Yoga Master at 98 -Täo Porchon-Lynch
On a recent Monday, Täo Porchon-Lynch was teaching her 90-minute yoga class in Hartsdale, N.Y., combining elements of Iyengar, meditation and vinyasa for a dozen or so regular students.
Ms. Porchon-Lynch’s soft voice was soothing as she called out poses — tree, dancer — and corrected alignment. She demonstrated some floor stretches, though she herself could not do them with perfect alignment on the right. “That’s my side with the hip replacement,” she said, fiddling with a large clip-on earring that had popped off.
Actually, it is the side of her most recent hip replacement. She has had three. Ms. Porchon-Lynch is 98, but a poster child for the active life.
She is also a dynamic dresser and confident driver. When the class ended, she hurried out of the studio in her bright yoga pants and peep-toe high heels into her new ride, a gray Smart Car.
She revved the engine a few times before peeling out of the parking lot, en route to teach a private lesson. Then she hurried to the Fred Astaire Dance Studio for her own waltzing lesson; she is a competitive ballroom dancer as well as a yoga teacher.
“I’m 50 years younger than her, and her schedule exhausts me,” said Teresa Kay-Aba Kennedy who (along with Janie Sykes Kennedy) was an author with Ms. Porchon-Lynch of the memoir “Dancing Light: The Spiritual Side of Being Through the Eyes of a Modern Yoga Master.”
The night before, Ms. Porchon-Lynch and Ms. Kay-Aba Kennedy had returned from California, where Ms. Porchon-Lynch headlined an event for Athleta, an athleisure brand owned by Gap Inc., at its store at the Grove in Los Angeles. She also did a photo shoot for the label.
Perhaps more than any other physical regimen, yoga has gotten tremendous public-relations benefit from social media. The images of women and men wrapped into graceful, gravity-defying poses are arresting and highly shareable in the visual worlds of Facebook and Instagram.
The result is a new subset of professional instructors: the yogalebrity who makes much of her living on the road, not unlike a small-time rock star, appearing at retreats and conferences, posting inspirational quotes fashioned in flowery Pinterest-friendly fonts, and pictures of inner peace found through arm balances or legs over one’s head.
Portion of article Täo Porchon Lynch - Oldest living yoga celebrity