Mindful Living

Mindful living by Genevieve Middlebrook

We thoroughly deserve a pat on the back for how strong, resilient and patient we have all been during the pandemic. Our physical and mental wellbeing have taken a battering, so it’s now time to make some time for you to build you back up so you are ready to live life to the full.

There can be many ways to stay mindful but understanding the basics are really all that you need to live your life mindfully. Below are a few techniques that incorporate breath and movement to help you stay grounded.

Breathing into the present moment Breath is one of the most important aspects of becoming present and grounded in the moment. Noticing where you tense or hold the breath you begin to realise how easy it is for you to fall into that pattern because you’ve always been used to it, right? Many of us hold our bellies in, tense our neck and shoulders and it’s about understanding why we are feeling like this and what is our trigger. A tip to help with this is to check in with your breath and notice if you are holding on to any tension in the body. To enable you to relax and breathe naturally, imagine your ribs expanding out 360°. As you breathe in, open up your belly but also the whole torso. As you exhale, imagine your ribs shifting towards each other and relax your belly. This breathing technique allows you to release any unwanted tension. By focusing on your breath, you are already becoming present in the moment, aiming to regulate and be in control.

Flow into the start of your day I always find that by starting your day on a good note, the rest of the day follows in suit. For me, I find it hard to stay motivated throughout the rest of the day if I procrastinate in the morning or I don’t push myself to get active and moving. The morning is a great place to start becoming mindful. Below is a five step yoga flow that allows you to keep moving in a slow and mindful movement which warms up the body, creates

energy and allows for better range of movement.

Start by standing feet hip width apart and feel the ground beneath your feet. Close your eyes and just check in with how you are feeling. Shift your weight forward and back and side to side and find a centre point that balances you evenly. Drop the shoulders and release any tension in the body by using your 360° breath.

Roll each vertebrae starting from head, cervical, thoracic and then lumber until you reach a forward fold position. Hang loosely with the arms, release the shoulders down, relax the neck by nodding the head yes and no and just keep the pose nice and passive.

Remembering to focus on the breath throughout the practice.

Step into downward dog from your forward fold and just cycle the feet out noticing how your body is feeling. Tip the pelvis towards the sky and bend those legs if you need to and see if you can keep even weight between the feet and the hands.

From your downward dog, step into a low lunge keeping hands rested upon the mat and lift the back leg off the mat and keep your front leg bent just nestled into your arm. Open the chest, gaze forward and notice how much space you can create.

Step your back leg to meet the front so that you are back into your forward fold position. Roll the spine up vertebrae by vertebrae back to standing. Repeat once more so that you’re using the opposite leg for the lunge and continue the sequence for as long as you would like to. I hope both the breathing and movement work will help you a little on your way to achieve mindfulness.

Enabling you to thrive and live life to the full. Founder of Mindfulness Yoga based in Hythe. www.mindfulness-yoga.co.uk @mindfulnessyogakent

Hythe Environmental-

Community Group 2021 Update by Chris Turnbull

It’s been a difficult time for any group activities but with good planning and the will to continue making a difference in whatever way we can, we have been able to make significant progress in a few areas:

Litter Picking We managed to keep going after the first lockdown and comply with Covid regulations by having small invitation-only groups. These had just got back to fully open community litter picks once a month when the second lockdown started!

So after a few months off over the winter, we gradually returned to small groups of six again, increasing to 15 once allowed. Fingers crossed we can restart our normal monthly litter picks from 5th June as groups of 30 are now allowed.

We plan to continue first Saturday each month litter picking through the summer as we have missed so many over the past months and we look forward to meeting more of you again soon. Keep an eye on our Facebook page and website for details.

Gleaning Update: We are now into our second year with our own Hythe ECG Gleaning Hub bringing back farm produce that would otherwise have gone to waste and supplying it to our local food banks, charities and schools. We didn’t really start until April last year, but managed to save and distribute 35 tonnes of produce by the end of December.

2021 has started slowly with potatoes every week and occasional opportunities for cauliflowers and broccoli, but has already totalled 8.2 tonnes. The weather has not been kind to farmers, with the extreme wet followed by cold and extreme drought, and greens have been in short supply with very little waste on the farms (which is good news). We are now up to an amazing 61 people who have said that they would like to come gleaning! Unfortunately, we have only been able to use a very small fraction of them so far. But all will change when the fruit starts ripening.

