Fear and Yoga in New Jersey

Excerpt Nina was in the middle of yoga nidra with her nine o'clock intermediate class when Debby Jacobs from the ten-thirty beginners ran in. Interrupting yoga nidra, as everyone knew, was a major breach of yoga etiquette. Even a beginner should know better. Nina closed her eyes and allowed herself a deep, long exhalation before deciding how to handle the intrusion. Ginseng candles were lit, Gaelic flute music floated up from the speakers of a portable CD player, and all seven members of the class lay flat on their backs as they imitated corpses. If there was one thing that distinguished Nina's classes from the dozens of other yoga classes available locally, it was the hard-wrought serenity achieved during yoga nidrathe practice of complete relaxationwhich took up the last five minutes of each class. Nina was strict about no giggling or whisperingeven in the classes filled with writers, who never wanted to shut up, ever. It was a time of rest and regeneration. But there she was, Debby Jacobs, bringing all her Russell terrier energy into the studio and positively gyrating with excitement. Nina placed a silencing finger on her lips. Already Anita Banschek had popped open a curious eye. In an exaggerated pretense of civility, or else her interpretation of Marcel Marceau imitating a burglar, Debby tiptoed over. "I really didn't want to interrupt," she said. "I knew you'd be mad. But"she lowered her voice and made the universal gesture for waves, or a snake, maybe"there's a flood in the waiting room." It had been barely three weeks since Nina moved into her new yoga studio, in the swankest part of town, where brick crosswalks set in a herringbone pattern provided safe pedestrian passage for the blond wives and children of the rich men who took off for New York every morning on the 5:58, the 6:27, and the 7:03 to move massive amounts of other people's money around. The shopping district was in one of the older Essex County towns, where, with the exception of a few gaucheries like Dunkin' Donuts, things looked pretty much as they had for decades: parking meters, alleyways between Tudoresque buildings, a movie theater whose old-fashioned marquee was protected by a historic preservation commission, and street planters carefully tended by a committee of shopkeepers. The timeless effect was reinforced by a towering verdigris-edged public clock, the old-fashioned analog kind with hands that swept around in a circle as they counted off the dull suburban hours, paid for by a local jeweler in business for three generations and now part of the township's official logo. The commerce, in this part of town anyway, tended toward goods and services that pampered and cosseted. Except for the contents of one hardware store (specializing in brass house numbers and Ralph Lauren paints) and one deli, there was nothing for sale that anyone could possibly consider a necessity. If, on the other hand, you were looking for candlesticks in the shape of fez-wearing monkeys and were willing to pay $183, you'd come to the right place. But for the occasional thirtyish male with shaved head and tiny glasses tapping away on a screenplay in Starbucks, the district might be a sorority composed of women twenty-five and up. The younger ones jogged after infants perched in special aerodynamically designed chariots. Women a bit older held the tiny peanut buttersmeared hands of toddlers who had known only toys made of wood and natural fibers. Women in their thirties or forties, wearing impossibly small jeans and talking on cell phones, darted into hair salons and therapist offices, running hard to accomplish whatever they could before three oRGalant, Debra is the author of 'Fear and Yoga in New Jersey', published 2008 under ISBN 9780312367251 and ISBN 0312367252.