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I had decided to attend the three-week course in October 2014 run by Lee Majewski at Kaivalydham Yoga Institute in India, [in the] South East of Mumbai, as I was recovering from some severe arthritis following a period of feeling really unwell after food poisoning in Sri Lanka. Well, that was one demonstrable symptom but perhaps also, just getting older was another, having passed my seventy-second birthday and deeply conscious that for the last lap of this race we all run, I needed to pay closer attention to my body and to my mind. I had at that stage not really thought about my heart.

The course was a daily program of very gentle yoga postures, pranayama breath routines, awareness, study, and chanting, not to mention lovely simple food day after day. A nice cocktail! The first week is of course always the hardest and I duly struggled while at the same time noting an almost immediate increase in general vitality, which I ascribed to pranayama. Looking back on the experience I now see just how deeply significant and necessary this practice of breath work really is. I had for years tried to meditate but it was not really until I started working with the breath that I realized that to watch the breath is to meditate.