I am kneeling quite awkwardly on a cushion in a yoga studio in London’s Shoreditch on an unseasonably chilly Wednesday and wondering when exactly will be the optimum time to rearrange my legs. I have an ice-cold mango and passion fruit kombucha beside me and an agonising case of pins and needles. The solution to pins and needles, I learned a few years ago, is to directly confront the agony: pull your legs out from underneath you, bend your toes up as high as they can reach, and yes, it will hurt far more initially, but then the pain subsides. I’d like to do this very much, but sitting opposite me is a man – sitting all around me are men – and it is his turn to talk. He has eight minutes to tell us – all men, all strangers – what has been bothering him lately, or this week, or today, or for his entire lifetime, and right now he is on a roll.
Here in Men’s Circle, if you go over your allotted eight minutes, the facilitator of the group is meant to give a polite little “wrap it up now, mate” cough, so everyone can have a fair turn, but nobody wants to do that with this particular man: after a slow, shy start he’s on a tear and words and feelings and secrets I’m not even sure he knew he was going to say are tumbling out, and it feels rude (and possibly destructive) to do anything to stop him. So I’m just going to keep my legs tucked up until he runs out of breath.
