Morag Warrack, 68, was so shy it took her a year to pluck up the courage to take her first aikido lesson. Now she’s giving them

In 2014, a year into her retirement, Morag Warrack found herself in a village hall in the Surrey hills, surrounded by middle-aged men throwing each other on to the floor. “I was terrified and thought all these blokes would be shocked by an old woman walking in,” she says. “The teacher encouraged me to stay and I realised they were all kind and curious about me being there. That was my first experience of learning aikido.”

At 59, Warrack had recently handed in her resignation as an art teacher at a local girls’ secondary school after becoming exhausted from the demands of the job, as well as caring for two elderly parents. She began filling her free time with painting colourful landscapes and was reading up on mindfulness practices. “The more I looked into mindfulness, the more aikido kept coming up,” she says. “These books were recommending it as a way to connect the mind, body and spirit, as well as a method for better identifying with others.”

Intrigued by how a martial art could cultivate a better state of mind, Warrack found a local class where she could take a beginners’ session. But it was a year before she drummed up the courage to actually attend. “I’ve always been shy,” she says. “I’ve never been especially active either, so after that first session I didn’t go back for three weeks and then I probably didn’t smile for the first few months of sessions.”