Getting good sleep is an integral part of maintaining both physical and mental wellness. We may take a good night’s rest for granted, but even a single interrupted or fitful night can make us realise how important restful sleep really is.

Losing sleep for any reason, including insomnia, can impact every aspect of our lives. Tiredness can mean making more mistakes at work, being short tempered with loved ones or simply having a harder time being motivated and enjoying life. At the end of the day, no one enjoys tossing and turning in bed watching the clock tick by, so here are some useful tips to help you get a good night’s sleep. They will range from easy, small changes to your environment to antistress spa day treatments, so you are sure to find something that fits into your lifestyle.

Sleeping in a room that’s quiet, dark and cool will naturally help you get to sleep easier. If your room is facing a street light or you perhaps prefer to sleep during the day, blackout curtains can help simulate a dark environment.

Removing distractions like computers, T.V’s & work items can also help you get into the right mindset. Having these items around can weaken the natural association you have with your bedroom as a place of rest. Some people also find the light aroma of essential oils like lavender can help them get to sleep, but make sure not to apply undiluted essential oils directly to the skin, as they can cause irritation.

​Your body naturally associates daylight with being awake, so exposing yourself to too much artificial light, especially before bed, confuses your natural rhythms. Bright light, especially blue light typical of phones and computers should be avoided. If this is not possible, look into setting a blue light filter on your device to reduce its disrupting effect. Being in a dark environment will encourage the production of the hormone melatonin, which promotes sleep.

You can help your body and mind transition from day to night by relaxing for an hour before bed. You can take a bath, enjoy a hobby or perform exercises like yoga, but make sure to avoid too much time using technology, as explained above.

​It is also important to sleep and wake at around the same time if possible. If you need to change the time you are going to sleep, try and adjust your routine gradually instead of all at once, so that your body’s rhythms have time to adapt.

It may seem obvious to avoid drinking coffee before bed, but what about nicotine and alcohol? Many people enjoy a glass of wine or a smoke before bed, but surprisingly these may be contributing to insomnia like caffeine would.

Studies have shown that consuming these substances may also increase anxiety, which will make it harder to get to sleep and feel well rested when you wake up. A 2015 study showed that caffeine can even make your mood worse if you are already sleep deprived. Instead, consider drinking cherry juice, herbal teas or warm milk to help you drift off.

​If you are going through a stressful time, especially an unpredictable year like 2020, it may be hard to get a good night’s rest. Trying a soothing massage can help ease some tension and refresh your outlook. Carisma Spa’s dedicated antistress massage is designed to ease tension, while massages like the Hot Stone Massage or the Ayurvedic Massage can help with exhaustion and anxiety.

In conclusion, your body naturally knows when it is time to rest, but the anxiety and complications of daily life can confuse it. By establishing a sleeping routine that simulates a cool, dark night and relaxes your body, you can help promote regular restful sleep.

Staying healthy doesn’t have to involve boring meals or unpleasant protein shakes. We at Carisma want you to enjoy your journey to wellness, so here are 5 amazing smoothies that support your health goals while tasting amazing!

Add to a Blender:

• A chilled cup of freshly brewed green tea
• Half a Cup of Yoghurt
• A cup of raspberries
• A tablespoon of honey
• Half a Cup of Ice

Blend until smooth and enjoy ice cold deliciousness!

​Consuming foods containing antioxidants has been suggested as a way to counter cell damage, reducing the chances of diseases like cancer, eye diseases, cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes. Antioxidants can be found in a lot of fruits and veggies, and this first smoothie is full of them. The Green tea is packed with antioxidants and boosts your heart’s health.

Blend Together:

• A handful of frozen cherries
• A chopped kiwi
• A cup of almond milk
• Some chia seeds

Blend until smooth and you have a smoothie that will supercharge your energy! This is a great smoothie to start the day with, or use as a pick-me-up. 

