A Shane Hollander Crashout
Inspired by real life events (RIP me)
"Hi, I'm Milan," the woman says. Shane turns from the computer where Dan is checking him in for his regular Wedneday yoga class to find a person he's never seen before with long, dark hair and voluminous pants smiling at him. "I'll be your instructor today."
He must make a face, because Dan is quick to reassure him that, "Diana's fine! It was a little last minute change, but Milan is subbing in." Shane knows he should be worried about Diana who, despite her extremely new-agey approach to healthcare, never seems to be sick. But the gears in Shane's brain catch and grind over the change in routine and his first knee-jerk reaction is to slip his sneakers back on and excuse himself from the studio.
In the year he's been coming to the studio, and Diana's classes almost exclusively, it's come to be a place of comfort for him. What started out as some gentle cross-training became a source of genuine pleasure as Shane found that yoga offered a delightful new way to challenge his body. It didn't hurt that the small neighborhood studio was frequented by perhaps the only people in Montreal that paid zero attention to hockey. When he wasn't on the road, Shane spent a couple hours a week at the evening flow for strength classes, making polite chit-chat with people who wanted neither his autograph nor to make plans outside of class. Yoga was, by now, sacred in his routine. Milan is not part of the routine.
"I took this class a few weeks ago, so it should be a very similar vibe to what you're used to," she says, and he gives a tight smile in reply. The chime above the door jingles and a couple more regular attendees walk in and lift their hands in greeting. They seem much more excited than disturbed by Milan's presence, and Shane feels as though the window where it might have been rude but acceptable to bow out has closed. So he takes his water and his mat and starts getting himself set up. He lies on his back and pulls his knee to his chest, breathing and trying to feel the floor under him or whatever and not think about the fact that Milan has left the lights on.
Class begins, and the poses she's throwing out are different than the repetoire he's used to. She skips birddog and has them doing cobra instead of upward-facing dog for some reason so he keeps pushing up too high and having to correct, but it's fine. They do a different sun salutation and he's not keeping track of his breath because he doesn't know the fucking names of all these poses she's saying and has to keep looking up to watch what she's doing. He feels half a step behind in a way he never does using his body, and it's maybe making him more tense than he was before class started.
Before class started, he was already pretty fucking tense. Theirault is being an idiot about their suffering penalty kill, ignoring the problems Shane has pointed out in tape review. He's being a dick to JJ about it instead, so Shane's also pissed on his friend's behalf. And to top it off, Hayden's been busy every moment they're not at the rink for days now - too busy even for Shane to hang around the house with him and the kids. Going to yoga was going to give him a chance to work off some of the irritation, but as the time ticks past twenty minutes and they are still doing gentle stretching, Shane feels his jaw twitch.
"And now turn to the back of your mat and lie on your back," Milan says. Shane follows the instruction, but it grates. They are facing the wrong way. Diana always tells them they can lie facing whatever way they want and Shane can lie down the correct way. Clear instructions of what to do with his body is a nice side benefit of yoga. There's no more decisions to make, just technique to perfect, and steady breathing to maintain. Too much to focus on in his body for other thoughts to creep in. He's not used to getting instructions he does not want to follow.
"We're going to let that stretch settle in the body with a brief mid-practice shavasana." He's seeing red. What does she mean? Let what settle - they've barely done anything! And he knows it's not the professional athlete in him talking because he has literally watched Emma stand on her head "for fun". He survives with gritted teeth, staring at the ceiling, and then gets up and diligently follows the remaining instructions. It's maybe going to be okay. It's not a good class. It's not what he needed. He'll be fine though. Until.
"Please take any pose you like on your way into shavasana to close our practice with a meditation. We'll be here for the last ten minutes or so." TEN MINUTES??? He's going to scream. The last thing he wants is ten minutes of lying still and listening to fucking atmospheric music. He wants to feel strain in his hips and burn in his thighs and the delicious release of that awful tension between his shoulder blades. He wants to breathe into where it hurts and feel it be soothed as he gets stronger, better. With an attempt at a deep, calming breath, Shane does something he almost never does and goes off script.
As he settles into child's pose, he feels his hips and shoulders stretch satisfyingly, and his forehead pressed to the mat starts to calm him. It's fine. Diana always tells them they can spend the last part of class however they're comfortable. Shavasana is traditional, but Shane noticed nearly all of the regulars do some variation, and this is one of the few rest poses that he really likes. He'll just stay here while she does her stupid meditation and he'll try really hard not to think about the penalty kill or what Ilya Rozanov might think of his fondness for hip-opening poses.
"No rush, but whenever you are ready, make your way onto your back and we will begin our meditation." Shane tenses. No way. This is not happening. Shane looks up, and the rest of the class is already lying down. That was for him. She's waiting. She's actually making him do it. He considers telling her he just doesn't want to. Considers rolling up his mat and going home right the fuck now. But he doesn't know her at all and if she'll push back or get upset or if Diana will hear and be upset with him. So he gets on his back.
She starts leading them into the mediation, and somewhere between tensing and relaxing all the muscles in his left leg and taking a deep breath into his belly, Shane realizes he's going to cry. Actually he's kind of already crying, but because he's lying on his back with his eyes closed the tears aren't really going anywhere. His throat is tight and his lashes are wet, and as his breaths come shorter, he realizes he needs to make it fucking stop. He can't though. The longer he lies there, the more frustrated he is that he's being made to do it. He acts like he's itching his eye to wipe some of the moisture away and hopes Milan doesn't say anything to him because he can't answer without sobbing and humiliating himself.
The minutes are agonizing. He can't calm down enough to get rid of the lump in his throat and is only managing to stave off tears by biting the inside of his mouth - lips, cheeks, tongue, anything he can get teeth on - and forcefully thinking of his grocery list. She lets them sit up again and he zones out the closing of the class and is the first person off their mat and back to the shoe rack. He takes his phone off airplane mode and checks his texts just long enough that a couple other people make their way over so it doesn't look like he's sprinting away from the class, but then he takes off with a, "Thanks, bye," over his shoulder and starts walking towards his building as fast as he can just to use his body for something.
He flips his sunglasses down as he loses some control over the tears finally. They don't slip down his cheeks, but he's sniffling. Shane puts his head down and fervently hopes he won't be recognized in the ten minutes it'll take him to get home. He's pretty sure he's about to start earnestly crying, when he hits a don't walk sign and looks across the other side of the intersection to see the walk signal leading right to a corner store. He crosses just to keep having forward momentum, but pulls up short at the vending machine outside.
The ginger ale is pleasantly cold in the palm of his hand, and when he cracks it open and takes a swig, the familiar fizz and sweetness washes the lump out of his throat. He drinks the whole can by the time he reaches his block and feels less upset but definitely still restless. The can clinks into the recycling bin on the corner, and Shane keeps walking, faster, faster, until he realizes he wants to run. All that anger he'd wanted to force out of his muscles and into the mat is still inside him and it's starting to push at his heels.
He runs. Not long, just a couple kilometers in a loop that circles back to his building, but he runs it hard. He's in a race against his own mind, sprinting down the sidewalk, dipping into the bike lane to pass strollers and commuters and people running at a normal pace. Shane runs so he can feel his lungs expand, his (still pretty fucking cold) quads wake up, his feet strike the concrete. Sweat starts dripping down his spine quickly and it feels cleansing. Not actually - he'll need to shower immediately now - but as he slows to a trot and pushes into the lobby, he thinks he might have finally...not let it go, but put his anger on a shelf for tonight.
