Most late Sunday afternoons, I do a double yoga class. Regulars call it “church”, our Sunday ritual. The second class is basically lying down, and if you don’t leave high on Zen and vibes, you haven’t done it right.

Leaving on Sunday, I started walking to my sister’s house. It was the first night of Hanukah, the Jewish festival of lights, and we were going to celebrate with family and friends. I’m non-practising in a religious sense, but I love a good cultural ritual, especially one involving doughnuts and fried potatoes.

I had barely walked 100 metres when I heard a barrage of bangs, and people started running and yelling.

“There’s a shooter!”

“Run! There’s a shooter.”

My yoga studio is opposite Bondi Pavilion.

I started running back, hoping someone was still there. Falling and skidding across the building’s courtyard, a woman helped me up, and we ran together. Knocking on church’s door, I announced my name, and an angel hurried us in. Apparently, yoga teachers remain calm and comforting in crisis.

There were others there too, wide-eyed and ashen-faced. There were women from yoga, women not from yoga, a mother and her teens, four food app delivery drivers and a young man with a toddler whose wife was locked in the supermarket below the studio – a motley and terror-struck crew.

“This doesn’t happen here,” the woman who helped me when I fell kept saying through panicking breaths, her American accent barely........

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