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2010-11-30 07:44:05
By Dorene Internicola Dorene Internicola Mon Nov 29, 6:06 am ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) Yoga master Tao Porchon-Lynch, 92 years young, kept
repeating her life's motto, there is nothing you cannot do, before a packed
workshop in New York City.
Then, light as a bird, she glided into a gravity-defying arm balance to
illustrate the point.
"I haven't been able to do the peacock since I broke my wrist in April, but I
did it in that room," Porchon-Lynch said of the pose she demonstrated recently
at Strala Yoga studio.
"In yoga every breath I take puts me on the right path." Porchon-Lynch has been
practicing yoga, the ancient discipline connecting breath to movement, for over
70 years.
Along the way she has walked with Mahatma Gandhi, modeled couture in Paris,
trod the boards in London, and acted under contract to MGM in Hollywood.
It was yoga breathing, she said, that kept fear at bay when she worked for the
resistance in World War Two France.
"I didn't realize I was doing any of them," she said of her many adventures.
"It's just the natural path of life. You either travel on it, or you get stuck
in the mud."
Born in Pondicherry, India, Porchon-Lynch studied under yoga legends B.K.S.
Iyengar and Indra Devi. At age 50 she was given her first paying yoga job in
the United States by fitness icon Jack LaLane.
Porchon-Lynch founded the Westchester Institute of Yoga, where she is director,
in 1982. She teaches up to 20 hours a week and has trained over 300 instructors
in her Iyengar-based style. Jane Fonda is an admirer, along with generations of
young yogis.
In class she cuts a glamorous figure. When she's not adjusting a student's
backbend or fine-tuning a hand position, she's weaving tales from her very
colorful life into yogic tutorials.
"Duke (Ellington) told me he was watching a sunset and all the colors seemed to
blend into deep purple," she recounted in an explanation of the chakras, or
wheels of energy, yogis believe reside in the body. "I don't tell you these
things from ego, but because it's what I know."
Tara Stiles, owner of Strala Yoga, says Porchon-Lynch is living proof that yoga
actually works. "She is a true leader by example," said Stiles, author of "Slim
Calm Sexy Yoga." Porchon-Lynch said her "most precious inspirations" come when
people think they can't do something, "then there's a smile on their face,
because they can."
When she's not teaching, Porchon-Lynch pursues another passion -- competitive
ballroom dancing. Despite a hip replacement, she recently completed a 17-dance
event where, she says her Tango partner was a 22-year old and her Cha Cha
partner was 29.
"Dancing is a continuation of yoga, like music," she said. "Music and dancing
and yoga are all coming from within you."
She's writing her autobiography and completing a documentary about yoga and
dance that took her on a recent flight over the Himalayas.
"All of those mountains, so pure. Yoga helps us create a life where we're
looking down from clouds instead of into the clouds," she said. "I call it the
dance of life, since I'm always dancing."
The way she looks at life, she says, she has no fear.
"The only fear I have is when people talk on the phone while driving. I'm
afraid they'll get hurt."