Namaste, Yoga Millennial

For A Big Guy, The Petulant Parsnip Moves With Sinewy Grace

It is a crisp Autumnal morning in London and I am on my phone, supposedly trying to read an article on quantitative easing in the Economist but really just doomscrolling through TikToks of cat memes. Mrs Parsnip ever so casually asks if I want to join her for a Yoga class at a studio near us. I absentmindedly grunt my assent and before I can realise what I have done she has paid online and booked us in. Non-refundable. And so it is that I find myself outside the Yoga studio on a sunny London Saturday, not exactly dreading it, but half wishing I was at home in bed reading the FT weekend or rewatching old episodes of 80s Saturday morning cartoons.

The Guru glows and exudes inner calm and beckons us in as she lights an incense stick. The studio is beautiful and has huge skylights through which sunlight streams in and douses us all in a golden hue – the OG filter before filters were a thing.

Inside, there are two women having a preliminary stretch and discussing using Facebook for souvlaki recipes. There’s Orla, a nervous Irish lady who seems super stressed cause it’s her first time. Don’t worry, mine too, I reassure her and get a grateful smile back. Good craic, Orla. Right at the front are two young guys lying down with their feet on the wall, contorting themselves into an impossibly twisted position while having a casual chat. I wish I had started Yoga back in my 20s instead of spending all that time falling out of Soho pubs and watching old episodes of Doctor Who on repeat. Yoga Bunny Mrs Parsnip has nimbly hopped onto the mat behind me and is doing what I think is the cat/cow pose as we wait for the class to begin.

We start by sitting on our heels, with our calves folded underneath our thighs. It has only been 30 seconds and my errant thighs are on fire. I really want to get up but don’t want to be The One Who Couldn’t Hack Yoga. I can feel the millennial anxiety (category: General) and the Type A anxiety (category: Specific) rising rapidly from within my chest. It wins over my need to sit more comfortably and I suck up my desire to adjust my legs and sit there looking like a punished sloth. Meanwhile everyone else in class looks fairly serene and folds and unfolds their languid limbs with ease.

We are asked to to clear our heads and breathe and to leave extraneous thoughts outside the studio. I do a quick introspective self-assessment and try to banish from my brain miscellaneous swirling thoughts of HMRC, the Mughal Empire, dumplings, meal plans, dishwasher liquid, my car, Moo Deng the Thai hippo, Captain Planet and the Garden State soundtrack. I try to focus on being more present and mindful and, as instructed, to restrict my consciousness to the boundaries of my mat.

Over the next hour, we squat and stretch upwards and raise our arms and extend our spine and push our elbows in and lift our hips and lie flat on our back while we wrap a little belt thing around our feet and stretch one foot out on the side while keeping the other one straight, toes pointed to the ceiling. At this point I’m grateful Mrs Parnsip warned me to be decent and vetoed my wearing short shorts. We breathe in and out and sort of suspend ourselves from rope like things attached to the wall. We hold our knees and twist the balls of our feet and wiggle our toes and press our shoulders into the mat and use little wooden blocks to help with alignment.

Halfway through the downward dog, I turn my head and look at the upside down Mrs Parsnip, who, as often happens with long term couples, senses my gaze and turns to look at me. Everyone else is too busy ensuring their bums are raised high enough, so I give her a wink and make a funny face. She widens her eyes and makes an admonishing gesture asking me to be respectful and focus on my asana.

We hold the poses for longer and longer. I start to quiver and worry about toppling over but manage not to. I stretch one long leg outward to the side and try not to squawk or look like an injured Hippogriff while doing it. “Why you’re quite mobile for a first timer, aren’t you” beams The Guru as she passes by, inspecting all of us. I am thrilled. Clearly not a lot has changed since I was eleven and needed affirmation from grown-ups.

At some point between the downward dog and the cobra, I fully get into it. I forget about all the others in the class and schedules and bills and assorted pop culture nuggets and to-do lists and the reality of everyday, modern living. I forget about anxiety (both categories: general and specific) and my need to constantly be quippy or wisecrack my way through life and to fidget and always be the funny one. By the time we’re done my brain feels very, very odd. There is a stillness in there that I have not experienced for many years. It’s like a more elaborate version of the peace I feel when I’ve rearranged my bookshelf (by author, never by spine colour) and stand in front of it, feeling the love from being surrounded by my books.

We are ushered out of class and back out into the cacophonous jungle that is London. I will return, I say to myself.

And I do. I return. Over and over. I refuse to make any social plans on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings and reserve them as non-negotiable Yoga time. Friends who are still doing weekend brunch are told to gloss over the avo on toast and meet for old fashioned lunch instead. Or to do Sundays. We discover Monday evening classes at the same studio and go religiously. Sometimes we reward ourselves post Monday Yoga with a kebab or two, but hey.

Over the next few months, interesting things happen. I get bendier and no longer huff and puff when tying my shoelaces. To my great shock, I eventually manage a headstand. When I drop my toothbrush in the narrow gap between the sink and the bathroom cupboard, I hop onto one leg and raise the other until it is parallel(ish) to the ground. I realise I’m doing a (potentially inaccurate) version of ardha chandrasana, the half moon pose while retrieving the fallen toothbrush. I learn loads about my body and even more interestingly, about my mind. I am initially puzzled by the colours I see and occasionally, sounds I hear (bells ringing or water dripping) when I close my eyes during the meditative/breathing part of the month end restorative classes. Google tells me that I am Synesthete – a person who has experiences Synesthesia where the stimulation of one sense triggers other senses resulting in colours/sounds. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, but I am intrigued by it. Who knew!

Looking back at why I kept (and keep) going back, perhaps it is partly because I am a Type A person who wants to be really, really good at this. But the truth is - I return because I wasn’t expecting to find a little nugget of pure inner peace in a local Yoga Studio in North London but now that I have, I’m holding on to it with no intention of letting go.