My legs put up a protest on the final 10 minutes of snowshoeing uphill. We’d skied all morning, and as the light faded, we climbed steeply to reach a lonely-looking refuge overlooking a largely frozen lake. Perhaps the yoga session that awaited us would abate the pain in my muscles.
My track record with yoga is poor. Converts (who seem to me to make up at least 50 per cent of the population) tell me I just haven’t found the right type of yoga. “You need something more dynamic, you haven’t found the right teacher, have you tried vinyasa, ashtanga, hatha..?”
I hate the complacency of it. Imagine if I went around telling everyone that doesn’t like running that they just hadn’t found the right pace, terrain or pair of trainers? I have tried every type of yoga and suffered every yoga humiliation (including – still traumatic 16 years later – farting in a school yoga class). Once, on my travels, I even checked into an ashram. I lasted 48 hours before leaving in tears, hungry, to find something more substantial to eat than raw vegetables.
However, I will accept that, like our taste buds, our hobbies can evolve with time. When I was invited to attend a yoga and skiing festival in the French Alps, I decided to give yoga a fiftieth chance, taking the sandwich approach. Maybe putting something I hated between two things I really loved (skiing and mountains) would sophisticate my palate. Surely 50 per cent of the population can’t be wrong, I thought, conveniently forgetting that, no matter your stance on Brexit, they can be.
It was snowing heavily when I arrived in Les Menuires, the Trois Vallées, for Yogiski in early April. The programme lasts six days, and the classes, including yoga, tai chi, sound baths, reflexology and naturopathy, are completely free, with additional costs only creeping in when a meal or lift pass is included. Having never quite lost my student mentality, I love free things. Yoga: 1, Ski: 0.
On the first morning we skied through dense clouds and still-falling snow. The snow was the best I’d experienced all season, and our instructor…
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