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SHWI do Tai Chi

My first meeting of the year, and the first I had been to since November owing to Christmas do’s and work overruns, I was excited to get my Tai Chi on with David Lipka from Mindful Tai Chi.  When I say excited, what I mean is that I was looking forward to an evening of relaxation with my favourite ladies, to going home in a floaty like state to my bed where I would have the best night’s sleep ever, a full night’s sleep is something I get very excited about as it so rarely happens!

Before we got started with some relaxation shenanigans, we welcomed a large number of guests as we decided to spread the love by inviting members to bring a friend along to our Galentines Day special meeting; a number of our guests have gone on to part with their cash and join us on a full-time basis so we must be doing something right.  Laura and Bex completed the WI business in record time, we marvelled at our SHWI merchandise store (more of a camping table) ‘manned’ by the beautiful Anna Tebble pedalling our SHWI related wares including our charity Christmas cards, OK its 10 months away but you can never be too organised can you?? 

We were also excited with the inaugural use of out iZettle card payment machine, a revolutionary purchase which will hopefully mean our future sales at Sheffield Food Festival and other events will be much higher as we can take contactless payments as well as cash, it’s a win win situation, imagine being able to pay your WI annual subscriptions by another method other than cash or cheque, it’s the future.

Following a quick pit stop for tea and cake, we got moving the chairs in the Church to create a circle for our Tai Chi experience with David’s velvety voice which sounded like a Jackanory story teller (familiar, soothing and relaxing) giving us directions as we got settled for an hour of relaxation heaven.  As I volunteered to write the blog I didn’t sit within the circle so that I could make some notes and observations and this is where I realised that my legs are considerably shorter than they perhaps ought to be….

David started his demonstration by asking us what we knew about Tai Chi, my own personal experience was Helen Daniels on Neighbours back in the day wafting about in her front garden in pink pyjamas with Brett Stark – ridiculously, I can’t remember what happened yesterday but this is a very vivid image of my teenage years and has totally checked out on the Neighbours episode guide from 1995. http://www.neighboursepisodes.com/index.php?year=1995&episode=2415

He asked whether we had invited him to the meeting because of the WI connection?  Cue a lot of blank faces until he reminded us of the ladies in Calendar Girls going Tai Chi on the moors in Yorkshire, whilst we could claim this was exactly the reason we had invited him, it was more that we are all more aware of being kinder to ourselves and Tai Chi seemed like a decent introduction to another element of self-care that some of us may not have considered.

David asked for what words immediately sprung to mind when thinking of Tai Chi – grace, community, wafting hands, baggy trousers, relaxation we all words our ladies came up with and hopefully we demonstrated some of this as he took us through his approach to the conscious awareness of movement.  He took us through starting positions of sitting well, this is where I found my feet don’t quite reach the floor if I sit correctly on a chair, I am 40 years old and have only just found out this fact. He spoke to us about relaxing the body and postural relaxation from sitting still, this is a concept that is alien to me as I am always on the go, so I found the sitting still, correctly and relaxed to be hugely beneficial, but then events within our group that evening took a different turn and with her permission, I will now write about my good friend Holly.

Holly is a long-standing member of SHWI, is married to Pep with a new son Enzo, who is 8 months old, Holly is also epileptic.  Diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy at 22 years of age, Holly has been open about her condition with us, her friends at SHWI, we have been with her when she has had a focal seizure, also known as a complex-partial seizure, where she appears to be spaced out and vacant, she usually recovers in 10 minutes or so and although tired afterwards she rarely injures herself.  At our February meeting Holly had a tonic-clonic seizure which is probably what a lot of people think of when they think of epilepsy, Holly knew that she was going to have a seizure and had alerted another friend Emma of how she was feeling, very quickly things deteriorated and Holly was on the floor convulsing and biting her cheek which resulted in a bloody mouth; this continues for what seemed like a lifetime but was probably only minutes. 

We are fortunate that a number of our new members in 2018 are Doctors and they were all in attendance that night and helped us to help Holly – thank you all for your assistance which was gratefully received!   Getting Holly home to Pep and Enzo was an interesting way to end the night, as she was still quite confused and refused to get in the car unless she could cuddle Bex who had been cradling her as she regained consciousness, but got her home we did to her fabulous husband who took great care of her. 

Holly made a video a year or so ago about epilepsy which I think is useful to share again http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04280m0, she also had her Emergency Details saved in her Health App on her iPhone which meant I could get in touch with Pep to tell him what had happened and reassure him she was OK and we would bring her home; this is something that I hadn’t got set up in my phone but this was rectified immediately when I got home that night. 

When we got back to the Church the Tai Chi demonstration was all but over, and the number of dreamy like faces around the room told me that the evening had been a great success; everyone was concerned about Holly but were reassured she was fine and that she will be back at SHWI in March when our fabulous member Ellie Last will talk about her Great Wall of China escapades in 2017 when she raised loads of money for Multiple Sclerosis.

To top off the night, as we were finishing tidying up the Church getting ready to leave a chap came into the room and walked down the aisle asking for bus fare to get back to Broomhill where he was a rough sleeper, as she had done with Holly, Bex immediately responded and took charge of the situation escorting our gentlemen caller out of the Church and giving him a quid to be on his way #bemoreBex

Rachel

Vice-President

More about our 2017 charity MHAGS

SHWI’s chosen charity for 2017 was Mental Health Action Group Sheffield (MHAGS). The charity started as a campaign group set up by Dorothy Gilman in the 1980’s under the name Mental Illness Action Group. In 1992 Tim Jones set MHAGS up as a day centre after NHS cuts resulted in the partial closures of mental health day centres across the local region. Tim still volunteers at MHAGS as lead campaigner and project coordinator, and was there to show me around their Hillsborough based premises when I went to visit them.

They currently run as a drop-in centre, providing hot meals (with food donations from Fareshare) and support to local people who are suffering from mental health conditions. Some of MHAGS’s service users are not just affected by mental health conditions, but also learning difficulties and other disabilities. In the past, MHAGS were able to offer day trips, activities and workshops to their service users, as well as access to psychiatric nurses who would be put on placement with the charity. The walls of MHAGS HQ are covered in artwork made by service users in the past. There’s a trophy shelf showing off the accomplishments of the sports teams MHAGS used to run. The office has files full of photographs developed in the darkroom MHAGS used to have.

Unfortunately, Sheffield Council are no longer funding MHAGS and now they do not have the money to run the charity in the same way they did in the past. Having been based in the city centre for many years, MHAGS is now less conveniently located up a hill on the Langsett Estate. Whilst the building itself has disabled access, the new location has proved difficult for some service users to get to. They are looking to start new groups in the near future in order to support their service users, such as a gardening group and a tropical fish-keeping group – the main room in the centre is full of donated tanks of beautiful tropical fish.

But the reality is that without funding, MHAGS wil have to close. This is a unique, “user-led” centre providing friendly support to some of the most vulnerable adults in Sheffield.

Therefore, I just want to thank everyone and anyone who has helped us raise money for MHAGS in the past 12 months. We’ve raised over £3000 for them so far and the final total will be made available in March.

If you want to learn more about them, check out https://www.mhagsheffield.org/ 

Laura B-H
President

Welcome to 2018!

After the success of our January 2017 meeting – we decided to do the same thing again! A relaxed crafty catch-up allowing new and existing members to say “hello”, grab a cup of tea and a homemade bake, then settle down to their chosen workshop if they were feeling crafty.

It's fair to say the start of the meeting wasn’t as smooth as usual due to a mix up with room bookings and some issues with the floor being freshly glued down – but the committee pulled it together and made it work as they always do!

Once we’d settled down and covered “the business” (local and national federation news), this year saw us make a new batch of bunting for SHWI. We still have our bunting banners which members made at a meeting a few years ago and they get used at a lot of our fundraising events. But you can never have too much bunting! So I prepared a load of fabric triangles and invited members to bring any crafty bits and bobs lying around at home to make our bunting look extra fabulous. Meeting Host and sewing guru Cat was in charge of our “bunting station” and has very kindly offered her skills to string them all together.

Fundraising and Events lady Jodie taught members how to “finger-knit” necklaces out of t-shirt yarn – which looked rather fiddly, but plenty of ladies were sporting a new handmade necklace by the end of the evening. Maybe it was just me who couldn’t find the patience to get one done!

Secretary Bex set up a mindful colouring in station for anyone who didn’t fancy getting arty with fabric.

I was supposed to be running an introduction to crochet – but ended up running around all meeting sorting things out and nosying at what everyone else was doing – so big thanks to SHWI members Liz and Holly who stepped up and took over with the teaching.

As President, I feel totally okay saying this meeting really was an example of SHWI at their best – all members working together to get things done, a lovely buzzy but friendly atmosphere and the creation of beautiful handmade things. What a wonderful way to start the year! Here’s to an awesome 2018!

Laura B-H

President