You'du00a0 expect a yoga teacher to have a flat stomach. My first one, Lorenzo, affectionately called Swami by his students, sported the most impressive belly when I met him in Goa, in February. Could he be trusted? Sure. Every move the 55-year-old vegetarian dished out to me, he would first perform himself, effortlessly. Far from causing an obstruction, his belly even complemented his contortions. I, on the other hand, stumbled and struggled and worried whether forcing long neglected muscles to stretch was a good idea. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2009/sep/yoga.jpg" border="0" /> Swami, a Goan who lives in the US, used the Iyengar method and improvised; if he thought I was in a cocky mood, he'd order me into punishing shapes that brought me close to tears. I hadn't stretched since school when two older boys thought it fun to rip out my arms one afternoon. Now within weeks, under Swami's supervision, the tips of my fingers could touch the floor, my legs kept firmly straight. I felt dead proud and as supple as those rubber men the Chinese despatch to the Olympics to round up the golds. At the end of our sessions, Swami would join me for a meditation. Usually he'd begin to snore before waking up with a start. "Oh, I wasn't asleep, it was a deeper state of consciousness. It'll take you years to get there." One thing yoga does is help you sleep. It takes things off your mind, relieving you of worries and anxieties and the sky becomes blue again. Like in the 1980s computer games, however, your yoga credits deplete fast. Regular practice is a must.u00a0 Swami's teaching took no notice of my inability and reluctance to bend. He started me on moves I simply was not capable of performing. At one point I thought my spine would break. "Don't worry," he said, "go down a little further." I did as he said and, within minutes, I was hallucinating about butterflies along with an elephant draped with an advertisement for an Italian restaurant. (The latter was not altogether my imagination in Goa, holy men do rent out their elephants as billboards). After those weeks with Swami, I was hooked. When I got to London in March the first thing I did was dive into a course. But this time it was different. Ashtanga yoga signalled an end to the one-to-ones I'd had with Swami. Through the door of an unassuming white building in London's Drummond Street, shoes off, I was in a steaming yoga shala filled with the sound of sharp, swift nasal inhalations and exhalations as two rows of people went through their routines (ashtanga is all about routines). <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2009/sep/yoga2.jpg" border="0" /> It was then that it dawned on me, "I don't know how to breathe". Swami hadn't taught me. The bubble I'd been in with him, burst. I had thought it was just he and I who'd discovered yoga. Now I had to make do with a minute and a half's worth of adjustments by Nikos, a very busy Greek god of a teacher with a seriously flat belly. I was deprived of the attention I'd been used to in Goa. In a room full of incredibly fit men and women swimming on their yoga mats into shapes it would take me years to achieve, I was the elephant carrying an advertisement for a restaurant. "Pizza, pasta, pizza, pasta." My brain told me to run out of there and find somewhere to eat and drink. But I didn't. I stayed and did a good few sessions and decided I would go to Mysore and practice with Sri K Pattabhi Jois, the guru-ji of the shala widely regarded as the foremost living master of ashtanga yoga. I didn't make it, alas the courses in Mysore book up months in advance and I'm rubbish at planning. In June, Pattabhi Jois died. He was 93. Now because I want to live till I'm 94, there was no point in continuing. If he couldn't do it, what hope did I have? Also, in monsoon time there is only one ashtanga course in Goa, run by a European couple who charge 20 euros per session more expensive than London. So for the past couple of months I've focused on what I'm good at, eating lamb drowned in wine. The problem is, though, that I can no longer touch the floor or, for that matter, see it. My belly is far too big. And to add to my woes, I'm growing breasts.

Tenacious City

You'd  expect a yoga teacher to have a flat stomach.

A belly for yoga

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A belly for yoga

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