In bed with...Pandora
The first in our ‘In Bed With…’ series, sees us climb under the covers with ROOTED London’s Pandora Paloma, our resident yoga guru and nutritionist.
Pandora holds regular yoga classes each week at the hotel and has also put her stamp on South Place Chop House breakfast and brunch menus with a selection of ‘ROOTED approved’ nutritionally balanced sweet and savoury dishes.
She is also co-host of our monthly Saints & Sinners Workout and Brunch; which combines a high-intensity boxing session at 1Rebel with one of her dynamic yoga classes, followed by a delicious energy-boosting brunch.
How would your friends describe you in three words?
Real. Soulful. Grounded. I actually asked my best friend and these were her very words.
What’s your usual breakfast choice when you’re away from home?
I’ve just come back from Lisbon. I ate a custard tart for breakfast every day I was there… holidays are for feeding your soul.
You’re hosting a dinner party – what’s on the menu?
Right now in the midst of winter it would be beetroot and coconut soup to start, root vegetable tagine with coconut rice as a main and a raw cacao and cherry pie for desert. Washed down with a good bottle of red and orange flavoured sparkling water.
What’s your top piece of nutrition advice that not many people know?
When washing your fruit and vegetables, it’s important to dry them afterwards as many of the pesticides will remain in the water. My top tip is to wash with a dash of apple cider vinegar to make sure you really get a good rinse.
What’s your favourite [yoga] position?
Pigeon or in Sanskrit Eka Pada Rajakapotasana – the king of the hip opener. As a yoga teacher I talk a lot abut finding space and letting go in postures. Yoga allows us to educate ourselves that physical sensations will pass. This one really is the perfect opportunity to work on this as you breathe into niggling sensations both psychical and emotional. We can tend to hold a lot of past emotional pain and fear, especially in women. The awakening of the sacral chakra in the lower belly helps us to connect to our emotions, relationships and creativity.
What’s your favourite Instagram feed and why?
I really enjoy spending time on instagram, possibly too much. We must always remember that this isn’t real life and that real life comes from communicating with people right in front of you. Being able to touch someone as you feel their pain, their anger or frustration or positively touching the people who you love the most, smiling at their jokes and the mannerisms that brought you together in the first pace. I look everywhere for inspiration, mostly Live the Process, The Numinous and Sala Yoga for her musings on life.
