Tales from the Yoga Studio

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

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. Rain's favorite pose is corpse.

PLUME

Published by Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Books (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

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 TRADEMARK—MARCA 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 trainers—Fiction. 2. Yoga—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.I8628T36 2011

813'.6—dc22

2010030045

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

 

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

I
t's at moments like this—when she's 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 world—that Lee starts craving a cigarette.

“Inhale through your nose into whatever traces of tension you're 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 wasn't even the worst of her behavior. Thankfully, those days of rote memorization, trying to prove something to her impossible mother, always feeling as if she'd 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 friend's 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. She'd rather give herself some slack and say she wasn't in her right mind that night. “
Om shanti
, Yoga Lady,” the Indian store clerk had said ironically, rubbing in the contradiction.

“They're for a friend,” she'd 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 she'd pass them out to a few homeless people. Except wasn't that like handing out lung disease? Talk about bad karma. So now she didn't 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 Brian—“Boner,” as Katherine and a few students refer to him, he of the white spandex yoga pants—and 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 moment—might as well face it—it kind of sucks, it's still better than it was back in those dark New York, failing-med-student days in her twenties—before Alan, before the twins, before Los Angeles. Before yoga.

She opens her eyes and sees that she's 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 you're headed. This calm is there for you when you need it. If something totally unexpected comes up, don't let it knock the wind out of you. You can't control the other people in your life. But you can control your reactions to them. You can't predict what the hell they're 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. Don't get bent out of shape.
Namaste
.”

D
idn't I tell you she was the best yoga teacher in L.A.?”

This is Stephanie, crowing in her loud and endearingly hyperbolic style to the friend she brought with her to the studio this afternoon. Stephanie can't help it; brash hyperbole is what has made her successful in film development. Or so she's told Lee. When it comes to the movie business, Lee has learned to filter out the superlatives, lop eighty-five percent off most claims, divide by two, and then believe any of it only when she's seen the film on Netflix.