The Body Keeps the Score (1/3)

I did my first yoga class with a bunch of friends at Nanterre University on the outskirts of Paris in 1997. The teacher was in her eighties.

Sam, a student who’d invited us to the session, spent the duration of the class elaborating to us the sexual peccadilloes of most of the women in the class. I didn’t ask how he knew.

Sam was growing a massive mushroom in a glass jar on the top of his kitchen cupboards which he gazed at reverently every day. He played drums in a fanfare, a brass marching band that covered timeless pop standards. I once saw him perform The Lion Sleeps Tonight as the sun came up over a straw-strewn courtyard in the Palace of Versailles. The courtyard looked like a war-zone, fallen revellers collapsed over bails of hay. Sam was very good, though.

I returned to the the UK a few months later to attend a 2-month TEFL teacher training course. With a teaching qualification under my belt, I hoped to find work in Paris and so return and prolong my stay. I lodged with my mum and dad.

The TEFL course threw you in a the deep end so you were up teaching real-life students by the course’s 2nd day, beginning with modest 10-minute slots that increased over the duration of the course to 1 hour. As a panic attack afficionado, the notion of standing before 15 students, 4 fellows trainees and the course tutor, all furiously scribing their impressions was not an appetising prospect. There began my most distressing brush with insomnia.

The night before teaching, I’d go to bed around 10, perhaps fall asleep by 1am and then awake for the day at 3am. In this pre-internet, pre-mobile, pre-freeview epoch, I was condemned to watch 4am reruns of sheep dog trials. I found this oddly comforting.

Standing before a class of students after 2 hours sleep, was not.

It was time to get my house in order, I thought, remembering the Nanterre University sessions.

I was going to learn yoga.