article originally published in Medium.com, May 17, 2022.

Warning: I cannot use their real names as these events are recent enough that those mentioned are still famous.

Okay, I’ll call them *Hawk and *Roberta. Not their real names, but of respect and legality, those will have to suffice.

He’s the son of an actor who did pretty well with a long-running sitcom, and Hawk is handsome enough, even in Los Angeles where conventional good looks are as ubiquitous as skyline haze.

Hawk doesn’t have the sultry, steamy looks of say, Zayn Malik. Nor the overt male charisma of Jason Derulo, but Hawk is comely enough, and certainly fancies himself devastatingly gorgeous. He’s also talented enough — but again, this is a city where some random guy sweeping the floor at Gelson’s can be found singing a heart-stopping rendition of the Chi Lites “Oh Girl,” to no one but distracted shoppers. Los Angeles is a town where on any given day, you might see and hear a young woman playing awesome drums on the Santa Monica bluffs, or an opera singer belting out a magnificent aria for free on the Third Street Promenade. Talent and looks are often banal parts of every day equipment here. I don’t say this to trigger people, it’s just a fact.

Great talent however is rare, and is usually unmistakable. Most of what passes for talent is relative. In Hawk’s case, relative means exactly that, it’s there, but probably would not have gotten him far without having a famous dad.

Nevertheless, nepotism and some actual talent have gotten him a sprawling house in the Hollywood Hills with a pool, a recording studio, and a genuinely world-class gorgeous, well-educated girlfriend, Roberta.

Roberta is the daughter of a Norwegian mother and a successful African-American lawyer. Roberta went to a top college, wears not a stitch of make-up, and always says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ like she means it. Her skin is like mocha ice cream without a single blemish, and her dazzling, perfect smile is not made of veneers.

Roberta has known Hawk since high-school. He tells me he fell for her in tenth grade and wooed her by singing “Jungle Fever” and doing a boogie-woogie dance for her in the school yard. Roberta is about as far from a jungle dweller as the Queen of England, and in fact Hawk is clearly the more primitive of the two, but I am their private yoga teacher, so I am observing and not judging.

Hawk is quite charming, by the way, in that way of people who are unashamed and even prideful about their own crass behavior. He features his failings openly in a sorry not sorry kind of way, which works as a buffer against any perceived egotism, at least for a while. Roberta laughs and rolls her eyes at his jokes as if she can’t believe she fell for such corny and vaguely insulting moves, but here she is, living with the guy.

Hawk has a cultivated insolence and entitlement that is eye-opening for me. In the middle of yoga class, he screams out to his assistant, “Peter, food!” Peter is another old friend of Hawk’s from high school who he employs and keeps at his beck and call, because, well, he can. In minutes, Peter can be heard scurrying around the kitchen, preparing Hawk’s lunch for immediately after yoga.

Hawk has set up his bubble world beautifully. He lives on a hill high above the hoi polloi of Los Angeles. He is surrounded by adoring friends and lovers who knew him when he was just the wealthy son of a TV star, and have stayed with him through his current run of minor stardom as a singer song-writer.

When Hawk does venture down into the gritty streets of Los Angeles, he wears sunglasses, even into his agent’s office. He confidently tells me all the “secretaries have crushes” on him there, so he can’t linger, lest they become too love-struck to work. He says fans accost him in the small market on Sunset Boulevard where he buys the cigarettes he can’t give up, as well as the occasional morning beer to offset the previous evening’s festivities.

One of the things they don’t teach you in yoga teacher’s training was how much you can understand about someone just by observing them do yoga. It can be difficult watching a student’s internal struggle playing out on the mat, monitoring their pain, both physical and psychological, seeing it blow up to the surface in certain poses.

Sometimes a pose will touch long-repressed trauma held inside little time-capsules of living tissue. Then, like an opened cyst, the toxic material filters its way up to the every day level of consciousness, and can be released in the form of sobbing, yelling, laughter or rage. It can be overwhelming for all concerned. I have often helped people through such experiences. But much more frequently, it’s ego issues that pop up like beach balls held under water. This will happen to pretty much everyone who practices asana with any consistency. As you do more and more yoga and commit to the breathing, it becomes inevitable that at some point you will face your own shadow. As a teacher or a student, you never know what form it will take, so you can’t really warn anyone of this. What would you say?

