I don’t feel that way at all. 60 is better than 40.

A different way to think about 60

In Japan, turning 60 is called Kanreki. Kan means return, reki means calendar. At 60, you have completed one full cycle of the traditional East Asian zodiac (the system combines 12 animals with 5 elements, creating exactly 60 unique combinations). I am a Fire Horse. When you turn 60, the combination that marked your birth year returns. You are, quite literally, reborn.

Traditionally, the person celebrating Kanreki wears red, which is the colour of newborns and new beginnings. I love this. It is a genuinely different way of understanding what it means to have lived 60 years.

So today, I am beginning a second cycle, with everything I’ve learned from the first one. And it taught me a great deal.

10 things I know at 60 that I didn’t know at 30

1. The body needs movement. The mind needs stillness. The spirit needs a tension-free body-mind to shine through.

This is the foundation of everything I have learned and everything I teach. We cannot separate these three. A tired, painful body makes stillness difficult. A restless, overloaded mind makes it almost impossible to sense anything beyond the noise. And the spirit, that deeper dimension of who we are, the part that gives life meaning, needs both. It needs a body that can show up and a mind that can quieten enough to listen. Everything that follows flows from this.

2. Learn to listen before your body has to shout

Most illness does not arrive out of nowhere. It builds. Quietly, over months or years, the body might send signals like tension that remains, fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix, a low mood that has no obvious cause, digestion that feels off, a heaviness that becomes normal because it has been there so long. We call these things stress, or ageing, or just life. And we carry on.
But the body was trying to tell us something.
The problem is that most of us have never been taught to listen. We are not trained in what scientists call interoception, that is the ability to sense the body’s internal state. To notice the early ‘whispers’ before they become loud. To feel the difference between tiredness and depletion, between manageable stress and a nervous system that has been in overdrive for too long. Western medicine is extraordinary at treating acute illness and crisis. It is not really designed to catch this slow build. That is our job.
Learning to listen to the body may be the single most important health skill we can cultivate. Not because it will prevent everything. But because it gives us a chance to respond before the body has to escalate.

3. Your body is not your enemy, even when you have an auto-immune condition.

I spent a few years fighting mine after I was diagnosed with MS. I felt like my body had betrayed me. But the truth is that my body was never working against me. It was trying to protect me, even when it got things wrong. Most of us are so disconnected from our bodies that we miss the signals it sends constantly: tension, fatigue, pain, the quiet pull toward rest. Your body is speaking all the time. The question is whether you are listening.

4. Everything in your body is connected.

The foot affects the back. The jaw affects the core. The breath affects the immune system. The gut affects the brain. Treating one organ or system in isolation, as if it had nothing to do with the rest, is like trying to fix a single thread in a web. Pull one thread and the whole structure responds. This is what the science is telling us. Everything communicates with everything else.

5. Mind and body are one.

Sorry Mr Descartes! Neuroscience has proven you wrong. Chronic stress damages cells. Loneliness weakens the immune system. Joy, connection, and a sense of meaning have measurable effects on physical health. And it works in both directions. How we move our bodies changes how we think and feel. The split between mental health and physical health is a useful clinical distinction but it is not a biological reality. Truly healthy ageing is holistic.

6. We are social animals.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest studies of human wellbeing ever conducted, found that the quality of our relationships is the single strongest predictor of health and happiness in later life. Stronger than wealth, fame or social class. Loneliness is not just unpleasant. It is physically harmful.

7. Ageing is a privilege.

My book is dedicated to my brother Patrice, who never got the chance to grow older. His memory is a constant reminder of how precious this is. Every year is a gift. Every birthday is a celebration of a life still to be enjoyed. I refuse to treat ageing as something to apologise for.

8. Your health is ultimately in your hands.

Western medicine is extraordinary at treating acute illness and crisis. But it is not designed to keep you healthy. That is your job. The research is overwhelming: the choices we make every day from how we move to how we breathe, how we rest, how we connect, all shape our health. Start now. Not when something goes wrong. Nobody can exercise for you. Nobody can breathe for you, rest for you, choose for you what kind of relationship you have with your body. Your doctor is an essential partner. But you are the one who has to show up, every day, and participate in your own health. That is not a burden. It is one of the most empowering truths I know.

9. Life force is real.

Every wisdom tradition in the world has a name for it. Prana in yoga. Chi in Chinese medicine. Mana in Polynesian culture. Ki in Japanese tradition. The idea that we are not just physical bodies but dynamic, living systems animated by something that goes beyond the purely mechanical: this is not mysticism. It is a shift in perspective that changes everything about how you relate to your body, your health, and your life. When I stopped thinking of myself as a machine to be fixed and started thinking of myself as a living system with its own intelligence, everything became possible.

10. Healthy ageing means healing.

Not in the fairy tale sense of being cured. But in the deeper sense of reclaiming life. Of returning to yourself. Of learning to live as fully as possible, in whatever body you have, with whatever challenges you face. Healing is a daily practice of attention, care, and willingness to listen.

A Birthday Gift For You

When my mum was still alive, I often gave her a present on my birthday. After all, she did the hardest part!!!
Now, I want to give you one instead.

For the last few months, I have been working on a free 7-day online course to wake up your body. It is designed for people who feel too old to exercise, who don’t know where to start, who are nervous about movement, who have been told their body can’t do this.

Each day you receive a 30-minute practice, either yoga, breathwork, gentle strengthening or deep rest. It is not about performance. It is an invitation to reconnect with your body, gently, and begin to build a different relationship with it.

The course is free. And I have chosen to launch it next week as September is Healthy Ageing Month in the US. It was created over 30 years ago to celebrate the positive sides of growing older. This year’s theme? ‘Curiosity Has No Age Limit.’

I love it!

Consider this my Kanreki gift;-) I will share the link here on Substack next week!Because if there is one more thing I now knowit is that it’s never too late to start a practice.

Much love

Véronique

PS: If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like to support my work, you can buy me a cup of tea (I’m trying to reduce my coffee intake)☕No pressure at all though.
But if you’d like to fuel the next edition, here’s the link:

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As a woman over 45, frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) can come on suddenly or slowly as a stubborn stiffness that locks up the shoulder until reaching for a high shelf or fastening a bra becomes very painful. This is quite a common condition which disproportionately strikes women between the ages of 40 and 60.

Hormones, Inflammation and Fascia in women over 45

• Oestrogen Drop: Oestrogen is a natural anti-inflammatory and a key player in keeping our tissues lubricated. When oestrogen levels decline, our connective tissue - specifically the fascia wrapping around the shoulder joint - loses its moisture, becomes brittle, and easily inflames.

• Fascial ‘Glue’: In response to this inflammation, the body deposits dense collagen fibers inside the shoulder joint capsule. Think of it like internal superglue. The fascia thickens, tightens and literally freezes the joint in place.

• Stress Spike: Fluctuating hormones increase systemic stress, causing us to unconsciously hold tension in our neck, shoulders and jaw, further locking down the tissue.

Why Force Doesn’t Work (And Gentleness Does)

Because a frozen shoulder feels so rigidly locked, the temptation is to stretch, pull or force it open. However, forceful movement triggers a panic response in the nervous system, causing the fascia to clamp down even harder.

This is why a gentle, fascial-release approach is so remarkably effective. By using light, modulating and deep-acting pulsations, we signal to the nervous system that it is safe to let go. Instead of fighting the tissue, we invite the fascial glue to melt, restoring hydration and immediate blood flow to the joint.

Although, there are individual variations, there are usually three phases: the painful freezing stage (2 to 9 months), the stiff frozen stage (4 to 12 months), and the recovering thawing stage (5 months to 2 years).

Case Study: Véronique had just entered the recovering thawing stage (5 months to 2 years). She also had received a cortico-steroid injection a few weeks before but her range of motion was still limited.
A single, deeply gentle fascia session with Happy Fascia Atlasbalans pulsation device clearly improved Véronique’s range of motion, freeing up both her shoulder and her neck. There is no doubt that the treatment has helped speed up recovery and improve her quality of life.

