HARTSDALE, NEW YORK, February 9, 2018 ( by Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Lohud.com ): At 8:30 a.m. on a recent monday morning, Tao Porchon-Lynch, recognized in 2012 by the Guinness World Records as the “World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher,” waltzed into the Fred Astaire Studio in Hartsdale for a yoga class wearing a fur coat and black stilettos. A few months shy of turning 100 years old, Porchon-Lynch is the founder of the Westchester Institute of Yoga. She took up ballroom dancing at age 87 and has won more than 750 first-place awards as a competitive dancer. At age 96, she appeared on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” receiving a standing ovation from the judges. In addition to teaching eight classes a week, she hosts yoga retreats and speaks at conferences at more than 20 destinations a year. In 2016, Porchon-Lynch was recognized on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day at the United Nations.
Born in 1918 , she talks about her upbringing in Pondicherry, a coastal city in southern India which was a French colony until 1954. It was there that she first got a glimpse of yoga, she was eight years old. “To me yoga is in every animal, every blade of grass and it’s alive with the energy of life,” Porchon-Lynch said as she taught a class at the Fred Astaire Studio. “If I can feel it within me, then I’m in touch with everyone in this room.”