A new chapter in yoga: why the Society of Authors is reaching out (on one leg)

More used to wrangling over contracts and offering grants to writers in need, the Society of Authors is suddenly getting into yoga. All last week it was challenging authors and readers to strike a pose and post it on Twitter, ideally inspired by a favourite book.

On Tuesday, Joanne Harris encouraged followers to adopt a yoga position somehow inspired by The Hobbit, and SoA pulled out a real life yoga expert to show off her “flying lizard” moves. On Wednesday, Philip Pullman decided that Pride and Prejudice was the book to yoga to, and the yogini did “the dancer pose” on a doorstep. “I’m sure the great lady would recognise her story at once,” tweeted Pullman. On Thursday, Neil Gaiman asked fans to create a pose inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, inspiring the expert to demonstrate a (Babel) “fish” pose, beneath a heap of books in SoA’s offices. Gaiman did not recreate it himself, to the disappointment of some fans.

Top posts by enthusiastic members of the public have included a young child inventing a pose inspired by Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, a Welsh Cob horse inexplicably pulling off a “dying lizard” position, and many drawings and poems demonstrating verbal, rather than physical, dexterity. The best response on each day won a book signed by the author who thought up the particular book-yoga combo.

Yoga week is in aid of promoting the work of SoA, a trade union for more than 10,000 writers, illustrators and literary translators that counts its members’ physical and mental health as a priority. “We’ve created the resource in response to the many professional requests for help from members, which are often linked to or exacerbated by wider concerns,” says a spokesman

As Gaiman explains: “It’s a gloriously silly competition but makes a very real point. Writers don’t stretch enough, we don’t exercise enough, we don’t always look after our bodies as we should, while we work with our minds and our fingers. Anything that reminds us to take care of the bits that carry the mind is a very good thing indeed.”

So next time you feel down, try doing a downward facing dog while reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, or a crow pose while enjoying some Ted Hughes. And if you really need cheering up, imagine Philip Pullman doing it alongside you.