Christine Jones
Profile
Christine Jones, née Chart, was born 58 years ago in Aldridge, near Walsall, where her father Norman had a market garden. Christine and her sister Joy have happy memories of helping their parents to sell fruit and vegetables in a little shop at their back door. On alternate Sundays they attended Anglican church services with their father and Unitarian chapel services with their mother, Hilda. (Christine preferred the Unitarians, “because their sermons were more interesting, and made more sense”.) She was 14 when they all moved to live in Wiltshire, taking in an extended family of grandparents and great-aunts.
On leaving school, Christine trained as an occupational therapist, attracted by the practical, creative, and expressive aspects of the job. She began work in Surrey as a rehabilitation officer, and then worked with blind people for four years, teaching the long-cane technique. During this time she married Nick, an electronics engineer, and they eventually moved to live near Witney when his job took him to Oxfordshire. Here they raised two daughters: Kathy (now aged 32, a qualified pharmacist who moved to Australia with her husband three years ago) and Yvonne (a teacher who works at an Oxfordshire field centre for midlands schoolchildren and was married in August this year).
While her children were young, Christine worked as a part-time classroom assistant; but, starting in 1987, she gradually developed a new career as a teacher of Hatha Yoga – having obtained a teaching diploma with the British Wheel of Yoga (which she eventually served as the Regional Secretary for six years). She has taught Yoga in village halls all over Oxfordshire, but also in many unusual settings, including Grendon Underwood Prison, under the auspices of the Prison Phoenix Trust. Some of the life-prisoners were very keen and responsive pupils.
Christine enjoys the challenge of adapting standard Yoga techniques to the needs of individual pupils – for example, adults with learning disabilities, who often have a short attention span. She combined simple yoga postures with music and rhythm, to help them to develop their awareness of their bodies; exercises such as looking at and listening to a seashell, to heighten their sensory awareness; and holding hands in a circle, to develop their sense of themselves and others. She has also taught music and movement exercises in sheltered housing for elderly and disabled people, and at a day centre in Bicester she currently teaches Yoga to a group of people with mental-health problems. Earlier this year Christine organised a successful yoga Summer School in Witney.
Another major element in Christine’s life has been the New Yatt Riding For The Disabled group, of which she was a founder member in 1984. Originally Christine and a small group of friends gave informal riding lessons to a few learning-disabled adults, but over the years the scheme has grown into a well-funded charity with its own indoor arena at North Leigh, near Witney, and nine ponies. A wide range of users benefit from learning to ride at New Yatt: children and adults with limited mobility develop self-confidence and enjoy the sense of freedom that riding gives them; emotionally disturbed children benefit from the discipline of riding and grooming the ponies; children and adults with learning disabilities, often socially isolated in their daily lives, enjoy the interaction with the horses and the helpers.
For nearly 20 years Christine was a helper, instructor, and sometimes secretary of Riding For The Disabled. She ended her close involvement with the charity in 2003, when she and her husband began designing and building their new house, in a paddock next to the home of Hilda (now aged 98) and Norman (92). It was a huge project, only recently completed. The house is designed to be energy-efficient by making use of passive solar gain: it is a simple shape with large windows on the south side and small windows on the north; solid walls to act like a storage heater; and lots of insulation. It has a solar panel and a wood-burning stove, so it uses very little oil and is always cosy. There is a big garden, in which Norman has planted an orchard, and Christine has begun keeping hens. Now that the house is finished, she looks forward to establishing a support group for local yoga teachers; continuing to teach Yoga; walking the Cotswolds Way; and devoting more time to writing poetry and singing (at ‘singing camps’ where participants sing in unaccompanied harmony in sacred settings such as stone circles).
As for her religious beliefs, Christine says that although she stopped attending chapel services in her twenties, she has gradually returned to her Unitarian roots. Her interest in Yoga led her to read the Hindu Upanishads and explore the Buddhist, Taoist, and Sufi traditions. About 20 years ago she began attending occasional Sunday services at Manchester College with her parents, and she has been coming ever since. She has been influenced in recent years by the writing of Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), Matthew Fox (Natural Grace and Original Blessing), Rupert Sheldrake,and Satish Kumar (You Are Therefore I Am: A Declaration of Dependence).
Christine loves the architecture, music, and sense of history at Manchester College and considers it a privilege to attend services here. She likes the fact that Unitarians combine the tradition, culture, and community of the Christian church, where she has her roots, with a genuine openness to inspiration from other religions and with freedom to explore, change, question, and grow. She conceives of God as the Universal Spirit which pervades and unites everything – animate and inanimate – in the universe. This idea is beautifully illustrated in the following poem, inspired by the Mundaka Upanishad, which Christine wrote earlier this year:
| Smaller than the smallest, |
| Farther than the farthest, |
| Nearer than the nearest, |
| Resting deep within. |
| Inner freedom growing, |
| Peaceful, free from longing, |
| Joyful, simply being |
| One with everything. |
| Bring the great good blessing, |
| Give the love unfolding, |
| Live the life enriching, |
| Cherish everything. |
| Smaller than the smallest, |
| Farther than the farthest, |
| Nearer than the nearest, |
| Resting deep within. |
Catherine Robinson, November 2007