Light Summer Reading While You Wait For Your Next Yoga Workshop To Begin

The ladies from Edendale Yoga Studio have returned in Rain Mitchell’s new book Head Over Heels. Although their professional successes have led them in different directions since we first met in last year’s Tales From The Yoga Studio, they each return to support their lovable, yet flawed yoga teacher.

Set in the Los Angeles, Silver Lake area, studio owner Lee is known and loved for her small quaint studio. What the student’s don’t know is the pressure she’s under to stay afloat amongst rock star yogi’s and mega-yoga festivals. Lee tries to find the balance between intimate classes and expanding her studio without falling too deeply into the trendy trap of hybrid yoga classes, incense burning and tracking coconut water sales.

“…coconut water is a little like Lady Gaga: one day completely unheard of, and the next so ubiquitious it’s dizzying.”

Author Rain Mitchell (pseudonym for author Stephen McCauley) does an excellent job of poking fun at the commercialization of yoga studios and placing a mirror in front of yogi’s caught up in getting a spot in the front row of the latest yoga hybrid craze.

“Yoga plus or minus is how Lee describes them… Yoga merged with ballet. Disco Yoga. Piloga. Katherine suspects Yoga on Ice will be next, but for all she knows it already exists.”

Head Over Heels is a lighthearted look at the LA yoga scene, the good, the bad and the ironic.

“If there isn’t a twelve-step program devoted to asana addiction there should be, especially since for some it’s turned into a competitive sport.”

Although Head Over Heels won’t ever be confused with the yoga philosophy books read in yoga teacher trainings, it is a quick easy read when your brain needs a break from the seriousness of yoga and you are ready to have some fun and a few laughs. Because we could all use a bit more laughter in our yoga.

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Editor: Kate Bartolotta.