It’s 7.30 on a Saturday morning and I am contorted and sweaty, but oddly happy. I’m on all fours, more or less, with my bum raised and one leg up behind me, rotated at the hip and bent at the knee. I must look a little like a dog cocking his leg. There are a dozen other people around me, all wearing as little as possible. That’s because the air has been heated to 37C – blood temperature.
Somehow, at the age of 60, I have got into yoga. And not in a teeth-gritted, I-will-persevere-because-it’s-good-for-me kind of way. I love it, enough to pay for a couple of classes a week and an online subscription to help me practise at home. I do hot yoga, in an inflatable “pod” like a bouncy castle, and not-hot yoga, in a shabby room above a theatre. I haven’t tried goat yoga, or dog yoga, or paddleboard yoga, but it’s only a matter of time.
I have my own mat, a non-slip towel to go on top and catch the sweat, and two blocks, designed to support me when I am struggling to hold a pose. I know a dozen instructors well enough to have favourites.
I can do a downward-facing dog, an upward-facing dog, a three-legged dog and a puppy dog, as well as a sphinx, a pigeon, a lizard and warriors one, two and three. I can be a wild thing or a mountain or a happy baby. I am sometimes a little wobbly on the standing-on-one-leg stuff, but I smash the moves that work your core. Corpse pose? I can do corpse pose in my sleep. My wife calls me a yoga wanker.
If you had told me any of this even a few years ago, I would have laughed in your face. I have, stupidly, spent more than half a century sneering at yoga and most of the Brits who do it. I thought they were even more smug and middle-class than I was. And as for their Insta feeds … what kind of loser takes a selfie while standing on their head in the mountains? A hippy. A long-limbed, fresh-faced, self-satisfied hippy.
Asha Melanie, a York-based personal trainer, rates yoga enough to teach it, as well as to do it for her own pleasure most days, but she agrees its image can be offputting. “There’s a misconception with yoga that you have to be flexible to start and you have to look a certain way,” she says. “When you go into most yoga studios, there are not very many men, there are not very many people of colour [like Melanie herself]. It can feel like a bit of an exclusive club.”
She might never have got into yoga if she hadn’t got glandular fever. “Yoga was the only thing I could do without feeling completely exhausted afterwards,” she says. “I didn’t enjoy it at first, but then I realised I was feeling much better in terms of my energy levels. And I felt content, like I was on an even keel.”
Once I hit my mid-50s, my sneering began to feel like self-sabotage. Every year I felt a little stiffer, a little more constricted in my movements. I could run for 90 minutes without a break, but I would almost hear myself creak when I had to bend down to tie my laces. Muscles, joints: everything that needed to be loose was getting tighter. Doctors, physios, running coaches all proclaimed that yoga would increase my flexibility, as well as my balance and strength.
Yet I still wasn’t ready to be a Yoga Person. On top of everything else, I wasn’t sure I was open-minded enough. Yoga was born in ancient India as a spiritual discipline, intended to align body, mind and soul. Even its modern, westernised form is about more than increasing your range of motion or activating your parasympathetic nervous system. And as anyone who knows me will confirm, I have the spirituality of a brick.
So I would sign up for classes – then chicken out at the last minute, turn up at the wrong venue or find some other way to undermine my plans. On my fourth or fifth attempt to just do the thing, I was minutes away from a class called Yoga for Everybody when I lost my wallet and had to rush home to cancel all my cards. Freud would have said that, although my conscious self wanted to explore this new possibility, my subconscious had other ideas and … I don’t know: reached into my pocket and dropped my wallet while I was looking the other way?
The answer, I eventually realised, was to go online, safe in the knowledge that I could hit pause the moment anyone tried to take me out of my comfort zone. That was when I discovered Adriene Mishler, the Texan behind the YouTube channel Yoga With Adriene. Her videos were unfussy and easy to follow, and enlivened by guest appearances from “sweet Benji”, her Australian cattle dog. “Find what feels good” was Mishler’s motto, and I realised that I had. Within days I was ready for my first in-person class.
I was finally on my way.
21 things I have learned about yoga since I stopped being such an idiot about yoga
There is yoga and there is yoga. There are at least a dozen or more styles, from fluid vinyasa to gentle hatha, via precise Iyengar, repetitive ashtanga and slow, sustained yin. There is even an aerial version that will have you hanging from the ceiling. There is a spiritual element to even the most “westernised” classes – especially kundalini.
It has its own language. You don’t simply do yoga: you practise it. Also, poses are never hard or painful: they’re strong, or spicy. You start – well, I started – by shrugging at all this, then think: “Hold on: maybe there’s a point.”
It will stretch you, and not only in the way you expect. It is also great for balance and stability. The more energetic poses, such as the fancy push-up known as chaturanga (don’t call it the fancy push-up!), will even build muscle. “I’ve worked with a lot of ironman/ultra athletes, runners, cyclists, weightlifters – many in their late 50s, 60s and 70s,” says Tiffany Soi, a yoga-loving climber who has brought her two passions together in the system she calls ClimbFlow Fit-Yoga. “While many started out sceptical, they loved the benefits.”
