Return to OZ

Lydia and I are preparing for a month of travel and teaching, in fact it’s our biggest teaching tour to date! We are really looking forward to the upcoming tour, which takes us to:

• Om Yoga Studio, Auckland, March 2-4
• Synergy Yoga & Pilates, Adelaide, March 7
• Australian Yoga Academy, Melbourne, March 10-11
• Sorrento Full-day Workshop, March 14
• Sorrento Half-day Yoga in the Park, March 15
• The Yoga Institute, Sydney, March 17-18
• Brisbane, March 24-25

We work hard on these teaching tours, but we always schedule a couple days on each side of the workshops to enjoy the host city. We’ve heard Sorrento is beautiful and while I’m teaching there I’ll turn 60 years old (on March 13). Word on the street is there may be some celebrating going on, so come out to the workshop on March 14th to help cheer me into my 7th decade! I believe there’s still room in some of the workshops, so if you or someone you know is down under, please come out and say hello.

All this planning got me feeling nostalgic about my first visit to New Zealand and Australia in 1983 so I dug out some old photos. At the time, I was living in Los Angeles with my partner Lynda Huey where we worked at Dr. Leroy Perry’s International Sportsmedicine Institute.  Lynda was the athletic director and, although I was teaching yoga flexibility to the athletes, my main job was to administer a new form of electro-therapy that was getting great results with pain and soft tissue injuries.  The instruments I specialized in, the Electro-Acuscope and Myopulse, were in great demand around the world at the training areas of track meets so, eased by the fact that Lynda and I were also working part-time as travel agents, it created a perfect opportunity to travel.

August of 1983 found us in Helsinki, Finland for the first-ever world championships of Track and Field. Towards the end of 1983, we were invited by Australian Olympic swimming legend Murray Rose to present our rehab work at a Sports Medicine event at Sydney’s Town Hall. After a stop to visit some friends in Auckland, we arrived in Sydney and were taken on a whirlwind tour of the city by Murray and his friends.

In this photo, I am posing for an AP photographer with Evelyn Ashford, who at the time was the world’s fastest woman. Evelyn had sustained a hamstring injury in an early heat of the 100 meter dash, and I was treating her with the equipment.  She recovered well enough to make the U.S. team and win a gold medal the 1984 L.A. Olympics in spite of a slight re-injury at the team trials (for which I also treated her). As part the promotion for the Sydney event, I was invited to a T.V. interview on “Good Morning Australia.

This photo shows me on set preparing the equipment for my segment.  I am wearing my best (and only) suit for the occasion. I was apparently still wearing that outfit when we visited a game preserve outside Sydney.  There, I met kangaroos for the first time. Once the film was developed back in L.A. , I also noticed for the very first time that I was – at the tender age of 25 – going bald on the top of my head. I was shocked and devastated, but I’ve gotten over it.

The rest of our trip was terrific.  We traveled to Canberra to tour the brand new Australian Institute of Sport, and the headed up the Gold Coast to visit with some friends in Nambour before continuing up to check out the facilities at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Finally, we went all the way north to Cairns, where we had a memorable scuba dive off the Barrier Reef. Lynda and I actually returned to Sydney in 1984 for a return visit that was more of a pleasure trip.