Rosie Garthwaite - How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone

• Move your straight top leg forward and then behind your bottom leg – as far as you can go without losing control of your top half. It’s like walking with one straight leg, except you are on your side and going nowhere.

• With the toe pointed, move the leg up and down.

• Make apple-sized circles a few inches above your bottom leg.

• Make slow bicycling movements – 10 reps each side, then switch.

This is your starting position for all the following exercises. Look back at your feet: is your bum in the air or your stomach on the ground? They shouldn’t be. Your body should be straight, in the basic press-up position. Now move your neck to a neutral position, looking straight down. If your wrists hurt, move onto your elbows, fists straight out in front of you.

Start in a strong plank position and, without wiggling from side to side, lift each leg a little off the floor – never above bum height. Hold for about two seconds and then switch.

This is the same as the leg lift, but in reverse. This time there should be a straight line down from your chest to your toes. It is a backwards press-up position.

After you have finished this exercise, try bending your knees and your elbows a little and walking around like an awkward crab. A few steps forward, back and side to side. It’s great for your triceps.

Exercise your chest – stress tends to build up there. Push-ups, racket sports… just moving your arms around a lot will help.

There should be a straight line from your head down to your ankles – no bottom sticking up or tummy scraping the ground. If you struggle in a straight press-up position, as many people do, bend your knees and put them on the ground, or stay on your toes and move your top half up so it is at an angle by leaning on a window ledge or the wall. Use this trick only until you build your strength up. Vary the distance your arms are apart to work different muscles.

Sit on a seat, bed or ledge with your hands holding onto the sides. Move your feet forward and drop your bum over the edge. Now your tricep muscles on the back of your arms are supporting you. Dip down and up again, keeping an even weight on both your arms. Keep going until failure.

Take your weights (see Exercise equipment on the cheap) and lift them up to chest height while keeping your shoulders down. Lower them and repeat.

Keeping your stomach muscles strong, move your arms from bent to straight in line with your body in deliberate movements, not a swing.

Shoulders together

With your arms falling towards the floor, move your shoulder blades together. This is a great reliever of repetitive strain injury (RSI) if you have been sitting hunched up at a computer all day.

Exercise is very important. It’s stress relieving. Even in the middle of Darfur, you find logisticians who built their own homemade gym. It helped them and it will help you.

For many people under pressure, the first things they turn to when they want to relax, sleep or forget the horrors of war are alcohol or drugs. While these might work to get you off to sleep, the body is just sleeping off the effects of them rather than getting the rest it actually needs. The same goes for your mind too. Scientists all agree that the brain processes the events and thoughts of a day during the deepest part of a night’s sleep. That means you can file away all the awful things you have seen, delete unnecessary worries and find calm space… but you need to hit that deep level of sleep first.

My friend Hoda Abdel-Hamid knows all about this: ‘You always sleep badly in a war zone. I cannot sleep without my lavender oil, which I sprinkle on my pillow at night. And I take my own pillow too if I can. It feels so luxurious.’

Lack of sleep plus a hangover will:

• Worsen depression.

• Lead to accidents.

• Make you more vulnerable to illness.

• Make you less productive.

• Make you irrational and grumpy.

• Kill your appetite for sex.

• Make you fat as you overeat to compensate.

• Make you thin because of all the extra hours spent awake.

All these things make you less able to cope in an emergency.

Remember too that lack of sleep can be as dangerous as being drunk or drugged on the job. Make it a priority to get some proper shut-eye.

The most important things in my bag relate to sleep – which I do very badly. I absolutely insist on earplugs, and I always carry multiple eye masks. The most important piece of embed kit is a very thin inflatable mattress. An American soldier gave me an excellent one, which I still use.

Everyone has their own tricks for helping themselves to nod off. As a lifelong insomniac, these are the ones I have picked up over time, though I often find a glass of red wine helps too.

• Routine – stick to a pattern before you go to bed. Always read, or always have a bath, or always listen to a certain song, or always delete unwanted e-mails in your inbox. Whatever it is, find one that works for you and stick to it. Monique Nagelkerke told her winning formula: ‘Have one stiff drink, and watch re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy every night. Guaranteed to make you fall asleep.’

• Don’t smoke or eat right before you go to bed. You might find it relaxing, but it will actually be waking up your body.

• Avoid caffeine or chocolate late at night. Resist, resist.

• Eat bran or wholewheat-based cereal with milk about an hour before you go to bed. There are elements of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin in both the grains and the milk, which will help shut your eyes.

• Try to get some sunshine during the day; then, when it is dark, your body will know it is time to sleep.

• Have a very dull but worthy book to read in bed, and force yourself to read that rather than a page-turner.

• Avoid using your computer or watching television while in bed.

• If you wake up, don’t move or turn on the light – just lie and wait until you can get back to sleep.

• Control your breathing and slow it down to sleeping pace.