I studied with Mr. Iyengar six times in India; he personally senior-certified me, and even stayed at my home on one of his trips to the States. Through the years, even though I studied with other teachers, I remained a devout student teaching strictly within his style.  

However, my approach to yoga began to change after one of my last trips to India, during an invitation-only senior seminar. There were many incidents that affected me during that time, but one of the most poignant was when Mr. Iyengar was exceedingly rough on a group of older British women; while at the same time, he seemed to favor his younger, more physically adept students. 

Although these older British women were among his most ardent supporters from the early days, they couldn't keep up with Mr. Iyengar's demanding class and he was furious with them. That incident began to change my thinking about the purpose and nature of yoga ... as well as how to teach it. 

Soon thereafter, I began studying NeuroMuscular Therapy. It's not like chiropractic. It's somewhat like Rolfing but not as deep into the fascia. My particular approach to NeuroMuscular Therapy is subtler yet, because I began working primarily on the level of fascia rather than muscle.

My study of the nature and characteristics of fascia had a defining effect upon my yoga. I discovered that if I applied my approach of NeuroMuscular Therapy to yoga (working less deeply), I achieved better results. In other words, by working my yoga on the level of fascia rather than muscle, I obtained quicker results; yet more importantly, the incidence of injury also decreased. I was learning how to get more by doing less.

Consistent with my approach to NeuroMuscular therapy, ExTension and Recovery Yoga evolved into a system that honors and works with what a person can do, not what a person can't do. It's about doing less in order to get more. It is not about trying; it's about learning how to correctly do what you can without forcing or trying.

Please do not misunderstand me: Although this approach to yoga starts out slowly and methodically, when it is appropriately practiced, it can take you into the cardiovascular arena if you want it to. Regardless, when it is appropriately practiced, enhanced strength, flexibility, and endurance ensues.

As you may know by now, I have multiple sclerosis. I've spent several years now developing the content of my website because the yoga I previously studied and taught did not sufficiently address the changes I had experienced in my own body. I developed MS in 1993, while at the "zenith of my career," just before my first book, ExTension Yoga, was published. I was by then a senior-certified Iyengar instructor. 

Within two years after my initial exacerbation, I developed chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, instability in walking, and bilateral idiopathic adhesive capsulitis that paralyzed my arms. During my decline, I wrote and published my second book, Recovery Yoga, a program similar to ExTension Yoga but it was directed toward chronically ill, injured, post operative, and aging people.  The next three years after completing Recovery Yoga were devastating both physically and emotionally, and I stopped practicing and teaching yoga because of my illness and my increasing depression.

Then in 1999, even though I had retired from teaching, I was asked by a mutual friend to teach Recovery Yoga to a woman in my community named Joyce Park, an "incomplete quadriplegic". Soon after she began her Recovery Yoga practice, her chronically low blood pressure began to return to near normal. She began sleeping better, she increased the mobility of her arms and hands, and could again feel parts of her belly that she hadn't felt since her accident 18 years previously. The crux of this story is that I became totally embarrassed for myself because Joyce was improving through her practice of Recovery Yoga, yet I wasn't even practicing the very program I developed.

Due to my embarrassment, I renewed my yoga practice, but it quickly evolved into something vastly different than what it was before I became ill. Because my body had changed so dramatically since my illness, I could no longer do even the most basic yoga. I therefore began with the first page from my own book, Recovery Yoga, and began practicing only what I could comfortably do ... which wasn't very much. But at least, I was again doing yoga

After about six months and without forcing, I found myself able to do most everything in Recovery Yoga and I allowed myself to "graduate" to the ExTension Yoga program. After another six or seven months, my body gradually allowed me to do the entire ExTension Yoga program and beyond.

What is considerably different in my yoga practice today, is that I no longer try to do anything. There are days when I can't do ExTension Yoga at all and I return to Recovery Yoga. What made the difference was adhering to the principles and laws of Recovery and ExTension Yoga. I no longer "try" to do yoga. After all these years, I have finally learned how to "do" yoga.

The implications of this approach to yoga are clear. ExTension and Recovery Yoga is based upon neuromuscular principles and laws; and less upon yoga as traditionally taught. 

During the spring of 2000, I returned to teaching and resumed workshops and Teacher Training Seminars. It is important to emphasize three things: 1) ExTension Yoga is for all physically ambulatory people; from world-class athletes to couch potatoes; 2) Recovery Yoga is for anyone who is out-of-shape, including all chronically ill, injured, or aging people. Recovery Yoga is not just for people with multiple sclerosis; and 3) both Recovery and ExTension Yoga utilize the exact same logic, principles, and foundations.

ExTension and Recovery Yoga work more effectively and quicker than any other yoga modality I've ever studied, including many of the techniques I learned sitting at the side of Mr. Iyengar in India. I've spent several years writing about many of these principles and laws and have placed them in my website because I want to share them with the yoga community.   

As a former athlete, now as an aging person; and as a chronically ill person with MS, I feel passionately about how effective this work can be when it is appropriately practiced and taught. Please allow me to be perfectly clear about my intentions. I do not for a second believe that ExTension and Recovery Yoga can cure MS or anything else. What I do believe is that the program helps us to enhance our respiratory response, and to coordinate our breathing with the movement and awareness of the body; thus moving us toward physical and spiritual balance where healing ultimately takes place. 

Do I believe that "my yoga is better than anyone else's yoga?" Absolutely not. It is on the other hand, certainly different in many of its approaches. However, the bottom line is that this program is designed, through its neuromuscular principles and laws, to minimize risk and to maximize benefit.

I wish you well.