Remembering 2012

Twenty-twelve feels like it was quite a successful year for me and Britain. It was dominated by the London Olympics which meant my hometown had a celebratory feeling about it for much of the year. It is nice to look back on a year that was about achievement, large and small, and visiting the London Olympic park in July 2020 bought it all back to me.

  

  

Below are the top 12 reasons why 2012 was such a special year for me and my family.

1.    The 2012 London Olympics

2.    Helped with Golden Wedding Anniversary celebrations for mum and dad

3.    Last holidays with my dad to Cornwall and Edinburgh

4.    Amy’s Saturday morning French class

5.    Amy’s singing class and concert

6.    Church concerts every first Sunday of the month

7.    Played piano at two of my piano teacher’s concerts

8.    Success with piano teaching (3 summer certificates including 2 merits)

9.    Did my piano teaching diploma

10.  Wrote ‘The Good Mothers’ Club’

11.  Produced cards, pictures, dolls for the church Summer Fair

12.  Enjoyed BBC favourites; Outnumbered, Merlin, Dr Who

25 years of yoga

I worked out that it was probably September 1995 when I took part in my first yoga class in Uxbridge. My daughter and I did quite a bit of yoga in 2018, most memorably Mindful Yoga at the West London Bhuddist Centre near Hyde Park. I started doing yoga again in August 2020, which is why I started reflecting on those Uxbridge classes. My yoga practise centres around the following 7 yoga poses which I find easy enough to do regularly.

1. Easy pose

2. Cat and Cow

3. Cobra

4. Crocodile

5. Forward Bend

6. Bridge

7. Corpse

A year of nature walking

  

My daughter and I discovered the walled garden a short bus ride from our house in August 2019. Since then I have been a regular nature walker. It was to be something we could do every week and sometimes daily; a New Year goal for 2020. During the Covid19 Lockdown, nature walking has been closer to home, but with lockdown easing we hope to get out and about more, visiting a glade near Uxbridge and other natural beauty spots. Nature walking is mindful, taking in trees, clouds and streams. Appreciating flowers and gardens has been good as has walking by rivers and through woods. Picnics in the park took over from cafes and pubs, however we have been really looking forward to the cafes and pubs reopening. August 2020 marks a year of mindful nature walking; I hope this relatively new activity will continue.
 

  

  

  

Yoga for stress relief

My life has changed quite a lot this year. One thing that I have reintroduced that I am getting on with much better this time round is yoga. I have been doing this yoga sequence regularly with my daughter to help with stress and anxiety and in particular PMS.

1. Easy Pose (Sukhasana)

Do for at least one minute (thirty breaths in and out). Promotes groundedness, inner calm, serenity and tranquillity, relieves anxiety, exhaustion and tiredness.

2. Cat Pose (Bidalasana)

Hold for 10 seconds, then rise for 10 seconds, repeat 6 times. Relieves tension and improves digestion.

3. Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana)

Lift face and leg while inhaling, hold for 20 seconds, then rest, then change leg, repeat 3 times. It helps lessen depression, stress and anxiety.

4. Crocodile pose (Makarasana)

Hold for 20 seconds then relax, repeat 6 times. It helps release stress from various body parts and helps get rid of indigestion and constipation.

5. Standing forward bend (Padahastasana)

Hold position for 10 seconds and come back to standing while inhaling slowly. Repeat 5 times. It relaxes overall body parts and removes depression, stress and anxiety.

6. Bridge Pose (Setu Bandasana)

Hold for 20 seconds accompanied by deep breathing. Repeat 5 times. It relaxes the central nervous, system, improves blood circulation and revives tired leg muscles.

7. Corpse Pose (Savasana)

Hold for at least a minute. It lets the body surrender to peace and tranquillity. It helps improve sleep, concentration and improve productivity.

Our yoga sequence was found on the internet but the resources above have also proved very useful.

I really love the book 'Thrive through yoga', the author Nicola Jane Hobbs is very inspirational. All her sequences begin with the easy pose which is why our one does too. She has been through a lot in her young life and has come out a breath of refreshing air. I also really like her meditations especially the ones on breathing, body scan and stress relief.

The healing meditation CD by Steven Halpern is a great complement to our yoga sequence and guided meditations. I bought the CD ages ago and it is really coming into its own now. The brainwaves CD is also meditative and I listen to it before going to sleep, it is recommended on various 'beditation' web pages.

I have included the Pilates resources as my daughter always preferred Pilates to yoga and our Christian friend is really suspicious of yoga. I like yoga more as I find it mindful and meaningful as well as good exercise, I have yet to get to grips with Pilates.

