And breathe! Your ultimate virtual wellness directory
Lockdown 3.0 is in full flow — and we’re surviving, not thriving. Still, let’s at least try not to let our exercise and bedtime routines immediately go flying out the window — going into this with some good intentions and a commitment to self-care is the way to stave off burnout thrice time around. From a virtual new moon retreat to sound wave therapy and virtual hypnosis, avoid a lockdown-induced meltdown with this digital wellness toolkit. You’ve got this.
Escape it all
Missed last summer’s yoga retreat abroad? Ibiza Retreats has teamed up with Transformation Station to send positive vibes all the way from the sun-drenched White Isle with a two-day event full of yoga, meditation, tapping therapy, and nutrition workshops kicking off on January 29 (£89, transformationstation.online) as part of its month-long winter wellness summit. Sign up online and you’ll receive a month’s free access to Transformation Station online classes and discussions. Elsewhere on the island, the Soul Adventures virtual Clubhouse is offering live-streamed shamanic kundalini yoga classes and healing circles led by energy healing therapist Trish Whelan (€10/session, souladventures.co.uk).
Closer to home (not that it matters) Jasmin Harsono, founder of Emerald & Tiger, and Natasha Anderson of Higher Self, will host February Within, a three-day virtual retreat to harness the energy of the new moon on February 11. Expect tea ceremonies, digital tarot, breathwork sessions and botanical workshops (early bird tickets are currently £35, kuula.tv/february-within). Just need something to perk you up each morning? Healthy meal delivery service Kurami is hosting a self-care festival throughout the whole of January with daily live yoga, meditation, haircare and nutrition tutorials on its Instagram page (@kuramiuk), while the traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners at Escapada (@escapadahealth) are launching monthly workshops on IGTV in February which will offer TCM-focused wellbeing tips. Anyone else just in need of a good dose of isolation salvation, should check into The Calmery, where Sushma Sagar, reiki master and author of Essential Chakras Find Your Flow, is hosting The Healing Club, a weekly Zoom gathering every Saturday involving energy healing, intention setting and meditation (£16.76 per session, thecalmery.com).
Zap your Zoom face
Zoom frown getting you down? Indulge in some face yoga with Danielle Collins AKA the Face Yoga Expert (@faceyogaexpert). “Face yoga is great for reducing stress and tightness held in the jaw. It can really lift the skin on the face, smooth out lines and wrinkles, reduce puffiness and dark circles and relieve eye strain from too much screen time, leaving you with a calmer mind,” she says. Collins’ feed is full of free tutorials of facial exercises, eye yoga workouts, facial massage and acupressure points — it’ll fix your tech neck in no time. Meanwhile, FaceGym has launched 20-minute online Facial HIIT classes at 8am and 8pm every day (£10 per session, facegym.com) as well as a series of free holistic wellbeing sessions via its Instagram (@facegym) as part of its 21-day January Reset. Next, fill the spa-shaped hole in your life with some full-body wellness courtesy of physiotherapist and acupuncturist Renata Nunes (@renatanunestherapist) for top tips and video tutorials for at-home treatments, including drool-worthy scalp massages, DIY foot rubs and back pain hacks.
Sound therapy
OK, so a virtual sound bath through your laptop speakers is not quite the same as the real thing — top tip, use headphones for a much richer experience — but they’re all over the ‘gram right now and while they don’t offer the same intensity as in IRL, they’re surprisingly calming. “Crystal bowl sound baths ‘bathe’ you in a wave of sound which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, allowing a person’s system to rest and restore, whilst also realigning the body’s own vibration to its optimum frequency,” explains Fiongal Greenlaw, tarot master and founder of The Wellness Foundry, which offers personalised live-streamed sound baths on Zoom (£70 for one hour and 15 minutes, wellnessfoundry.co.uk). Over at Emerald & Tiger (@emeraldandtiger) Jasmin Harsono offers free 15-minute sound healing meditations on IG every Monday at 8pm.
Binaural beats are a new form of sound wave therapy that involves listening to two virtually identical tones, but which have slightly different frequencies (one in each ear) to create an auditory illusion of a third sound. Experts say it may help to enhance memory and focus, plus it’s deeply relaxing — Spotify has a selection of binaural beats recordings for everything from sleep to healing. Head to Free Binaural Beats for some other tasters (free-binaural-beats.com). Meanwhile, Wavepaths, a London-based sound therapy studio headed up by neuroscientist Mendel Kaelen, promises drug-free highs by using music to mimic psychedelic therapy to help heal trauma and ease symptoms of anxiety and depression. Book in to a Deep Listening group session to learn more (£5 per session, wavepaths.com).
Flex yourself
We all know what spending eight hours a day hunched over a makeshift desk is doing to our posture — so why not mix things up with a virtual guided stretch? Good Stretch (goodstretch.uk) is offering a free seven-day trial to its live deep stretching classes designed to open up the shoulders, chest, back and hip flexors. Improving your flexibility will help to address muscular imbalances, joint stiffness, muscle tightness, lower back pain and help to bulletproof your body against injury, according to co-founder Aida Yahaya — you’ll be doing the splits by March. Just want to brush up on your downward dog? Top London yogi Annie Clarke (@annieclarke_), founder of online yoga studio The Practice, is hosting a free hour of open level yoga every Monday in January at 6.30pm with Lululemon to support NHS workers. Sign up via eventbrite.co.uk. For more free flows, Fable Yoga is offering 30 days of 30-minute classes in January on YouTube. Classes are led by yoga teacher Claudia Mirallegro (fableyoga.com).
Slip into a virtual trance
Hypnotherapy is going digital (along with everything else in life) — but can it really work online? Yes, according to cognitive hypnotherapist Jessica Boston (@iamjessicaboston) who treats clients for everything from addictions to phobias and insomnia via Zoom. She says it’s all about rewiring your subconscious mind. “It’s through a conversation with both the conscious and unconscious processes of your thinking that we update the unconscious part with information it either doesn’t know or doesn’t prioritise to create radical change — and this can be done anywhere.” We’ll try anything once. Clients receive a personalised hypnotic meditation to practice to continue to make progress in between sessions, book a free introductory call at jessicaboston.com. At the London Clinic of Hypnotherapy, founder Lydia Johnson offers online 1:1 sessions as well as courses designed to help you make “seismic changes across all pillars of your life”. (Free consultation, one-to-one online sessions from £145, londonclinicofhypnotherapy.com). Meanwhile, Terrence the Teacher (@terrencetheteacher) offers 1:1 mindfulness meditation and clinical hypnotherapy sessions via Zoom, Skype and Facebook Messenger.
Want to give it a go without the commitment? Clementine is a wellness app designed specifically for women that offers pre-recorded hypnotherapy sessions for sleep, stress management and confidence. It is a good (and free) starting point (clementineapp.com).
Hit download
For vegan foodies, Ella Mills has relaunched the Deliciously Ella app with a new holistic angle, offering daily guided meditations, fitness and yoga classes and hundreds of plant-based recipes (99p per month, deliciouslyella.com). Struggling with shut-eye? Aren’t we all. Sleep School is a new app created by sleep doctors using published research to offer tools, techniques and audio series to help you drift off faster (free seven-day trial, sleepschool.org). Meanwhile, if you want to spend some time nourishing your mental health this lockdown, mindset coach and podcast host Ben Bidwell (aka @thenakedprofessor) has launched a new app Heart Space, a membership-based community for people to connect virtually via group discussions on Zoom, a monthly book club and coaching sessions (free 14-day trial, heartspacecommunity.app).
