Back then, Dimitri’s pressure-cooker coaching style made sense: winners work hard, and we wanted to win. Even if Sara’s philosophy is a little new age for me, I hear what she’s saying. Listen to your body; connect to your body; honor your body. Push yourself when you can, and rest when you need to. It goes against everything I was raised with, but in hindsight, maybe Dimitri should have been softer with us. More forgiving. Less intense. After all, I worked hard all the time, just like he wanted me to, and I still didn’t win. I don’t regret the way gymnastics shaped my life, but I do wonder if the few fleeting moments in the spotlight were worth the lifetime of pain I know I have ahead of me.
I take a deep breath. Sara’s hands have drifted away from me; she’s moved on to another student. I concentrate on doing a mental scan of my body. I feel the spongy surface of the yoga mat under my fingertips and the center of my forehead, and I can sense the thin sheen of sweat between my breasts. The soft curve of my belly rests against my thighs, and my hips hinge backward in a comfortable stretch. My feet are tucked under my bottom, and when I wriggle my toes against the mat, I feel the sensation flex all the way up my legs. More than anything, I feel present, and that makes a sob escape from my throat. It’s mortifying to cry here, but somehow, I don’t think anyone will mind.
For years, I ignored physical pain and warped my desires into discipline. I controlled my body with the sheer strength of my mind. Maybe now it’s time to turn all that around—to let my mind dictate the way my body moves. On my next exhale, I transition into downward dog—my calves feel warm and loose this time around, even as a tear rolls down my cheek and mixes with my sweat. I kneel for a moment to wipe my tears with the hem of my tank top and drink in the cool water that’s been waiting for me all practice. I do a sun salutation to catch up to the rest of the group. The simple way my breath and my movements sync up makes me feel airy, light, strong, and yes, powerful.
I make it through the next twenty minutes without taking a break, but I wouldn’t mind if I needed to. It’s strange—I didn’t realize I’d come so far. I mimic Sara’s movements as she leads the class from a one-legged balance to core-strengthening exercises to half-pigeon pose, which stretches out your hip flexors like taffy. In the final few minutes of the class, she asks us to lie down on our backs with our eyes closed in shavasana. She walks softly around the room with a bottle of lavender essential oil, dropping a dot of it on each of our shoulders.
“I’m going to close out the class with a few words of wisdom from the poet and activist Audre Lorde, and the song of the Tibetan singing bowl,” Sara says softly. The little noises around the studio—coughs, sighs, slurps from water bottles—grow still in anticipation. “ ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.’ ”
Then the melodic sound of the Tibetan singing bowl resonates and spirals throughout the room, growing and growing until Sara strikes the bowl and it clangs to a stop.
“You can stay in shavasana until you’re ready to rise again,” she says simply.
I let myself sink into the mat. Energy swirls through my body, but my limbs feel heavy with relaxation. I hadn’t wanted to give into Sara’s woo-woo, spiritual sort of stretching, but even I have to admit that it felt kind of, well, nice. The combination of exertion and mindfulness makes me drift off into thoughts about the ways in which gymnastics shaped my relationship to my body: my body image, my insistence of pushing through pain, the distant way I regarded my physical self first and foremost as a tool. Over the years, I’ve tried not to think about it too much. But here, it’s impossible to avoid.
Suddenly, Sara is squatting next to me. “How’d you like the class?” she asks.
I crane my neck to look at the clock at the back of the room. Five minutes have passed, and the rest of the class has already rolled up their yoga mats and filed out of the studio.
“It was… wow.” That’s all I can manage.
“You think you’ll come back again?” she asks.
Sunlight pours into the studio through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and I get a startlingly clear vision of myself returning to this spot again and again. I could do this, couldn’t I? I feel peaceful here, similarly to the way I relax when I cook. The steady movement of the class meant my mind never wandered off to Ryan, Hallie, or even the terrible scandal in the news. Instead, I had no choice but to focus on the flow between poses, my breath, and the sound of Sara’s voice. It’s not a stretch to see how I could develop a craving for this, unwinding here at the studio after a long day at Summit. And if just one session already feels transformative for me, I can only imagine how it could help Hallie. Maybe this is exactly what she needs to rein in the anxiety she’s felt lately.
“Yeah, I’ll be back. And next time, there’s someone else I’d like to bring, too.”
• CHAPTER 15 •
Hallie wrinkles her nose when I tell her about my idea at the end of practice on Monday.
“Yoga? I mean, I already do so much,” she says, looking skeptical.
She’s cross-legged on the floor of the changing room, stretching the white thigh-high socks she got at her friend’s Sweet Sixteen, embroidered with the girl’s initials, up her legs. The thick socks strain over her muscular calves, though, and barely graze her knees. She gives a final tug and gives up. I bet the party wasn’t as fun as she expected it to be; she probably had to say no to the cake and head home early to stick to her sleep schedule.
“But what if you could have private yoga lessons here at the gym?” I counter. “Barely any extra work on your part, and I think it’ll help reduce stress over the next few months.”
“I’m not stressed,” she snaps.
She looks wild, with a cloud of frizz escaping her ponytail at the temples. But then her expression softens. She must understand, on some level, how that’s just not true.
“I’ll try it once,” she agrees. “If Ryan thinks it’s a good idea, too.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I promise.
Hallie shoves her feet into sneakers, stands up, and slings her gym bag over her shoulder.
When she turns to walk away, I catch a glimpse of what’s on her screen. I recognize it because I saw it, too, earlier that day—Delia Cruz’s Instagram encouraging her followers to donate to RAINN, a nonprofit that supports sexual assault survivors. Hallie’s broad shoulders look small and slumped as she disappears around the corner and heads outside to her mom’s waiting car.
I know Ryan’s still inside, probably cleaning up alone. All the other classes and team practices have wrapped up for the night, and the rest of the coaches have headed home. The lobby is empty by now, too; the usual rows of Lululemon moms playing games on their phones have cleared out of the plastic folding chairs. I head back into the gym to find Ryan and talk to him about setting Hallie up with yoga lessons.
Sure enough, I find him in the back corner of the main part of the gym, cleaning chalk dust and sweat off crash mats with a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels. He’s changed the music from its usual Top 40 radio station to what must be his own classic rock playlist.
“Hey, what are you doing back here?” he says, spritzing a mat with soapy water.