The ping of a small brass gong pulls us gently back up through limbic layers. The breathing deepens, the sound of chanting still echoing, to the exclusion of all bothersome thought.

Limbs return to slow life. Folding back the blankets of our chrysalis, we draw in sticky wings and then roar like charging lions and our yogamama has us shake out fingers, wrists and tingling forearms and wave our hands in the air like Good News Mexicans. Someone murmurs hallelujah. Yogamama tells us of the class she runs in the Jewish care home.

Vital signs all but extinguished, cast-off human carapaces line the walls in ticking-over silence.

Words may all have seeped away, everything tastes of stale toast, voices are a jumbled blur and shapes and lights flicker and confuse, but the touch of a hand still comforts and music will lift the heart's puppet-strings. They wave their hands as the music gathers speed and memories surge into fire - wedding dances, stamping, clapping, skirts whirling, Hava Nagila swaying, desert nights, starlight, youth, hope and freedom, futures of their collective pasts.

Shakers, bells and rattles are pressed into arthritic claws and the eager percussion section swells to fill the Albert Hall. Steadied by third world carers, first world detritus stirs from chairs and throws lost decades into the corner. The music swifter now and ever more compelling the shaking and the stomping and the Zimmering.

The eminent visiting psychiatrist from New York looks around for an instrument and settles back, a bed-pan drum to hand. Besuited, bespectacled and bearded, he is won over by the moment of communal awakening. Not a single soul is untouched by the vibrations and the rushing blood.

The tall black cook leads a kitchen conga through the hall, Black and White Marigold hands glistening aloft.