Beyond the Shoulder: What Else Can Fascia Release Help?

• Chronic Neck / Tension Headaches: Melts away tight bands of tissue running from the upper back into the skull.

• Lower Back Stiffness: Restoring elasticity to the thoracolumbar fascia, taking the pressure off the lumbar spine.

• Pelvic and Hip Tightness: Opening up locked hips to improve walking gait and ease lower body discomfort.

• Repetitive Strain & Joint Restriction: Alleviating numbness, tingling, or stiffness in elbows, wrists, and knees.

• Poor Posture & Tech Neck: Reversing the rounded-shoulder slump caused by hours at computers or looking at phones.

• Sluggish Circulation & Fatigue: Clearing the fascial pathways so blood, lymph and energy can flow freely through the body again.

Clinical & Global Research References

1. The Fascia Guide & Fascia Research Society. (2025). Proceedings of the Global Swedish Fascia Convention: The Living Body. Sollentuna, Sweden.

2. NHS Scotland UK Guidelines. (2024). Clinical Overview of Adhesive Capsulitis (Frozen Shoulder) Incidence in Post-Menopausal Demographics.

3. University of Glasgow School of Infection & Immunity. (2023). Soft Tissue Inflammatory Pathways and Fibroblast Signalling Matrixes in Mid-Life Structural Joint Stiffness.

Find out more

And this August, I’m doing two things that have nothing and everything to do with each other. From the 2nd to the 15th, I’m switching my phone off completely. And starting this month, six days a week, I’m doing 60 squats, 60 sit-ups and 60 skips a day.

Not because I’m afraid of turning 60 but because I want my 70s to be good ones.

I’ve lived with MS for over 25 years. I’ve been through menopause. I know, in my own body, that nothing about strength, balance or resilience arrives by accident. It’s built deliberately, especially in the decade before you need it. So I’d rather do the building now, while I can, than wait until I’m forced to.

What’s actually happening in our bodies around now

I would like to mention four research papers but if you prefer the summary, jump to the last paragraph in this section ;-)

1. A Stanford team led by geneticist Michael Snyder tracked thousands of molecules and microbes in 108 adults over several years, and published their findings in Nature Aging in August 2024. Their finding: the body doesn’t age in a slow, steady line. Most of what they measured shifted in two sharp bursts: one around age 44, one around age 60. These affected things like fat and alcohol metabolism, cardiovascular markers, and immune function. Ok it is a small one, with only 108 people and Snyder himself has cautioned against reading too much into it. But for me, it is one more nudge…

2. A separate, much larger study, led by Laura Gimeno at UCL and Oxford, published in the Journals of Gerontology in 2024, looked at over 100,000 people and was quite sobering. Adults reaching their 50s and 60s today are about 1.5 times more likely to have multiple chronic conditions (such as diabetes, high cholesterol or heart problems) than people who reached the same age a generation or two earlier. Living longer hasn’t automatically meant living better. But there are two pieces of better news.

3. A Duke University study (Hall, Morey and colleagues, tracking 775 adults from their 30s to their 90s) found that measurable declines in balance and the strength needed to rise from a chair tend to slowly begin in people’s 50s. It sounds bleak, except that it also means the 50s are a real opportunity to intervene!

4. A large 2026 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, following over 24,500 people from midlife into their Medicare years, found that people with higher fitness in midlife spent meaningfully more years free of chronic disease. It’s worth noting that study was three-quarters men, so I’d love to see more research about women here, but the direction of the finding lines up with everything else.

To sum up: research suggests the body ages in bursts, first around 44 and then 60. Today's midlifers have more chronic disease than past generations did at the same age but the encouraging counter-evidence is clear: strength and fitness built now measurably buy back healthy years later.
In other words, none of this is a reason for panic. It’s the opposite, actually. The window to influence how your 60s and 70s feel is now. But you definitely can influence how you age by working on your mobility, strength and speed.

The importance of rest

None of this works, though, without the other half of what I’m doing this August: Rest.

Deep rest isn’t a lifestyle preference, it’s a biological necessity. But rest doesn’t mean watching TV or scrolling on your phone. Your nervous system doesn’t fully repair, regulate or restore itself while it’s still half-listening for the next demand, the next notification, the next thing that might need you. It has to feel safe enough to let go.

When I think about what keeps my own nervous system half-alert most days, it’s not something dramatic. It’s my phone, my laptop. The notifications, the news, the videos of cute baby elephants or dogs and cats (I will genuinely miss them). In my new book, I write about how modern life constantly pulls our attention outward, and how turning it back inward, even briefly, is the best way to come back to ourselves.

Strength and rest aren’t opposites. They’re the same project. You can’t build one without the other.

What I’m actually doing

So this August, alongside the squats, sit-ups and skips, yoga and meditation, I’m giving my nervous system two weeks ‘off’.

From the 2nd to the 15th of August, I’m off social media and off email. No scrolling, no inbox, no half-checking. I’ll be enjoying the company of dear friends in a beautiful part of the world I’m eager to explore.

If you’ve been meaning to explore some of these ideas yourself, this feels like the right moment to point you toward a free sample of Taming the Walrus. You can read it here while I’m away: Get the free sample

I’ll be back, properly reconnected and, I hope, a little stronger on the 15th.

Until then, if you fancy joining me in 60 squats, 60 sit-ups, 60 skips and 60 min meditation a day, let me know.

Much love, Véronique

PS: Image by SteenJepsen Pixabay

Most of us learned anatomy like this: bones stacked on top of each other, muscles pulling them into movement, and joints taking the load. A kind of vertical column, like bricks in a wall.

It’s a useful image. But it’s not quite right. And understanding why changes everything about how we move and how we age.

A tent, not a tower

There is a principle in architecture called tensegrity, short for ‘tensional integrity.’ A tensegrity structure doesn’t rely on rigid parts stacked vertically for stability. It relies on a continuous network of tension. Compression and tension work together. Forces are distributed across the whole system, not concentrated in one place.

Your body works exactly this way.

I find it helps to think of a tent. The poles give the tent its shape and height but they don’t hold it up alone. It’s the ropes and the fabric, constantly under tension, pulling in all directions, that create stability. Take away the ropes, and the poles collapse.

In your body, the bones are the poles. The muscles and tendons are the ropes. And the fascia (that remarkable web of connective tissue that wraps around every muscle, bone, and organ) is the fabric. Everything connected. Everything in constant communication.

This means that when you move well, force doesn’t pile up in your joints. It spreads across the whole system, through the fascia, through the muscles, through the web. Your joints don’t have to take the full load.

But when we move poorly, or when we stop moving in varied, whole-body ways, the load falls unevenly. We feel it as tight hips, a sore lower back, achy knees. Not always because something is ‘wrong’ locally, but because the system isn’t distributing force the way it was designed to.

Feel it for yourself

Try this. Stand up and step into Warrior II: a wide stance, front knee bent, arms extended at shoulder height, gaze over your front fingertips.

Illustration by Izzy Barrett @izustrations

Pause there for a moment.

Feel your feet grounding into the floor. Notice the subtle lift through your spine as your body organises itself. Relax your shoulders. Do your arms lengthen from fingertip to fingertip? Can you feel the whole structure adjusting and responding as one?

That is tensegrity. Not muscles working in isolation. A whole system holding itself in balance, distributing effort evenly, stability emerging from the web of tension rather than from force.

It’s like magic you can feel!

Why this matters for strength

This is why, in yoga, we don’t teach strength as an isolated muscle exercise. We teach it as a whole-body coordination practice.

When you understand that your body is a tension network, and not a stack of parts, you start to strengthen differently. You feel how the foot connects to the hip. How the grip connects to the core. How a relaxed breath changes everything.

This Saturday

On July 25th, I’m hosting my monthly Masterclass, and this month we’re going deep into Strengthening: The Architecture of Stability. We’ll explore tensegrity in movement, feel how the body distributes force, and practise together. The masterclass is 90 min long, with 15-20 min theory, 60 min practice and 10-15 min Q&A. It is not recorded so everyone feels free to interact. If you’d like to join, click on the link below.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article and that you will think about it when you move.