The cherries and the kiwi will add a lot of vitamins and antioxidants to your diet, while almond milk is a low-fat way to improve your calcium intake. Chia seeds are loaded with nutrients and even contain Omega-3 fatty acids!

Blend Together:

• A quarter cup of frozen strawberries
• A quarter cup of raspberries
• A quarter cup of blackberries
• Half a cup of Coconut Milk
• Some spinach leaves

Blend together, and you have a low carb snack. This smoothie is also a great light breakfast, if you aren’t a fan of cereals.

Berries improve your blood sugar, are great for your skin and help fight inflammation. Just like the spinach in this smoothie, the berries are also packed with vitamins but have a very low amount of calories. Coconut milk helps with your energy levels, improves your digestion and helps your heart health.

Blend Together:

• 300ml of milk, water or yoghurt
• 2 scoops of vanilla protein powder
• A cored, chopped apple (preferably with the skin still on for even more of a health boost)
• 2 tablespoons of almonds
• A handful of uncooked oats
• A sprinkle of cinnamon

Blend until smooth and enjoy!
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This smoothie tastes like a delicious apple pie, but without the unhealthy part! It’s packed with protein, making it a great pre-workout incentive or a post-workout reward. You’ll be looking forward to exercising in no time.

Not only does it contain the protein you need for your workout, but the yoghurt will boost your immune system while the apple and oats will give you a great dose of fiber.

Blend Together:

• A cup of frozen blueberries
• Half a cup of your favourite berry juice (pomegranate and cranberry are great)
• Half a cup of ice
• A tablespoon of chia seeds
• Half a peeled banana
• Half a pitted avocado

Blend until smooth and enjoy a clear, focused mind.

This is a great way of taking a short break from work or studying, and improving your focus at the same time. This smoothie is also loaded with vitamins, protein and antioxidants to improve both your physical and mental wellness.

​We at Carisma hope this article has given you some delicious smoothie ideas! If this has given you a craving for some fresh fruits, you may enjoy our Spa & Lunch packages that even include a voucher to use at Kofi & Kale (where you can even try a whole range of smoothies)!

At many points in our life we may experience something that causes us a great deal of stress & anxiety, and given how hectic life can be these feelings can often last for a long amount of time. The turbulent nature of 2020 has been especially stressful for many of us, so it has become even more important to be able to prevent and cope with these feelings.

Here at Carisma Spa, we want to ensure that people experience both physical and mental wellness, so this article will take you through some ways to manage these negative emotions and to help prevent them from taking hold in the first place.

Anxiety can have physical, mental, and emotional effects on you. When you experience anxiety, you can feel scared or apprehensive, you can have negative emotions and you can even experience intense reactions like sweating, shaking or shortness of breath.

​Anxiety and Stress are often the result of something that has already happened, or something that you are worried will happen, so tackling these feelings can start from approaching these events in a different way.

If future events are causing you anxiety, it can be very helpful to plant for them in advance. Knowing that you already have ways to cope with this event, if it were to happen, can take a great deal of weight off your shoulders.

This can be as simple as writing down your daily routine in advance, listing your short term and long term goals, or writing down some ways to cope with an event that you fear will happen. Consider talking about these worries with people you are close to, as they may have perspectives that you are not seeing at the moment or solutions that you are not aware of. Often the act of simply talking with someone can relieve some anxiety.

Many of our goals in life require a great deal of time and effort; getting a good job, buying a house or succeeding in education, for example, can all require years of work. As a result, we can lose motivation and feel like our goals are too far out of reach, so it’s important to list small goals and reward yourself for them. Exercised or ate a healthy meal today? Reward yourself with some moments of relaxation. 

Even small achievements have their value, and it’s important not to forget this! Focus on what you can change right now.

Experiencing a moment of high anxiety or stress can be overwhelming, so it’s important to know what to do beforehand. When you feel overwhelmed, try to sit down and take a second to clear your mind. Close your eyes and focus only on your breathing. These calming breathing techniques are surprisingly effective, relieving intense emotions in a matter of minutes.

