LEVEL 3
Brooke Myers has studied yoga since 1973 and taught Iyengar Yoga since 1987. She has trained many times in India with the Iyengar family. Her primary teachers are Geeta Iyengar and the late Mary Dunn.
Brooke’s social conscience informs her teaching. “Yoga should be for everyone,” she says. “We have to make a real effort to go where the need is.” Her outreach efforts have taken her to psychiatric hospitals and a drug rehabilitation center. She co-taught the Institute’s HIV/AIDS class for many years. Brooke has taught special classes for knee and back problems, depression, and menopause.
The spiritual aspect of Iyengar Yoga inspires her teaching style, which is simple, reverent, and aspiring. “To motivate people, you have to first give them the experience. I can’t talk to them about their breath or their inner self. I have to show them that if they learn to come back into their heels and lift their chest, they won’t feel so depressed. I have to find physical ways to show them spiritual and emotional states.”
Brooke’s previous career was in radical experimental dance and theater. Along with political causes, she is active in animal rescue.
“I’m still looking for ways to use yoga to bridge the gulf between all kinds of people,” she says. “It should be possible—one of the meanings of yoga is union.”