Much love,

Véronique

Sign Up for Masterclass

Note: The Masterclass is free for my monthly zoom subscribers. For others, you choose how much to pay (minimum £5)

It’s a topic very close to my heart. So much of what we’re told about ageing well focuses on what to do. But very little attention goes to the relationship we have with our body in the first place.

If that relationship is one of frustration, distrust, or feeling like your body is working against you, no pill or protocol will fix that. We need to start there.

In this class we’ll explore how to feel safe in the body again, through movement and breath, and why that sense of safety is actually the foundation everything else is built on. It’s free, it’s online, open to all levels, and I would absolutely love to see you there!

Book your spot

Feel free to share with anyone who might enjoy it.

Much love

Veronique

The Little Prince and the Fox

There is a scene in The Little Prince that explains it clearly.

Image by Estoile from Pixabay

If you’ve read this amazing book, you might remember that the prince meets a fox in the desert. And the fox asks the little prince to tame him. The prince doesn’t understand: what does taming mean? The fox explains: to tame is to create a bond. When the prince asks what he should do to tame him, the fox replies:

“You must be very patient. First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass. I shall watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are a source of misunderstandings. But every day, you can sit a little closer to me…”

You can only tame something by showing up. With patience. With curiosity. A little closer, each day.

The dream

Three months before I was officially diagnosed with MS, I had a vivid dream.

I was walking through a quiet neighbourhood when I felt drawn towards a house I didn’t recognise. Steps led down to a small, bare garden, and a garage. I went inside, and there she was. An enormous female walrus. Her head nearly touched the ceiling. Her vast body moved like a slow wave. She looked at me through long lashes, calm and kind. And she gave me a riddle to solve. I woke up. I couldn’t remember the riddle but I knew that the dream mattered. I didn’t know exactly how or why. I just trusted that feeling.
As I tried to understand the dream, I realised that if I was asked to choose an animal to represent MS, I would choose a walrus. It is big, slow moving, not deadly but huge!

It took me a few years to understand what the walrus in my dream was asking of me. She was asking to be tamed.

What taming really looks like

For a long time after my diagnosis, I fought my body. I pushed through fatigue. I ignored signals. I tried to perform my way back to health.

It didn’t work.

What eventually worked was listening to my body. But not just listening… learning from it, adapting my approach, trying new things. Asking what my body needed, rather than telling it what it should do.

This is what taming looks like in real life. Patience, presence, and an honest willingness to listen and adapt.

Why I’m sharing this now

I still teach yoga, ‘despite’ living with MS for over 25 years. I still run - albeit not very fast - and looking at the next challenge. I share that not to impress you, but because for most of my life I believed my body was the obstacle: something to manage or ‘conquer’.

I now know that this was the wrong approach. Taming was the right one.

Next month, I turn 60, and on my birthday, I want to offer you a little present: a free 7-day experience. One practice a day (movement, breath, strength, rest, stillness). No special fitness level required. Just a willingness to show up and tame your body.

More details coming very soon!

Much love,
Véronique

PS: If you’d like to check my book, you can download a free sample or share it with your friends…

Download your free book sample

Children have to learn this when reading (eyes movement), when tying their shoes (hands movement), but it is not just a childhood milestone. It is an indication of how well our two brain hemispheres communicate, throughout our life.

What It Does to Your Brain

The brain is divided into two hemispheres, and they don’t automatically share information. That job belongs to the corpus callosum, which is a thick bundle of roughly 200 to 250 million nerve fibres that acts as the brain’s internal broadband connection.

Every time you reach your right hand across to touch your left arm, every time you step your left foot diagonally to the right (you might do that occasionally!), you are sending signals through that cable, keeping it efficient.

Neuroscientists call this ‘bilateral integration’, in other word the coordinated recruitment of both sides of the brain for a single task.

Like most structures in our body, if you don’t use the corpus callosum, you lose it! Research shows that adults who regularly practice movement where they cross the midline, show that the fibres that carry signals between the different brain regions work better!

This translate into better processing speed, clearer thinking (aka less brain fog) and stronger executive function compared to those who don’t.

There is also a compelling connection to neuroplasticity more broadly. Midline-crossing movements require the brain to do something it finds genuinely challenging: override its natural tendency to keep left-side tasks on the left and right-side tasks on the right. That override requires effort. And new movements that require effort are precisely the kind of stimulus that drives the production of BDNF, sometimes described as fertiliser for neurons. BDNF helps keep you neurons healthy and also encourage the growth of new ones. The decline in BDNF is one of the mechanisms underlying cognitive deterioration.

In short: crossing the midline is not a party trick for children. It is a form of cognitive exercise disguised as physical movement.

Modern Life & Midline Crossing

Unfortunately, we don’t really do much midline crossing during a normal day.

Think of a typical day. You wake up, move in a straight line to the bathroom, sit at a desk with the legs uncrossed, type with both hands hovering in front of their respective sides of the keyboard, drive a car (hands fixed at nine and three), sit through meetings, walk in straight corridors, and spend evenings on a sofa staring at a screen directly in front of you.

You might have reacted when reading the above paragraph: ‘But I was told not to cross my legs when sitting!’ First when we talk about midline crossing, we’re talking about dynamic, active movements when the brain has to adjust and coordinate the movement. When you sit and cross your legs, it is passive. Secondly, this is not good for your spine, it might lead to ‘dead leg’ feeling and restrict circulation. So please don’t cross your legs while sitting!

Going back to your typical day, at no point has your nervous system been asked to do anything genuinely cross-lateral. You have spent twelve or more waking hours in a movement environment almost perfectly engineered to keep your two hemispheres in comfortable isolation.

This is new. For most of human history, daily survival required reaching, twisting, climbing, carrying loads across the body, foraging, farming, dancing, and navigating uneven terrain, all of which demanded constant midline crossing and bilateral coordination. Our brains evolved in that movement-rich environment. The corpus callosum developed its extraordinary connectivity not as a bonus feature but as a biological response to a physical world that constantly demanded it.

When that demand disappears, the connectivity gradually weakens. We know that one of the leading causes of injury and loss of independence in older adults comes from falls. They are closely related to poor bilateral coordination and slowed cross-body reaction times.

How to Bring It Back

The good news is that this is entirely reversible, and the interventions are neither expensive nor time-consuming. The research points to a handful of movement practices that reliably stimulate midline crossing and bilateral integration in adults.

For those who want something more accessible, even simple daily practices make a meaningful difference. Brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand. Reaching across the body to retrieve objects rather than turning to face them. Walking with deliberate arm swing - the right arm swings forward as you step the left foot forward- marching with high knees and touching opposite elbow to opposite knee. These are easy ways of prompting the nervous system to re-engage pathways it might not have used for a while.

The key principle in all of them is the same: the movement must cross the body’s midline, and it must require some degree of conscious coordination. Automatic, habitual movement have far less of the neurological benefit. The brain benefits most when it is required to think about what the body is doing.

A brain that is regularly asked to coordinate both its halves is a brain that stays more connected, more responsive, and more resilient. And that, it turns out, is a matter of how you move through every decade of your life.

If this resonated, consider sharing it with someone in your life who thinks brain health is only about crossword puzzles and omega-3s. The body is the brain’s oldest tool for staying sharp.

Much love
Veronique

PS: This kind of movement is woven into everything I teach, including my new book Taming the Walrus.

Download your free book sample

PS: Images by yanalya on Magnific

Taming the Walrus brings together everything I’ve learned over 25 years of teaching, my own journey living with MS, and the science of how we can age with more vitality, resilience, and connection to ourselves.
As a thank you for being part of this community, I’m sharing a free sample with you.

In these pages, you’ll get a sense of the heart of the book: why healthy ageing isn’t about fighting the body, but learning to listen to it - and how yoga, breathwork, and modern science come together into one practical approach.

📖 Download your free sample

Free Sample

2.92MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I’d love to hear what you think.

