If I were in charge...
What three things would you do Emine Rushton?
The goodness that is Emine.
I’m an Author and somatic movement educator, my clients call me “the nervous system whisperer." The Soothe Programme is for you if are burnt out, anxious, chronically stressed, or trauma issues. You’ve tried everything but nothing worked?
Come and find out more about The Soothe Programme, I am holding a Q&A exploring anxiety on Tuesday 4th Marcth at 7 pm ( GMT) - send me a YES and I will send you the link.
In times of chaos and uncertainty, it’s ideas, hope, and creativity that keep me going. Yet, we seem to be facing a real poverty of creative thinking - so much of what we hear is just headline-grabbing, polarised slogans which are designed to keep us in a state of high alarm.
I often wonder, "If I were in charge, what would I do?”
Each month, I highlight someone I’ve met on my travels - someone kind, insightful, and willing to share their unique perspective - and who I’ve managed to convince to play along. I also love new ideas for something to watch, read and listen to.
Please meet – Emine Rushton, I met her when I taught a press class organised by Aveda UK and loved her thoughtfulness and considered manner. Emine has a soulful presence, whenever I read her writing, I let out a sigh.
Who are you?
I’m a woman, a mother of daughters, an editor, author, and have spent 20 years studying, writing about, and working in health & wellbeing.
What is your mission?
I think I’m here, on this planet, to tell stories, and connect through communication. Through my writing, I hope to empower people to make kinder, slower, and more holistic choices… to give themselves more than a second thought and trust their own intuition more.
How do you do it?
Everything I do (and I do a few different things), is rooted in wholistic health and wellbeing. I’m a holistic therapist and a yoga therapist, a wellness author, an editor, and a writer.
I didn’t set out to have multiple strings to my bow… if I could choose to do anything and money wasn’t part of the equation, I’d always choose to write, but I’d take on fewer projects (and worry far less about paid work). As it stands, over the last 15 years, I’ve written five books – two about Ayurveda (which I’ve studied and practiced for almost 15 years now), two about nature, joy, creativity & nourishment and a big, beautiful tome of a book about holistic health, beauty & natural connection.
I also write a twice-weekly Substack, MOTHER NOURISH. It started as a way to help others like me, who always seem to subsist on the ‘crumbs’ of the day… not enough time, energy, thought or care went into how I looked after myself. There were long periods of my life when I downright neglected my wellbeing – mental, emotional, physical & spiritual.
There are also many, many times, particularly I think as a mum, when the shit really hits the fan, and your whole, sole focus is on supporting your kids and getting them to a better place, whether that’s because they’ve been physically unwell or are struggling mentally (or both)… but I realised that even when the kids were doing really well, I still wasn’t prioritising my own wellbeing.
I seemed to always have this list as long as my arm of other things ‘to do’… and because everyone’s to-do list is relentless and unending, I never quite managed to get to the point when I’d made enough time to look after myself properly. That really changed when I turned 40, and even more insistently this past year, as I have started to experience perimenopause (I’m now 44). I have, through sheer stubborn determination more than anything, raised my wellbeing from the bottom of the day’s pile to a non-negotiable part of its fabric. I don’t feel guilty about it anymore, and I don’t ask permission – I just do it – whether booking myself into a yoga class or going for a walk.
That may sound utterly basic, but for a very long time, as a working mum, I guilted myself into believing that if I was ‘home’ (i.e. not out at work), I should spend every second with my family. What it took me 15 years to realise, was that my kids were always free to choose to do what they wanted to do (whether hanging out with friends, going for a walk, or lying on the sofa and watching a film). For reasons I can’t quite make sense of, I believed that I did not have that right; I didn’t get to just walk out of the house, go to a class or for a wander by the sea, or simply sit with a cuppa and read a book for an hour… it didn’t help that my youngest would often fall ill (or become inconsolably upset) whenever I made plans to be away for a day or a night, and I lost count of the number of times I cancelled my plans in order to stay at home with her.
