Holistic Practice

31/08/2026

Since February, I've been deepening how I listen to the body. Now I want to talk about it.

This past weekend I finished my advanced training with BioTrace in Auckland in a modality called QRA. Quantum Reflex Analysis.

QRA is a form of kinesiology that uses Traditional Chinese Medicine meridian points (an ancient, well-established framework). Instead of testing muscle strength the way traditional kinesiology does, QRA reads a bio-energetic reflex response. The body's energy field responds to what's being tested, and the practitioner reads that response through a reflex arc.

In practice, I can gently test specific organs, tissues, systems, and remedies to see how your body responds. It's not diagnostic. It's informative in a whole-body sense.

Six months of using it has changed the conversations I'm able to have with clients. It has shown me where detoxification pathways are struggling, where minerals are quietly depleted, and where the deeper emotional layers are still holding on. Which I'll talk about on Wednesday.

QRA doesn't replace the naturopathic work I already do. It sits alongside it. Case history. Symptoms. Functional testing. Clinical judgement. And now, this quiet way of asking the body directly.

The body has usually been trying to tell us something for a long time before we finally hear it. QRA is one more way of listening.

On Wednesday I'll break down how it works. On Friday I'll walk you through what a session looks like in my practice.

If you've been curious about how a naturopath actually listens, this week is for you.

28/08/2026

28/08/2026

How I sleep for my brain.

Since we've been talking about the glymphatic system this week, I want to share the four practices I use every night to support mine. Not a sleep routine. Four small, evidence-based shifts that protect the conditions my brain needs to do its overnight housekeeping.

🧠 I sleep on my side.
Research from 2015 (Iliff and colleagues, Journal of Neuroscience) showed glymphatic clearance is significantly more efficient in the side sleeping position, compared to back or stomach. One of the simplest no-cost interventions I've come across. A pillow between my knees keeps the alignment gentle. That's the whole thing.

🧠 Magnesium glycinate before bed.
Magnesium supports deeper slow-wave sleep, which is exactly when glymphatic activity peaks. Glycinate is the form I reach for because it's the gentlest on the gut and the most calming to the nervous system. I take mine 30 to 60 minutes before bed. Consistent, not occasional.

🧠 Hydration during the day, tapering by evening.
The glymphatic system uses cerebrospinal fluid, which is water-based. Adequate daytime hydration supports the fluid dynamics. The nuance almost no one is told is to front-load the water and taper by early evening. Otherwise you wake at 2am to p*e, which fragments the deep sleep window the whole system needs. Most of my water is in before 5pm.

🧠 Alcohol-free evenings, or at least three hours clear before bed.
Alcohol suppresses slow-wave sleep and REM. You might fall asleep faster, but the quality is significantly worse in the first half of the night, which is exactly when glymphatic activity peaks.

Four practices. None of them require willpower or expense. All of them protect the conditions the glymphatic system needs.

Side sleeping for the flow. Magnesium for the depth. Water timed for the fluid dynamics. Alcohol free evenings.

Sleep isn't just rest. It's housekeeping.

These are the four I never skip, even when life is chaotic. On the weeks when everything is hard, the cleaning window matters more, not less.

26/08/2026

What actually happens in your brain while you sleep.

On Monday I said sleep isn't rest, it's housekeeping. Today, here's the full picture of the system doing that work.

🧠What it is. A brain-specific waste clearance network, discovered in 2012. It uses cerebrospinal fluid to flush metabolic waste from between your neurons. Named "glymphatic" because it functions like the lymphatic system but is driven by glial cells, the support cells of the brain.

🧠 When it works. Primarily during deep sleep, especially slow-wave sleep. Brain cells shrink by up to 60 percent during deep sleep, opening channels for the fluid to flow through. The system is roughly 10 times more active during sleep than wakefulness. This is why sleep quality matters more than hours.

🧠 What it clears. Metabolic byproducts of neural activity. Beta-amyloid (the protein associated with Alzheimer's disease). Tau proteins (associated with neurodegenerative disease). Cellular debris that accumulates during waking hours. One bad night of sleep. Measurable proteins left behind.

🧠 What compromises it. Poor sleep quality. Sleep apnoea. Chronic stress. Alcohol before bed. Dehydration. Sleeping on your back rather than your side. Aging.

The good news is most of these are things you can shift.

Our tūpuna understood moe as sacred, restorative time. Not the absence of wakefulness. The active healing state. Modern glymphatic science is only just describing what has always been known.

In my practice, once clients understand this, sleep stops being a lifestyle recommendation and starts being non-negotiable. The brain fog isn't imagined. The cleaning didn't complete.

On Friday I'll share the four specific practices I use to support my own glymphatic system every night.

Save this for the next time you're tempted to shortcut your sleep. Send it to someone who's been running on empty and needs new language for why it matters.

