THIS LIFE: ROISIN MEANEY

I’M PRETTY HOPELESS AT YOGA. I’m inflexible and uncoordinated and awkward. I can’t balance on one leg for more than a second or two without careering towards the floor. My hips are so tight that sitting cross-legged is excruciating. At the end of a class, when we all stretch out gratefully on our mats and the instructor tells us to empty our minds, she may as well be asking me to fly to the moon and bring her back a bottle of water from the Sea of Tranquility. I simply can’t do it: my mind hangs on grimly to every little bit of the inane paraphernalia that normally inhabits it.

Despite all this, I love yoga. I love the bits I can manage, like lifting my arms above my head and reaching upwards with everything I have, and feeling the wonderful lengthening that happens right through to my toes. I love spinal twists, turning to look over a shoulder while hips face forward – my back all but weeps in gratitude whenever I treat it to one of them. I love forward bends, tilting from the waist with a wide stance, inching down until my palms connect with the floor. I love pelvic tilts, and shoulder stands, and the blissful release of child’s pose, one of the beautiful resting poses you’re allowed every now and again.

After a yoga class I feel longer and looser, as if someone put me on a rack and turned the handle, and stopped about three turns before my hips and shoulders dislocated. It’s this feeling, this lovely stretched-out sensation that keeps me going back every week.

I was lucky enough to discover yoga in San Francisco. I’d taken a year off my teaching job to see a bit of the world, and as luck would have it, one of my younger brothers lived in the city I’d been planning to check out for a long time. It’s hard to avoid yoga in San Francisco – there’s a studio pretty much at the end of every block. I signed up in my neighbourhood one, and over the course of my year in the city I tried out every one of the multiple classes on offer, from a frenetic Ashtanga session in the morning from which I would emerge red-faced and panting, to a sublime hour of restorative yoga on Friday and Saturday evenings that had me floating home.

And the real bonus, apart from the marvellous teachers and spacious studios and variety of yoga that was available each day, was the all-inclusive ethos of the club. No matter how inept you were, or how amateurish your efforts, nobody laughed or pointed. Everyone was accepted, everyone was made to feel that they had a perfect right to be there. Even in the beginner classes, which were all I dared to go near for the first six months, I was easily the one who struggled most – but nobody seemed to mind, least of all my endlessly patient tutors.

In addition, the dress code was gratifyingly casual: after checking out the price of yoga gear in a few of San Francisco’s many sports stores I took myself off to the thrift shops and spent about $20 on half a dozen T-shirts and a couple of tracksuit bottoms, and none of my fellow students at the club, most of whom were immaculately kitted out, batted an eyelid.

I adored it all. Struggling yogi that I was, I looked forward to every class – and there were even a few triumphs along the way, like when I finally mastered the crow pose – basically, a crouched handstand – or the first time I managed the terrifying back bend that is the camel (looks easy: it isn’t).

I also learnt another valuable lesson. One day I passed a Bikram yoga studio that offered pay-as-you-go classes. My own club didn’t do Bikram, so in I wandered and paid my $10 or whatever it was. I loved yoga, so I’d love this too, right? Wrong. The heat in Bikr`am studios is at sauna level, and the set series of poses very challenging and fast-paced: in no time you’re sweating like a hog. I crawled out after 90 torturous minutes, beetroot-faced and drenched, and never darkened its doors again.

When my year of freedom came to an end I rolled up my mat and returned to Ireland and the Junior Infant classroom, determined to keep up my yoga habit – and for a while, I did. Most evenings I would get into my gear and do my own amateurish versions of sun salutations and downward dogs and cobras – but as time passed I found the momentum waning, so I cast about and discovered a studio with a lovely teacher who re-ignited my enthusiasm. Every Tuesday evening I head there with a smile on my face.

Yoga is tough. It pulls you from your comfort zone and challenges you to go where you think you can’t. But the truth is, you can, and you will – eventually. And when you do, it’s the best feeling in the world.