If You Give A Yoga Teacher A Cookie...

A bit about bravery, fate, and those who embrace weirdness

Instead of paying to rent a graduation cap and gown and processing to receive my Master’s Degree, I bought myself a gym membership. It was early fall 2005, and the completion of this program meant I would suddenly be overwhelmed with free time. I had been working 40 hours a week, and studying 24 hours a week, and now rather than spending evenings crouched in front of a book and my computer, I was faced with unstructured adulthood.

What do grown ups do in the evenings? Watch Law and Order?

I wasn’t sure, but I felt that I needed a better plan than boob tube, and so instead of paying $550/month for the loving distraction of graduate school, I paid $30/month for access to 24 Hour Fitness, which was always open, a promise I was grateful to pay for. They had yoga classes, fitness classes, a pool I never entered, a weight room that perplexed me, and rows of machines where you could park yourself in front of a dozen TVs and run from your demons without getting lost on the way.

It was a good thing I joined when I did, because I also soon lost my job AND my boyfriend deployed for a year in the sandbox, and unstructured time engulfed me. My life became a metered dance of daily gym classes, job searching, and library visiting. My house was freakishly spotless - the truest sign of a misspent life.

In three weeks, I found a new 40 hour commitment and exited free fall, but still found that there was so much time. I was dripping with time in an era before social media offered to daub it up, and I did my best to fill it with classes. I think there were three weekly yoga classes at the time (I don’t recall, but Stacy will), and I went to all of them as though it was my religion. Steven taught once a week, when he wasn’t working on secret spy planes. He was kind and enthusiastic and often invented Sanskrit-like words to describe poses. Kathleen once told us that she was about to turn 40, which was perplexing given that she looked not one minute older than my 24 year old self.

On days when I felt swallowed by emptiness, I would take Pilates, too.

Pilates as a practice does not speak to me, but the instructor did. I can’t recall her name (but again, I’m sure Stacy will… Janice? Julie?), but after class she stood by the exit and handed out a scrap of paper with a little intention she had written, and offered hugs, and not the obligatory sort, but the genuine. It was worth suffering through an hour of mat Pilates to receive her gifts.