Yoga has become a hot cultish mess

Ommm… are you in the lotus position? Then I’ll begin.

The studio was literally Hades, four industrial heaters blasting in each corner. We were crouching on our knees, sweat dripping, foreheads to the floor. It was a weekday morning. Then our instructor said the six words I can never unhear.

‘Flower your anus to the sky,’ he ordered all the middle-aged WFH men in shorts and yummy mummies in crop tops in this crunchy-granola bit of north-west London. He jutted his rock-hard buns heavenwards as an exemplar of the uttana shishosana pose or, as I prefer to call it, ‘kneeling’.

Even though I’d pre-paid for a package of yoga lessons to save money, I struck my antimicrobial, biodegradable mat and cried: ‘No more!’ This was the last time I would park to pay and be told to be ‘thankful for my instrument’.