I was halfway through a yoga session when it happened. I was sitting opposite a stranger and we were about to do a clapping exercise together, like a child’s game of pat-a-cake. I didn’t feel awkward, or silly; I went for it and gave it everything. It was as if the clouds parted and the sunlight shone through. I felt a huge sense of relief, as if I had just found something I had been looking for.
I was in my late 20s, and I’d had chronic depression since my teens. It would come in waves, and I could see another wave heading towards me. After a photography degree, and a couple of years working at a picture library, I had been desperate to break into the media and, in 2003, I was really excited about getting a job on a magazine picture desk. It felt like an achievement and a lucky break in a competitive industry, but I soon discovered its office was not a great place to be.
My boss was difficult to work with, and it wasn’t a warm, welcoming environment. She would put me down and make me feel worthless. My self-esteem, which was not great to start with, was soon in tatters. Outside work, I was partying hard and taking too many drugs. My boss and I had several confrontations and, after one particularly bad interaction, I couldn’t face going in the next day.
My friend, who knew I had been depressed, told me his girlfriend was teaching a yoga class that evening, and suggested I go. I hadn’t done yoga since university, and she taught kundalini yoga – a style that focuses more on energy than physicality. I didn’t know then that yoga could be such a cathartic process.
I threw myself into it. Across from a partner, looking into their eyes, the childlike practice of our hands clapping together, and the concentration required to keep the rhythm, suddenly cleared the mental fogginess that had dogged me for years, and I experienced a crystal-like clarity. It was as if somebody had turned on the lights. I felt as if I’d been in the dark, in anguish and negativity. Now, I could see myself more clearly, and I got a sense of the jolly person inside. Depression felt as if it didn’t belong to me, as if it was a great big, stinky old overcoat that I could take off.
Not long after that first kundalini yoga class, my job contract ended and I got out of that office. I had just enough experience to go freelance, and I ended up making twice as much money, so I could pay for regular yoga classes. I had felt broken but every time I did yoga, it felt as though I was piecing myself back together a little bit.
Practising yoga taught me to trust in life – to believe that I could release my grip and situations would work out without me having to try to control them. Without so much fear running the show, I had a greater sense of ease. Of course life was, and is, stressful, but I had a much more positive outlook.
I began to make better decisions and it became a positive feedback loop – as I looked after myself better, I got more energy. I joined a gym and when I started getting physically stronger, I became far more mentally resilient. It didn’t happen overnight but I had put the brakes on my downward spiral and started to reverse out of it. It had such a huge impact on my life that I decided to train to be a kundalini yoga teacher.
For the next few years, I was still working as a picture editor, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Working on newspaper picture desks, I would sit in front of banks of images that were considered too distressing to print, and feel helpless and full of rage at the injustice in the world.
I wanted to contribute something to make the world a better place, and in a small way, I hoped that by teaching other people kundalini yoga, it would help them. I hoped that this would ripple out – that the more that people were able to find their own inner peace, the more they would in turn be able to help their friends, family and community.
Kundalini yoga changed my life, and I have seen it give people more purpose and enjoyment in their lives, too. It taught me that happiness really does come from within, and now I help people switch on their own inner light.
As told to Emine Saner