Beryl Bender Birch

Beryl Bender Birch (born October 1942) is a teacher of yoga as exercise and a creator and guru of Power Yoga.

Life

Beryl Bender Birch was educated at Syracuse University, where she read English and Philosophy. In 1974 she spent six months studying yoga in India under Munishree Chitrabhanu. She founded her own school of yoga in Winter Park, Colorado in 1975. In 1981 she began to teach Ashtanga Yoga at the New York Road Runners Club; she later became Wellness Director there. She is the creator of one of several forms of Power Yoga; cofounded New York's "The Hard & the Soft Astanga Yoga Institute".

Kali Om, writing on Yoga Chicago, describes Birch's writing style as never dull, with humour and a cheerful tone, but casual and with "endless anecdotes". She finds the account of the ashtanga primary series in Beyond Power Yoga condensed and "sometimes confusing", but writes that the book provides a non-threatening introduction to the seven other limbs of ashtanga yoga beyond the physical.

Works

1995 Power Yoga, Atria. 2000 Beyond Power Yoga: Eight Levels of Practice for Body and Soul, Touchstone. 2009 Boomer Yoga, Sellers. 2014 Yoga for Warriors, Sounds True.