'Sweet Spot' With Mike Sugerman: World's Oldest Yoga Teacher In Westchester County
"Sweet Spot," by Mike Sugerman
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- I took a yoga class last week.
"Feel the energy rise up," the teacher told me.
She worked my old bones pretty good.
"Push it farther. And now bring your right arm in front of your leg," she told me and the 30 others in class.
It was hard to argue with her. She's a teacher for the ages.
Tao Porchon Lynch has been practicing yoga for 70 years.
"I'm 98 now," she likes to say. "But in two months I'm going to be 99."
Porchon Lynch may have 98-year-old bones, but they're certainly stronger than mine. She's in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest yoga teacher in the world.
"People just want to take a breath, they want to sniff through the nose. But that doesn't go through the body," she told us.
Breathing is very important to her.
After the 90 minute class, she took a ballroom dancing lesson. She's already a champion. Two years ago, she was on "America's Got Talent."
"I wake up in the morning and hear the birds," she says, when asked how she keeps so fit and active. "And they don't just sit there like this, they come alive, they sing. And that's where the song of life comes from."
She was recently profiled in an HBO documentary, "If I'm Not in the Obits, I Eat Breakfast," produced by Carl Reiner.
"She's magical," says Marsha Mandell, who has been taking classes with Porchon Lynch for 35 years in in Hartsdale, New York. "She's like a pearl necklace. Every time I'm here, I feel like I'm adding a pearl."
The pearls will keep coming. Porchon Lynch has no plans to stop -- certainly not before 100.
