On a rainy October night, I stepped into a space that forever changed my life (+ some YOGA news)

Spaces leave their imprint on us. A good one helped me finally fall in love with yoga.

Photo by Max Harlynking on Unsplash

On a dark and rainy Monday night in late October 2001, I slipped through the gap between two buildings on a Primrose Hill side street and made my way to an old warehouse at the rear of a courtyard. I was there to try out a yoga class, with a teacher who came highly recommended. I’d done some yoga before. Although to be honest, I still didn’t quite get what all the fuss was about.

The class took place in a warm, candlelit first-floor room. It had a high, vaulted ceiling, a white floor and walls, and huge Crittall windows, which looked out over the neighbouring gardens. The space exuded calm. As did the teacher’s voice. He guided us through a sequence of movements, which were both fluid and precise. We spent the final ten minutes resting on our backs, eyes closed.

Lying there, I connected to a part of myself I’d long forgotten: peaceful, soft and spacious. A part so at odds with the rush of my day-to-day life as an overworked young architect, who regularly clocked up 60 hours a week at the office.

My previous experiences of yoga had not made me feel like this. I’d tried Iyengar classes, squashed into the sitting room of a teacher who was clearly brilliant, but not the right fit for me, at least back then: having spent all day sitting at the computer drafting working drawings and deliberating whether a door frame should be 80 or 100mm wide, my body needed to move more freely, rather than hold downward dog forever while obsessing over the exact position of my thumbs. Once, the teacher mentioned she was running a daylong retreat the following weekend, and I thought, why on earth would anyone waste their entire Saturday doing yoga.

Next, I tried Bikram yoga, which is practised at 40°C. The studio was a brightly-lit, mirrored room, behind a battered metal door on a parade of shops in North London. Here, Savasana (the relaxation typically included at the end of a yoga class), was very much optional. In any case, lying on the grey carpet, which smelt of sweat and the disinfectant pumped through the heating system, was not exactly relaxing. Sometimes, I felt sick after class, but the teacher reassured me this was a good thing: I was supposedly detoxing. When my skin broke out in the worst acne I’d had since my teens, I finally clocked that, perhaps, my body was telling me it was time to stop going.

After that first class at the Primrose Hill warehouse, I was determined to go every Monday. Soon, I added a Sunday afternoon class, with a different teacher. Then, a Thursday morning one, pre-work, after which I’d race to the tube, praying for no delays on the Northern Line, so I’d make it to my desk on time. And when, in spring 2002, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and took months off work to have treatment, one silver lining was being able to attend daytime yoga classes whenever I felt up to it.

My teachers were all excellent. But they weren’t the only reason I kept returning. It was also because of the space. As Peter Zumthor - one of my favourite architects - said, architecture ‘is an envelope and background for life, which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container…’.

Buildings are typically created for people to inhabit. There’s a symbiotic relationship between the two, and when a good space meets good human energy, the effect can be potent.

I was reminded of this on a recent holiday in Puglia, where my husband and I stayed at a 16^th century farmhouse, now a small, family-owned hotel. The dining room, with its stone floor, open fire, walls lined with bottles of olive oil and wine, and sideboards arranged with bowls of lemons and jars of flowers, was beautiful. But the owner’s kindness – for example, taking great care to tailor the set dinner menu to accommodate my husband’s intolerances, and always checking we had everything we needed at breakfast – enhanced my experience of being in the room.

In 2014, I walked out of the Primrose Hill yoga studio for the final time. The landlord had permission to redevelop most of the site into luxury flats, and the studio was forced to find itself a new home, in nearby Camden Town.

I missed the old place, and would often conjure up memories of it. In each snapshot - whether mid-class, chatting to a friend in studio before the start of one or, eventually, teaching classes there myself – the space itself was as much a part of the memory as the people I was with or the pose my body was in. Spaces leave their imprint on us. Even when we no longer physically inhabit them, we carry them with us, and are forever changed by them.

I assumed I’d never set foot in that building again. But life moves in mysterious ways and a new yoga space, HOME, is currently being constructed on that site, set up by same person (Jonathan Sattin) who created the original studio. I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but I trust it will be beautiful.

And on a light, early July evening, I will step into it again, this time as a teacher, whose intention is to help you experience some of the magic yoga plus a good space can offer us. I would love you to join me.

Annabel x

As always, I’m so grateful for every comment, like and email reply. Thank you for reading.

Practise Yoga with me at HOME:

When:Yoga Open 17.00-18.15 every Sunday from 6 July (suitable for all levels, including beginners)

Where: HOME, Primrose Hill Courtyard, 7 Erskine Rd, London NW3 3AJ or via Livestream

Booking: via homewellness.uk – the schedule (and, I presume, bookings) will go live next week. You can also find details of limited founder memberships here