When we focus on our negative thoughts, we can give them a great deal of power and make them feel worse than they actually are. When you experience negative emotions, take their power away by listing them either on a piece of paper or in your mind. Ask yourself what is bothering you, why it is bothering you and whether you can do anything about it. 

If the problem is something you can change, try and list what you can do to solve it. If you can’t figure out a solution, ask others for advice or even see if you can get some useful information from the internet.

Often, this process can relieve your anxiety even before you actually start doing anything to fix your problem, since it grounds you in the present and makes your feelings tangible. Once you understand something, you can deal with it more easily.

Creating a relaxing environment can help with anxiety and stress, and aromatherapy is a useful tool in your arsenal. By burning incense, using a scented oil or a warmer, you can diffuse a relaxing scent around the room to ground you and relax you. 
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Specific scents like lavender, jasmine, chamomile, rose, frankincense, and patchouli have historically been used to relieve anxiety, depression, and stress.

If you feel like you would prefer a more hands-on approach to tackling your tension, you can choose treatments designed to relieve these negative emotions. A facial, for example, can relieve tension and allow you to step away from life’s worries for a while. 
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Meanwhile, a massage that targets anxiety like the Hot Stone Massage or the Antistress Massage is designed to relieve the symptoms of stress in your body to refresh your physical and mental energy.

Keeping up with meditation and exercise can also be a useful tool to relieve negative emotions. They lower the body’s levels of stress hormones, improve your sleep and make you feel more confident in yourself. In addition, they can be a great distraction that allows you to focus on something other than the way you are feeling.

​In conclusion, there are many approaches you can take to manage your feelings in these stressful times. You may choose to try one or more of these techniques or even all of them, so we hope that they will be of help and lead to your mental wellness.

Improving your health and wellness, both physical and mental, may seem like a daunting task. We associate improving our health with major lifestyle changes, inconvenient exercise routines or complicated dieting plans, but this doesn’t have to be the case!

There are some surprisingly simple ways to feel and look better that can slot right into your current lifestyle, making them easier to adapt to and maintain. You can’t always find the time to pop into the spa for a massage to break your routine or get advice from our therapists, so this blog will outline possible additions or minor changes to your diet, lifestyle and the products you use in your own home. Not all of them may be perfect for you, but that’s ok! You can adopt as many tips as you like, or use them as a first step into making bigger changes.

Your diet doesn’t only affect your skin and body, but your mental wellness as well. Eating well helps you feel and look better, but we often try to change our diet dramatically; cutting out the foods we love and eating only carefully meal-planned dishes. This can make diets hard to maintain, and demotivate you quickly.

Instead you should start with smaller diet changes first, that can benefit you a great deal on their own, or help transition you into more major changes. For example:

Herbs and Spices
Herbs and Spices don’t just make your food taste amazing, they also have some major health benefits:

• Sage: True to its name, sage is a medicinal herb that’s great at boosting your brain function and memory. It’s also great at fortifying your immune system since it contains antioxidants and is suggested to help reduce blood sugar levels. Sage retains its flavour when dried, so fresh or dried sage can be incorporated into pasta sauces or in meat dishes to give an earthy flavour.

Side Dishes & Fermented Foods
Adding a side dish or small addition to your existing food favourites can also be a great way to boost your diet. I’ve focused on sides that require very little preparation, to have as little of an effect on your routine as possible.

Western Diets are lacking in foods that support your gut health. Fermented Foods contain beneficial bacteria that help with digestion, immunity, weight and mental health, so including them in your diet is a great idea. But what are these probiotic boosting foods? Kimchi, for example, is a popular Korean dish that goes well as a side dish or with dishes that are a little bland. It’s usually made from fermented cabbage, garlic, ginger, spring onions and seasonings. It can be found in any Asian food store in containers of various sizes, so it’s easy to pick up a small packet if you’re not sure if you’ll like it. 

