Fun in the sun workshop!

I am excited to be running a brand new workshop this year limited to 20 people with the vibrant beauty Elizabeth from CheekyCoconuts!

As summer approaches and we spend more time enjoying the sun's beautiful rays, we want to share with you ways you can nourish and protect your skin and hair using all natural DIY products.  

In this workshop we will showcase how easy, quick, fun, rewarding and so much more economical it is to make more of your own personal care products focusing on products that are more frequently used over the summer months. 

COST IS $65 PER PERSON AND INCLUDES: 

1. Brief discussion on the dangers of certain ingredients found in conventional personal care products. 

2. Hands-on experience in making four products containing essential oils to take home with you:

• Sun Cream
• Soothing after sun lotion  
• Bug spray
• Dry shampoo

3. Organic morning tea of peppermint after dinner mints, essential oil infused herbal tea and filtered water infused with lemon essential oil. 

4. Opportunity to purchase at wholesale prices Young Living essential oils which are the most pure, potent, and therapeutic on the planet. 

5. Opportunity to ask questions especially how Liz and I have replaced conventional personal care products with more natural toxic-free products.

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THIS WORKSHOP IS IDEAL FOR: 
 

• Those who want to take their health and well-being to the next level by  replacing more of their personal care products with essential oil based all-natural products 
• Those who struggle to find a ready-made natural sunscreen that works for them or is easy to apply (or even smells nice!)
• Those who want to learn to make new things and to meet and mingle with a beautiful tribe of a holistically minded people!

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WHEN AND WHERE

Saturday 28th October. 10.30am - noon
Where: 23 Kent Street Waverley  

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TO SECURE A SPOT

To secure your spot, CLICK HERE and simply follow the steps to checkout and purchase your place in this workshop. I will then email you further details closer to the date.

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CANCELATION POLICY: Please note that once payment has been made, it is non-refundable. If because of last minute unforeseen circumstances you can not attend please feel free to have a friend attend in your place. 

PLACES WILL BOOK UP QUICKLY! PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD TO ANY FAMILY MEMBERS OR FRIENDS

Casserole, pot roasts and roasts workshop

I am excited to be running a series of slow cook workshops.

A beautiful and tender slow cooked meal is a staple in all traditional wholefood kitchens the world over, and very much remains an integral part of all regional cuisines.  People of yesteryear would cook their meals long and slow to impart tremendous flavour and tenderness. This traditional way of cooking meals gave way to the fast food culture of the modern day, bringing with it deleterious health consequences. One of my missions in life is to honour the wisdom of our ancestors by bringing slow cooked meals back to the modern table and teaching people how to make them effortlessly and joyously in their home. This is your opportunity to learn how! 

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IN THIS WORKSHOP I WILL …

…teach you my craft of how to make a deliciously hearty, and nutritious slow cooked meal in my renowned super-simple and fuss-free approach. I will reveal all my slow cook recipes with you using a basic fail-safe “formula” that I have developed and fine-tuned for over a decade. 

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COST IS $140 PER PERSON AND INCLUDES: 
 

• Detailed theory discussion on the nutritional benefits and advantages of slow cooked meals, the difference between a casserole, pot roast and roast, and where to source pastured meats from.
• Detailed workshop booklet including theory and recipes based on my go-to sow cook “formulas”
• Practical demonstrations
• Hands-on experience
• Food tasting 
• Opportunity to ask questions

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THIS WORKSHOP IS IDEAL FOR: 
 

• Those who are grain-free and dairy-free
• Those who are interested in making or perfecting their own home-made slow cooked meals
• Those who suffer, or have family members who suffer, from low immunity (eg frequent colds, infections) or gut/digestive issues (eg leaky gut, auto-immunity including skin conditions) and wish to make more hearty and nutritious meals for their family 
• Those who are time poor and wish to prepare meals quickly and easily in under 10 minutes without ever compromising flavour and nutrient-density
• Those who are wanting to give their family more variety in their meals 
• Those who routinely make and consume slow cooked meals but wish to hear more about the nutritional benefits of them or wish to gain some culinary tips and tricks
• Those who want to try new things and broaden their culinary repertoire

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WHEN AND WHERE

Choose from one of the following classes:

Monday 16th October (SOLD OUT)
Monday 23rd October (SOLD OUT)
Monday 30th October (SOLD OUT)
Wednesday 8th November
Monday 13th November
Monday 20th November

Each class runs from 6:30PM – 9pm ish. Please arrive by 6:20pm at the very latest so that we can promptly kick off by 6:30pm. If these classes book out I will run additional  classes. 

Where: BROTH BAR & LARDER, 49 BELGRAVE STREET, BRONTE (FREE STREET PARKING)

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TO SECURE A SPOT

CLICK HERE AND FOLLOW THE STEPS TO CHECKOUT & PURCHASE YOUR SPOT!