I have also yet to get to grips with Ayurveda or 'the science of life', however it has already inspired two new mindful doodles and colouring pages.

     

Resolutions resolved

I wrote some resolutions for myself back in January. This is a consideration on how I got on with each of them.

Music
1. Piano teaching - I taught piano to eight people this year, and despite a lot of coming and going I managed to keep teaching all year (except August). I also helped one of my pupils achieve a distinction in her grade one.
2. Concerts - I performed ten piano pieces in concerts this year, the tune that went down best of all was Queste Notte by Einaudi.
3. Zumba- my main source of exercise became zumba which I started in February. Zumba has changed venue since then but has been a real find this year. It is also a good activity to do with my daughter.

Writing
1. Wattpad -  I said I would make more use of Wattpad this year and I did. I now have twelve items on there. My story 'Underground' has proved to be the most popular so far. It is written in the first person and is about sinsiter goings on during a commuter's daily tube journey.
2. A social media strategy - I feel a little happier with FaceBook; I made more friends and managed to make my news feed a little more pleasant, although I still find it a quite unsatisfactory virtual environment, I think GooglePlus feels a lot nicer. I'm also happier with other social media; blogger, Pinterest, YouTube. I'm not very popular on other Social Media, but they feel more open and honest. I've been developing Deviant Art and Wattpad. I hope 'At the Piano' on 8tracks might get enough likes to go gold. I also have nearly 50 book reviews on GoodReads.

Art
1. ALF Creations - I raised some money for charity through my arts and crafts stall, as well as through my regular contributions.
2. Landscape paintings - although I have been painting pictures for many years, most of them are portraits, this year I produced a few more landscapes, primarily so they could be more easily used in an ALF calendar and to represent some of my songs on YouTube.

General
1. Walking - as well as zumba I walked more in 2016 and I would like to do more walking in 2017
2. Giving - I would like to expand my charity and voluntary work next year. Maybe 2017 should be a year of living more generously.
3. Blogging - I feel that working on my blog has helped both my art and my writing; having to think about the combination of words and pictures that make up a good blog post.
4. Creativity - art, music and writing are areas I continually want to develop, I think next year will be similar, plus a longed for visit to New York.

The Excuse

Over the years I have enjoyed a number of exercise activities; swimming, which I still enjoy on Saturdays, all kinds of dancing, yoga and walking, which, not having a car, is also a necessity. However, at school PE was my least favourite subject, an attitude I shared with my best friend. This is an excuse letter I wrote to get her out of one particular games lesson. Unfortunately it was not taken seriously and she had to do the class anyway. The accompanying picture is by Amy.

 

Dear P.E. Staff,

Could you please excuse Alison from her P.E. Lesson as resorcinol and crystalline organic compounds have diffused and demolished her anti-bodies leaving her with a panachronism and making her myopic. She also has a thallium in her central nervous system which has devastated her libido and she is now waiting for 'good old' lobotomy which will hopefully cure her of her schizophrenia and xenophobia. At the moment she is undergoing treatment for her chronic social disorders and we are transferring her to another psychiatrist as the previous one went mad and is now dwelling in a lunatic asylum south of Watford. Despite her leanings towards anarchy and her militant tendencies which cause her to go impuris naturalis, she is strictly and strategically opposed to the filthy capitalist bourgeois pigs and the mediocrity that surrounds the succession of imperialists in pre-revolutionary Prussia. She is willing to disregard her objectives and maintain an elevated degree of over righteous sanity and stability for the good of the welfare state. Alison is a very sensitive five foot five demented gnome, would-be-hippi, who is a member of a samarium, occasional druid and her increasing interest in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks have led to the acknowledgement of the nuclear fallout shelter in the back garden. She is mentally deficient at the sanest of times and has occasional lapses of intensity which is only too common in manic depressives and delinquents. Alison has an inbuilt inferiority complex which led me to the conclusion that her grey matter is not as green as I once suspected. I have always found her very pleasant when she is not around. She has an atrocious claudication in the ninety degree, neither acute nor obtuse, wooden means of support and she is suffering with convoluted nervous tissue in her skull which has left her with exhaustion and brain fag. We hope that her allegiance with Satan and the fact that she is a hypochondriac and psychopath will not detain her for an abnormal length of time at the sanatorium. I hope you will understand as she still has gruelling primal therapy sessions to overcome.

Yours metaphysically,

The hunched backed antichrist with green teeth and a degree in melodramatic hair-dos with a tendency to hypocrisy

(AKA Alison's mother)