With the help of Ward Grants from local Town Councillors, we are purchasing a small trailer which will be used for transporting produce. It will also be available as a community asset to other local non-profit organisations.

Our Hub already co-ordinates our gleaning with “Deal With It” in Deal and we are forming an East Kent Gleaning Hub run by Charmaine Jacobs in Folkestone which will hopefully encourage other hubs to set up within the area

Community Orchard at Eaton Lands The orchard is now developing well, as the main fruit trees – apple, pear and plum – have survived a potentially stressful first Summer last year through dedicated watering provided by local volunteers. The trees have started to expand their root network and have rewarded us with beautiful blossom this Spring, followed hopefully by more good growth this year. In addition to the main fruit trees, we have added a few smaller saplings of cherry and damson that will add more variety and interest to the orchard.

Earlier this year a small team of volunteers established a hedge line marked out by around 40 native hedging plants of various species, with different attributes such as flowers or berries to provide forage and shelter for wildlife. This needs to be kept well watered whilst the plants establish…fingers crossed for “normal” rainfall this year. Continued on page 20

It was exciting to see how well the wildflower mix, planted in 2019, returned in 2020, and the signs for an abundant show later this year are already there. We know there are campion and forget-me-nots as they are already blooming, but ox-eye daisies, comfrey, foxglove, yarrow, ragwort and a number of other species are emerging and hopefully other annuals to come such as cornflower and poppy. All in all, they should be colourful and provide good forage for insects and pollinators of all kinds. We have plans to do more – the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has very kindly donated a large bee hotel which will be placed in the orchard, and we are hoping this year to design and commission interpretation boards to help explain the orchard.

Exciting times at the Community Orchard!

Hythe Hops – 2021 season update It is wonderful to see that, despite the impossibility of meeting up face to face at all last year and the imaginative Covid-safe arrangements we had to make for hops harvest delivery, our growers have kept faith with the project. As a result, our community of local hop growers continues to expand, through word of mouth rather than any deliberate campaign. We now have a grand total of 175 members, growing 275 hops across 140 locations… and the geographical spread continues to grow as well. Our coverage extends westwards to Rye and Woodchurch; to the north we reach almost to Canterbury, but our greatest concentration is still in the Hythe, Seabrook, Sandgate and Folkestone area.

Last season we dried hops for the first time, and our store of dried hops is being used by our friends at the Docker brewery which first produced a delicious stout “Dark Matter” and a very successful IPA “Hythe Pale” in time for Christmas. By popular demand, the Hythe Pale has been repeated in May this year and we are expecting at least one, perhaps two, more brews before we reach the next harvest! Assuming the Summer growing season is anything like “normal” we should have a harvest approaching 100kg (33% up on 2020) and look forward finding pleasant, social ways to enjoy the fruits of our community labours!

Plans for restarting other activities Assuming that Covid restrictions allow, we are planning to restart all our usual Summer/Autumn activities: Plant and Seed Swaps, Apple Pressing and Butterfly and Bird walks.

See our Facebook page and website for ongoing plans and firmed up events/activities. https://hytheenvironmental.community/

Here at Hythe Vet Centre we want to deliver the very best in professional veterinary care whilst maintaining a loving, caring and family ethos. After a long search for the right place for our passion, we believe that we have found it, here in Hythe.

THESE INCLUDE: • Dedicated parking. • Purpose built surgical theatre, imaging suite and kennels. • Spacious waiting area and large consulting rooms. • X-ray machine with digital processor allowing faster developing times. • An ultrasound scanner similar to those used in human hospitals. • Heated theatre table – to keep your loved ones cosy warm! • Air driven dental machine, not unlike what you would find at your own dentist! • The latest veterinary practice computer system – this will increase the efficiency of the mundane administration side of things. • An oxygen concentrator – this will provide the oxygen that we will use during anaesthetics. Its biggest bonus is that it means that we will not need regular oxygen bottle deliveries, reducing our environmental impact.

Combining 25 years of experience in small animal veterinary practice, Colin, Helen and their team aim to provide a first class service to both you and your beloved pets.

We have been awarded Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons General Practice recognition. This is a sought after accreditation that gives you peace of mind that our practice adheres to strict professional standards.

Call: 01303 260003

www.hythevetcentre.co.uk