I’ve had a home yoga practice for half my life. Started learning when I was 28. My practice is the one intentionally fitness-oriented activity I do on a regular basis, and probably the one reason I am not a hobbling wreck after so many years sitting in a task chair.
Yoga was also a career option for a while. I got certified as a personal trainer a dozen years ago (at the same time I was doing my ballroom teacher training), and seriously considered it as a path to leaving behind the task chair. However, the husband is self-employed, and having two such people in the household was simply too risky. So … still in the task chair.
But I learned a lot, which is never a bad thing, and as with everything else I’ve ever even experimented with, yoga has made its way into my stories.
photo below by wee lee @weelee on unsplash.com, with thanks.
photo credit: wee lee @weelee unsplash.com
Pretty much every one of my characters who’s a performer (and there are a lot of them) does yoga as part of their health and fitness protocol. Many of the non-performers do too. And a few characters teach yoga.
The first of those to appear was Kevin Park, whose story Breathing Space appears in the collection FROM THE ASHES.
His friend and colleague Karen Scott (LIFT) followed in short order.
And then there’s Willem van der Meer (TAKE EVERYTHING).
Kevin is a painter who chose yoga as a profession that wouldn’t interfere with his art. Karen was a ballet student who stepped sideways into kinesiology and got her yoga instructor certification after a family tragedy. Willem was a professional performer, who secured the same qualifications as Karen because he knew eventually he’d have to leave the stage.
Willem’s book was the latest-written, and I had to re-work the earlier novellas to account for him. The thing about interconnected stories like mine (not sequential; you really don’t have to read all of them in order to make sense of one of them) is that they occur within a community. None of these people exist in a vacuum.
Any given story doesn’t tell the reader about every single other person in the main characters’ lives. But there are always certain people who touch our lives more closely than others. A friend we make at work can become a close friend in a short time, because 1. it’s a guaranteed common frame of reference and 2. we spend a lot of time with our co-workers. Thus, when Kevin realizes he needs someone to talk to, and Karen is right there, discovering they like each other is a bonus. When Willem decides it’s time to stabilize his work life and gets a job at the same studio where Karen works, it’s only natural that they become friends too.
The three yoga-centric stories (so far) might appeal to three different readers. Kevin is 50 when his story begins; his lover Paul is 54. Karen is twenty years younger than Kevin. Zach, her love interest in LIFT, is in his mid-thirties when they get involved. Willem is also in his mid-thirties. A M/M story featuring men in their fifties, one of whom has already lost a long-term partner, may not be for the same reader as a M/M story featuring men in their thirties, both with addictions. And a M/F story may appeal to readers who don’t want to go near those others.
That’s the thing about a community, though. It includes all kinds of people. And, as we say here and there, romance is for everyone.