What do a ladder and sore muscles have in common? This is not the beginning of one of these horrible riddles. But actually it is the beginning of the wonderful love story between Yoga and me. Confused? Me, too! What happened there?

I’ve never really taken Yoga seriously, I thought of it more as hanky-panky thing; People connecting mind and body, contacting their deeper selves, through wrenching their bodies. Well, good for them…But me? Nah, I thought I was a little too old for that.

Then I borrowed a ladder from my neighbour Manuel because there was a rusty nail very high up on my ceiling. Once, twice, then a third time, there was always something to fix. At a Christmas party he kindly offered me his ladder as a kind of permanent loan (he has two). As an extra he gave me a yoga mat (because I like extras).

So there I was with a ladder and a yoga mat. What to do? Luckily, Manuel also offered to practice Yoga with me. When he comes over, I am sceptical. “You’ll have sore muscles, you never knew existed!”, Manuel warns me. Yeah, right.

He rolls out his mat next to mine and shows me the first pose, the downward-facing dog. It looks easy enough. I try. Manuel tells me to elongate my neck and back, and to stretch my heels into the ground. This is not easy at all!

And it goes on like this for the next hour. Manuel does something that looks really simple and then, when I copy him, it feels like my body is about to tear in half.

On the other hand he does things with his body, that seem impossible to me, but then I swallow my fear and simply toss my legs behind my head (plough): it’s an incredible feeling!

There is so many things I haven’t done yet, simply because I didn’t think I could! Suddenly Manuel asks me to stand on my head! But this is only my first time doing this! I try, I do, but there’s no way this’ll work for me. “Not yet!” Manuel smiles reassuringly. “Really, don’t worry, keep practicing, you’ll get the hang of it!”

When Manuel leaves I feel like I could fall asleep immediately, but then again my mind is so awake, so alert. The next three days my body is bent and broken. I can only barely make it to the top of the stairs. But my mind keeps going strong.

It’s New Year’s Eve and I make a resolution: Keep on doing Yoga, Nadja! Yoga does you good.

Manuel comes over another couple of times, and I allow myself the luxury of having a yoga teacher over once in a while. She helps me, showing me what I can do, what I cannot (yet), influences the process of testing myself. I practice close to every day, I am eager to stand on my head!

Some days I don’t find the time to do Yoga and then I feel it in my bones (pun-alarm!) the next time; just a tiny bit stiffer, just a tiny bit less smooth in my movements. This means I profit from continuity, I need it, I let Yoga affect me on a regular basis.

I also enjoy that Yoga is not competitive, I am not better or worse at it than somebody else; that creates a completely different motivation. Maybe the motivation comes from a place deeper down, but it certainly revolves around me, my health, my mental and physical flexibility and fitness, my access to my body. Oh, this sounds like spiritual hanky-panky. Maybe one day you’ll try Yoga and find out that not only your joints are a little rusty (and the nails in your walls), but also your opinion about Yoga. I certainly did.

So what do a ladder and sore muscles have in common? Rust!