In yin yoga we come intimately close with who we are. We witness our strengths and our limitations, and we come to love all of it.

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Let’s start with the breath. For every inhale you take, become aware. What does the air feel like as it passes through your nose? Where does it land in your body? How soft can you make your belly as you breathe? Close your eyes and listen to your body’s etheric ocean. Notice the pause between breaths. Notice the exhale. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Greenwashing is the act of a brand creating misleading claims or marketing tactics that portray a product as environmentally friendly or natural when they’re not. This practice often exaggerates or misrepresents a company’s sustainability or eco-friendliness, deceiving consumers into believing they made the best choice for their well-being and the environment. In the context of candles, greenwashing occurs when manufacturers label their products as “vegan," “natural" or "eco-friendly" without substantiating these claims. For instance, greenwashed candles might contain synthetic fragrances, paraffin wax, or other non-sustainable and potentially harmful materials.

Australia is famous for greenwashed soy and palm wax candles

Laden with synthetic fragrance and Forever Chemicals that leave a lasting negative impact on the earth and our bodies.

Australia is also famous for beeswax.

Within Australia exists huge expanses of untouched wilderness. We get our wax from keepers in Queensland. Our beekeepers ethically-harvest beeswax from hives that are strategically situated within Queensland’s expansive landscape. The vastness of forest ensures that each honeybee travels well within the diameter of untouched land, eating pollen that is free from pesticides, sprays and man’s manipulation.

The precious wax is filtered by steam and sun, and meticulously purified through linen so that each drop is pristine. In the world of candle making, beeswax is a symbol of purity, luxury, and tradition. Beeswax carries a rich history in elegance and refinement, stemming all the way back from ancient Rome, and even further back to Egypt. Beeswax candles embody a skilled artisanal approach to candlelight, honouring the artistry and wisdom of a past era.

In contrast, alternatives like soy and palm wax exist simply because they are driven by commercial interests. Masking their true environmental impact, misleading claims of eco-friendliness hide the synthetic fragrances and harmful chemicals that reside within these cheap, manufactured candles. They starkly oppose the natural allure of pure beeswax.

I’ve had a weird relationship with happiness. I’ve both craved and shunned happiness. Chased after it and chased it away. Celebrated every high and wallowed in every low, attaching to both states as if they defined me.

Like most of us I’ve come to realise that the highs and lows of life have nothing to do with happiness. Highs and lows are simply that. Like the tide or the weather, things that come and go. Moods, feelings, phases, fortune, good times and bad.

Happiness deserves to be looked at differently; Maybe as a conscious a choice. We choose each day to welcome happiness or create it within our hearts and minds. It isn’t always easy: On days when the rent is missed or the relationship isn’t working or the black cloud blows in or whatever worldly thing occurs to pull us into a low state, it isn’t easy to choose happiness. And it’s okay not to.

Bypassing is when we spin the hard times into lies and tell ourselves, “everything happens for a reason.” We smile and say, “It’s a blessing in disguise,” before having a chance to savour the wound because we fear being seen as anyone other than an okay person; That if we’re not okay, there might be something wrong with us.

But happiness doesn’t require denial. It embraces grief and loss and despair. It sits in the background of the heart, aflame and ever-burning, only to fire up big and bright once the body and mind have digested the wounds and finished their healing.

And happiness is not a series of quotes on Instagram or a life lived on the beach. It can happen in the office and it’s there alongside the mundane routine of adulthood too.

I love seeing people happy because it reminds me that nothing is perfect, that nothing lasts forever, and that brief moments of happiness are beautifully fleeting. I’m reminded to cherish them without attachment. To celebrate the fact that they’re there, even when we can’t feel them. Even when we aren’t experiencing them.

Happiness doesn’t have to be a lifestyle. It isn’t a full-time job. It’s a subtle sweetness that never feels like how it looks in the movies or online.

I’m learning to savour it.

In my twenties, I picked up a gratitude journal and instantly resented it.

I found the practice too shallow for my heart to bare.

My Italian roots whispered to me that a life well-lived produces gratitude like a nutrient: One wouldn’t need to search for it if one were planted in the right soil.

And so I embarked on the journey of soil-searching.

I travelled from Toronto Canada to the East coast of Australia and that journey would come strip me of who I was; Take me across the world, force me to detach from my home, my family and friends; burn down the person I thought I would be only to rebuild the person I’d become

In that time I shed countless hopes and goals. I faced debilitating anxiety and many dark nights of the soul.

I lost myself before becoming this version of me, and every step of the way felt increasingly so important.

And now, here I am, many years older.

And the gratitude is overwhelming.

Your favourite coconut-lime candle is not actually Vegan.

As a beeswax candle maker I often hear, “I can’t use them, they’re not vegan,” and I think it's important to shed light on the impacts of soy agriculture so that we can understand the greenwashing that has shaped the “vegan” soy candle industry.

Soy wax is marketed as a sustainable and eco-friendly material, but a little bit of research reveals how eco-unfriendly the wax really is. This is important because people who usually opt for soy candles over their cheaper, paraffin counterparts are investing their energy and money into products they hope are greener than the alternatives.

One of the biggest issues with soy candles being touted as “vegan” and “eco” is the harmful effects of deforestation prevalent soy agriculture. In order to grow soybeans on a large scale, forests are cleared and converted to monoculture soy fields. Deforestation is not vegan. When mass amounts of land are clear-cut to make way for soy fields, animal populations suffer greatly.

There have been regulations in place to make soy agriculture sound sustainable, but a little digging reveals that there is very little that can be done to ensure corporations uphold these standards.

More than 400 sq miles (1,000 sq km) of Amazon rainforest has been felled to expand farms growing soya in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in a 10-year period, despite an agreement to protect it, according to a new investigation.

In 2006, the landmark Amazon soy moratorium was introduced banning the sale of soya grown on land deforested after 2008. From 2004 to 2012, the clearing of trees in the Amazon fell by 84%. But in recent years deforestation has climbed steeply, reaching a 15-year high last year – encouraged, campaigners say, by President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-conservationist rhetoric and policies.

With the moratorium applying only to soya, farmers have been able to sell the crop as deforestation-free, while still clearing land for cattle, maize or other commodities.

— The Guardian

Here are just a view detrimental effects that large-scale cultivation of soybean crops in a single area has on the environment: