A PLUME BOOK
TALES FROM THE YOGA STUDIO
RAIN MITCHELL began practicing yoga as a teenager and is currently at work on the second novel in the series. Rains favorite pose is corpse.
PLUME
Published by Penguin Group
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, January 2011
Copyright Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011 All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Mitchell, Rain.
Tales from the yoga studio / Rain Mitchell.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47811-0
1. Women personal trainersFiction. 2. YogaFiction. 3. Female friendshipFiction. I. Title.
PS3613.I8628T36 2011
813.6dc22
2010030045
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To Denise Royextraordinary editor and inspirationI hereby dedicate all of my gratitude poses to you
PART ONE
Its at moments like thiswhen shes put the class through their paces and has them settled back onto their mats in a state of collective peace, contentment, and deep relaxation, when their bodies are glistening with a light sheen of sweat, when the afternoon sun is glinting off the end of the Silver Lake Reservoir, which she can see through the wall of windows she and Alan had installed on the southern side of the studio, when all seems temporarily right with the worldthat Lee starts craving a cigarette.
Inhale through your nose into whatever traces of tension youre still holding on to, and sigh it all out through your mouth, she says. Let it go.
The craving is just a ghost from the past that visits her from time to time, drops in from the years of misguided study and too much stress at Columbia University Medical Center, when, like a quarter of the students, she would rush out to 165th Street from a lecture on emphysema, abnormal cell growth, or heart disease, light up, and huddle against the buildings in the gray dampness of those New York afternoons.
One more long, luxurious inhalation, one more compete exhalation.
And that wasnt even the worst of her behavior. Thankfully, those days of rote memorization, trying to prove something to her impossible mother, always feeling as if shed stepped onto the wrong flight and was hurtling toward an unknown destination, are long past and gone for good. No regrets, no second-guessing.
The fact that on the night Alan moved his stuff into a friends spare room, unannounced, explaining only that he needed some space to get his head together, she stopped at the convenience store on her way home from the studio and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights was a blip on the radar screen. Shed rather give herself some slack and say she wasnt in her right mind that night. Om shanti, Yoga Lady, the Indian store clerk had said ironically, rubbing in the contradiction.
Theyre for a friend, shed lied, which made it even worse somehow.
She smoked only two and was about to throw the pack out before she considered how expensive cigarettes have become in the past ten years (who knew?) and told herself it was a horrible waste of money to dump them. She locked them in the glove compartment. Maybe shed pass them out to a few homeless people. Except wasnt that like handing out lung disease? Talk about bad karma. So now she didnt know what to do with them except leave them safely out of reach until she figured out the best course of action.
How long has she had the class in savasana?
She watches fifteen rib cages rise and fall in unison in the beautiful golden afternoon light, ignores one awkwardly timed erection courtesy of BrianBoner, as Katherine and a few students refer to him, he of the white spandex yoga pantsand closes her own eyes. If she thinks herself into it, she can get a contact high from the class. A deep breath in, a long breath out, a reminder that even if life has suddenly gotten way more complicated in the past few weeks, even if for the momentmight as well face itit kind of sucks, its still better than it was back in those dark New York, failing-med-student days in her twentiesbefore Alan, before the twins, before Los Angeles. Before yoga.
She opens her eyes and sees that shes run seven minutes over. Fourth time this week. Or is it the fifth?
She brings the class back, has them sit up cross-legged, and then, with the sudden feeling of warmth and tenderness for all of them that inevitably comes over her at this point in class, she says, Take this feeling with you, wherever youre headed. This calm is there for you when you need it. If something totally unexpected comes up, dont let it knock the wind out of you. You cant control the other people in your life. But you can control your reactions to them. You cant predict what the hell theyre going to do all of a sudden, out of nowhere, with no advance warning, just when you think everything is running so smoothly and perfectly, and then... Uh-oh. Have a really great afternoon, folks. Dont get bent out of shape. Namaste.
