Reviving the spirits

   Chris Elam, yoga teacher and Ayurvedic masseur, outside the garden house he has built for yoga, massage and personalised retreats.

I discovered yoga in London almost ten years ago, and used to go along to a windowless studio in Shepherds Bush Shopping Centre with a crowd of young mothers.  I became a convert.  When we lived in France I attended less demanding sessions run by an only slightly eccentric Dutch woman in the attic of her home.  Outside, the rolling hills of the Verteillacois were an inspiration in themselves.  My fellow-participants were older than in London, but the sessions were still like a mini-holiday.

A search on the Net for yoga teachers in Hastings brought up Chris Elam, who runs classes about ten minutes' walk away from our house.  His website revealed that he also did Ayurvedic massage.  Paul had gone off to London to see an old friend, and the weather was depressing.  I was feeling a bit wan, and picked up the phone.

What I love about this town is its unpredictability.  Chris gives massage sessions in one of the bedrooms on the first floor of his 1930s house just outside the centre of town.  "The room's quite warm," he said on the way up.  This was an understatement: it was like a Turkish bath.  "I try to recreate the feeling of southern India," he said.

Had someone told me ten years ago that the day would come when a perfect stranger in Hastings would massage my back with his foot, I might well have expressed a degree of scepticism.  But that's the richness of life: you never know where you'll be next.  With enough warm oil on me for a skidpan, the sensation of the back being foot-massaged was on the pleasure side of pain although we got perilously close at times.  "Have you changed foot?" I asked when he switched from one side of the back to the other.  He had.  The replacement was colder, but soon warmed up.

I returned home with muscles relaxed and skin glowing.  Paul had got back from London.  "You smell like somewhere in India," he said.  I'm not sure where he had in mind.  All I know is that energy flows were restored by the following day.  Now I just have to get to the yoga class...

Antony Mair