A guided practice that keeps the meditation bells going: a welcome bell when you begin, then a bell on every hour and half hour. Pick an exercise, follow the little figure and the breath cue, and go gently: skip anything that hurts, and check with a doctor first if you're pregnant, have high blood pressure, glaucoma, or back or joint trouble. Back to Two-Stroke Morning
Holobiotic living. Each of us is a holobiont: a body plus the trillions of microbes living in and on it, working as one. Movement, slow breath, fresh plants and fermented foods look after both halves at once.
How this is drawn. Cortisol peaks about half an hour after waking and falls through the day. In a meta-analysis of randomised trials, yoga and mindfulness practice lowered cortisol and blood pressure, with small to moderate effects (Pascoe, Thompson & Ski 2017); here the reduction grows with weeks and days of practice to at most about 15% through the day. In a ten-week trial, a diet high in fermented foods raised gut-microbe diversity and lowered many inflammation markers (Wastyk et al. 2021); fresh produce brings fibre that feeds those microbes. These are illustrative sizes in the direction of the evidence, not a prediction for you.