With gratitude,
Véronique

If you’d like to keep reading, you can:
👉 Buy Taming the Walrus on Yogamatters
👉 Buy Taming the Walrus on Amazon

PS: If you would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee ☕or a glass of Mother Root (thanks to Niall and Charlie for the gift!) No pressure at all. Your reading my posts and your comments already mean a lot.

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It’s all about the vagus nerve

Ahhhh the vagus nerve! It has become such a buzzword. It shows up in conversations about breathwork, cold exposure, meditation, and nervous system regulation. But it is not just a trendy topic. There’s real science worth understanding, especially if you’ve been struggling with ‘unexplained’ anxiety.⁽¹⁾

In case you haven’t heard of the vagus nerve before, it is the longest cranial nerve in the body. It starts in the brainstem and travels down through the neck into the chest and abdomen, connecting the brain to major organs like the heart, lungs, and gut.

You may have heard of polyvagal theory, which suggests that the vagus nerve helps to regulate our sense of safety and connection. In simple terms, when our vagus nerve is functioning well, our body can easily switch from the ‘fight or flight’ mode to a state of relaxation. This ability to ‘switch off’ is our vagal tone. Higher vagal tone is associated with better resilience to stressc and a greater sense of ease in the body.

So where does head position come in?

Here’s the part that often gets overlooked. Because the vagus nerve leaves the skull and travels down through the neck, its function can be influenced by posture, especially the position of your head and cervical spine.

If your head is constantly leaning forward (looking down at a phone, working on a laptop…), it can place strain on the structures around the vagus nerve. Over time, this forward head posture may contribute to compression or irritation in the neck. When that happens, the vagus nerve may not signal as effectively as it should.

The result?

It’s harder for the body to relax and you might experience low-grade anxiety or tightness in the chest…

Of course, anxiety is complex and rarely has a single cause. I am not saying that if you release your neck, your anxiety will automatically disappear. What I’m saying is that we often overlook the physical component and for some people, it would make a huge difference.
This is why I start 95% of my classes with nexk release movements… But if you cannot join me on zoom, here are a few simple exercises you can also do on your own.

Some Easy Practices

Chin Tucks (Posture Reset)
Sit or stand tall. Draw your chin straight back (as if making a double chin) without tilting your head up or down. Hold for 5 seconds and repeat 4 or 5 times. It is not the most flattering pose but it helps realign the head over the spine and reduces strain on the neck.

Slow Neck Mobility
Gently tilt your right ear toward your right shoulder. If you want you can also lift the right arm overhead and lower your hand on the left side of your face. The weight of your hand and arm will gently draw the ear closer to the shoulder. Then turn your head to look towards your right armpit then in the other direction, diagonally, towards the ceiling. Repeat a few times and then switch sides. Move slowly and breathe deeply.

Head circles
I love small gentle head circles. But make sure you don’t create huge circles… small ones are so much nicer.

Eye and Head Coordination
Keep your head still and slowly move your eyes to one side. Hold for 20–30 seconds, then switch. This exercise - called the Salamander - can help regulate the nervous system and trigger relaxation.

Bumble Bee Breath
One of my favourite breathing practices (but I confess I have many favourite ones!) is the Humming Breath or Bumble Bee Breath. Inhale through the nose and hum on the exhale. You can also close your ears with your thumbs and place your index and middle fingers gently on your eyelids to ‘amplify’ the effect. Do 5 repetitions and notice how relaxed you feel afterwards. (By the way, this is one of the practices I describe in my book... )

I would also like to encourage you to ensure you raise your phone to eye level when using it. Don’t forget to adjust your workspace so your screen is not pulling your head forward. This isn’t an ‘exercise’ but it does make a difference.

The key idea here isn’t that posture is the sole cause of anxiety. But that your body and mind are deeply interconnected. Sometimes, what feels like an emotional problem has a physical contributor. And sometimes, the solution isn’t to think differently, but to sit, stand, and breathe differently.

If you’ve been trying everything to calm your anxiety and still feel stuck, it might be worth asking a simple question: Where is my head, right now? -:)

Much love

Véronique

PS: If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like to support my work, you can now buy me a coffee ☕or kombucha (I love kombucha!) No pressure at all. Your reading this newsletter and replies already mean a lot.

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(1) If you’re interested, you can for instance check the article called ‘Effect of Forward Head Posture on Resting State Brain Function’ published in 2024 in the journal Healthcare (Basel)

We search for the next supplement, the next treatment, the next pill that might finally make us feel better. And underneath so much of it, I think there is often fear.

Because when we stop reaching for something outside ourselves, we are left facing what is inside us. Grief. Loneliness. Exhaustion. Old pain. Emotions we never had space to feel.

Most of us were never taught how to sit with those things. So we distract ourselves. We eat. We buy. We hold on. Because holding on feels safer than letting go.

The body holds everything

But our bodies carry far more than we realise. You can often see it in people. Tight jaws. Shallow breathing. Hard stomachs. Shoulders that don’t relax.

The body adapts to stress and emotional pain over time. And fascia, the connective tissue that runs throughout the whole body, seems to carry so much of that story.

I find this deeply fascinating because fascia is not just physical. Anyone who has experienced bodywork, deep stretching, massage or trauma release knows emotions can suddenly appear from nowhere. Tears come up suddenly. Memories pop up out of nowhere - or so it seems. Sometimes there is relief without even understanding why.

It is as though the body has been waiting for the right time to release. For years we have approached healing as if humans are machines that simply need the correct input. Better diet. Better supplements. Better routines. Better productivity. Better optimisation.

But human beings are not machines. We are emotional. Energetic. Sensitive. Complex. I believe that what most of us need is more safety, to let go!

Why letting go feels frightening

I think many people want healing, but are also frightened by it. Because healing changes us.

If we stop numbing ourselves with food, what feelings might appear? If the body finally relaxes, what grief has been buried underneath tension for years? If we are no longer constantly fixing ourselves, who are we?

Even our suffering can become familiar. The body gets used to certain patterns, even painful ones. Letting go makes us vulnerable.

And yet there comes a point where all the holding becomes exhausting. Our body gets tired of carrying too much for too long. We feel disconnected from ourselves, from others, from life itself.

I think this is why so many people are now becoming interested in fascia, nervous system healing and more subtle approaches to wellbeing. Of course, they are also trendy but I believe that people are longing to feel whole again - maybe because life is so uncertain!

Returning to something simpler

The older I get, the more I feel that healing is about returning to what was always there underneath the noise. It is about remembering!

We already know how to breathe, how to feel, how to settle when it feels safe. And maybe fascia is part of that remembering, through listening.

I don’t believe we need to reject medicine or physical healing. There is real value in support, treatment and science. But I also think healing requires listening, honesty, compassion.

And the willingness to feel what we have spent years avoiding.

That can be uncomfortable but it can also be incredibly freeing.

Because eventually we realise that beneath all the layers we built to protect ourselves, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with us.

There is simply a human being who learned to hold on tightly in order to survive. And now, little by little, the body is learning it may finally be safe to let go.

This is what Conscious Connected Breath (CCB) allows us to do: to see beyond the protective layers - even if it feels vulnerable - in order to let go and heal.
If you-d like to experience a CCB, you could join the Breathwork Foundation course at the end of October here in Portugal… (https://tamingthewalrus.com/event/breathwork-foundation-course/)

Wishing you a wonderful weekend
Much love

Veronique

Why Embodiment Is Crucial

If you are familiar with MS, you are aware that fatigue and brain fog are very common - and quite debilitating - symptoms even if ‘invisible´.
Researchers are now exploring the idea that fatigue and brain fog are not just caused by damaged nerves or inflammation alone. A newer idea is that the brain has trouble correctly reading and managing signals coming from inside the body (like sensing energy levels, body temperature, heartbeat, stress, pain, and how much effort something requires etc).

Because it cannot ‘read’ signals efficiently, the brain may estimate that ordinary mental or physical activity is more demanding than it really is. The problem is that if the brain predicts that a task will be taxing, it can generate the feeling of fatigue before the body is truly exhausted.

