I've been lucky enough to be part of this wonderful studio from very early on. Not from the beginning, mind you. I started my yoga practice on 1st October 2003. Almost exactly a year after the studio had opened. 

It took Kat 4 months to convince me to go with her (she had started in June): 

 

- Fed, it's amazing. I'm sure you'll love it. It's nothing like any other form of exercise! 

- Yes.. But I really don't think it's for me, Kat. I'll stick with the gym. I don't want to be healthy, I want to look good! 

- What does that even mean?? 

- It made more sense in my head.

 

And I guess it did, at the time. I had this idea that our bodies are very much like a house: it doesn't matter how bad the interior is, from the outside, the building can still look beautiful. Nonsense, of course, because if a house is neglected from the inside, it will 'eventually, or in the future' inevitably collapse.  You might say I was foolish. I say I was Italian.

And so it was only thanks to my wife's perseverance and a very tempting introductory offer (�10 for 10 consecutive days. Oh, how times have changed!), that I decided to give it a go. 

I remember only a few details of my first class: me arriving at the studio, feeling like I had entered a really weird place, where everybody seemed to be inexplicably happy; Kat setting the mats down for us (in the front row...!! I guess it was payback time, for all those weeks spent trying to convince me to go.) and the mirrors. I had never looked at myself for such a long time. And, as class started and I began to sweat profusely, drenching my slightly-too-tight-for-comfort grey vest, I kept looking at my face (now the colour of a ripe pomodoro) and I noticed that I too looked happy... Definitely not the 'Oh, yes!! I'm having the time of my life!!' kind of happy, but more like: 'I've got no idea what I'm doing, this is madness.. But.. I'm doing it!'. Kat was right: whatever it was that I was doing, it was something out of the ordinary. And I could 'feel' it was already working.

After class, in the changing rooms, I looked at myself in the mirror again: I was still Italian, just a bit more dishevelled. But my eyes looked whiter, clearer and my skin had a definite glow.  And I felt great. I realised, there and then, that I had just started tidying up my 'house'.