The Olive Oil Effect

If you have ever reached for a bottle of olive oil kept in a cold cupboard, you will know that it loses its golden clarity and becomes thick, cloudy, and slow to pour. This is exactly what happens inside your body during the colder months. Your interstitium, that incredible, fluid-filled network that lives between your cells and your fascia, has spent the last few months in a form of "hibernation mode."

In clinical research, this is known as a thixotropic shift, these wonderful internal fluids are not just static; they are a living, moving system that changes state based on temperature and movement. So, in the colder months, this fluid begins to thicken into a more viscous, gel-like state, as your nervous system prioritises your core, redirecting warmth away from the surface tissues to keep your vital organs safe and protected.

It is important to remember that this thickening isn’t a dysfunction, it is actually a beautiful adaptation. Your body is trying to conserve energy and create a protective "Safe Container" against the winter chill. However, when we move into the warmer, lighter seasons, that thickened gel state, begins to gently thaw and flow more freely again, this is what I call the ‘Olive Oil State’.

Try this very relaxing guided 5 Minute Touch Yoga™ practice to restore your inner flow (softening what has been held and restoring fluidity)

Click here to listen to the full audio...

Or read the script in your own voice and guide yourself gently into the practice.

• Witness: If possible gently close your eyes or have a soft gaze. Bring your attention to the body, noticing how it rests against the floor or chair. Feel the rise and fall of your breath. Simply witness the body, its sensations, maybe tension, or stillness, without trying to change anything. You are the witness, quiet and attentive
• Warmth: Begin to rub your hands together, slowly, experience that lovely heat building up, creating energy, warmth and connection.
• Connection: Place those warm hands onto your lower belly, your body's energetic centre. Just feel the weight and the heat of your hands resting here, very nurturing and deeply relaxing.
• Invitation: As the heat of the hands seeps into the body, imagine that heat as a gentle inner burning fire, sending waves of warmth around the entire body, radiating outwards, until the entire body is filled with a beautiful inner heat.
• Flow: Feel your whole body beginning to respond to this warmth, imagine all your internal fluid networks become clear, warm, and ready to move again into to a gentle state of flow, giving your body permission to stop holding on so tight, to just gently let go.
• Integration: Now take a few quiet breaths here, noticing the warmth, the gentle release, and flow that have settled into the body. Sense a gentle energy balance, harmonious relaxed, alive and always flowing.