Me, half-naked, on-stage in front of an audience

It's something I'd thought I'd left behind in my college days, but no -- somehow I wound up on stage, doing Yoga no less.

I've been doing Bikram Yoga for about 6 months now, so when the guy at reception said "Hey Kai -- how would you like some free classes?" I thought maybe it was some kind of reward for being a regular member. (And coughing up £85 every 10 classes).

So -- I jumped at it. I'm always a bit naive, because I wasn't even thinking about the catch. Until he said, "oh, by the way, it will be for a Bikram Yoga demonstration."

"Fine," I thought. A few people interested in starting Bikram, dropping by a class to watch, no problemo.

All I figured I would have to do is stay super healthy and hydrated for the next couple of days and I'd be in top form. Then I remembered -- Matia's in town. Actually, I was reminded of that when I got a call after Yoga that he and the folks were at Dovetail, the Matia pub of choice.

So, I revised my aspirations for the Yoga class from "super fit" to "not hung-over."

Fast-forward to the day-of, and of course I'm waking up -- hung-over. Which is funny, because not that much happened the night before when we went to 333/Mother.

Anyhow, I get to the Bikram West studio to find out that there were only 7 of us (4 instructors and 3 students), AND we weren't going to be in the studio AND it was going to be on stage in front of an audience in the middle of a conference centre.

Not entirely sure how we got selected. There was another tall Black guy there, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence -- given that there are about, erm... 2 of us that go regularly. Also, there were 4 guys and 3 girls, which is also not your average cross-sample of Bikram Yoga.

So, we went to this new-age, Hippie, mix-up, mash-up exhibition of cultures, philosophies, faux-spirituality and scary borderline cult-like groups at this event hall near Victoria. It was filled with people doing breathing exercises, getting massages, listening to people who must be wise because they are Asian. In short -- not really my scene.

I'm not saying everything there was bollocks -- I just think when you take thousand-year old ideologies from a temple and put them into a carnival format, you lose a little something.

But it was okay not to fit in. I was representing Bikram Yoga -- we're Type-A Spiritualists.

Later on, we got out on stage and did a rapid-fire 30-minute version of the class. The stage-fright quickly vanished when we got into it, because if I didn't concentrate I would have fallen over. Besides, I was actually amused by the absurdity of the situation.

The only time I was embarrassed was when everyone went down to do toe-stand and I stayed standing. All of a sudden, I got a flashback to my pre-school days when we did this show at the swimming pool in front of the parents. We were all singing "London bridge is falling down..." (again, the coincidences continue), and then we were supposed to fall down underwater to show how much we'd learnt at swimming-camp (or whatever that was). I, of course, remained standing. Just like 26-some-odd years later at the Yoga show.