Yoga is something that a lot of people do because of the many benefits that it can provide. People who have practised yoga for years and completed their RYT 200 yoga training course know that every time they leave a yoga class they feel great. There are physical changes to your body as well as mental ones that you can benefit from.

The problem is that a lot of people do not look at creating a daily practice routine. When you do not practice yoga, you will feel it the next time you head to a class. You could also increase the chances of injury from lack of mobility the next time you are in a class. If you are not completely sure that practising each day at home is the best option, there are a number of reasons why you should.

No Special Equipment

To practice yoga, you will not need any special equipment that can only be found in a gym. You can do yoga anywhere from the rug in your home to the grass in your garden. Where you practice is up to you and how you are feeling on the day.

You Do Not Have To Change

You can do yoga in any clothing. In fact, you can roll out of bed, onto the floor and start your practice. When you practice yoga at home, there is no need for fancy clothing or those special gym shoes that everyone else is wearing.

Tailoring Your Practice

When you practice at home, you will be able to practice the poses that you want. You will also be able to set your own pace which is something that you cannot get with a class. You can determine what your body needs on the day and practice this which helps you get more of the benefits of yoga.

Yoga Makes You More Productive

A lot of people use the excuse that they do not have the time to do any exercise including yoga. However, all you need to do is get up 30 minutes earlier and you will be able to get some yoga practice in. You will soon find that this practice actually makes you more productive and provides you with more time in your day.

An Increase In Energy

Yoga will not only make you more productive by relaxing you and keeping you focused, but it will also give you more energy. If you practice in the morning, you will feel more energised throughout the day. This is due to the fact that you increase your oxygen intake and stimulate the flow of blood throughout the body.

You Will Sleep Better

Yoga will make you more aware of the present and will help you to reduce stress. It can also help to lower your cortisol levels and stop those thoughts that distract you are night and stop you from sleeping. This will help you fall asleep and improve the quality of your sleep.

Save Your Feet

Your feet are in shoes all day and will become tired and sore. If you have unsupportive shoes and do not move around a lot, you could suffer from flat feet and pronated ankles. This can cause serious problems such as plantar fasciitis, knee pain and shin splints. Doing yoga will free your feet for at least a bit of time.

Boosting Your Immune System

As yoga lowers stress hormones, stimulates the lungs, heart and digestive system, it will be boosting your immune system. All of these benefits will help your body get rid of toxins and drain the lymphatic system.

Better Posture

Many people do not realise that yoga can help to promote better posture through the practice of good posture habits. This is important because it can reduce damage to your neck and back from long-term tension. You will also be able to hold your head up and move with more confidence.

Reducing Anxiety

When you practice longer inhales and exhales, you will be able to focus your mind on the present. This will help you to reduce your feelings of anxiety.

Proving Me Time

Everyone needs some time to themselves and yoga practice is a great time for this. This is particularly helpful for people who are surrounded by others all day. Taking care of yourself is important and provides you with the energy to look after others.

Decrease Inflammation

There are studies which have found that yoga will decrease the pro-inflammation molecules in your body. This has been found to be helpful for people who suffer from fibromyalgia and arthritis.

Can we talk about Greece? This is more than likely the place you have been dreaming of visiting this summer. Greece has everything you could desire for a fun family vacation, it offers a wide range of luxurious activities, a good deal of history, and a laid-back vibe. In addition, it offers incredible value for money and a wonderful choice of lovely hotels, such as The Ikos Oceania Hotel.

The Greek Islands consist of well over 6.000 islands with only 227 of them being inhabited. It is quite possible to never see the same Greek Island twice!

Experience the Timelessness of Greece

Many people feel as though the Greek Islands are the best way to experience the Mediterranean way of life. It gives many people a sense of how it would have been to explore the streets of Italy or southern France in the 1950’s. Greece offers a timelessness that can not be found easily throughout the rest of the world, despite it being a tourist destination it never fees as though it is overcrowded or congested with traffic.

Of course, you are going to find those very busy resort areas, however, it is just as easy to take a few steps down the road and find your own private paradise

Much of Greece feels as though it has yet to be discovered! You can walk around a village and still find people sitting around drinking coffee and playing card games in the early morning. However, after just a few short hours, those streets will be empty as everyone has gone back inside for an afternoon siesta.

Greece is truly the location for a perfect family holiday. If you are traveling with children, understand that they are going to be totally adored by the locals.

Savour the Delicious Food

And of course, we need to talk about the food. Greece offers some of the healthiest and most delicious foods you could hope to encounter anywhere in the world. On the Greek Islands, it is not uncommon to enjoy fresh fish and salads anytime of the day. You can spend hours eating plates of fresh calamari, octopus, red mullet, whitebait, and sardines.

