CHAPTERS on The price we pay for namaste
Because nothing says inner peace like maxing out your credit card
If I had a quid for every time the phrase "baptism of fire" has been used in the last six weeks of my life, I'd be a millionaire. That's how my new colleagues and I have described my initial work projects: a true baptism of fire. I had the sweats to prove it. Totally exhausted, with zero fuel left in the tank for anything else in life, naturally I turned to the wellness industry to take my hard-earned cash and fix me.
I started by booking a couples massage one weekend, giving James the big spiel about how "we just need a bit of time for ourselves to relax and refresh." When we got there, the woman had misheard me on the phone, and there was no couples booking, only a room for a single treatment. I was very grateful for James letting me take the slot, but I spent the whole hour recounting a story in my head about a woman who came out of a Thai massage with a cracked rib. How relaxing.
The following week I booked in for some acupuncture. I was late, having been tied to Teams and so jogged (in sandals) to the appointment. I lay on the bed panting and immediately freaked out about the idea of a hippy stabbing needles into me. Whatever zen I’d found last time I tried this treatment was now nowhere to be seen. I called my sister. "I just can't find any calm," I told her. Lauren, not unlike a hippy herself, suggested I do some yoga. "Your nervous system is in fight or flight," she told me. "You should do a breath-work class." Needing no excuse to channel my stresses into another form of consumerism, I found a yoga studio to try nearby the office.
Again, I was running late. When I arrived, the receptionist asked if it was my first Iyengar yoga class, I nodded and he whispered, “between me and you, this is the best class on the timetable.” There was only one space left, and of course, it was at the very front. I immediately joined everybody else in a downward-facing dog as the teacher announced, "we'll be getting into handstands shortly, so everybody warm up the wrists." I looked around to see if anyone was laughing at what must have been a joke. Turns out, no joke, I'd somehow booked myself onto an advanced-level inversions session.
I had only grabbed a floor mat on my way in, expecting to spend most of the class lying down and counting my breaths. I was told to get stretching straps out of the drawers at the back. I tiptoed my way through the people behind me who were casually wrapping said straps around their ankles. I did the same, acting like I had done this loads of times before, definitely knew what a "Salabhasana" pose was, and would be doing it any moment now. It would just be rude of me to go first.
Next, we were all beckoned to crowd around a man who looked like a yogi reincarnation of Steve Jobs, small round glasses and balding short hair. He moulded himself into a backbend, which involved standing the soles of his feet onto the palms of his hands. I wondered if I could leave while everyone was distracted by this contortion. I asked a woman with hairy armpits how long the class was. When she replied, "90 minutes," I realised what I'd really wanted to ask was, "are you all part of a cult?"
The first handstand was against a wall, and thankfully, that's something I can do with the help of leftover childhood muscle memory. Meanwhile, on the far side of the room, someone opened a corner cupboard and started handing out metal folding chairs, you know, the ones from Argos that you might get out at Christmas for overspill guests. Alas, there was no dinner party in sight. No, these were to be our next props. At this point, one woman cleverly declared she had a headache and could no longer participate. I envied her genius.
We were instructed to lie across the seat of the chair, push our palms into the wall, and lift our body weight into the air. Inevitably, someone's chair collapsed under them, and the poor woman banged her head against the wall so hard that she burst into tears. When I found myself on all fours, holding onto the chair legs and taking directions from yogi Steve Jobs on how to get into a forearm stand, I decided enough was enough.
A guy next to me with a greying man bun handed me a bolster and showed me how to get into a "relaxation" position. The idea here was to turn the chair upside down, balance the bolster on its upturned legs before precariously lying backwards over it. I told him it looked more like torture than relaxation. He turned to me, red-faced, and in a strangled voice commented, “it’s better the more you bend backwards.”
On that note, I folded up my chair, returned it to its cupboard and walked out of the class twenty minutes before the end. In a power move I smiled and waved goodbye to the confused-looking receptionist as if to say '“see you never!” and cycled home. I might have wasted twenty quid but I felt like I’d won back twenty-minutes of my life and it might just be the most zen thing I've ever done.
Wellness is big business. A credit-card company that surveyed Brits claims we spend around £4k a year on self-care, things like massages, facials, spa treatments, skincare and hairdressing. If that’s true it seems obscene and it doesn’t even account for gym memberships, which average at £600 a year. Then what about all the protein powders and vitamins we “need” or whatever holistic fads Gwyneth is pedalling to us on Goop. James was recently suckered in by the ZOE app, paying £500 to reveal that boiled sweets do nothing for your gut bacteria. Shock.
The wellness industry has us convinced that we are one subscription, one supplement, one habit-change away from contentment. And we buy it, metaphorically and literally, in whatever the local currency. We actually start to believe the words of hipsters with man buns when they claim, “it’s better the more you bend backwards.” When in reality, you’ve probably just got a stressful job, do a gruelling commute, don’t get enough sleep or had a few too many wines at the weekend. So before I start considering reiki, cold-water therapy or signing myself up for a gong-bath, I think I’ll just book some annual leave. Namaste.