Stuck in that pattern, I never got what I needed, and my children got too used to me being ‘always there.’ I’d drop everything and anything at a moment’s notice, if they asked me to, rather than show them the importance of honouring my promises to myself and reflecting back at them the vision of a woman who is also her own strong, sovereign, thriving & independent self. It was difficult, but once I imagined my daughters as mothers themselves (guilt-ridden, and continually sublimating their own needs), I got better at it. That’s not what I want for my kids. I want them to be much stronger than I’ve been. To be better at saying, ‘I’m doing this because I want to, and that’s important.’ I think kids need to hear and see that from their parents more often! It’s ironically become a lot easier since I’ve started experiencing perimenopausal symptoms… there’s a validity about what our bodies go through that we struggle to find if it’s solely an emotional or psychological… and that’s another really important thing we need to talk about, and seek to change.
How do you look after yourself?
The big thing: I no longer set intentions. Intentions didn’t serve me very well… because I’m a writer, I can trick myself all too easily with lyrical promises and lofty insights… believing I’ve ‘seen the light’ and am actually going to start doing all the things I write about doing! I’ve learned the long and hard way that that’s not how my life works.
Now, I know that the only way to make positive changes is to do them, over and over, until they stick. I’ve gone from intention to action. Action is everything.
Perimenopause arrived with big shifts – most noticeably, my skin morphed from perfectly happy and ‘easy’, to highly sensitive, reactive and hypoallergenic, almost overnight. I had issues with eczema and red, raw rashes, swollen eyelids, lips and face, for months. It was intense – waking up some days with eyes swollen shut, unable to get out, up or on with the day.
But it also forced me to wake up to what was really going on. There’s been a lot of change in my life in the past few years. Loss of loved ones, deeply difficult periods with both children and with my partner, a move across the country with kids, pup & our four, uprooted lives in tow… and the latter has undoubtedly been the most positive thing we’ve ever done, and has spurred us all to make so many more positive choices and changes across all layers of our lives, but it has also been exhausting, and as with any big shift, time to assimilate and settle is crucial.
I’ve spent the last four months very dedicatedly focused on my wellbeing. I’ve learned how I can wrap important choices in and around my working days… I left Instagram last year, no longer use any social media (I am on Substack, but rarely use the ‘Notes’ function), and do not waste any of my precious day scrolling the internet. That is a huge thing and has given me back so much time.
I now get into bed around 9.30pm, read something nourishing for a while, and then play a Yoga Nidra recording, to help ease me into a deep, restful sleep. I do not always sleep all the way through (hello Perimenopause), but am sleeping better now than I was six months ago.
Because of my histamine and sensitivity issues (again, thanks Perimenopause), and my love of food, I’ve also reframed the way that I eat. Instead of getting hung up on the things I can’t eat a lot of (because they’re high in histamine and will trigger a skin flare-up), I focus on all of the varied, vibrant, fresh and nourishing things I can have – delicious, seasonal veggies, fruit, grains, pulses, organic meat, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices… which has also had a positive impact on my overall wellbeing. I make make most of my food from scratch now – from turmeric, blueberry & cinnamon porridge for breakfast, to veg-packed curries for dinner – and rarely eat processed foods as a result.
A few times a week, I will take our dog down to the sea (we live in South Devon), and give him an hour-long runaround, while I walk beside him, breathing and recalibrating. Being by the sea has always felt like medicine to me… islands are in my blood, as my family is Cypriot. I come home refreshed, invigorated and with a clear head…
I also enjoy a weekly 90-minute restorative yoga class – it’s on a Sunday morning, which feels fitting, given it’s the day of rest. The whole process – from filling my water bottle with herbal tea at home so that I can sip & enjoy it during & after class, to the drive there (15 mins, my playlist blaring, singing along as I drive), and then settling onto my mat, pulling a cosy jumper and socks on – feels as restorative as the yoga itself.
I also go for a regular sauna… just at my local leisure centre, where it’s a few quid for an hour-long session. Sweating is such a smart and important mechanism – a brilliant way for the body to expel things it doesn’t need, from excess hormones and histamine to heavy metals. I feel amazing after a sauna, and when my histamine issues were really bad, it helped me turn a corner… and now my body craves it (our bodies tend to know what’s good for them).
