If you attempt a yoga pose and fall flat on your face but no one is around to see it, did it really happen?

Somewhere in the space between warrior II pose and downward-facing dog, I topple and land heavily on my yoga mat, on the floor of my bedroom in the social isolation of my elderly mother’s Queensland home.

I decide it didn’t happen; my laptop is perched on a stool in front of me but the video is off. Kel Newstead, the teacher who is leading this livestreamed vinyasa yoga class via Zoom from Power Living Adelaide, can’t see me. It definitely didn’t happen.

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I return to an upright position and study my screen where Kel’s cheerful face is framed by a gallery of other students, each a small, smudged figure drawing in motion. I try to catch up with her sweet-voiced instructions: “Left leg up, three-legged dog. You’ll cross-body tiger curl when you breathe out, so a little core work here … ”

This is not the style of yoga I normally do. Frankly, I’m a bit lost. Perhaps I should have started with the level one classes instead of launching into level two. Kel is offering warm praise to other students on the screen – the ones who have chosen to turn their cameras on.

“Yeah, that’s it, Henry, gorgeous.”

“That’s it, take your time, Sarah.”

The teacher announces we will move into crow pose. She doesn’t hear the bad words I use to tell her 'no way'

I’m all tangled up in tiger curls and three-legged dogs. I’m panting furiously and my monkey mind is wandering to my leftover tuna-macaroni casserole lunch sitting heavily in my stomach. The tuna came from the depths of my mother’s bottomless pantry. The can had a little rust on it but, mindful of social distancing rules and empty supermarket shelves, we had ploughed on with the casserole endeavour. I decide it’s indigestion, not food poisoning.

Kel and the gallery of students on my screen have moved on when I return my attention to the class. “This practice is yours. If you need to do a little less, you can.”

Now she announces that we will move into crow pose. She doesn’t hear the bad words I use to tell her “no way”. I most certainly will do a bit less. Just so you know, the crow pose – bakasana – goes something like this: start with a squat, as you might over a bush toilet. Follow that by manoeuvring both knees into your armpits. Come up on to tippy-toes, plant your outstretched hands on the ground, look forward, lift both feet off the ground, hover. It’s mad, it’s acrobatic, it’s totally beyond me.

While the gallery of students on my laptop screen contort their bodies into birdlike postures, I remain in a simpler yogic squat. I’m diverted by my feet. They need a pedicure. My mind wanders to the women who speak little English who run my local nail salon in Sydney. How are they doing? Are they eligible for Mr Morrison’s assistance?

When I return my brain to class, Kel has moved on through the aviary, through half-pigeon and on to open eagle. She issues rapid-fire instructions. Vinyasa is a style of yoga in which postures and breath merge seamlessly into a continuous, flowing form. I’m getting tired. I’m pouring with sweat. My upper arms and glutes are feeling the burn.

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“Have you got the toes going on, have you got your bum searching backwards? If you’re still in open eagle I salute you,” Kel says, before guiding us into stork pose. “Half moon when you’re ready. Right hand searches for the floor … you can use a drink bottle, a coffee table, a couch, whatever you’ve got nearby.” Some ad-libbing is required when you don’t have a yoga studio’s block props handy.

Kel flicks her eye across the multiple students in her gallery, in bedrooms and living rooms and backyards around Australia and overseas, and suggests an adjustment in posture here, a change in pace there. “Just tuck your chin in a little there, hon, that’s it, yeah.”

I am an undisciplined and irregular yogi but I know now that it is vital I spend more time with Kel in the weeks ahead. The fact that I need to sign up for class to receive the Zoom link will make me more likely to actually follow through with it than if I turn to YouTube yoga videos. And next time I will turn my webcam on: if Kel can see me I will feel more accountable, less inclined to slow my pace or slack off. She will also be able to suggest adjustments to my poses. I might even be able to pretend that I’m in a real live yoga class rather than in my mother’s spare bedroom.

When I finish this livestreamed class I will have a Zoom chat with Kel and Power Living Adelaide’s founder, Triton Tunis-Mitchell. They will tell me that their Zoom-powered livestream classes have allowed former students living interstate and overseas to rejoin the studio. “People are coming back to things they know really support them. If there was a time to practise regularly, this would be it. If there was a time to meditate regularly, this would be it.”

Now we move into shavasana – corpse pose – that moment of rest and relief at the end of a yoga class. I see snowdrifts of dust under the bed. Kel’s voice penetrates my worries, bringing me back to the practice: “When we work at yoga day by day it has this profound effect in our lives.” I let my shoulders slump down. The physical and mental peace that comes at the end of a yoga class starts to wash through me, just as it would if I were in a studio, lying alongside other sweaty students.