24/08/2026

Sleep isn't rest. It's when your brain does its housekeeping.

You already know sleep matters. What you may not know is what's actually happening in there.

Your brain has its own dedicated waste-clearance system. It's called the glymphatic system. It was only formally described in 2012, which means most doctors were never taught it existed.

Here's what it does. Every night, if the conditions are right, cerebrospinal fluid flushes metabolic waste from the spaces between your brain cells. The proteins your neurons made during the day. The residue of every thought, every stress response, every meal digested, every emotion processed. It gets carried out while you sleep.

And here's the part almost no one is told. This system primarily runs during deep sleep. When you don't reach deep sleep, or you spend less time there, the cleaning doesn't complete. The waste stays put.

That's the brain fog after a bad night. It's not laziness. It's not weakness. It's not aging. It's a physiological process that didn't get its window.

Your brain missed its cleaning window.

One night of poor sleep measurably increases beta-amyloid in the brain, the protein associated with Alzheimer's. Chronic sleep disruption over years is now a growing area of dementia research. The glymphatic system is one of the most important pieces of science to emerge in the last decade, and it changes how we think about sleep entirely.

Sleep isn't rest. Sleep is where the deepest housekeeping happens.

Which is why "sleep hygiene" isn't just wellness culture. It's how your brain stays clear, sharp, and long-term healthy.

In my practice, once clients understand this, sleep stops being a lifestyle recommendation and starts being non-negotiable.

On Wednesday I'll break down exactly how the glymphatic system works and what compromises it. Save this so you're ready.

21/08/2026

Awareness isn't one thing. It's whatever practice keeps meeting you.

Mine are three. Different textures. Same quiet work.

🙏Kundalini yoga, twice a week.
Breath, mantra, movement, stillness. Woven together in a tradition that knows what it's doing. Twice a week is enough to keep the channel open. I don't need to be a full-time yogi to feel the shift it makes in how I meet the rest of my life.

📖Journalling.
Where the subconscious surfaces through the hand onto the page. No structure required. Sometimes lists, sometimes stream of thought, sometimes one sentence that turns out to be the whole thing I needed to hear. The oldest form of talking to yourself with kindness.

🌿Moments in the garden.
Awareness that requires no discipline, only presence. The plants, the soil, the weather doing the teaching. This is my quietest and most consistent teacher. In Rongoā, healing has always happened in relationship with the whenua, never separate from it. The garden is one of the oldest practices there is.

Three different textures. Three different rhythms. All of them doorways back to noticing.

None of them are complicated. None of them require perfect discipline. All of them are the same thing wearing different clothes. A practice of meeting myself.

You don't need an app. You don't need a class. You don't need a tradition someone else told you was correct.

You need whatever practice consistently meets you where you are.

Kundalini, journalling, the garden. Those are mine. Yours might be walking, or swimming, or an hour with your hands in bread dough, or morning coffee before the phone gets touched. Whatever brings you home to yourself, gently and often, is your awareness practice.

The practice matters less than the practising.

If this week's posts have landed anywhere in you, let this be the invitation. Not to add something big. Just to notice the small doorway that's already there and start walking through it, more often.

Come and meet yourself. That's the whole thing.

19/08/2026

A map of your own mind, in three layers.

On Monday I introduced the part of you doing the most, quietly, all along. Today, here's the fuller map.

🙏 The conscious mind. The voice reading these words. Deliberate thought, focused attention, planning, deciding, reflecting. This is where you experience being "you." Small in size, large in significance.

🙏 The subconscious mind. The layer running your breath, heart, digestion, and hormones while you go about your day. Holds every habit. Stores every experience you've had. Speaks in body sensation, imagery, gut feeling, dream. The vast, quiet, capable depth of you.

🙏 Awareness. The bridge between the two. Not thinking harder. Not analysing. Just the quiet capacity to notice what's already happening. The moment you catch your breath changing. The moment you feel a knot in your chest before you name why. The moment you notice a thought instead of being carried by it.

Not to change anything. Not to fix anything. Just to see.

Awareness is the oldest practice in every wisdom tradition on Earth. It doesn't belong to any of them. It belongs to being human.

In te ao Māori, awareness has always been embodied and relational. Held in hinengaro, tinana, wairua, and whānau together. Never the mind alone. Te Whare Tapa Whā has never split the mind into conscious and subconscious the way Western psychology does. The whole person has always been the frame. Modern neuroscience is only beginning to describe what our tūpuna have always known.

The invitation is simple. Get to know all three layers. Meet the part of you that thinks. Meet the part of you that has been holding everything else. And practise the awareness that lets them speak to each other.

In my practice, the moments clients describe as breakthroughs are almost always moments of awareness. Not new information. A new noticing.

