Sasha laughed softly. "Nothing they can't handle," she assured. "Hey, I know you're busy, I just wanted to see if Studio Three was empty for awhile."
"It's all yours," replied Callista. "Nobody's got anything scheduled in there at all today. So have at it."
"Thanks." Sasha gave the clerk a grateful little pat on the shoulder.
Unlike a few of the other teachers here at the studio, who tended to treat the support staff like - well, support staff - Sasha was always mindful of treating everyone with kindness and appreciation. It was just one of the reasons that she was not only the most popular teacher among her students but among the staff as well.
Studio Three was the smallest of the trio of practice spaces here at SF Flow, designed to hold no more than twenty students. The room was used mostly for private and semi-private sessions that some of the teachers offered, as well as the workshops and lectures that were presented on a regular basis at the studio.
And it was where Sasha often retreated for her own personal yoga practice, a place where she could easily spend two to three hours at a time. During the classes she taught, she actually spent very little time actually practicing yoga herself, except to demonstrate a pose here and then. Most of the time she was busy making her way around the crowded room, ensuring that her students were doing the poses correctly, and making adjustments to their alignments as necessary.
These sessions served a dual purpose - not only allowing her to enjoy her own practice, but also to plan out sequences for future classes. Her bedroom at the multi-level Victorian home that she shared with four other roommates was much too compact for the space she needed to do her practice. And there was no other suitable space in the old house, considering that her landlords - married couple Chad and Julio (for whom she'd also been a member of their wedding party) - subscribed to the belief that more must always be better. As a result, nearly every room of the historic old Victorian was crammed full of furniture, mirrors, paintings, and a great deal of assorted bric-a-brac.
And these private sessions were also a time when she could completely immerse herself in the beauty and flow of the ancient practice she'd devoted her life to, accompanied by an inspiring music track.
Sasha would be the first to admit that she was both technologically challenged, and rather hopelessly detached from much of mainstream society. She didn't own a computer, and barely knew how to send and receive emails on the cell phone she mainly used to store her extensive music files. She disliked most television shows, and the only time she went to the movie theater was to see a documentary or occasionally a classic film. She preferred reading or listening to music or attending art exhibits, in addition to taking long walks and hikes.
As the daughter of a musician - her father Enzo was a member of one of Brazil's most popular samba groups - Sasha had both music and dance running through her veins. For her yoga classes, she was known to play an extremely eclectic variety of music - everything from Indian classical to jazz to reggae and rock - and her students constantly pleaded with her to post the diverse playlists on her Facebook page or website. Problem was Sasha had neither a Facebook account nor a website, and zero desire to create either one. But she was always happy to share her music with her students and other teachers, and pleased that they enjoyed the variety of genres as much as she did.
As her limber, slender body - toned and strong and leanly muscled from so many years of both yoga and dance training - began to move through the physically demanding practice, she lost herself in the music as one track segued into the next. Anoushka Shankar gave way to Jason Mraz, then to the Gipsy Kings and Stevie Ray Vaughn. And, of course, the tracks were peppered here and there with selections from her father's vast catalog of songs that he and his band had recorded over the past three and a half decades. She was half-Brazilian, after all, and had spent a good part of her life in South America, so the music was in her blood.
The practice she put herself through was much more difficult and demanding than anything she would actually teach to a class. The arm balances, handstands, intricate twisting and binding poses, and the complex choreography of the flow were all very advanced postures, ones that only a very skilled practitioner could hope to achieve. She preferred to practice with others, thriving on the energy that could only be generated by the shared breath and movement of other practitioners. But since she rarely had time nowadays to attend a class taught by one of her old teachers, or even attend a training workshop, these solitary sessions had to suffice.