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folded a blanket and placed it under her kneecaps, then positioned her palms on the floor underneath her shoulders. “As you inhale, extend your spine, lengthening it from the crown of your head to the tip of your tailbone.”
    Alicia’s spine grew subtly longer. “As you exhale, pull in your belly and move your hips back toward your heels.” She moved her hips
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    toward her feet, bent her elbows, and rested her forehead on the
    floor in a position called Child’s Pose.
    I continued coaching her. “On your next inhale, come back to
    hands and knees. Keep your elbows soft and your belly lightly en-
    gaged. Continue this motion, linking every movement with your
    breath. Each inhale, return to hands and knees; each exhale, fold back to Child’s Pose.”
    As Alicia moved, her breath became slower and subtly deeper;
    the chemo-induced stiffness eased from her joints; the tired-looking wrinkles diminished around her eyes. I would even have sworn
    that her prana—yoga’s invisible life-force energy—grew stronger.
    Alicia didn’t have much stamina, so I kept our practice short.
    But that didn’t make it any less powerful. By the time I rang the chimes at the end of our session, she seemed utterly transformed.
    She looked lighter—softer somehow. The circles under her eyes
    were less pronounced; a slight smile graced her lips. Our time together fed her in ways more powerful than food, rest, or a cabinet full of prescription medication ever could. Working with Alicia reminded me why, in spite of its challenges, I loved my profession.
    We said our goodbyes as Alicia reached for the door. She
    paused after opening it, looking confused.
    “Didn’t you lock up before we started?”
    “I thought so, but the door must have stuck. It’s been giving us
    some trouble lately.”
    Alicia pushed, pulled, and rattled the handle in a futile effort to lock it. “Kate, I wish you had told me. This isn’t safe. I’ll have Jake come by tomorrow to take a look.”
    Oh no, not Jake. I resisted an urge to hide behind the display of yoga blocks. Even the thought of spending time alone with Alicia’s husband, Jake the Jerk, made the hair on my arms stand up.
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    OK, so his last name wasn’t actually “the Jerk.” I added that
    part. To be honest, I’d never liked Jake, or his dark brown goatee, for that matter. But until recently, I hadn’t seen him very often.
    All that changed the day Alicia received her diagnosis. She quit her full-time job as property manager to become a full-time cancer
    fighter. Jake hired himself as her replacement.
    I had no idea what Alicia saw in Jake, but she wasn’t alone. My
    female students used adjectives like gorgeous, funny, interesting, and intelligent to describe him. I used words like sleazy and used car salesman. He stood a little too close, touched a little too much, and volunteered to come by afterhours a little too often for my
    comfort.
    So when the toilet overflowed, the heat stopped working, or
    anything else in the studio broke down, I did whatever I could to avoid calling him. I would have rather waded through waist-high
    raw sewage than spend an hour alone with that man. Dealing with
    a finicky front door was nothing.
    “Don’t worry about it, Alicia. All you have to do is jiggle it to the right, push quickly to the left, then pull it out and snap! There it goes, right into place!” For once the gods were with me. Right on cue, the door finally latched shut.
    Alicia looked skeptical.
    “Honestly, it’s no trouble at all.” I fibbed. Fixing that door had been on my to-do list for weeks. “Please don’t bother Jake. I know he’s busy, and I don’t want him wasting his free time over here.”
    Alicia furrowed her brow. “Well, I don’t know … I’d feel re-
    sponsible if something happened.”
    “Seriously, it hardly ever causes problems. Maybe it’s extra hu-
    mid today.” I kept talking before she could reply. “I promise, if it causes any more trouble at all,