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19 results
  • Article
  • Article

Soil health and dairy farming in the UK

| Angela HuiCat O’Neil

Although healthy soil means more nutritious dairy products, modern intensive farming methods pollute and degrade the environment. However, a regenerative agriculture movement is kicking back against mainstream industrial farming.

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  • Article

Love, longing and tea from the polski sklep

| Kasia TomasiewiczAnna Keville Joyce

For people of Polish origin in the UK, herbal tea is closely tied to health and shared history. Kasia Tomasiewicz explores her changing relationship to these tea-related cultural habits.

  • Article
  • Article

Thomas Sankara and the stomachs that made themselves heard

| Perry BlanksonAnna Keville Joyce

Thomas Sankara’s vision to transform farming and health in Burkina Faso turned to dust with his assassination. Perry Blankson highlights the considerable achievements of Sankara’s brief span in power.

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  • Article

Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis

| Giulia Smith

Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.

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Yoga gets physical

| Lalita Kaplish

Modern yoga owes a debt to the physical culture movement that created a world obsessed with health and fitness.

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The housing that gives hope to refugees

| George KafkaMamadou

A safe place of one’s own can be a source of healing and hope. George Kafka reports on two Athens-based projects helping displaced people by putting housing first.

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The sickness in the wellness industry

| Gwendolyn Smith

In recovery from anorexia, Gwen Smith began to realise how the wellness industry needs its followers to feel bad about themselves in order to make money out them.

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Crones

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Menopause can be tough when nobody talks about it and all the stereotypes are negative, but it can also be transformative, marking the start of a new stage of life - cronehood.

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How trauma affects the body and mind

| BidishaBenjamin Gilbert

The long and devastating aftermath of an attack have given writer and broadcaster Bidisha unique insight into the suffering of other victims. Here she explores survival and healing in those who have experienced trauma.

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  • Article

My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic

| Sandy Di YuSteven Pocock

A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.

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Yoga adapts to time and place

| Lalita Kaplish

A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.

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Queer cafés and gay mylk

| Holly ReganCat O’Neil

Holly Regan explores queer London spaces where the alternative – oat milk – is the norm for the communities gathering there.

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Invisibility

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Why do menopausal women feel invisible? Because nobody talks about menopause or because society doesn't value older women?

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Sun salutations and yoga synthesis in India

| Lalita Kaplish

Surya namaskars, or sun salutations, have a long history in South Asia, but their place at the heart of modern yoga is more recent.

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  • Article

Ways appear

| Chris North

While his sense of body shame meant the personal side of his life was unfulfilled, Chris’s career was rewarding. His own childhood experiences gave him profound empathy for the children he worked with.

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Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark

| Nelly Ekström

Hamlet clearly demonstrates an excess of black bile and is arguably the most famous literary melancholic.

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WhatsApp aunties and the spread of fake news

| Rianna WalcottMaïa Walcott

The advantages of WhatApp chat groups – especially as a cost-free way of keeping in touch with family around the world – make them fertile ground for the spread of bogus medical advice. Writer Rianna Walcott explores how to encourage ‘aunties’ in the community to question the truth of unattributed health hoaxes.

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Celebrating our soft toys

| Elspeth Wilsonthe participantsBenjamin Gilbert

After cuddling a teddy bear cured her insomnia, Elspeth Wilson was inspired to speak to four other autistic and disabled adults, who praise the roles soft toys play in their lives.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

| Guy StaggJess Nash

Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.