Chapters (47)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Epigraphs
- Prologue
- Part One
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- Part Two
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
At the end of class she’d collect her ten bucks from each participant. She hated that yoga was yoked to money, but she was barely scraping by. Maybe it was the money collecting that began to erode her love for yoga, or maybe it was her students. Travelers to the beach destinations were mostly wealthy middle-aged people who used the word “blessed” too much. The truth was they weren’t blessed, they were privileged. They could afford to stay in fancy resorts and boutique hotels, while the people who actually worked in these places had to sleep in huts, the backs of vans, crappy apartments above souvenir shops, or in tents.
Poppy began to resent how hard it had become to find a place that was truly authentic, beautiful, and cheap—all the best beaches had been monopolized by the travel industry and catered to women in tight-fitting, eighty-dollar Lululemon tanks and butt-hugging Lycra yoga pants, and men in shirts with country club insignias. But it seemed that the more she resented her students, the more they liked her. They thought she was living the life they didn’t have the guts to live, when what scared Poppy most was their lives of responsibility and commitment.
Who was she to tell these people to make space inside themselves with their breath, while she was wondering if this was really possible. Wasn’t breathing just breathing? Did prana even exist? She’d talk about the light in herself connecting to the light in her students, even though she knew she’d be forgotten as soon as their plane touched down in Cleveland or Bismarck or San Antonio. It seemed navel-gazey to devote so much time and energy to self-improvement—this had nothing to do with healing.
The hard questions, the ones she used to keep at bay with weed, beer fogs, and meditation, grew more persistent. Could she do this forever, or would she end up like Burl? Should she call home? Visit her parents? Try to make peace with Ann and get to know Noah? Her dad said they weren’t even in Milwaukee anymore; Ann finally got her wish and moved to Boston.
Go-time. Poppy decided to pack up her things and move to Panama. It seemed the more she moved, the more she felt like she was standing still. But if that was the case, how come she saw an older, startling version of herself whenever she snuck a peek at her reflection in the window of a parked VW van?