‘Bloody ridiculous’ I grumbled across the breakfast table. ‘$40 on yoga socks? $152 on Adagio Organic Tea? $860 on yoga conferences? Is Busso mad?’

Intent on proving her mad I got my calculator out and cast my mind back to the year I took up yoga.

It started well – I crossed out several of Busso’s high cost items immediately:

$860 on a yoga conference

$1200 on acupuncture

$1800 on privates

$3590 on a Balinese yoga holiday

Then I crossed out several of her more esoteric calculations:

$40 on yoga socks (what’s wrong with bare feet?)

$70 on YogaToes and YogaHands (what’s wrong with pedicure toe separators from the local pharmacy?)

$126 on yoga bras (M&S is fine with me)

$152 on Adagio Organic Tea

Then I started totting up my own spend:

Classes: three a week with Simon Low £1400 – rather more than Busso’s $1150.

Holidays: After only one class I signed up for Low’s holiday at Huzur Vadisi, Turkey, spending around £600 plus flights to sleep in a yurt with a hole in the roof, ‘built for star gazing.’

Workshops: I’d say Busso’s estimate of $118 was on the low side; I spent £250 in that first year – one weekend with Sarah Powers and the other with Shiva Rea who managed to get me into a handstand – well worth it for that alone, though I’ve never done it since.

Massage: $392? And the rest! I had no idea I had muscles in all those places.

Food and drink: In no time I was mainlining a box of Yogi tea @£3 a week – maybe I should’ve economized with Adagio.

Clothes: OK I may not have gone for the socks and the yoga bra but I was a sucker for the two £40 each après yoga t- shirts with suspect Sanskrit-ish writing down the arms, and let’s not forget the two workout vests from Cyndi Lee’s OM yoga studio that I paid a friend to bring back for me… and what about the two Elvis vests that another friend was wearing in class that I just had to have?

Equipment: The mat, the mat bag, the strap, the bolster, the beautiful wooden Iyengar inspired blocks probably set me back £150. At least my yoga blanket was a multi-tasking pashmina that I’d owned for years.

Music and concerts: Only 2 Krishna Das CDs? Busso has to be kidding! I bought his entire back catalogue, and Deva Premal’s, plus every Buddha Bar CD ever released.

Books: Only three Busso? What’s the matter with you? Light on Yoga, The Heart of Yoga, Awakening the Spine, Autobiography of a Yogi, A Search in Secret India, The Spiritual Tourist etc etc… plus the glossy $75 Yoga Journal tome stuffed full of yoga masters, and still inspiring me today.

Miscell: Add in the home practice DVDs, the £4 a month we Brits have to pay for Yoga Journal, the leggings, the eye pillow, the travel to and from class, and I don’t think I’d have got much change out of £4000, or nearly $6500.

At the time I was working in advertising and could afford to spend such sums but eventually the practice of (as Simon Low put it) ‘peeling back the layers that stood between me and my true self’ led me to leave the ad business and earn half the money.

So you could argue that the total cost of that first year’s yoga was half a lifetime’s earnings, and I’d say it was worth every penny – and far from being mad, it was the only route to sanity.

Yoga School Dropout was about my yoga school adventures in India – my search for mystic Indians, Tantric bliss, a pretzel like body and, um, a man.

One of the great joys of being published has been getting emails from yogis who wanted to share their yoga adventures with me.

These mails gave me the idea for a website where we can share our adventures in yoga – on and off the yoga mat.

It will be a place to update the Yoga School Dropout trail, a place to detail your own yoga trail, to recommend teachers and destinations, to comment on other yogis’ posts, to blog and post photos of our adventures in yoga

…from a trip to India to trying a new neighbourhood yoga class…

…from the people you met on a yoga holiday to how yoga has affected your relationships…

…from the way your yoga practice inspired a new project to reinventing yourself in an all too familiar job…

Think of it as Facebook meets Tripadvisor – a social place to share yoga recommendations and to connect with your yoga friends.

So, if you would like to be a founding Dropout please sign up below and start telling everyone about your yogic adventures. When the site is ready we will migrate your posts to the new website…

Read about the yoga holiday that changed my life on Elephant Journal

According to this New York Times article a quarter of your mat mates should be male. I am confused…I never see anything like that number doing yoga – I suspect men are massively overclaiming as yoga gets more aspirational…as in ‘of course I mix in some yoga with my squash games and killer career and being a great dad - its all a matter of balance…’

Not so new actually – YSD was published in 2004, a year before Eat Pray Love, which is now out in the US as a movie, a fragrance, a bangle and an om bead necklace. Prepare for my range of Yoga School Dropout chakra panties, and perhaps an essence of sadhu perfume – yum!! Any other suggestions welcome.

Come along Sunday at 11am for another round of chakra blowing with Una and me.

45 min class and 15 min of readings and chat from me. @Pandora’s Playground.

Please come and join me at 11am on Friday 16th and Sunday 18th July for a fifteen minute talk based on Yoga School Dropout and The Handbag and Wellies Yoga Club. Then there’s a one hour yoga class led by the extremely cool Una Laffan – a half Mexican half Norfolkian chick with a yoga CV that’ll get your chakras spinning.

She will be assisted by one of my dearest friends – Rosie Winston. Freshly graduated from the Simon Low yoga school she’s already opened up her campervan to two needy friends and she’s prepared to share all her heavenly gifts with you this weekend. 

See you at Pandora’s Playground – you won’t be able to miss us – we’ll be the ones lighting up our 7000 nadis!

July 18th 7-9pm CST at http://www.chatzy.com/namaste

Hoping for a lively debate !
For further info on the book club go to http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages#!/pages/Namaste-Book-Club/235105940384