The yoga teacher

Your posture is not your fault," he told me, his hand below mine. 

- Ruby Porter

"Push down," he said.

"Push down." Beneath the other.

"Try that side again, hard as you can."

In the mirror, he showed me how my right shoulder was higher than my left, how my head was at a lean, my hips tilted.

"You have scoliosis," he said, "and a pinched nerve. The vertebrae in your neck are locked, except for one joint, which is wobbly. Every time you do your neck exercises, you make it wobblier. Don't feel guilty. These problems developed in childhood. But you need to stop the yoga."

Yoga was a reach. I took a class at Gardenview, the old person's home on the corner, three times a week. Mostly, we hung from the waist, and shoulder circled, and child posed. None of the rooms overlooked a garden. Half of them overlooked the carpark; the dining room we used for yoga, tables pushed against the wall, overlooked the main road. Old person's home was another misnomer. There were two young men sat in front of the TV every day, one twitching, one completely still. There was a third who never seemed to leave his room, but I'd spied him through the open door, bedside table a plastic skyline, empty cups stacked into towers. Then there was Hanny, the girl who came to class every week in her pink flannel pyjamas. One nurse, the nurse with the mole, always apologised. "She didn't want to change today."

At night, I could feel my ribs shifting like tectonic plates as I tried to get comfortable. I felt the familiar earthquake where they met.

"Tell me if it hurts," he said.

It did, but it was good pain.

"I'm loosening up these muscles here," he said, palm against my left shoulder blade. "Every time they've torn, they've healed again, tighter. That's why your spine is curved. Were you in a car accident as a child?"

"No," I said, "my Mum didn't drive."

"Fall out of a tree? Beaten by siblings?"

"Something like that."