As Honeycomb Health’s brand-new Yoga Teacher, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce the custom designed classes I will be bringing to the Zen Room, located within the gorgeous Honeycomb practice. But first, allow me clear up some misconceptions that I often hear from prospective students before they join me for their first Yoga class.

You do not need to look a certain way, already be super flexible or have years of Yoga experience to join us for a Honeycomb Health Yoga class. Yoga is for EVERY body, of EVERY background and EVERY physical ability. The classes I guide are purposefully designed to be accessible, centred around choice and welcoming to absolutely everyone that would like to give Yoga a try. I also place great emphasis in my classes on the physical, psychological and energetic benefits of a Yoga practice, rather than the ‘aesthetics’ of creating the ‘perfect’ Yoga posture. The perfect posture in Yoga is the one that makes you feel your best, not the one that you may think ‘looks’ the best.

So, what does a Yoga class at Honeycomb Health actually involve? Well, generally we begin our practice with some mindfulness or a ‘grounding’ exercise. These help us to prepare our mind and body to receive the maximum benefit of our class. We will then progress to the Asana or movement part of the class, to move our bodies and start to flow through our postures. Then to conclude we will typically finish with our Savasana or meditation/relaxation practice. This, along with every other part of our class, is completely invitational and optional, but will hopefully leave you feeling relaxed, regulated and nourished post practice. At times a class may follow a slightly different structure in order to create a particular feel or effect for a class, but I sincerely hope you will enjoy the variety of my class programs.

If you would like to learn more about the upcoming classes at Honeycomb Health or would like to be placed on the waitlist to join us, please feel free contact me through the details below.

I look forward to seeing you on the mat!

– Laura

Acacia Yoga
Email: acaciayogamelbourne@gmail.com
Phone: 0447 469 677

I tried Parkrun not long ago. It’s been on my radar for a while but I’ve had a lot of resistance as well. Exercise is not one of my loves. I hated sport in school. Sports days were the source of huge amounts of distress. Exercise was something like taking medicine, good for you, will make you feel better, but yuk! Yesterday, my friend and trainer, Claire Samana from Tailored Health, messaged me. “I’m going to do Park Run tomorrow, want to come?”. My instant reaction was yes, immediately followed by no. I don’t know where to go, I don’t know what to expect, what if I’m not fit enough to keep up with her (I’m not!), it’s too early, can I fit it in around my other Saturday morning commitments. 

In the last few years, I’ve changed my perspective around exercise. I often try to use the word movement instead. How can I choose to move today? Can I park the car further away? Can I put on a silly song and dance with my kids. Intentional exercise is something I schedule, I plan and I book and I do it with people I like. I don’t do as much as I “should” or as much as I know would make me feel better overall, but it’s no longer something that I resist or object to. There are so many ‘shoulds’ in our world, when we change our perspective take the self-criticism out of it, let our friends push us out of our comfort zone, it can feel really good. 

Today there were people of all shapes, sizes, ages and fitness levels. The volunteers are welcoming, inclusive and supportive. I don’t know that I’ll go every week but identifying with the pillars of lifestyle medicine, today, I’ve ticked off something in both the movement and connection pillars. 

We often get asked why Honeycomb Health? It’s an unusual name for a General Practice. It was my daughter, who came up with the name Honeycomb Health as we were discussing the possible names for a clinic that focuses on the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine.

Honeycomb Health strives to focus on the 6 pillars as the framework for everything that we do. These include:

Nutrition
Movement
Stress management
Sleep quality
Addiction management
Connection

The six hexagons of the Honeycomb logo reflect not only the six pillars of lifestyle medicine but that our GP clinic is the central hive for communication and collaboration. We do the things that you would regularly expect from a GP clinic but our focus is on the prevention as well as the management of chronic illness. Modern medicine has the capacity for us to live longer, how do we do that in a way that is full of quality life?

Lifestyle Medicine is defined as, “The application of environmental, behavioural, medical and motivational principles to the management (including self-care and self-management) of lifestyle-related health problems in a clinical and/or public health setting” (Egger et al, 2017).

Or put another way, “Lifestyle Medicine provides an interdisciplinary, whole-system approach to the prevention and reversal of chronic and lifestyle-related diseases through the modification of the behavioural, social and environmental drivers.”  From <https://lifestylemedicine.org.au/lifestyle-medicine/> 

Evidence based medicine has radically changed the way that we practice medicine but it relies often on boiling things down to single variables. In an increasingly fast paced and complex environment,  things are rarely a result of one thing. The leading cause of deaths in Australia in 2020 according to the Australian Institute of Health and Wellness all have multiple factors involved in their development. There is no one trigger. All of these illnesses have an impact on quality of life. We need to keep using high quality evidence to inform our treatment and prevention, but we also need to shift our medical focus from reactive medicine, wait for illness then treat it, to prevention. Lets not wait to get sick before we look at the things that not only make us feel healthy but keep us as healthy as possible