Yoghurt is definitely a familiar food, but it has many benefits you may not be aware of. It can reduce your risk of heart disease, contains a great deal of nutrients and like kimchi, boosts your gut health. Adding Yoghurt to baked goods or breakfast dishes is a great option if you prefer not to eat yoghurt on its own.

Kefir is another fermented drink that’s great for you. It’s common in Eastern Europe and Russia, but you can even make it at home by adding grains to a glass of milk and letting it sit for 24 hours. The grains will prevent it from spoiling and ferment the milk, leaving you with a smooth drinkable yoghurt smoothie! You can strain out the grains before drinking, and they remain healthy and ready to make more Kefir!

Adding or making little changes to your routine can dramatically help your physical and mental health. In this section we will take a look at a few simple tips you can adapt to your lifestyle:

• Epsom Salts: Epsom salts are readily available (and low cost) from pharmacies. By adding them to your bath, they can break down and be absorbed into your skin. The health benefits are endless; reducing swelling, bruising and sprains, helping with insomnia, reducing muscle soreness and chemotherapy discomfort and soothing pain from sunburn.
  
  
• Getting a Regular Amount of Sleep: Sleep can make or break your health, and can really bring your mental wellness down. Setting aside at least 8 hours of sleep at the same time each day is especially important. Many people tend to stay up later on their days off, and this can throw off your body’s natural rhythms. Of course getting to sleep may be easier said than done if you have sleeping problems like insomnia, so you may want to consider our blog post on getting good, restful sleep.

Planning Your Meals: Planning your meals in advance can save you last minute stress or problems with missing ingredients. You may want to set a little time aside each week to plan a few meals, or even make meals in advance if the food can be stored in the fridge or frozen. This also helps you avoid eating takeout or unhealthy snacks when you are too tired to cook at the end of the day.

Set and Track Your Goals: Staying motivated is hard sometimes, so track your progress and reward yourself! You can write down your goals and milestones, and set rewards when you achieve them. Achieved your daily goals? Reward yourself with some self-care time like watching a movie or taking a long bath instead of a shower. Achieved a major goal? Treat yourself to a trip to your favourite restaurant, or a relaxing afternoon at the spa on your day off. Rewards can be as large or as small as you want, but remember that it’s healthy to keep your motivation up.

Many people use skincare and body care products that are popular, or recommended to them by others, without first ensuring that the products are suited to their unique needs. It is important to use products suited for your skin type, otherwise these products can do more harm than good.

Identifying Your Skin Type
Determining your skin type is straightforward if you know what characteristics to look for. First, wash your face with a cleanser and dry your skin. Take note of any of these features that may occur after 30 minutes:

• Dry Skin: You may have dry skin if your skin feels tight and parched. Throughout the day, people with dry skin may also notice a little flaking. Moisturising soon after washing your face, with an intensely hydrating moisturiser, is therefore very important for this skin type.
  
  
• Oily Skin: If you wait an extra 30 minutes and you can observe a slight shine all over your face, your skin may be oily. Identifying oil is easier if you have sheets of skin blotting paper that you can use to test for oil. It is still important to nourish your skin with products, so you may want to use products that are not greasy or oily. Exfoliants or peels will also help get rid of any clogged pores that oily skin is susceptible to causing.
  
  
• Combination Skin: If you only observe shine on your nose, chin and/or forehead, you may have combination skin. Your cheeks, on the other hand, may feel a little dry. To meet the needs of all areas of the face, you may therefore prefer to use gel products, so as not to dry out dry areas and over-hydrate oily ones. It is still important to moisturise after you strip your natural oils away when washing your skin.

​Improving your health doesn’t require a complete change to your lifestyle. It’s better to take small steps, and build upon them, than take a giant leap and struggle to maintain it. But at the end of the day, making small changes for yourself can lead to better physical and mental wellness.