Why? Because the brain tries to protect us from overload!!! In other words, fatigue may be the brain’s way of pushing us to rest. How does the brain do that? By reducing motivation, slowing our thinking speed, increasing the sense of effort, and making movement feel heavier. That’s why tasks you used to do easily begin to require more conscious control. This is why brain fog often feels like ‘thinking through mud.’ The brain is effectively telling you ‘this requires a lot of energy’.

On top of that, the brain often becomes stuck in a state where it constantly checks whether the body is running out of energy. That extra monitoring itself may use up mental resources and contribute to the feeling of exhaustion and brain fog.

With ageing, the same brain systems involved in interoception and energy regulation also become less efficient over time. It takes more time for our brain to filter signals, but also to recover from effort. There might also be overlap between fatigue, ageing, long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome… the brain either receiving distorted information about the body or failing to interpret it correctly, and thus responding by limiting activity to protect itself.

This newer understanding is changing treatment approaches. Instead of only trying to stimulate the brain or fight inflammation, researchers are studying ways to calm and retrain the brain-body system.

This is why developing interoceptive skills has become a key part of all my retreats, and also why I am now teaching a weekly zoom class called Reconnect with Your Body.

Can You Sense Your Body?

What about you? Can you tell, right now, if your jaw is tight or if your shoulders are relaxed? Can you feel your breath moving in your body? When something ‘feels off’ (like you suddenly feel tension in your neck), do you pause to sense it or do you immediately try to fix it or explain it? How often do you push through fatigue without ever really checking in, just to meet your deadline?

You might think that these questions are a waste of time. But if you’re not aware of what’s happening in your bod, how can you notice stress building up? How can you recognise tension before it becomes pain?

During the retreat, I kept telling the participants, listen to the body’s signals because they represent crucial data. Without reliable data, how could your brain do its work properly?

The body is constantly sending data through sensation, breath, tightness, ease, temperature, subtle shifts… why don’t you listen to it? Reconnecting with our body allows us to regulate more effectively and also to respond, rather than react.

Embodiment in Movement and Stillness

Movement is often the most accessible entry point into embodiment because it gives you something tangible to feel. You can sense how weight is distributed through the body, how your breathing pattern changes with effort, what happens when you stretch etc.

Being embodied in stillness is slightly different. There is nothing to distract you, and at first, it can feel uncomfortable. When you stop moving, tension usually becomes more obvious. We become restless, and the mind starts interfering. But if you stay aware of the sensations, they become clearer. And remember, it means better quality data for your brain, less brain fog, less fatigue.

If you feel like exploring this further, I invite you to join my new class on Fridays, 7.30 am UK time. It is a pre-recorded class, which means that you can listen to it whenever it suits you (the recording is available for a week). For more info, check HERE. You might also consider joining one of my upcoming retreats…

Much love
Veronique

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If you picked the first, I’m flattered. But age-wise, I’m very clearly at the other end.

That said, I’m not refusing technology. I was an eLearning Designer for many years. I use technology every day. I rely on it. This isn’t about rejecting technology.

Handwriting is Good for the Brain

A study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that writing by hand activates far more complex brain connectivity than typing. When participants used a pen, several regions in the brain linked to memory, movement, and sensory processing lit up. Typing, by comparison, was far less stimulating for the brain. By the way, if you haven’t read my article about our hands (February 12th), you might want to add it to your To Read list…

The key difference between typing and handwriting is effort. Writing by hand forces you to slow down, shape each letter nicely - even if your handwriting is like mine and looks like chicken scratch (for the linguists out there: in French we say my handwriting looks like fly legs!).

Chicken scratch or fly legs?

When you use a pen and paper, you also physically engage with what you’re saying. All this - the fine motor control, but also the visual feedback, the rhythm - creates lots of neural connections that support learning and memory. This is also why if you practise gratitude, it is more efficient to write down what you are grateful for in a journal.

Another research, this time from Japan, also came to the same conclusions: writing on physical paper, rather than typing, leads to stronger brain activity in areas tied to memory and spatial awareness. The brain seems to remember not just the words, but where they are on the page, the layout, the margins, the layout, the feel of it…

So if you want a healthy happy brain, get your pens and paper out!

I Hate the Red Squiggly Line

You know the one that appears instantly when you make a mistake, or when it doesn’t recognise the language you write in. Since I use a Portuguese laptop to write sometimes in English, sometimes in French, I see a lot of this squiggly red line. It puts me under pressure, like a strict teacher pointing their finger at me.

And then there’s the new layer: AI. Word’s Copilot!
Would you like me to improve this sentence? Would you like to insert a summary or chat with Copilot?
No. I would not. Thank you.

When I write by hand, there’s no algorithm over my shoulder. No auto-correct rewriting for me, thinking for me… Just a pen. My own mistakes. My crossed-out words (loads of these) that show I AM THINKING… THUS I AM.

It’s messy but I like it.

Writing Is My Safe Place

I feel I can only be alone when writing on paper. There is no notifications. No temptation to just check something quickly…. and disappear for twenty minutes. Just me, a pen, and whatever is trying to surface out of my muddy thoughts.

When I write by hand, the pace is slower, yes. But that’s exactly the point! It gives me time to reflect… It feels more private. I’m a bit shy… I like to keep my words to myself until they’re ready, because putting them out into the digital world can feel a bit like exposing my thoughts before they’ve had the chance to fully form.

And later, I can choose to bring those thoughts into the digital world, edit them and publish them. But first, it’s nice to keep them secret…

I’m not refusing technology. I just need space - without technology - to think independently.

I acknowledge the irony of writing about this HERE on a digital platform. I do not want to go back to a pre-Substack time. It’s all about balance.

What about you? Anyone else still using pen and paper?

Much love

Véronique

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The Brain as CEO

We’ve been taught, implicitly and explicitly, that the brain is in charge. It’s the decision-maker. The analyser. The problem-solver. The place where ‘you’ live. Everything else (the body, sensations, emotion) is often treated as secondary. So we organise our lives accordingly.
We think through decisions instead of feeling into them (you might even feel ‘feeling into decisions sounds absurd!)
We override fatigue with logic (I have done that for years… until I collapsed). We try to manage stressful situations from the top down. And in general, we explain emotions rather than experience them.

The brain becomes the CEO. It directs, controls, optimises.

This is particularly true in many Western cultures, shaped by centuries of philosophy that put reason above all else. Thinking became synonymous with knowing and with intelligence. But what if intelligence isn’t centralised?

The Intelligence of the Body

This brain-centred view of intelligence hasn’t always been dominant. Across ancient traditions (in Egypt, Greece, India, and China), intelligence wasn’t located solely in the brain. It was understood as something distributed throughout the body, with the heart and the gut playing key roles.

The heart was often seen as the seat of consciousness and truth, while the belly or gut was considered a centre of instinct and visceral knowing. In ancient Greece, Aristotle described the heart as the primary organ of intelligence and sensation, with the brain playing a secondary role. In the Upanishadic traditions of India, the heart is portrayed as the centre of awareness, the place where the self is known not through analysis, but through direct experience.

As for the gut, many cultures agree on its key role. There’s a Japanese expression I love: ‘hara ga ochiru’. It literally means ‘the belly drops.’ It describes the moment something truly lands, not just intellectually, but physically. You don’t just understand it. You feel it settle in your guts.

Seen this way, the modern idea of the brain as the sole authority isn’t universal. It’s cultural. And possibly incomplete.

You might argue that these examples describe instinct, not intelligence. But isn’t instinct a form of intelligence?

There have been moments in my life when I followed my instincts. And was grateful I did. It felt as though my body had access to signals my brain hadn’t yet processed. My gut was faster than my thoughts.

And let me ask you: if the brain is so good at running the show, why do we so often feel disconnected, overwhelmed, or out of sync with ourselves? Why do we replay the same thoughts without finding a solution? Why do we struggle to make decisions even after thinking it over and over again? Why do we sense that something is off, yet can’t think of ways to get a clearer picture?

