I set the same resolution every year. Some could say it’s a cop out, until perhaps I tell you what it is. I resolve to be grateful for at least 3 things at the end of every day. Sounds easy? Try that at the end of back to back yoga teaching and your body is aching; you got a parking ticket as you rushed to teach a class…who moaned about the cold studio…which was only one of the many you’d been in that day!! And that’s before you get home to start on the domestic drudgery.

OK, 21st century yoga teaching problems they may be but, it can leave you drained and struggling to find something joyous in the whirlwind of a day.

FIND 3 THINGS, NO MATTER HOW SMALL OR INSIGNIFICANT

But, I do it. I think hard and find 3 things, no matter how small or insignificant. Today, a grey, dreak January day, I saw clumps of snowdrops, raising their delicate drooping heads optimistically over the drizzly parapet. On my early morning walk, I stopped to marvel at a murmuration of starlings as they swarmed above me. And, a stranger stopped me as I was slogging round the supermarket to compliment me on my hair. My head lifted, my shoulders drew back and my heart sang!

APRIL IS THE CRUELLEST MONTH? 

T.S. Eliot wrote that ‘April was the cruellest month’. I dare to challenge and say that this time of year, with Christmas cheer behind us and Spring loveliness a long way off, is the toughest. The trick is to find joy in the mundane. A cracking cuppa (and the biscuit dunks perfectly!!); a bunch of early daffodils on the windowsill to greet you in the morning; a smile from a stranger. And remember you could be that stranger too, after all, what goes around comes around.