£100 prize…

Alice could never switch off, but then she found a relaxing yoga class. But it wasn’t just the exercises that were doing her good…

For your story, like reader Michael Milton!

Alice was always in a rush. Up, breakfast, shower, work, lunch, work, dinner, work, bed (work). There was barely time to breathe in the publicity industry; by the time one campaign finished, another had already begun. The job had taken its toll. Spencer had walked out 18 months ago – the only trace that he’d ever lived with her was the ‘Workaholics Anonymous’ pamphlet he’d left stuck to the fridge.

Going up two dress sizes hadn’t helped either. They say that ‘when you fall off the horse, climb right back on’. But how do you climb a horse when your clothes don’t fit?

She’d been a gymnast at school, spending half her youth doing the splits, but the closest she got to exercise these days was wrestling into jeans.

Her girlfriends were anything but sympathetic; trying to set Alice up at dinner parties and speed-dating events that they knew she hated. (She spent most of these evenings working from her iphone). She needed to slow down, she just didn’t know how.

Alice finally opened the Workaholics Anonymous pamphlet, still on her fridge after all these months. On the back was a list of ‘useful resources’, and one caught her eye: Johan’s Yoga. What did she have to lose? Alice dug out leggings and a top

she could still squeeze into, then left for the sports centre (dictating emails into her phone along the way).

Johan was Swedish and taller than expected. Long blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and just the right amount of beard.

After forcing Alice to put her iphone away, Johan put the Lycra-clad students through their paces with planks, down dogs and half-moon poses. He even encouraged them to try headstands. Alice enjoyed the movements and wasn’t nearly as embarrassed as she thought she’d be. Maybe those splits weren’t so far away after all?

At the end of the class, Johan told them to get comfortable. He was going to talk them through a guided relaxation.

The difficulty of the class, he said, would make it all the more enjoyable. Alice got cosy under a fleecy blanket with a bolster beneath her knees.

First, Johan had them imagine a light between their eyes. They followed the light to their chin, moving it with their breath. Next, the light moved across their necks and shoulders, up and down their arms, torso and legs. Alice felt a warmth as the imagined light pulsed in her body. Johan’s voice was hypnotic, lulling her deeper into the relaxation. It’d been so long since she’d allowed herself to unwind. The light began to fade as she slipped further and further into darkness…

Alice shocked herself awake with the rumble of her own snoring. She rolled her eyes behind their lids, embarrassed to open them in case the whole class had heard. She listened for a clue. Nothing. Maybe she’d got away with it, maybe she’d never snored at all. Maybe, she thought, it had only happened on the inside. The only way to find out was to peek.

She opened an eye. The person to her right was gone. She rolled her head to the left. An empty mat. When she lifted herself up, she was horrified to discover she was the only person left on the floor. The studio was empty but for Johan, cross-legged on a bolster, his nose in a tattered copy of the Dhammapada.

‘Morning, sleepy head. Alice, isn’t it?’

‘Oh my goodness. Johan, I’m so sorry. How long was I…’ ‘Asleep? Oh, I’d say about three hours or so.’

‘Three hours?’

‘I’m kidding. It was only about 15 minutes. The others have just left.’

‘I’m so embarrassed.’

‘Don’t be. It happens all the time. I couldn’t bring myself to wake you up. Seemed like you could do with the nap.’

‘It’s your fault, you know. Your voice is too soothing.’

Johan put down his book, flashing his broad smile.

‘So is yours.’

‘What?’

‘You were talking in your sleep.’

‘Please tell me that’s another joke.’ Alice hadn’t sleep-talked for years, why did she have to today, in a room full of strangers?

‘I’m afraid it’s no joke. It turns out you have quite the crush on me. You even asked me out for coffee after class.’

He couldn’t keep the smile off his face, and it went right up to the corners of his bright blue eyes. Was he asking her out? It felt like he was asking her out. ‘That was my way of asking you out, Alice. If you’re not in a rush to be somewhere.’

It was then Alice realised that, during the entire exchange, she hadn’t thought of her iphone once. She smiled.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not in a rush. Not in a rush at all.’