| I was a graduate student
and only in my early twenties, but was suffering from arthritis. Luckily,
as a benefit of my part time job at the “Y”, I was able to take for free
the yoga classes offered there, and was hoping these classes would help
to relieve some of my pain. The experience of my first class was life-changing,
to say the least. I felt that I had found something that was a form of
worship using the body instead of only worship by prayer. The morning
after my first class I got up and practiced what I remembered. It has been
the same every morning since that September day in 1971. I began teaching
20 classes a week a scant 10 months later. I had found my calling.
Now arthritis-free, I
completed my MA in Government, and after marrying and moving to California,
graduated from the University of California, San Francisco, in Physical
Therapy. I went on to receive a Ph.D in East-West Psychology, to help found
the California Yoga Teachers’ Association, the Yoga Journal magazine and
the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco, the first one in the US. Currently
I am the author of 5 books and hundreds of articles on yoga. But most proudly,
I am the wife of Ike Lasater and the mother of three grown children.
-JHL
The practice of yoga is fundamentally
an act of kindness toward oneself. This idea is often forgotten, but not
by Judith, whose approach is warm, non-judgmental and responsive to individual
differences and needs.
Judith Lasater has taught
yoga since 1971. She holds a doctorate in East-West psychology and is a
physical therapist. Judith is president of the California
Yoga Teachers Association, and serves on the advisory boards of
Yoga
Journal and the Yoga
Research and Education Center.
Her yoga training includes
study with B. K. S. Iyengar in India and the United States. She
teaches ongoing yoga
classes and trains yoga teachers in kinesiology, yoga therapeutics,
and the Yoga Sutra in the San Francisco Bay Area. Judith also gives workshops
throughout the United States, and has taught in Canada, England, France,
Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Peru, and Russia.
She is the author of six
books: A Year of Living Your Yoga, Yoga Abs, Yoga for
Pregnancy, 30 Essential Yoga Poses, Living Your Yoga
and Relax and Renew. |
