Yoga, Aspergers and remembering my Mum

Yoga books used to turn up in odd places in my childhood home.  My Mum was a yoga teacher, and she was always studying and planning new classes, always trying to improve the experience for her pupils.  Yet despite her style and elegance, I associated yoga with floaty skirts, big hair, unshaven legs and jangly earrings on women of a certain age.  I even went to one of her yoga classes.  She was great, but yoga seemed a very slow activity to a teenager like me who lived life at about 100 miles an hour.  I decided that yoga was not for me.  But as I've got older, more and more of my friends are eulogising yoga, and I began to wonder if I should give it another try.  It crossed my mind again when my son came home with his one bonus mark so far this term: for attending a yoga class.  "It was good," he said.

Still, I was surprised when I found myself circling around a strange school car park last Tuesday, looking for a space.  A woman I've only met once had included me in a group text about the yoga class and, as I was not feeling calm, trying it out seemed to be a good plan.

There were no signs for the class, and only the presence of anther punter self-consciously clutching a yoga mat by the door told me that I must be in the right place.

The women arrives in ones and twos, filled in forms, and arranged the room under the supervision of the teacher - who is a great ad for yoga!

There was no whale music, no scary clothes or designer water.  It was just friendly and relaxing.  And it did achieve something.  I was trapped, but in a good way.  I couldn't get at my 'to do' list.  It wasn't like a night out or a run that I could cut short and rush back, because the longer I stay away from the house, the more things pile up.  I could hardly disturb the relaxing ladies and clamber over them to get to the door, now could I?  I just had to stay where I was, do what I was told, and relax.

So now I'm counting down the hours till the next class.  And I must resist the temptation to get the mat beside the door...