There’s a right and a wrong way to breathe. Pranayama – yogic breathing – is a central part of the practice. If you are moving, rather than holding a pose, the goal is to match the motion to a long, slow breath in or out. The usual rule is “in through the nose, out through the nose”, with the occasional “cleansing breath” – a deep breath in through the nose, followed by an audible sigh out of the mouth. You will also encounter variations such as alternate-nostril breathing, known as nadi shodhana.
All of this can make you a better runner, swimmer, cyclist … “Yoga’s wonderful for recovery, endurance and staying injury-free,” says Colly, who leads a yoga-for-runners class at the Hotpod studio in Brixton, south London. “Your breathing capacity and efficiency will be greatly improved and the practice can help your mindset both before and after running.”
If you exercise, you will already know a lot of the poses. Vasisthasana? It’s a side plank. Setu bandha sarvangasana? A glute bridge.
But it’s not just about the body. Your mind may be racing at the start of a class, but those long, slow breaths and rhythmic movements will almost always calm it down. By the time your instructor encourages you to “thank the practice of yoga”, you will feel there is plenty to be grateful for.
It could all end in tears. Most classes finish with you lying on your back, feet apart, arms by your side, for several minutes. Corpse pose – savasana – is often called the hardest pose in yoga, because it is just you and your feelings. Soi says tears are not unknown – but I am still at the stage where savasana is a lovely relaxing lie-down. And who doesn’t enjoy a lie-down?
You will forget what to do with your hands. There you are trying to relax in corpse pose, or the cross-legged “easy pose”. But should your palms be up or down?
Mindfulness takes work. One of my first instructors was telling us about the importance of being in the moment, letting noise from the street just wash over us etc. The next minute she interrupted the class so she could shush some people who were daring to talk in the corridor outside. Now that was distracting.
The older you get, the more yoga feels like a good idea. I met Melanie at Manoir Mouret near Toulouse in the south of France, where she was helping to run a longevity retreat. Her vinyasa class felt a natural fit with the resistance training, mobility work and qi gong. As Melanie says, yoga does wonders for people “physically and mentally”.
Soi couldn’t agree more. “I work with seniors with neurological conditions and chronic pain,” she says, “and yoga has been a significant contributor to improvement of symptoms and strengthening their bodies.”
If you are doing yoga, you are probably a woman. I am often the only man in class, but I have never felt uncomfortable or unwelcome. I’m not entirely sure it would be the same if I were the only woman among men.
There is a lot of tutting about “commercial” yoga, but at least you can find a class when you want one. Yes, it is nice to support the lovely teacher who does an hour on Thursdays at the local leisure centre, but if you can’t fit her schedule, you may have to patronise the yoga-industrial complex. My local studio, part of an international chain, operates seven days a week, from 7am on Monday to 9pm on Sunday. And it has showers.
Talking about money, when you are starting out, the slower disciplines may leave you feeling shortchanged. You will pay the same for an hour of vinyasa, where you will move from pose to pose and the instructor will barely pause for breath, and an hour of yin, while you might hold just a dozen poses, while “getting comfortable with the discomfort”. Feel you should be getting a discount? Take a deep breath and sigh out that superficiality.
You will feel less exposed on the fringes of the room, but you will also see less. This is probably a metaphor for life or something. But back to the practice: if you’re hiding next to the wall, it will be harder to follow the teacher, and when everyone turns to face the side of the room, you may not even be able to copy your classmates.
You will have to either make peace with your ugly feet or do something about them. Socks are frowned on in most classes. For men in particular, this may be the first time your tootsies have been on display to anyone other than your family. On the plus side …
No one is staring at your bum when it’s up in some undignified pose. It just feels as if they are. Anyway, repeat after me: yoga is not about how you look.
It is surprisingly hard to stay on your mat. I would like to apologise to the woman whose hair I stood on the other day. For your own sake, have you considered a bun?
If you need a block under your thigh or whatever, you should just put a block under your thigh or whatever. This is probably another metaphor for life. But back to the blocks: even experienced instructors use them to make it easier to hold a pose. Or at least they say they do – I’ve never actually witnessed it.
It’s natural to want to break wind. Just remember: it’s out through the nose, not out through the bottom. And if moving makes things worse, pretend you need to take a moment in child’s pose.
One last thought: you will never be as comfortable doing downward-facing dog as an actual dog. Just look at this good girl!
… and one thing I’m still confused about
Why do they call it “easy pose” when it is so hard? OK, it’s just sitting cross-legged, and that’s no big deal when you’re a kid – but more than half a century later? If you have tight quads like me, it will make you want to cry.
The Move 4 Life! longevity retreat was provided by Manoir Mouret. The next retreat runs from 9 to 14 October; details at manoirmouretretreats.com
