Do you make resolutions?  I used to.**

I don’t know about you but I have always been notoriously bad at keeping them.  I think it’s something to do with the pressure we put on ourselves to do so much on 1st January every year.  Years ago, when I used to smoke, I always resolved to give up smoking on 1st January every year.  I think the longest I ever went without a visit to the newsagent for a new packet of cigarettes was 5th January!  Then one autumn day several years ago I just stopped.  Life’s like that sometimes!

In 2011 that word was JOY.  And opening my business has brought more joy than I ever thought possible.  A lot of headaches and panic attacks too, but mostly joy!

(source)

In 2012 my word is going to be RELEASE.  Releasing expectations, comparisions, judgement, procrastination, scarcity mentality, poor health, credit card debt, the eternal straightening of my hair.

I wonder what adventures 2012 has in store for us all?

I’ll ride the wave
Where it takes me
I’ll hold the pain
Release me.
– Release, Pearl Jam

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**although I really need to drink more water, get more sleep and remember to floss twice a day!

I woke up this morning and realised November is over half way through.  How did that happen?  Where did it go?  Christmas is almost upon us (yesterday I made curried parsnip soup to begin the festivities) and in just four short weeks I’ll be closing the clinic for the holidays.

Wow!

(source)

This year has been incredible on so many levels; but it’s also been hard. Really, really hard.

Ten and a half months ago I wrote a post choosing my word of the year and what I hoped to do to get there.  I chose Joy.  I chose that word rather naively hoping that, after a couple of years of trials and tribulations I could just be allowed to be happy and joyous.

Life doesn’t work like that though does it?  To be happy, to live the life you dream of, to make the waves you want to make you have to work your butt off.

With the benefit of hindsight’s 20/20 vision it would be more pertinent to have chosen Healing as my word of the year.  Because there has been a lot of that readers.  But out of that healing has come joy abundant and I find myself, at the end of this year with a little business that’s almost sustaining itself, the ability to pick and choose my own clients and my own hours, sitting down to breakfast every morning with Himself safe in the knowledge that these days neither of us have to commute anywhere very often.  There’s food in the fridge, a roof over our heads (although I predict a move in our future – more on that next year), money in the bank (mostly).

There are memories, like our amazing month in Australia to look back on, and the beginnings of a future plan to look forward to.  There has been the arrival of Dave the Stray Cat (much to the consternation of the spoiled house-cats).  There’s been Pilates Teacher Training (done and done – thanks crooked body for being so unimaginably strong!) and that phenomenal weekend in Durham when I got the green light to start to teach BWY Foundation Course Tutor Training (whatever I say, yoga will always be my first and foremost love).

But then there’s been the chronic anxiety and the terrible health, the low iron levels, the damn trapped nerve in my neck - I’ve written a lot of Small Stones this year to try to keep me present and a lot of gratitude lists to help me remember how much worse it could be.  There’s been counselling and coaching and a lot of lightbulb moments about where I’m going wrong, where the anxiety is coming from and where I’m self-sabotaging.   There’s been a lot of blood tests and a lot of trips to the doctor and that horrible moment when I realised that why yes osteoporosis is hereditary and I await an appointment for my bone scan.

I made the decision to stop eating wheat and start eating meat (there’s a poem in that), which was a hard decision but the right one for me for many, many reasons.  I have written a lot, but none of it what I thought it was going to be (maybe that will become clearer next year, maybe it won’t) and I think I may have a better handle on my finances (with thanks to the amazing Nona Jordan and this course – which I cannot recommend highly enough. There’s another one starting in January)

There are big things coming I know, not least that move I was talking about and the whole writing and presenting my first Foundation Course.  But that’s OK.  I am a different person now to who I was 12 months ago, as though I have been broken apart and rebuilt, and I will be different again in 12 months’ time.

2011 – you’ve taught me an important lesson in balance.

2012 – I’m ready for you, bring it!

This post was inspired by the lovely Nadine Fawell.

I have been for many years a great believer in The Middle Way. Balance. In terms of yoga practice, to feel as if you are working on all levels but not to feel as though there is any strain. This is my own version of Ch2v46 of Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, about finding steadiness and softness at the same time I guess.

In terms of life, I’m not a fan of extremes or fanaticism, I always find that getting too extreme about a belief can lead you all the way out the other side. I try to live a good life, a kind life. But at the same time I’m only human. I try to eat a vegan diet but when I wanted an egg salad sandwich yesterday I had one. I believe in women’s rights, but not to the point where we begin deny men rights.

But sometimes when it comes to my own emotions I find balance very hard to maintain. I beat myself up over the tiniest thing. I obsess over constructive criticism. I will try so hard to be kind that I let people walk all over me.

I constantly need to remind myself about balance. Just as I constantly need to remind myself that all that really matters is right now. This moment.

And all of this raises the question – do we try to hard to be “good yogis” whatever that means? Do we put too much pressure on ourselves to reach some sort of unacheivable perfection? Is our pursuit of happiness in fact making us unhappy?

Sometimes I have to remind myself that it is OK to break the rules sometimes. After all, I set the damn rules to begin with!