If you are going to be enjoying lunch or dinner in Greece, it is best to order up a large variety platter of Greek salads, cheese and spinach pies, grilled feta cheese, stuffed peppers and tomatoes as well as stuffed vine leaves. All of this food is incredible and by ordering this way, everyone is going to enjoy their favorites plus try something new.

You will also want to enjoy your meal mezze-style as it becomes a more social activity. When we share food it allows us the opportunity to interact with one another. We get the opportunity to talk and enjoy one another’s company.

The Incredible Greek History

Greek history and myth are subjects that have help to ignite many children’s imaginations. However, this same history and myth manages to truly come alive as you walk the islands and see the sights that you have only read and dreamed about.

From the very first time you gaze upon the Parthenon temple, climb up to the Acropolis in Athens or visit the home of the first Olympic Games at Olympia.

Greece has remained one of the top holiday spots for being of exceptional value. It is possible to feed an entire family for less than 45 euros and enjoy a luxurious boutique hotel experience for less than one would pay in France or Italy.

Chances are there will be no need to purchase a visa and if you get your airfare sorted out early enough, you can enjoy really low rates. No reason to wait any longer, start planning for your wonderful Greek holiday today. It will be an adventure you will not forget.

If you decide to hire a nanny who will care for your kid, then you turn into an employer. As an employer, it’s necessary to meet particular obligations like national insurance, paying tax, and offering your nanny a pension.

What legal obligations do you have as an employer?

If you employ a nanny, there are many obligations that you have to be compliant with. The following are among the most essential:

Verification Of Right To Work Inside The UK

You have to check and make sure that your nanny actually has the legal right to work inside the UK. Check the identification documents of your applicant, like an identity card, birth certificate, or passport prior to making any formal employment offer.

Tax Contributions

You’re responsible for the deduction and payment of income tax contributions of your nanny. Consult HM Revenue and Customs in order to register as a brand-new employer so you can establish a PAYE scheme.

You also need to maintain records of the payments you make, both for your nanny and yourself.

National Insurance Contributions

You are responsible for the deduction and payment of national insurance contributions on behalf of your nanny. These will be payable on the salary of your nanny, provided she earns more than a particular threshold. Contributions from your nanny and you are calculated as being a percentage of her overall earnings.

Liability Insurance

You have to have employer’s liability insurance, as that’s what covers you when your nanny gets ill or is injured from working for you. You might already have coverage from other insurance policies that you hold, but you should check carefully.

Employment Contract

You need to issue a specifically written contract prior to her starting work or within the first two months of her starting date. It needs to describe her duties, her hours, her salary, and her holiday entitlement.

If there are any changes in the contract details, then they need to be mutually agreed upon by your nanny as well as yourself.

Payslip

You have to give your nanny her payslip every week or month that shows her the earnings and deductions made. Payroll for nannies should be no different than the standard payroll you would expect in your own job.

National Minimum Wage

You have to pay the nanny a rate that meets or exceeds the minimum wage. More than likely, you’ll actually be paying her a lot more than this.

Live-in nannies typically charge from £300 up to £350 for each week. Day nannies might charge a bit more, averaging from £400 up to £475. Keep in mind that each nanny might have her very own salary expectations just based on required duties, as well as her individual skills, qualifications, and experience.

Annual Paid Leave

Each employee, be they part-time or full, is entitled to 5.6 weeks of annual leave or its equivalent. You can pick whether you include bank holidays as part of this allowance or not.

You can negotiate the specific holiday periods individually with your nanny.

Pension

If your nanny’s age falls between 22 and the state retirement age, and she’s earning in excess of £10,000 per year, then you have to establish her a pension scheme. You need to make monthly contributions to this pension scheme, which are based off the gross salary your nanny receives.

Notice Of Employment Termination

During the initial month of employment, either you or the nanny should give one week’s notice of the contract being terminated. Following this, a month’s notice is typically given, although this is another thing you and your nanny can negotiate. Be sure that you put this agreed period of notice into the contract.

Maximum Working Hours

You are not able to make your employee work in excess of 48 weekly hours. You might have heard about this law being called the working time directive.

If your nanny’s age is more than 18, she is able to work over 48 weekly hours, but only if both of you sign an agreement. You aren’t able to force a nanny to sign this, however, and she is free to change her mind any time she wants so long as she offers you a week’s notice.

Statutory Maternity Rights

If a nanny you hire gets pregnant when working for you, then she is entitled to have maternity leave.

If you’re not sure where you need to start with all of these various responsibilities, you can get help. There are businesses who can do payroll for you, simplifying the national insurance and tax contributions. Some even offer pension services.

Generation Z as long as the largest segment of the population, with this in mind, many have focused to this generation’s possible potential. As of 2019, Generation Z will compromise 32% of a 7.7 billion global population, sliding ahead of millennials who will account for just 31.5% of that share.