I’m not saying the brain isn’t powerful. It clearly is. But I can’t shake the feeling - quite literally in my heart and guts - that it was never meant to lead alone.

Getting Out of Your Head (and Back Into Your Life)

Being ‘stuck in your head’ isn’t just about thinking too much. It’s about losing contact with the rest of your experience.

Does it apply to you?

Just ask yourself if you find making decisions abstract and difficult. Or maybe emotions feel overwhelming and instead of enjoying the present moment, you analyse, remember the past or anticipate the future. You might look completely functional on the outside, but internally, something feels distant…

Please don’t panic if you feel this applies to you. I would say 80% of the population is disconnected from their body’s intelligence (this is not an official data. Only my guts’ feeling!)

Would you like to do a little experiement? With yourself! The next time you’re making a decision, pause. Just take a moment and instead of asking, ‘What do I think about this?’, ask yourself:

• What happens in my body when I consider this option?

• Do I feel a sense of expansion or contraction? Tension or ease?

• Do I feel grounded or agitated when I think of that option?

The goal isn’t to replace thinking with feeling. The goal is to reconnect them. To let thoughts be informed by sensation, and action guided by something deeper than analysis alone.

You don’t need to stop using your brain. That would be a shame! But you might need to stop believing it’s the whole story. Because some of the most important signals in your life don’t arrive as thoughts. They arrive as sensations.

And the real question is: Are you paying attention?

I would LOVE to hear from you. Please do let me know if you feel stuck in your head and if you take time to observe sensations and trust your body’s signals.

Wishing you a wonderful day
Much love

Véronique

PS: If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like to support my work, you can now buy me a coffee. No pressure at all though... Your reading and replies already mean a lot. But if you’d like to fuel the next edition, here’s the link:

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Q: How do you feel?
I’m knackered. Truly. I first thought about writing this book years and years ago. There were many false starts. Mainly because Itried to say everything at once… and went nowhere.
Eventually, I accepted that I couldn’t write everything. So I reduced the scope. I began again. The first pages of this version were written in May 2024.
But for the last six months, I have been completely immersed in the book.
So yes: I’m really tired. But also… super happy. And, if I’m honest, a little bit proud too (but it’s ok to be, isn’t it?).

Q: What is the title of your book?
I never would have thought that it is so hard to find a title!
Finding something original… and a subtitle that actually says what’s on the tin? It was so incredibly hard.
I first wanted to call it ‘The Intelligent Body’ but this title has already been used a couple of times. So here it is:

Taming the Walrus
Inner Intelligence, Yoga, and the Science of Healthy Ageing

And if you’re wondering about the walrus… you’ll have to read the introduction. (Don’t worry, I might share extracts from the introduction here soon.)

Q: What is it about?
Here’s the elevator pitch (not that easy neither):

This book challenges the idea that the body inevitably declines with age, presenting it instead as an intelligent, self-organising complex system. Blending science and yogic wisdom, it explores the physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual dimensions of our experience.

Q: Can you tell us more?
No. 😊Instead, I’ll leave you with a few early words from people I deeply respect and who kindly accepted to read the Early Readers Copy:

‘Each chapter is a fresh look into dimensions of movement, strength, intelligence, and renewal. Each chapter is grounded by the latest science, and inspired by wisdom traditions, which invites us to engage with ourselves, understand ourselves, and explore ourselves more deeply as life continues to unfold.’
- Doug Keller, Yoga Teacher & Therapist

‘The book is beautifully written… complex scientific concepts are explained with clarity and elegance.’
- Prof George Jelinek, Honorary Professor, University of Melbourne

‘Véronique’s book inspired me - even after 30+ years teaching yoga and meditation - to step onto my mat with a renewed sense of curiosity.’
- Esther Ekhart, founder of EkhartYoga (now YogaEasy)

‘I found myself both exhaling and smiling from deep within as I read this book… I felt profoundly seen in these pages.’
- Linda Bloom, Director Overcoming MS

’Eloquent, mindful, and attentive to detail.’
- Ann McConnell, Entrepreneur

‘This book is a celebration of being human - of our place within the innate pulse of life, and of our capacity to heal, grow, and evolve.’
- Dr Ela Manga

‘Clear, thoughtful, and truly compelling.’
- Twanna Doherty, Yogamatters CEO

’With great clarity and compassion, she offers not just in-depth knowledge and the latest insights, but deep understanding and real hope. Her voice is reassuring and empowering, reminding us that we are not alone.’’
- Dr Jonathan White

I am deeply touched by these beautiful words. But to read the full reviews, you’ll have to wait a little bit longer.… Just a few weeks…

Q: What does the cover look like?
I won’t tell you now… but we found an amazing young, talented graphic designer, Izzy Barrett, who created beautiful illustrations. I highly encourage you to follow her on Instagram @izustrations/
Here is a picture she created to illustrate a chapter about the benefits of stretching… Isn’t it just gorgeous?

Q: Why did you self-publish?
At first, I considered the traditional route. Then I saw the submission forms. Identify four competing books. Summarise them. Explain what you offer that they don’t. And of course, the question behind it all: How many followers do you have?
Well… I’m not an influencer. I don’t have thousands of followers on Instagram.
So that was it. I made a decision: I would do it myself.

Q: What helped you most to finish this book?
People. Without a doubt. In May 2025, the amazing Niamh Cooper - and Peter, my wonderful husband - stepped in. That was a huge turning point.
Niamh gave me deadlines. I am an excellent soldier. I love deadlines so much that I want to meet them! That was the nice kick - or push - I needed. Without deadlines, I would still be researching, thinking, rewriting…
Peter put on his Project Manager hat and built a team around me, from graphic design to layout and cover. This book may have my name on it, but it has been a collective effort.

Now, I’m going to rest. And maybe celebrate just a little.

With love,

Véronique

Not the dramatic kind we heard about in the news here in Portugal (floods and droughts) but the ordinary water we drink and rarely think twice about. This inspired me to write this post. So thank you Ray and Roger!

Confessions of a French Water Snob

I’m French, from a generation that grew up before sodas flooded everyday life in France. In our childhood, water wasn’t the boring option. It was simply what you drank. Two litres a day of plain water was the rule in most households.

And we knew our waters.

With my eyes closed, I could easily recognise the difference between Evian, Vittel, Contrex, and Volvic. Each has a distinctive taste, a different mineral profile, and slightly different benefits. Some are richer in magnesium, some lighter, some sparkling and lively. Water wasn’t just hydration. It had character. I’m not joking!

People often assume the French only care about wine. But truth be told, I probably know more about still water than about Bordeaux or Beaujolais.

In fact, still water mattered so much to me that when I moved from the Champagne region, where I grew up, to Berlin, I once drove back with my car packed full of bottles of French mineral water. At the time, it was nearly impossible to find still water there. Everywhere you went it was Sprudelwasser or sparkling water. It took me a while to discover that Turkish grocery shops stocked still water. What a relief that was.

What fascinated my friends this morning was the connection between water and joint pain.

Our Body is Water

Our bodies are largely made of water: around 60%. The connective tissue that holds everything together, the fascia, is largely water-based. Fascia wraps muscles, organs, and joints, allowing everything to glide smoothly. When we become dehydrated, the body has to find water wherever it can. And it often takes it from the most accessible reserves.

One of those reserves is the cushioning between our vertebrae. Those discs between the vertebrae are like little water-filled shock absorbers. When we are well hydrated, they remain plump. But when dehydration sets in, they can lose some of that fluid. The cushions flatten slightly, the cartilage edges come closer together, and sometimes a nerve can get squeezed in the middle.

The result?

Back pain that seems to appear out of nowhere. My husband learned this lesson the hard way two years ago. His back pain had become so severe that doctors began discussing the possibility of surgery. It was frightening. One evening, while searching online, he came across a video from a British physiotherapist. The physio explained that the first piece of advice he gave many clients with back pain was incredibly simple: Drink more water.