If you were in charge, what are the first three things that you would do?
I would fix the broken food systems. We live in a country where millions of people can’t easily access fresh food and the only food they can find (at local corner shops or petrol stations, for example) is ultra-processed (UPF). Where our school children and those convalescing in hospital are fed the lowest grade foods, highest in pesticides and health-sapping additives. Where those who work so hard to grow good food, are paid less than the cost of producing it. Over 7 million people in the UK now live in a ‘food insecure’ household – which means they’re regularly going hungry. I would put an end to all the tax breaks, back-room funding, advertising and public procurement contracts for UPF producers, and redirect that money into sustainable farming, local food supply chains, and school and hospital contracts (just to begin with).
I feel so passionately that the mark of a ‘civilised’ or ‘good’ society is partly how we raise, feed and support the ‘whole’ health of our kids, and when we’re providing ‘free fruit & veg’ in primary schools that’s found to contain more than 123 pesticides – which was also many times higher than standard, non-organic produce from the supermarkets) – we are so far off that mark, it’s horrifying.
I would incorporate integrative health education into all medical training programmes – to introduce a ‘joined-up’ approach to health.
Integrative health education is sorely lacking in the UK. It’s still rare to find a GP or medical professional who combines their allopathic medical training with integrative approaches, including nutrition, lifestyle, and women’s health education around menopause and menstruation etc. Modern medicine is astounding in its scope and capacity, and utterly brilliant when it comes to critical and emergency care that saves lives – but when it comes to long-term, preventative and holistic care, we have a long way to go. I would love to see integrative education as standard… and for GPs in particular to have more time to work with individual patients, to know their ‘history’, and be able to see past the obvious symptom, and understand, and treat, the root cause. Imagine!I would support redistribution of wealth.
It will never, ever make sense to me that 1% of the world’s population own more and has more collective wealth than 95% of humanity. And what a large proportion of that 1% chooses to do with that wealth is another (highly concerning) matter entirely. It is a source of deep grief for me to see so many mega-rich (mostly) white, male, ageing individuals, who have the collective power to solve so many of the most devastating problems of our time, yet choose to focus only on accruing yet more wealth and privilege for themselves and their inner circles. As Vandana Shiva (one of my heroes) has put it, people who do this – who take and hoard and seek always to overpower, overtake and to dominate, – even when they cannot possibly want for anything more than they have (and would do much better to have far, far less) – are unwell; this seismic greed is a form of sickness. We see it the world over… war wouldn’t exist anywhere in the world without greed.
Please recommend a book, a podcast and a film or TV programme.
Book: the best book I have read in the last ten years is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It blends so many of the threads I am passionate about – ecology, botany, holistic health, community, indigenous wisdom… but is ultimately the most powerful treatise for reciprocity of all time… I cried a dozen times while reading it, and recommend it endlessly to everyone I meet.
Podcast: I love On Health For Women by Dr Aviva Romm MD podcast, and The Hagitude Sessions by Dr Sharon Blackie.
Recently watched Far From the Madding Crowd – recent adaptation with Carey Mulligan, and loved it. I enjoy adaptations, The English Patient remains my favourite film of all time.
Is there anything else we should know about what you?
So many things! Lots of brilliant campaigns and thought-provoking content, pushing for fairness in food and farming, as part of my role at Riverford. My Substack, Mother Nourish, which explores food, home, heart, health… all of the threads that make up a ‘wholistic and realistic’ way to nourish ourselves. And my sixth book, which is all about the power of non-negotiable nourishment during perimenopause, and is out in September 2026.
You can read more about my books + work as an author here
Contact
If you’re interested in Food, Farming & Fairness, you can read more at Wicked Leeks.
Paid subscribers, here is a somatic breath practice that will help to resolve your breathing patterns at rest.
Thank you for reading and have a lovely weekend.
Stay human,
Nahid x
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