I’ve always hated yoga – could combining it with a France ski festival change my mind?
Yoga-sceptic Anna Richards works on her downward dog during a ski festival in the French Alps
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My legs put up a protest on the final 10 minutes of snowshoeing uphill. We’d skied all morning, and as the light faded, we climbed steeply to reach a lonely looking refuge overlooking a largely frozen lake. Perhaps the yoga session that awaited us would abate the pain in my muscles.
My track record with yoga is poor. Converts (who seem to me to make up at least 50 per cent of the population) tell me I just haven’t found the right type of yoga. “You need something more dynamic, you haven’t found the right teacher, have you tried vinyasa, ashtanga, hatha..?”
I hate the complacency of it. Imagine if I went around telling everyone who doesn’t like running that they just hadn’t found the right pace, terrain or pair of trainers. I have tried every type of yoga and suffered every yoga humiliation (including – still traumatic 16 years later – farting in a school yoga class). Once, on my travels, I even checked into an ashram. I lasted 48 hours before leaving in tears, hungry, to find something more substantial to eat than raw vegetables.
However, I will accept that, like our taste buds, our hobbies can evolve with time. When I was invited to attend a yoga and skiing festival in the French Alps, I decided to give yoga a fiftieth chance, taking the sandwich approach. Maybe putting something I hated between two things I really loved (skiing and mountains) would sophisticate my palate. Surely 50 per cent of the population can’t be wrong, I thought, conveniently forgetting that – no matter your stance on Brexit – they can be.
It was snowing heavily when I arrived in Les Menuires, the Trois Vallées, for Yogiski in early April. The programme lasts six days, and the classes, including yoga, tai chi, sound baths, reflexology and naturopathy, are completely free, with additional costs only creeping in when a meal or lift pass is included. Having never quite lost my student mentality, I love free things. Yoga: 1, Ski: 0.
On the first morning, we skied through dense clouds and still-falling snow. The snow was the best I’d experienced all season, and our instructor guided us with ease through zero visibility. We rode the gondola up from the nativity scene town of Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, and zig-zagged down pistes, barely seeing the rise and fall of the mountains, until we found the tower blocks of Les Menuires which rose up eerily through the mist like the setting of a dystopian film. Yoga 1, Ski: 1.
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No one, except a man I once dated who waxed lyrical about his love of Brutalist architecture for an hour, could describe Les Menuires as pretty. The Sixties tower blocks that look like they belong in city suburbs were part of a plan by Georges Pompidou’s government to make skiing affordable and accessible to all – a socialist ski utopia created by a centre-right government. I love the principle, but I’m secretly pleased that we’re staying in a cute little chalet in Saint Martin-de-Belleville instead of a building that looks like my old comprehensive school.
After the first day of skiing, followed by a snowshoe stomp from farm-meets-restaurant Chez Pépé Nicolas, my thighs and glutes started to feel as though they’d been finely sliced by a mandolin. The Lego blocks of Les Menuires faded into the valley to be replaced by streams tumbling down mountains so covered in rocks it looked like they were encrusted in snowy barnacles.
When we arrived at Lac du Lou ( “Lou” means “lake” in patois, so it’s very unpoetically named), we were invited to take a moment to meditate. The only thing I hate more than yoga is meditation: I have a complete inability to stay still. Asked to close our eyes and retrace the outline of the frozen lake in our mind, I soaked up the absolute silence of the mountains, as though someone had stuffed my ears with cotton wool, and felt very peaceful.
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Inside the refuge, a resident cat strutted confidently over the unrolled mats. Yoga: 2, Ski: 1. I made the mistake of positioning myself directly facing the clock – yoga classes are never longer than an hour, right?
An hour came and went. My limbs shook much more than they had on the pistes. I began to count every minute, and when we reached 90 the blessed moment arrived. Shavasana: lying on the floor with our eyes closed.
The next day, the sky was so clear that the mountains looked like cardboard cut-outs against the blue. I was amazed to find that my legs, far from aching, felt strong. We headed to Pointe de la Masse, at 2,804m high, my spirits soaring as the gondola rose. The Massif des Écrins, clearer than an Etch A Sketch, stretched out before us. What followed was the best morning of skiing that I, a relative novice, had ever managed to produce. I followed my instructor painlessly down red runs that had previously caused my legs to tremble.
I began to view yoga like a smear test: not particularly pleasant when it’s happening, but a necessary discomfort. If it took a yoga class to improve my skiing, I’d do it all over again. The scores on the doors? Yoga: 3, Ski: 1,000.
Yogiski takes place in Les Menuires from 6–11 April 2025; for more information, visit lesmenuires.com
Read more: Learning to ski as an adult isn’t as scary as you think – here’s why you should try it
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