Despite his hipster persona, Hawk is a rigid authoritarian inside his body. His body is literally half-congealed, immobile, tight, even bowed in some places by habitually tense thoughts turned into hardened flesh. But no matter what, he insists on doing the most extreme version of a pose possible, like a rodeo cowboy trying out for Cirque De Soleil.

Down Dog pose is a form of bowing down to the Universe. As I pressed his hips back to help his hamstrings stretch, Hawk let out a high-pitched screech of pain, causing their mellow Labrador to run into the other room.

Hawk sat down on his mat and glared at me with real malevolence in his eyes, “that hurt,” he said, his expression more pout than grimace. There is no way the stretch I gave him could have physically injured him. We both knew that, but Hawk had dipped into some stored place of fear or anger that he didn’t want touched. He got up, and stormed out of the session.

Roberta smiled at me, “don’t worry, he’ll get over it, let’s just finish class anyway.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked her.

“I like the poses we always do,” she grinned.

“I meant, with your life. You’re smart, beautiful…” The implication being as she well understood, was there something else she might want beyond being Hawk’s girlfriend?

“Honestly?” She asked me.

“What’s your dream? Speak freely while Hawk isn’t in the room.”

“I’m almost thirty years old,” she began apologetically, this being LA, she was convinced she was already too old, “truthfully,” she said, “I‘ve always wanted to act.”

“So, do it!” I said.

“How?” She had an expression that said I must be crazy to start now on her face.

“Maybe Hawk’s agent can send you out on a some auditions? That’s a start.”

So, Roberta began auditioning. Predictably, the first few did not go well. She was nervous, had no experience, could not relax. Her acting coach had told her how to say the lines, but they sounded all wrong when she did them exactly as he had instructed. Hawk’s agent was already starting to balk at sending her on any more appointments.

So, we began intensive yogic breath training. I taught her to find the passion and power of the moment, where all possibility exists. She learned to be present. I told her to memorize her lines nominally, and then forget about the script. Just be in a listening state, I told her. Being is listening. Listening is interesting.

We developed a breathing technique she could do in the bathroom, or in her car before an audition.

Roberta’s ego seamlessly disappeared into listening and watching. In this state, she forgot her looks, her age, or what line she was supposed to say next. She simply responded to the person in the scene with her, whether it was a casting director or another actor. She understood how to do all this so quickly and thoroughly, it became clear that she was an old soul, merely relearning something she already knew.

Roberta’s ego was of a far different type than Hawk’s, and she took to this teaching like a gosling developing wings: it was pure instinct for her.

Hawk, angry at me for digging too deep into his hamstrings, skipped the next month or so of yoga sessions. During that time, Roberta avidly poured herself into understanding meditation, intention, stillness, surrender and listening.

She also started booking parts. The first few acting jobs were small, but within a matter of eight months, she was getting major movie roles. Roberta became a star.

Hawk played the part of the proud adoring, boyfriend, and even for a while, husband. But he was taken off-guard by her success, and things were changing. He wasn’t the star of the family anymore, and it was clear that Roberta’s talent was greater than his. Roberta also wasn’t going to be there every time he screamed like a baby for food or coddling. It wasn’t long before he predictably strayed. As I said, the ego part of person is highlighted in bold letters by yoga.

Hawk’s ego was as tight and constrained as his back muscles and hamstrings. Just like in class, he stormed out of his marriage. On top of that, his career was faltering. He’d had a big hit, but lawsuits soon followed over who had actually written the lyrics. It wasn’t really a very good song, and he couldn’t follow it up.

Hawk tried to get his career back on track. But just as he had in yoga, he pushed too hard and walked away when things didn’t go his way. Eventually, Roberta’s lovely, relaxed, sunny talent eclipsed his moody, angry middling talent, and they parted ways.

It’s poignant for me to see pictures of Hawk in the press. You are connected to anyone you teach yoga to, and always hope the practice has served them well. But I can still see his contracted hamstrings that never fully stretched. Even today, Hawk’s publicist pushes pictures of him with his new wife, a nice girl, I’m sure, but the dollar store version of Roberta at best. He hasn’t had any more hit songs. He looks lost.

Roberta is still a star and a class act.

I saw it all in yoga.