On Friday I'll share the awareness practices I use in my own life.

Save this for the next quiet moment. Send it to someone who is ready to slow down and meet themselves more deeply.

17/08/2026

Meet the part of you that's doing the most.

You know the part of you reading this.

The one thinking, choosing, deciding, following the words across the page. That's your conscious mind. Focused, deliberate, effortful, and yours.

It's also about 5 percent of you.

The other 95 percent is running quietly beneath the surface. Your breath, right now. Your heartbeat. Your digestion. The regulation of your hormones and your temperature and your immune response.

Every habit you have, held so you don't have to think about it. Every experience you've ever had, stored whether or not you can consciously recall it. The gut feeling that arrives before you can name why.

This is your subconscious. And it's doing the most.

Not because your conscious mind isn't important. It absolutely is. But because the subconscious is where the depth lives. Your mind is a lake. You've been introduced to the surface. There's a whole quiet ecosystem beneath it that's been with you the whole time.

Our tūpuna understood this. Hinengaro (mind, thoughts, emotions) has always been held as inseparable from tinana (body), wairua (spirit), and whānau (relationships). Te Whare Tapa Whā has never split the mind the way Western psychology does. The whole person has always been the frame.

Awareness is how the two layers meet. Not to fix anything. Not to change anything. Just to notice. The moment you catch your breath changing. The moment you feel a knot in your chest before you name why. The moment you notice a thought instead of being carried by it.

That's it. That's the whole practice. A Holistic Practice if you will 😉

On Wednesday I'll break down how the conscious and subconscious mind actually work together, and how awareness bridges them.

Come say hello to the part of you that's been doing the most, quietly, all along.

14/08/2026

Honest beats impressive. Brief beats perfect. Done beats beautiful.

Three days. Two lines per meal. That's the whole ask.

Not seven days. Not tracked in an app. Not weighed. Not counted. Not cleaned up. Just three honest days of what you actually ate, when you actually ate it, and what was going on around it.

What to include.

Time. What you ate, in plain words. Every drink (water, coffee, tea, alcohol, kombucha, all of it). The small things you'd normally skip. The bite of your kid's toast. The biscuit at the counter. The chip off your partner's plate.

If you can manage it, one word for mood, hunger, or how satisfied you felt. "Rushed." "Content." "Not really hungry, ate anyway." A single word tells me things the food alone can't.

What to skip.

Calorie counting. Weighing food. Macros as numbers. Apps that push you toward obsession. Trying to eat "better" during the diary.

The three principles.

🥑Simple beats detailed. If it takes more than 30 seconds to write, you won't do it.

🥑Honest beats impressive. If you clean it up, the picture doesn't fit your body.

🥑Brief beats perfect. Three days done imperfectly is worth more than seven days started perfectly and abandoned by day two.

And one practical trick. Write as you go. Anchor it to something you already do. Note the meal while the kettle boils, or the coffee brews, or as you sit down to eat. Fifteen seconds. That's all.

A food diary doesn't have to be intimidating. It doesn't have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to be complete.

It has to be honest, brief, and yours.

Three days. That's the whole ask.

If you've been asked to do one and haven't started, this is your permission to keep it simple.

12/08/2026

Four things a trained eye reads in three days of your eating.

On Monday I said most of your eating happens on autopilot. Today, here's what your naturopath is actually seeing when you hand over the three days.

1⃣ Macronutrient ratios. Is protein at every meal, or just at dinner? Are carbohydrates whole and paired, or standing alone and driving blood sugar? Are fats present, or has low-fat culture left the plate running on carbs? The balance tells us if the body is fuelled for stability or set up for the crash-and-crave cycle.

2⃣ Micronutrient intake. Iron, B vitamins, zinc, magnesium, omega 3s. Every meal is either building nutrient stores or quietly depleting them. What's missing tells us where deficiencies are being built silently.

3⃣ Patterns. When is the first meal? How long between meals? Is breakfast skipped? When does the 3pm biscuit cycle show up? Patterns tell us the rhythm the body is living in.

4⃣ Relationship with food. Rushed or mindful. Guilt or ease. Restrictive language or neutral observation. Joy present, or purely functional. Sometimes what's between the lines is more clinically important than what was eaten.

Four things we read. One thing we hand back.

The awareness the diary creates in you belongs to you. Most clients discover things they didn't know were happening. The three coffees. The skipped lunch. The 4pm biscuit that had become invisible.

Our tūpuna understood food as medicine, memory, and connection. Never just fuel. The food diary is one small way back to that knowing.

On Friday I'll share how to actually do a food diary that's useful without being overwhelming.

Save this for the next time your naturopath asks. Send it to a friend who has been asked to do one and hasn't quite got there yet.

If you want help reading your own food story, this is the work I do.