Madcap mornings and gwyneth P (1/2)

I’ve had some pretty madcap morning routines over the years, due in part to the various spiritual traditions I’ve hitched my wagon to.

Before returning to England from Sri Lanka, my beloved meditation teacher for many years, a Manchester-born monk called Bodhidhamma, followed a tradition that had you up for the day and meditating from 2:30am.

We had it easy though when we attended his retreats, getting to sleep in until 3:30 am.

Yeah, slack – I know.

Some years back, at a Kundalini Yoga retreat in France, bands of wandering minstrels would circulate around our sleeping tents singing the wake up song from 3:30am so we could be showered and be-turbaned ready for our 4am start.

These 4 am sessions which were called Morning Sadhana, lasted til 7am and involved an increasingly wacky array of arm movements, interminable mantras and a spot of singing, which was the best bit. By 7am though, I was definitely ready for a snooze.

My most consistent early-morning routine was back in my days living opposite the Grenfell Tower and featured, bizarrely enough, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Dragging my gnarly-ass self out of bed at 6am, I first cycled the 4-odd miles to an Ashtanga Yoga self-practice centre, known only to the cognoscenti, called Diorama, a short hop from Great Portland Street tube. Even at 6:30am, you often had to queue for a space as the lithe yogis, slick with sweat, rounded off their self-practice with 10 minutes of relaxation before freeing up a space for us Johnny-come-latelies.

Practice was presided over by a slight and unassuming figure in glasses called Hamish, worshipped amongst the ashtanga yoga community as the first Brit to be given permission to teach the Ashtanga Yoga system by its guru K. Pattabhi Jois, as well as for his quiet and humble manner. (For the record, Hamish awakens at 1am to do his practice to be ready for his students, leaving my meditation guru, Bhante B in the dust.)

The Primary Series, as it was called, takes about 90 minutes to complete. So, by 8am, I was back in the saddle spiriting myself up the ghastly incline of Pentonville Rd to be present and correct for my 9am start, teaching at a college in Islington.

But that morning, there’d been much excitement at the yoga centre. Firstly, we’d had a celebrity in our midst. And secondly, and more memorably for me, there was the matter of Nick and what happened to him when he went into the wheel pose, Chakrasana.