It is now a race to bring the best markets to generation Z. The older members of this generation have just recently graduated from the University and have begun to enter the workforce and are now compromise in a large portion of consumer spending. It is expected by the year 2020, Generation Z will account for almost 40% of all consumers in the market. They have a potential buying power of $44 billion which expands to over 600 billion when one considers their possible influence on their parents spending. It is easy to understand why marketing teams are doing all they can to capture the attention of this highly profitable segment of the population before their competitors do.

As with each generation before, Generation Z has a unique set of behaviors and challenges which leads marketing teams many possibilities. The following guide from Manmade will help you understand Generation Z to create the perfect marketing blueprint.

A Mobile First Generation

Individuals who are considered to be individuals of Generation Z were born after 1995, meaning they have no idea of how life was without technology. They are the first generation to be raised in the presence of smartphones and social media. Millennials are considered to be mobile pioneers whereas Generation Z are native to mobile technology. Generation Z members between the ages of 13 and 17 typically received their first smart phone at the age of 12 compared to those who were 16 for 18 to 24-year-olds and 20 years old for those who are ages 25 to 34.

For many Generation Z members, the smartphone is an indispensable device, it is estimated that 78% will use their smartphones as a means of communication, shopping and entertainment. One of the main things to remember about this generation is the fact that they use their smartphone on a day to day basis. In addition, they will use their smartphone for a wide variety of tasks all at the same time. Meaning they can be texting, creating a document and posting a photo on a histogram all at the same time.

Authenticity Is Key

While authenticity has become an essential part of marketing, Generation Z is taking it further. They have made it fully clear what they consider to be important, they want to know the company and the person behind it. Due to the fact that this generation has been exposed to digital marketing from the very beginning, their instinct is to filter out anything that feels artificial. In fact, they do not want you to market to them, they want a relationship.

Financially Conservative

One of the things that sets Generation Z members apart from others is the fact that they are financially savvy. Many members of this generation were impacted by the recession in 2008 and saw their parents deal with many financial struggles and millennial’s dealing with high unemployment and wage issues in addition to staggering student debts. Over 60% of Generation Z individuals already have a savings account, that is considerably higher than previous generations. For members of this generation, price and quality are key considerations, they will spend a great deal more time searching for a better deal on their smartphone then making an impulsive decision.

Multitaskers

Due to the fact that this generation is part of a connected society, they are much more use to updates from their apps. Many of these individuals will spend their day flipping through various social platforms, texting friends while watching their favorite show on Netflix. Many Generation Z members have the ability to juggle up to five various screens at once. For many of these individuals, they have absolutely no problems juggling a wide variety of tasks.

It should be noted though, that the majority of these individuals have the shortest attention span in history. Believe it or not, most members of this generation have an attention span of only eight seconds, which is actually shorter than that of a goldfish. Due to this fact, this generation tends to be more responsive to videos and images as opposed to text. One of the best ways to gain their attention and leave an impression with them is to use visually striking material.

Data backup is a requirement for every type of business. With data volumes that continue to grow, and legal requirements that have become more stringent, the traditional-based tape backup is today no longer a cost-effective or reliable way to match up to compliance levels.

1. Reliability

When using disk-to-disk technology, you are offered  the potential to back up your data on disk-drives, which are a lot more reliable when compared to tapes. When the backup completes, you are assured that your data is accessible and secure on these disk drives. With the tapes you are not guaranteed that the data is still usable until you attempt to try and restore it, and by then it’s obviously too late. As much as 71 per cent of restores from tapes will contain failures.

2. Breadth of Offering

The offerings from service providers vary widely. Some of these are primarily designed for consumers while others are dedicated to enterprise data-centres. Select the solution which scales along with offering you the levels of service that you need, such as for a business selling SWL2500EFR Yuasa batteries. Delta-block and de-duplication technologies improve performance, save you money and lower your data footprint. You should also establish whether their de-duplication offerings are at block level or file level. The solution must be able to back up laptops and PCs along with your applications.

3. Security

60 per cent of organisations that use tapes fail to encrypt backups. Encryption use with the tapes causes the backups to run very slowly and in most cases will take too long in order to fit into the backup window. For this reason, many people make the decision to turn the encryption off, which results in security risks. Even with “physical” safety of the disk-to-disk backup, encryption is always vital. Consider a 256-bit AES and find the solutions which will encrypt all your data during the stages of transmission along with storage.

4. Accessibility

Many organisations waste a lot of working hours waiting on their tapes. You need immediate access to backups, eliminating time that would have been spent on the physical transport. A restore should only take a few minutes and not many hours or even days. You should find a way to work alongside your data rather than waiting for it. Ensure that the service provider you have chosen is able to meet  your RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objectives) which will determine the speed at which you are able to recover data along with maintaining business continuity.

