A healthy new year

I have spent the past couple of months feeling less than under the weather. In November we were all struck down with the dreaded Noro virus and the past couple of weeks the flu has been doing the rounds. It’s not just the fact that I’m coughing up my guts (which isn’t very pleasant) but that I just don’t have the motivation to do much more than stroll to the fridge and back to bed again.

The new year for me is a time for new beginnings, possibilities and wonder. I want to do all the things, go to all the places and just live life to the full but I know I have to be in tip top condition to achieve that so top of my list for 2017 is health!

Now hold your horses, I’m not about to join a gym or anything extravagant like that! One step at a time. I am going to make some small changes to my daily habits as I think this is achievable and thanks to lights by TENA, I am already off to a good start.

By downloading the My Pff app onto my phone, which is available in both google play and the apple store, it means that I never forget to do those all important pelvic floor exercises. Improving your pelvic floor tone reduces your chances of experiencing little leaks and can, in time, entirely eliminate these little oooops moments from your life.

The my pff application explains and guides you through the exercises, ensuring you are doing everything correctly and in the most effective way. It allows you to track your progress and receive daily reminders to do your exercises at a time that suits you and fits in with your routine. The thing with pelvic floor exercises is that they can be done anywhere and at anytime so in between a flick through Twitter and a game of Candy Crush I can click a button and get a set completed in a few minutes…nobody even knows that I’ve done them! The exercises are quite different to when I do them myself as I don’t tend to hold for so long so the app definitely feels like a proper workout, also I love that it reminds you to breathe because actually you can forget!

A few other changes I would like to make is to drink more water and eat a more colourful range of foods. I would also like to spend more time practicing some form of yoga and meditation because I think it is just as important to keep a clear healthy mind as well as body.

I was sent a new year workout kit from TENA to get me on my way and I will be making my own kit for one lucky reader to get their new year off to a healthy start too so look out for that over on my twitter page!

What new year resolutions do you have?

Putting on an exhibition

Last year, as part of one of our modules, we got to carry out a commissioned photography project for our university.

Working on a commissioned project means a company or brand pay you to take photographs for them. It is very much a collaboration of ideas with the company instructing you with what they vision but with you as a photographer inputting your own creative ideas and style.

The London South Bank University is made up of seven schools and as a class we were split into seven groups to each represent one of the schools. Our job was to get to know students from each school and produce some photography work that could be displayed around the university to showcase what they do.

We were not paid for the project but we were given a budget to produce the work which meant we could be a bit more creative with the amount of photos and the way they were to be displayed. I worked with the school of Arts and Creative Industries and we specifically focused on drama and performance.

The drama students we worked with were creating their own version of Matilda and throughout the semester we sat in on their classes to get to know them and the characters they would be playing. Our idea was to create some documentary images of them during rehearsals, some portrait photos and a panorama of the final performance.

The final outcomes were not far off our original idea. I really liked the portraits as they were taken in character and we decided that the backdrop would be somewhere outside the drama studio because they don’t spend all of their time in there. During the dress rehearsal we got some really colourful shots of them in the act and thought these worked better than the documentary images. We did create a panorama but this had to be done with a different set of students and although it was last minute it came out looking great. Unfortunately it wasn’t up in our exhibition as it was printed on vinyl to be stuck to a curved wall and once it is up it cannot be removed so we are waiting for it to be installed in its place outside the drama studios.

The whole project took a few months to produce and was pretty stressful, there were times when we thought we wouldn’t have any images as so many technical problems and time management issues came up but we were really pleased with the final outcome and cant wait to see all the pictures displayed around the university.

Some of the other projects included work with the schools of

• Business
• Applied sciences
• Health and Social care
• Built environment and Architecture
• Engineering
• Law and Social Science

This is just a few of the pieces that were made and I am so impressed that we managed such high standards of work as first year students! (that last image is of a dummy that is used in the health and social care department, not a real baby)

We are putting on another exhibition of our work as individuals from this semester that will take place from 14th – 17th December at the Cob Gallery in Camden so if you’re in the area then be sure to pop in and see what we have been working on!