It started well.

Lie down, find a comfortable position, legs extended or tepee them in, and close your eyes. I began to bob and drift on the teacher's soothing sound waves. I have no idea what she was saying. She spoke in that quiet yogi way, making it impossible for her to actually be heard. I was almost asleep within the first 4 minutes.

Coming to, with the help of a poke in the ribs from my daughter Sash, was a bit disorientating. But I went with it, and I mentally re-entered the room.

Every part of the yoga class from that point on was foreign and inhospitable. Full of pain & frustration, I was dazed by disbelief and already burying myself alive in unfavourable comparisons with everyone in the class. I was lost and I was useless, and I was also shocked that I was lost and useless. And here are the reasons why I felt that way:

• The teacher spoke a different language, and I’m not even talking about the Sanskrit! By the time I’d processed her words, the class had seamlessly moved on into another incomprehensible pose. I was left behind, still trying to process the previous thing the teacher had said.

• In yoga you spend a lot of time upside down or looking behind you. So to add to not understanding the language (which made it difficult to follow instructions) half the time I couldn’t see anyone either. What I could do though was fully experience the strong sense of shame I felt at my uselessness.

• The yoga poses that I did manage to squeeze, force or manipulate myself into were either agonisingly painful, or made me shake. There was this monster of a pose called 'plank' in English that we seemed to be required to do almost every other pose. The teacher asked us to lower ourselves from plank to the floor with control. But Sash and I couldn’t control our bodies. Or our laughter. We collapsed to the floor, giggling and undignified. Oops. The darts of disdain directed at us pierced deep. Not a lot of laughter was welcome in this class, we realised.

• Everywhere I looked all the other yogis seemed to be effortlessly arranging themselves into swan and pigeon balloon shapes. It didn't engender good feeling in me. It made me want to spitefully pop their balloons!

So you might be wondering why I carried on?

Two things kept me going for that weekly dose of torture. Firstly, Sash insisted, and because it might help her, obviously I had to go. And secondly, how could I be so bad at it? I taught fitness for a living. I didn’t like or understand why I was so bad at yoga, so I had to go back to the classes find out why. Yoga affronted me physically, mentally, and emotionally. Where were all those benefits, that magic wand of transformation, why wasn’t I strong and skinny and instantly in love with it?

My yoga journey had begun.