Look after yourself first, then you can help others

– We'll never make it as actresses, says Nathalie Johansson Billing as she and her colleague Samira Musa fall to the floor laughing when they should be playing dead.

Along with another colleague, Anna Molin, they have used a classic scene from an aeroplane to demonstrate how best to help others by first making sure that they themselves are all right.

The mood among the women gathered in the room at Folkuniversitetet is cheerful. The women are of all ages and their backgrounds are different, but they have one thing in common. They are all eager to know more about the inspiration day for women.

– Everything in our lives is connected, and we need to find a balance between eating, resting, exercising, meeting people and dealing with existential questions, says Nathalie.

– Health is about how we feel, both physically and mentally. It's also a question of getting enough sleep, resting, having time for ourselves and having people around us who make us feel happy.

In one of the many exercise breaks the participants sing 'Head and shoulders, knees and toes' and carry out the appropriate actions. Not so easy, but it all goes well and there is spontaneous applause and more laughter.

– Language break? Or not? all right, I'll speak slowly, says Nathalie, laughing.

In a language break anyone who doesn't quite understand something can get an explanation from a neighbour or someone else sitting in the half-circle in the room.

Instead of talking about going to the gym, exercise is given priority. And there are lots of ways of doing so.

Swimming, cycling, dancing, walking, housework, are some of the suggestions from the women.

– Everything that isn't sitting still is exercise, says Nathalie.

–The heart is a muscle, and the more active you are, the stronger your heart becomes. Then the heart is able to pump more blood and we live longer, says Nathalie.

Elin is almost two, and the youngest girl in the group. She is there along with her mother.

– I usually go and play football with my two boys. That's great fun, says her mother Arwa Khader, who has come from Broby along with another five women.

– We women are good at multitasking, it's a superforce we have, but it's important to have time just to be, to breathe at your own pace, to take care of yourself, says Nathalie.

That is just what the members of Hej Främling! are trying to demonstrate with the scene from the aeroplane, when oxygen masks double as protective face masks and where 'mother' first puts on her own oxygen mask before helping her 'daughter' with hers. So that they both survive.