My husband thought he was drinking enough but he was drinking mostly tea. Very little plain water. So he started drinking water regularly throughout the day. Over two days, the pain was gone! We could not believe how fast his back improved! Surgery was no longer on the table. The pain hasn’t come back.

Of course, water is not a miracle cure for everything. Bodies are complex. Pain can have many causes. But hydration is one of those fundamental things that is so simple we often overlook it.

The First Cure for Tiredness: Water

Another moment when water becomes surprisingly powerful is when we feel tired. Many of us reach automatically for coffee, tea, or something sweet when our energy dips. Yet very often the body is not asking for stimulation. It is asking for hydration.

Even mild dehydration can affect how we feel. About ten years ago, an article S K Riebl and B M Davy - The Hydration Equation: Update on Water Balance and Cognitive Performance- concluded that:

The result? That familiar foggy, sluggish feeling. But by the time we feel thirsty, we are already dehydrated. Thirst is actually a late signal from the body.

This is something we pay close attention to during our retreats at Casa Mukta here in Portugal. When participants arrive, one of the first things they receive is a refillable water bottle. It’s a small gesture, but they are encouraged to drink regularly throughout the day.

People often arrive slightly dehydrated after travel, long flights, coffee at airports, or simply busy lives where drinking water falls to the bottom of the priority list. It might take a few days before you notice improved energy, a clearer mind, and even small aches and stiffness beginning to ease.

Of course, water is not the only thing I turn to when I feel tired. I also use breath and movement. But when you combine hydration, breath, and movement, the body often finds its way back to energy surprisingly quickly.

It’s not magic. It’s physiology. Quite literally, every system in the body works better when it is well hydrated. Which brings us back to that simple question we often overlook when we feel tired, stiff, or foggy: Have I actually drunk enough water today?

So I raise my glass of water in a toast: Sláinte! Chin chin! Santé! Prost! Salud! Skål! Cheers!
Much love

Véronique

PS: If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like to support my work, you can now buy me a coffee No pressure at all. Your reading and replies already mean a lot.
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PLUS If you’d like to learn more about posture, nervous system, breathing but also anatomy, yoga philosophy… why not join YogaEasy 200 Yoga Teacher Training? We are 8 teachers facilitating this online training, and the next cohort starts in April. More info on the link HERE.

Letting Go!

One of the biggest lessons - and one of the hardest to learn - is to let go!

MS has forced me to confront old wounds, grudges, and regrets. I’ve realised that holding onto these feelings not only weighs me down but is actually hurting me. Forgiveness, whether it’s forgiving myself or others, has become essential. Yes it is tough but once you learn to let go, it’s really freeing - and it gets easier.
It’s also the only way to move forward into new experiences rather than being stuck in what once was.
Each time, I feel the need to forgive, I think of the following quote by Oprah Winfrey:

Not easy but worth it!
When living with chronic health issues, it also means letting go of who we were or thought we would become. Maybe you were a fast runner but MS or ageing changed that. It might feel that ‘they took it away from you’. But the more you feel like you were ‘robbed of something’, the harder it is to open up space for something new.
Some doors close. Others open. C’est la vie !

Embracing Unpredictability

What does it mean? For me, it means to stop trying to control everything, to be flexible and to see uncertainty as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Of course, we also need to do our best to be healthy, have enough money to look after ourselves and our family but ideally - especially when it comes to health - we should not get too attached to the outcomes. This is why I run, I do my strengthening, stretching, plyometrics, breathwork, yoga etc… but it might not be enough. MS taught be that doing my best is not a guarantee.

It definitely is necessary but not always enough, and I know many people living with MS who have done their best but still struggle with a whole range of symptoms. This is tough and must feel very unfair…. But we need to embrace each day as it comes, finding joy in the little things without stressing over what tomorrow may bring. Working hard to stay well while letting go of the need for perfection.

Does it sound too hard? If it does, I’d like to share another lesson I learnt from living with MS: we’re far stronger than we think. But we don’t have to pretend to be strong all the time! Vulnerability can be a superpower, and it’s okay to lean on friends and family, to share your struggles.

Reconnecting with your Intelligent Body

The biggest lesson I learnt from living with MS is that our body is intelligent. It is not our enemy. It is not failing us.

Even if you’re living with an autoimmune disease, even if you are in pain, your body is trying to protect you. It might be wrong and overprotective but it is not intentionally trying to hurt you.

We need to reconnect with our body and its inner intelligence to ‘decipher’ the signals it sends us. Truly listening to my body is a priority. Most people are so disconnected from their body, living in their head most of the time, taking pills to remove pain etc… I believe that by understanding and supporting our body’s natural intelligence, we can often find relief from stress and discomfort. It’s all about tuning in and nurturing that relationship.

Ultimately, MS has reshaped my perspective on ageing. It’s not just about adding years to our lives. It’s not about being free of pain. It’s about living fully and intentionally. Each lesson learned along the way has reminded me that while life may throw us curveballs, it’s also filled with opportunities. This is also why I wrote my first book about inner intelligence, yoga and the science of healthy ageing.

Much love

Véronique

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Note: Image by Julita at Pixabay

It might sound a little unusual at first, but the results are interesting.

Humming: More Than Just a Sound

Have you ever hummed absentmindedly while walking, cooking, or daydreaming? That gentle vibration travels through your throat, chest, and torso, sending calming signals to your nervous system.

When we hum, especially on the exhale, we’re activating the vagus nerve, a key player in our parasympathetic ‘rest and digest’ system. This is our body’s way of saying, ‘Everything is safe here. Relax!’

So why not pair this hum with movement? When the nervous system receives this signal, muscles relax, tension softens, and we can sink deeper into a posture. In short, humming is a direct invitation for your body to unwind.

How to Try It: Seated Forward Fold

Here’s a step-by-step guide to exploring humming in your forward fold:

• Sit on your mat with your legs extended in front of you. You can keep them slightly bent.

• Inhale, lenthening through the crown of your head and on the exhale, hum as you fold forward from your hips. Let the vibration resonate naturally in your chest and throat. The sound should be soft and effortless.

• Feel how your muscles soften and your body relaxes and folds deeper. You don’t have to go as deep as in the image below… just as far as is comfortable. Continue for several breaths, inhaling to lengthen, exhaling to fold and hum, noticing the sensations in your backbody.

  

Illustration created by Anya Shapira for YogaLingo.net

What I love about this practice is how small and playful it is. No props, no complicated sequencing: just your breath, a gentle hum, and your body. It’s a reminder that yoga is about curiosity. Sometimes the tiniest experiments, like a sound or a subtle shift in breath, can transform the way you experience your body and mind.

Next time you’re on your mat, try humming on the exhale in a forward fold. Explore it. Enjoy it. Discover how deeply a simple vibration can relax you. And let me know how it feels for you!

Wishing you a wonderful rest of your day,

Much love

Véronique

PS: If you enjoyed this newsletter and would like to support my work, you can now buy me a coffee ☕No pressure at all. Your reading and replies already mean a lot.
But if you'd like to fuel the next edition, here’s the link:

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This week’s topic is our hands. I’ve been thinking about mine a lot lately. Not in any metaphorical way, but in a very literal way. After a wrist fracture (and a thumb that got dislocated in the fall), I ended up seeing a hand specialist who had studied in France. She has a poster on the wall of her office: a table with hands in strange, precise positions called “Ka Main Sutra.” It made me smile as ‘main’ is ‘hand’ in French.
Can you do these positions comfortably?

Keep practising because hands are… kind of a big deal!

Hands are huge in your brain

Have you ever seen this famous distorted little human figure below, called the cortical homunculus (captured from https://www.britannica.com/science/homunculus-biology). It shows how much brain space is devoted to each body part. It looks absurd: oversized lips, tiny legs and arms… But look at the massive hands!

Your hands take up an enormous amount of space in your sensory and motor cortex. Way more than their physical size would suggest. Why?

Because they need to feel and be precise. So they are packed with nerve endings. Fingertips alone contain thousands of sensory receptors. They’re designed to sense differences in temperature, texture, vibration, pressure, pain, micro-movement. Your brain doesn’t just use your hands; it listens to them constantly.

