meditation techniques. Anyone can join in, whether living with chronic illness, chronic pain…
Chronic Health Warrior I’d like to introduce you all to Ren, a young man with complex health needs who has channelled his experience into song writing and music. I’ve not been blown away by new music for a while. Ren has released a song called “Hi Ren”, which details his inner conflict over living with…
The Art of Pacing What does pacing mean and how can it benefit you as a life philosophy? Pacing is generally the opposite of how we have been conditioned and brought up. We live in an ever increasing fast paced and demanding world. It’s no wonder stress is one of the most silent and untreated…
Self Managing Chronic Pain For those living with chronic pain who would like to be active in their self care management, read over my collection of resources that aim to naturally and holistically support you. Explore gentle and powerful methods for both mind and body to change your pain experience. I understand personally the impact…
How Do You Do What You Do? This questions was posed to me by one of my students who lives with chronic health. She was aware of my health baseline, and asked how I do what I do as a Tai Chi and Qigong instructor. This is a great question. Delving deeper into her question,…
Health Baselines Learning to Take Care of Yourself In my classes I often talk about exercising and training gracefully to your own physical baseline. This phrase comes from my teacher Casey Kochmer, from Personal Tao. Read his article on baselines here. We all have a unique health baseline, that changes with the ebb and flow…
Tai Chi Qigong for Ehlers Danlos Tai Chi and Qigong as dynamic movement practices to aid the genetic connective tissue disorder called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). Hello everyone, I’m Nicola, a Tai Chi, Qigong and meditation instructor and I live with hypermobility EDS. This article explores how mindful dynamic movements can support the symptoms of…
What does EDS pain feel like? Making the invisible visible I would like to describe my experience of living with pain to help educate and raise awareness for all living with chronic and acute pain health conditions.  For those reading this that know someone who lives with chronic pain, the best thing you can do is…
Living with EDS “Ehlers Danlos Syndrome” My Story by Tai Chi Instructor Nicola During May 2014 it is Ehlers Danlos awareness month. I have written my account of living with EDS and wanted to share this with you all. Here is my story, it is a little raw and gives honest insight into what it…