5. Cost Effectiveness

On average companies lose £64,000 for each lost hour of activity. When you start to work this out, these losses are significant. This is why disk-to-disk makes more sense. Unlike tape, the handlings costs are near to zero, no rushed deliveries, accessing, loading, locating or having to repeat these steps. There is also  one  benefit that you cannot factor in directly and that is reputation. Security and reliability will make incalculable differences with even one avoided failure or breach.

6. Compliance

Many companies have issues with satisfying security, data retention and security regulations. How can you recognise one of the strong compliance partners? They will be happy to show you the table for regulatory requirements, along with listing how their services, technology and products assist you to satisfy them. Taking this one step further, choose one of the service providers that is accredited  to store NHS or government data and is also accredited to assist you in complying with these regulatory requirements.

7. Disaster Recovery

Many companies do not have a tested and comprehensive plan in place for disasters. You cannot state that your protection for data is finalised until you have completed your own disaster-recovery plan that is tested and complete. The backup service provider that you have chosen should offer you a combination of products and a professional service team that will assist you in preparing for the worst-case scenarios. Ensure they will be able to assist you with preparing for worst-case scenarios. Also ensure they are able to assist you with configuring your backups, which will help you to rebound fast. The best types of service providers are the ones that will offer you training to handle disasters with confidence, based on the actual configuration of your company.

8. Ease Of Use

Some companies can’t or don’t manage backups from a single place. Managing your own backup environment needs to be simple, and software that you are using should do away with any guesswork which might result in data loses. You need to be able to confirm that your data is always protected across the entire network that includes remote offices, by just viewing the dashboard.

9. Customer Support

Data Backup service providers will offer different types of product support. Customer support needs to be one of the primary selling points of the service provider. You need to find a provider that you can rely on when you need them most.

During this time of the year, roads tend to be quite dangerous. All motorists should ensure that they drive cautiously whenever they get on the road, with the weather alternating between black ice, snow, ice, gale force winds and rain. You need to exercise even more care when handling a vehicle carrying a heavy and large load.

Get Your Heavy Goods Vehicle Ready

To begin with, you need to get your vehicle ready. Your HGV should be in tip-top condition during winter, even though you need to ensure that it is well conditioned throughout regardless of what time of the year it is. Check to see that all the lights are in proper working order, look at fluid levels and inspect the condition of the wiper blades before getting your vehicle on the road for any trips. If the brakes haven’t been maintained for a while, make sure that you get them checked by a professional after running your own checks.

Get your vehicle inspected as soon as possible, if it has not been comprehensively maintained for an extended period. Make sure you always have more than half a tank of fuel before you set out as anything less might cause problems in the freezing temperatures. Also remember to ensure that there is no snow or ice on the brake lights, headlights and windows or any other essential parts of the vehicle before you start each trip.

Be Prepared for the Weather with a Winter Driving Kit

You should expect to be stuck on the road for an extended period if you are going to be driving during winter weather. You want to be prepared for any eventualities that involve being snowed in somewhere,  making a long trip or just getting stuck in traffic. Pack a sufficient winter driving kit in a large robust bag. The kit should include:

•  Winter wear
• Raincoat for rainy conditions
• A hat, scarf and pair of gloves
• A working flashlight and some extra batteries
• A warm blanket
•  Foodstuffs with a long shelf life such as breakfast and protein bars
•  Sufficient amounts of bottled water
• A first aid kit for any emergencies
• A windscreen scraper and de-icer

Drive Smart

Now that your driving kit and vehicle are both good to go,  prepare yourself. However, this is easier said than done. When it comes to operating your HGV in wet, ice and snow covered roads there is sadly no easy way out. Only through experience can you learn most of the skills you need. However, you can drive more safely in winter by sticking to the following rules:

• Drive slowly: you need to be able to respond swiftly and safely to the randomly changing winter driving or weather conditions. All your actions should be done slowly and steadily. To stop you will need more distance, considering the fact that your tyres will have lost much of their traction in freezing weather, as a result of the presence of sleet and ice.
• No instant brakes: during winter, it is very unwise for you to hit your instant brakes, no matter how tempting it might be. Give yourself the space you need at the back and front by always trying to slowly apply the brakes.
• Watch out for black ice: it’s easy to get in dangerous situations involving black ice, considering how dodgy it is. Avoid patches of black ice by being on the lookout for it on the surface of the road, at all times, when driving.
• Always inspect the windscreen: the formation of black ice always comes soon after you spot ice accumulating on the edges of your windscreen and along the antenna.

As a Heavy Goods Vehicle operator, safe driving during winter should be of importance to you,which is why LGV training is desirable. We are proud of assisting our drivers to operate safely and in a proficient way regardless of the prevailing weather, at Easy HGV. Learn more about how to handle your HGV in the prevailing conditions by anticipating the weather and appreciating the fact that driving is 10 per cent swift thinking and 90 per cent care.