What I didn’t know though is that if you injure your hand, the brain’s map can literally reorganise itself. Some areas go quiet. Other regions try to take over. I wonder what my brain map now looks like…

So hand rehabilitation isn’t just about muscles. It’s about teaching the brain how to listen to your hands again. Which explains why hand therapy looks… weird.

That poster at the specialist’s office suddenly made sense. It’s not just some kind of fun shadow theatre. The various positions were carefully chosen to stretch, activate, isolate different muscles and nerve pathways. You hold each for three seconds to wake things up.

It reminded of hand mudras.

The yoga practice of hand mudras

In yoga and meditation, hand mudras are specific hand gestures used to influence energy, focus, and mental states, based on the elements associated with each finger. Some of the best known mudras are thumb to index finger (Gyan Mudra) for clarity. Thumb to ring finger for grounding. Palms open, palms together, fingers extended, fingers folded, etc.

Looking at the Ka-main-sutra poster, I realised that mudras also stimulate sensory feedback loops in the hands. They engage fine motor control. They create sustained pressure and awareness. They activate neural circuits. In other words, mudras may work not / not just because they’re mystical but because hands are neurologically ‘loud’.

When you hold a hand mudra, you’re not just “posing.” You’re sending a very specific signal to your brain. You’re using tyour hands to talk directly to the nervous system. Which is… exactly what hand rehab does.

The thumb, specifically, is a diva

Do you think I exaggerate? I don’t think so. After all, thumbs are the reason humans can build tools, text, write, cook, climb, and scroll Substack. They’re biomechanically complex (the thumbs, not the humans) and neurologically expensive.

Dislocating mine was humbling. Suddenly everyday things like holding my favourite mug felt awkward. Try it if you don’t believe me. Hold your mug without using your thumb … Without the thumb, it’s really hard to grasp and manipulate objects. No wonder it takes up so much space in our brain.

We “grasp” ideas. We “handle” situations. We “reach out.” None of that language is accidental. So that strange, beautiful poster on the wall felt like a reminder: care for your hands as if they matter, because they really, really do.

Stretch them. Use them deliberately. Let them rest. Let them feel. They’re not just at the end of your arms. They’re deeply embedded in your brain.

With love,

Veronique

Buy Me a Coffee

So when I was only 40 and told I was showing the first signs of osteoarthritis, I wasn’t very happy. My first thought was: “Well, that’s it then. I’ll end up like Mum.”

My mother lived with chronic pain. Her neck hurt, her back hurt, her knees ached. Painkillers, in every shape and size were lined up in the bathroom on the pharmacy cabinet.

Fast-forward nearly two decades… I’m 59 (an a half), and I’m pain-free and I know how fortunate that is. For me, there are no daily painkillers, no creams, no heat or ice packs. Well, except for the occasional wrist fracture I get from tumbling while running up hills. Fortunately, it’s not chronic. Pheww

So what changed?

One simple truth: I move every day.

The Magic of Movement

It sounds cliché, doesn’t it? “Motion is lotion.” But it’s true. When you move, you nourish your joints.
Literally. Joints don’t have a direct blood supply like muscles do. Instead, they rely on synovial fluid, a thick, gel-like substance that lubricates the cartilage and delivers nutrients.
Movement is what pumps that fluid in and out of the joint capsule, flushing out waste, bringing in oxygen and nutrients, keeping cartilage healthy and slippery.

Stop moving, and that flow slows down. Stiffness builds. Inflammation creeps in. Pain becomes your new normal. Start moving, and the opposite happens.

Most mornings, I do a few movements from a yoga therapy series called the Pawanmuktasana Series. It’s not glamorous yoga. No Instagram-worthy handstands here. Just simple, mindful joint rotations: wrists, ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, neck, and spine. All performed gently, with awareness of the breath.

These movements are quietly magical. They warm up your synovial fluid, wake up the nervous system, and keep your fascia supple and responsive. Honestly, I wish everyone over 45 or 50 would start their day like this.

Back in 2014, I shared one of these “warm-up” videos on YouTube (LINK). I’m not a big yoga influencer, and it didn’t go viral but clearly, it helped a few people, most of them like with chronic health conditions. Here’s some of the feedback from subscribers:

• “Just did this routine and it was amazing. Thank you so much!”

• “I LOVE this routine. I have PPMS and I certainly notice the difference!”

• “I am truly thankful for this video. It is so helpful, and I’m working on this every day. My body lets me know if I haven’t done my exercises. Thanks again.”

I share these not to brag, but to show how a simple, mindful practice can make a huge difference in everyday life.

Even Athletes Get Osteoarthritis. Why Don’t They Hurt?

Here’s something fascinating: many athletes have osteoarthritis and no pain at all.

MRI scans of long-distance runners, footballers, and even older active adults often show signs of joint wear, including thinning cartilage, bone spurs, changes in joint shape. Yet, these people frequently report no discomfort whatsoever. How is that possible?

Because joint structure and joint pain aren’t the same thing. Pain is influenced not just by what’s happening in the joint, but by how the muscles, nervous system, and mind respond to movement. Active people tend to stay pain-free because:

• Their muscles support and stabilise their joints.

• Synovial fluid keeps circulating through regular movement.

• Exercise triggers anti-inflammatory responses in the body.

• Their nervous systems are used to normal joint stress. They don’t interpret it as danger.

So yes, an X-ray might show osteoarthritis but that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to pain. The key difference? Movement.

What Science Says

Modern research backs this up.

• Movement reduces inflammation: Gentle, regular exercise decreases inflammatory cytokines, the chemicals that make joints swollen and painful.

• Cartilage health depends on movement: Mechanical loading (like walking, stretching, or yoga) helps maintain cartilage thickness and slows degeneration.

• Exercise increases pain tolerance: Movement releases endorphins and retrains the brain’s pain pathways, making us more resilient to discomfort.

In short: movement doesn’t wear your joints out. It keeps them alive. You don’t have to accept pain as part of aging. You can write a different story, one where you move with vitality.
I did. And at 59, I feel better than I did at 40.
This is one of the ideas I explore more deeply in a book I’m finishing. If this writing is useful to you, supporting it helps me keep going.

Support my work

With love,

Veronique

No wonder we feel overwhelmed. Even when nothing changes in our own personal lives, soemthing in the world shifts.

So many of us try to think our way through it. We read about it. we analyse, we try to “understand what’s really going on.” And yet, the more we stay in our heads, the more disconnected and anxious we feel.

The big question is “how do we stay centred?”
For me, the answer is not in more thinking, but in the body.

Getting out of the head, into the body

When we feel overwhelmed by external events, our nervous system tends to move into survival mode. Have you ever noticed how your breath becomes shallow when you feel overwhelmed? The body tightens. It’s like we are on high alert.

Breathwork offers a direct, yet very gentle way back. By consciously working with the breath, we can regulate the nervous system. We can breathe in a way that tells the brain “Don’t worry. Everything is ok. We are safe!”. So the body feels supported from the inside, and relaxes.

This has nothing to do with “staying positive” or bypassing reality. It’s about creating enough inner stability to be with what is, without being swept away.

Why breath works

The breath is like a bridge or a language between the conscious and unconscious systems. When we breathe slowly and deeply, the vagus nerve is stimulated. The stress response is muted and the body receives the message that it is safe now.

From this place of safety, presence becomes possible. We don’t need to disconnect from the world to stay grounded. We need an anchor inside ourselves.

A free breathwork session (in French)

To explore this together, I’m offering a free breathwork session in French with Breathwork Africa today Thursday 15th, at 6:00 pm UK time.

This session will be an invitation to come out of the mental noise, reconnect with the body as a place of safety and feel present, even amidst uncertainty.

No prior experience with breathwork is needed. Just a willingness to pause, breathe, and listen inward.

To join me, you’ll need to sign up HERE. You will then receive a zoom link, as well as a recording if you cannot attend the live session.

If the state of the world has been weighing on you, I hope to see you then.

I would love to breathe with you… in French!

Warmly,
Veronique