I will then email further details a few days closer to the date. I look forward to seeing you at one of my slow cook workshops soon!

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cancellation policy - once payment has been made, it is non-refundable and your place can not be moved to a different date. If you can not make it due to last minute unforseen circumstances, feel free to gift your place to a friend and let me know.
Thank you for your understanding.

Why illness might be the best thing that ever happens to you

My recent bout of influenza was, on many levels, a life-changing experience for me. As I lay naked on the shower floor, having passed out flat, wallowing in self pity and sobbing to myself “I can’t afford to be sick….I’m a single mum running a business”, my attention quickly turned from WHAT can I do/take to quickly get better (which I detailed in a blog post here), to the far more interesting question of WHY did I get sick in the first place. 

I know that nothing occurs randomly in nature. It is not simply “bad luck” that some people get sick while others, who are exposed to exactly the same illness, do not. A compromised immune system doesn't stem from the fact that you are simply “unlucky”.  I firmly believe that illness, in whatever guise it takes, is a potent sign that the body is, in short, out of balance. Whilst the greatest yearning of the human heart is connection, the greatest yearning of the human body is balance. The ancient yin and yang principle beautifully illustrates that without balance, chaos and disorder results. Our internal and external ecosystems dance in a harmonious tango that predicate balance. When there is balance, there is flow, energy and vitality. 

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“Whilst the greatest yearning of the human heart is connection, the greatest yearning of the human body is balance”

click here to tweet

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Illness is mother nature's wake up call that you could be looking after your health a little better and have let things get out of balance. It's the canary in the coal mine. It's the timely messenger saying "Ahem, sorry to be the party pooper but you can't keep doing what you're doing. Something has gotta change. And I'll just keep sending you louder and louder messages until you really stop and listen".

To keep our internal ecosystem in homeostasis (balance) we need to attend to a number of lifestyle /environmental factors which are so pivotal I call them the 8 foundations of health:

1. nutrition
2. hydration
3. movement
4. rest/sleep
5. stress management (mindfulness)
6. breath (how and what we breathe)
7. connection with ourselves and others
8. spending time in sunshine and nature generally

These foundations are so fundamental to keeping the body humming in homeostasis with a robust immune system that a consistent neglect of one or more of them results in imbalance leading to illness or dis-ease. I go into song and verse about each of these foundations in my health coaching sessions. 

For me this bed ridden illness was Mother Nature sitting me down, looking me square in the eye and saying "Ok great, now that I finally have your attention, what can you be doing better to improve your health and well-being on a day to day basis? Care to have a little think about what you were neglecting?" There is nothing like a debilitating illness to force us to look within and really ask what is going on. And sheepishly I glanced down and found on the floor 3 balls laying forgotten in the corner gathering dust with the words "stress management", "movement" and "sunshine" on them. 

I gathered them up, blew off the dust and had no choice but to reflect on the strategies I will have to put in place to create space in my week to give them the love and attention they deserve. I can no longer view these 3 foundations as luxuries (“who has the time to exercise, I mean really?!?”, “Lying on the beach in the middle of the day when I have a business to run, are you kidding me?!”, “Spending 20 minutes in meditation- what a life?!”) but as absolute necessities to counterbalance my raging yang with calming yin.  

We need to bask in the sunshine and to move our bodies as they designed to move and to meditate or just chill out doing nothing each day to calm our nervous system from the constant bombardment of stimulants of modern life. We NEED to do so, so that when life does throw us a curve ball in the name of an illness, we have the resilience to dodge it.  A nutrient-dense wholefoods diet can't make up for the consistent neglect of the other foundations of health – they are ALL equally fundamental. It's often a bitter pill to swallow for über-driven A-type personalities like myself who are hell-bent on being on the go to furiously tick off to-do lists, and won't rest, exercise or have fun in the sun until it's "all done". The reality is that it's rarely going to get "all done" anyway especially if you're working on grandiose projects that are very much a work in progress. If you don't create balance, Mother Nature will sooner or later take care of that for you with "forced rest". Wiser to chip away on a daily basis with rituals of foundational self-care than have to experience the misery and inconvenience of forced rest. 

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“Illness forces us to look within and really ask what is going on...”

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As I look back on my life, every bitterly painful situation I have experienced, turned out in hindsight to be a blessing in disguise. It was an opportunity to learn and grow and steer us into a different, more fulfilling, direction. Every illness, breakup, redundancy, and accident were divine interventions redirecting me to a brighter path.  I have written before that sometimes it takes something cataclysmic for us to change paths.  We often need to have the breakdowns in order to have the breakthroughs. Nothing is more true of debilitating illness. The mere realisation that some aspect of your health and well-being has been neglected means you're half way there. But actually doing something about it on a consistent long term basis is what will get you to vibrant health. 

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As Hippocrates once said "Healing is a matter of time. But it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity"