We’ve had a funny couple of weeks. Last Saturday cost us thousands of euros after our canoe capsized (pictured, just before), killing Chris’ new phone and sunglasses, and our truck fell into a ditch and had to be towed to the garage for costly repairs. Less expensive but equally irksome was cutting the chewing gum out of Tana’s gorgeous curly hair, and cleaning someone else’s child’s vomit out of the grooves in our bathroom wall at 3am. On my knees by the toilet with a toothbrush (an old one) in hand, I chuckled to myself at the run of bad luck. But I didn’t feel unlucky.

Then on Wednesday I receive the dreaded phone call: “Mum, come quick. Dad’s had an accident”. Luckily it was no-school-Wednesday and Tana was with Chris on his pool-cleaning rounds when he fell on a metal pole and into the pool. Tana helped him out and rescued the phone on which he called me. The phone held out until I arrived, which took a while as Tana didn’t know where they were so sent me to the wrong village. But he didn’t panic, just walked to find some road signs and directed me in before running back to check his father was still breathing. Chris was taken to hospital, blue lights a-flashing, where x-rays showed there was no damage to lungs or heart, just fractured ribs and some very impressive bruising.

This coming hot on the heels of our ‘samedi de merde’, lots of people have said how unlucky we are at the moment. But I don’t feel unlucky. Not one bit. I feel blessed. It’s been costly, irritating, time-consuming, and, for Chris – now and for a long time to come – painful. But that is all.

Tana started big school this term – aged just 10 years old. Nerve-wracking for us all as his first years at the local primary school were tough. He was bullied by older kids for wanting to join in with their games and ignored by others who didn’t dare upset the bullies.

Which is why we decided not to send Tana to the local ‘collège’ but to a small, private, Catholic (yes, really) school in the next town. What attracted us was reports of strong discipline and pastoral care. A laissez-faire, “kids will be kids” approach does not, in my opinion, help children learn how to get along in life. They need adults, both parents and teachers, for that. Tana lost some of his self-confidence for a while but happily bounced back and learned some valuable lessons.

A month in at his new school and Tana’s teachers and classmates love him. They describe him as funny, kind, enthusiastic and charming. Tana is back. We are so lucky that this option was open to us as school can make or break a child. I’m not talking about grades – as long as our children do their best most of the time we’ll be happy – but children must feel safe. We are lucky too that private school in France costs just 40€ a month. There are no luxuries for that price so facilities are basic and pretty tatty. But Tana is not only happy to be himself, he is applauded for it. And that is priceless.

Work, work, work. Not much rest. And lots of play. That about sums up our Happy Coulson summer so far. May, June and July saw us working harder than ever, continuing to teach yoga and welcome pilgrims, and also opening and cleaning 20 plus swimming pools and hosting three French students for week-long language immersions.

But it hasn’t been just about work. In amongst all that hard graft have been several visits by dear friends and family, which we managed to thoroughly enjoy. End of term shows and presentations were followed by a string of fêtes, festivals and fiestas. And we went to most of them!

To cap it all off, we held a party last weekend for some of the families we have met over the last four years. An afternoon of swimming, games and festival fun was followed by an evening of dancing and live music around the fire. It was a special moment for us, as we have dreamed of a party like this at Happy Coulson. Thanks to everyone who came bearing food, drink, music and good times. Here’s to many more moonlit and music-filled soirées.

Amazing photos by our Mexican workaway, Fernando (pictured above, twirling poi).

So the UK has voted to leave the European Union. I had considered the possibility so was surprised at how disappointed I felt when I heard the result on Friday. My main concern was how separatist and hostile it made my homeland seem, and already there are reports of an increase in hate crimes and verbal attacks. As a British person living in France, I can only imagine how terrifying this would be. Luckily, our French friends just think Brexit is hilarious and are guaranteed to dine out on this for a long, long time…

Despite the threat to our whole life here in France, it must be much harder living in the UK at the moment. But let us all remember that racism will not be tolerated. Let us make it clear that it will not be tolerated. Whatever the referendum result, decent people are still in the vast majority. No one knows exactly what will happen now so there is no point worrying about it. What we can and should be doing is spreading enough love and tolerance around to extinguish any smouldering embers of hatred.

Thank you to Christine, a French yoga student of mine, for reminding me of this wonderful story…

One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said: “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace love, hope serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.” The grandson though about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied: “The one that you feed.”

Feed your good wolf. Abundantly and with all kinds of delicious tidbits. And while you’re at it, give some to your neighbour’s good wolf too.

The rhythm of life at Happy Coulson is changing. Chris has started his first season as the local pool guy – he has 20 swimming pools to clean and open before the summer. Spring also brings a steady stream of pilgrims – more than steady this year as we’ve had record numbers already. Thankfully we have had a workaway – Kristen from Kansas – to look after them. We also had four French girls to stay for a language immersion during the school holidays.

Everyone is mucking in – the kids earned their first ever pocket money by doing whatever was required, from kitchen work to feeding the animals. India can pretty much prepare and serve the evening pilgrim meal by herself now and we came down one morning to find that Tana had taken payment from a couple of pilgrims and stamped their passports before waving them off.

We all love busy – Tana says he wants to live in a hut on an island so he always has something to do – but it’s important not to be a work bore. So four days at a friend’s beachfront house for their 40th birthday was just what we needed. Sea, sand, friends and food reset the balance beautifully.

We often have French students staying with us during the holidays to learn English, this time two sisters from Paris who are here for their third visit. The girls work very hard at school and their parents are happy to know “they’ve changed the pace and content of their Parisian routine”.

You don’t have to live in Paris to have a busy life, and this can make life stressful for children as well as adults. The girls always enjoy coming to yoga with me so I planned morning and evening meditation sessions, in the hope of giving them some techniques they could take back home.

What exactly is meditation? For me, it’s a way of finding space in my head, with no need to do anything, just be. This can be very helpful for children who feel weighed down by expectations and overstimulated by life.

How do you do meditation with kids? It can sound a bit daunting, especially when it is not something you are used to doing yourself. Here are a few super-simple techniques that I use:

Seated meditation (you can do this anywhere, even if you only manage a couple of minutes):
1. Sit comfortably, with your back straight, if in a chair feet flat on the floor, eyes closed
2. Just be aware of your breath – observe how it lifts and lowers your chest
3. As you breathe out, relax your eyes. Relax your mouth. Relax your shoulders. Relax your hands
4. Stay here for as long as you want, coming out slowly with some deeper breaths, eyes to the floor

Other things to try (just use one technique, always starting with good posture and breath awareness):
– Put one hand on your belly and let your belly fill with your in-breath, just letting go with your out-breath
– Count how many seconds it takes you to breathe in and out. Try to slow your out-breath by 1-2 seconds
– Be aware of the little pauses at the top and bottom of the breath – maybe hang out there for a moment

Lying meditation (anywhere – in bed, outside):
1. Lie on your back, arms by your sides, palms up, relax your legs, shoulders and arms
2. You can do all of the above. Also, after getting comfy and focusing on your breath for a few minutes:
– If outside, become aware of any sounds. Start with those close by then let your awareness ripple out, taking in those far away before slowly bringing your awareness back. Take your time.
– Imagine yourself in a really peaceful place – lying in a meadow, on the beach, on a mountain, even on a cloud. Describe how it feels. Take your child on a journey, encouraging them to find their own place.

Give it a try. It’s worth it. And let me know how it goes.

Bees rock. We all know how important they are for our planet and here in our tiny village in southwest France they are especially revered. We even have an organic bee farm that makes natural cosmetics from the honey, propolis and royal jelly. Ballot-Flurin also runs Yoga des Abeilles (Bee Yoga) courses, where people sleep among the bees and leave the static and stress of modern life behind, enabling them to get close to the bees without any protection.

I teach outside yoga for the staff and sometimes early morning yoga for the people on the Yoga des Abeilles courses. I have even been lucky enough to do a meditation with the bees and had them all over my bare skin. It was an amazing experience.

Now, thanks to a wonderful friend who is a natural beekeeper, we are on our way to harvesting our own Happy Honey. Julie has just started a new business helping homeowners set up their own hives. In return for helping her with English translations, as she would also like to offer the service to English-speaking expats, Julie is overseeing the installation of our first Happy Hive. We have chosen to use a Warré hive, which provides the bees with an environment that most closely replicates what they would have in the wild. We are ordering our kit and Julie is on the lookout for a swarm that would like to make Happy Coulson their home…

Our French student was given a list by her English teacher – things she needed to work on during her stay with the Coulson family:
Present perfect v. past simple
Prepositions
Forming questions
Third conditional
So I asked Yuka to write a blog using everything she has learned…

Hello, I am Yuka. I’m 11 years old and I am from Paris. I came here to study English. Do you want to know what I have done this week?

Well… we have been to the mountains, where we built a snow ghost, had a snowball fight and made snow forts; we have made and eaten lots of delicious food, including sushi, brownies, cookies, pizzas and toad-in-the-hole; we have made boats from corks and sailed them on a little river; we have played games like Picture Consequences and Bananagrams; we have been on lots of walks and done some yoga; we have watched films in English; we have made pottery – I made a vase; and we have made Origami shapes.

Don’t worry, mum, we also did lots of work. I knew that if I hadn’t studied hard, you would have been cross.
It is my second time with the Happy Coulsons. If I hadn’t enjoyed it the first time, I wouldn’t have come back!

New year, new resolutions. I hear it so often in my yoga classes – I must lose half a stone, stop smoking, stop drinking, I must change this or change that. Not the greatest start to the year, putting all these barriers between us and happiness?

Many resolutions fail because they start from the assumption that you are not good enough. They reinforce the mistaken belief that your happiness depends on getting what you want.

The yoga tradition offers a way to realise your heartfelt desires without asking you to change who you are. The practice of sankalpa, or resolve, starts with the belief that you already are who you need to be. All you need to do is focus, connect and let the magic happen.

Ok, so how on earth do we do that? It can actually be as simple as finding a space, breathing and letting go, both of things from the past and of your expectations for the future. Discovering your sankalpa is a process of listening. It’s not something you need to make up or go wildly searching for.

And if nothing comes up, just come back to space, breathe and let go. That may be all you need.

If you don’t like Christmas, you’re not doing it right. That’s what I think every time I hear people moaning about this time of year. Too commercial, too much over-spending and over-eating, lack of real meaning, blah blah blah.

We all have a choice. How much to spend, how much to eat, what meaning we give this festive period, whether we allow ourselves to be suckered in by every advertisement.

And if we do eat or or spend too much and it turns out to be not such a good idea, we can choose to play it differently next year. Or we can choose to do exactly the same thing.

For us this year, Christmas is all about spending time together, just the four of us. Happy Coulson is a busy place (which we love) and we are busy people (which we love). So we have sl-ow-ed right down, with no work, few activities and limited socialising. Leaving lots of space for walking, cooking, crafting, watching films, or simply lazing around in bed.

Of course, there are people who are alone at Christmas through no choice of their own. If you know someone and can do something about it, then do. I heard about a great ‘spare chair’ idea where people offer a seat at their Christmas lunch to someone who would rather not be alone. Inspired.

So what does Christmas mean to you? And if you don’t like it, change it. There is always something you can do. If you can’t stand the commercialism, move somewhere with no shops. It’s working for us.