Even as a child I had back pain. By the time I discovered yoga in the late 1960s—following along with Lilias Folan on PBS television—I was in my early 20s. I was a college student at the time and didn’t have a TV, so whenever I visited my parents, I’d spread out a beach towel in their living room and sigh with the relief that came when all that bound-up tension let go of its choke hold on me. I continued to have an on-again, off-again romance with yoga for a number of years before I finally became certified to teach via the Sivananda International Vedanta Society.

Not long after, I became a massage therapist, having now gained a boatload of information about anatomy—most especially muscles, muscles, and more muscles. I opened a yoga studio in downtown Hilo on the Big Island of Hawai’i—the first one in Hilo at the time. Before long, I opened a second studio in a dedicated portion of our family home in Volcano Village.

But still, something was not right. The stiffness that plagued me kept returning. The hip pain grew worse and often kept me awake at night. Small injuries lingered after a strenuous practice, and stuck around longer. The chronic tension I experienced never fully released — no matter how much I stretched and moved my body.

What I didn't understand then was that I hadn't really found relief. I had found dependency. Stretching was releasing tension trapped in chronically tight muscles — but only temporarily, because the misalignment of bones that were causing that tension never changed. I was managing symptoms I hadn't yet learned to name.

A chance encounter that changed everything 

In my case, the chance encounter was actually a magazine article. It was written by two women, one of whom was Jean Couch, and it told the story of Noëlle Perez of Paris — a movement analyst who had spent years observing people who moved with effortless grace and lived free of chronic pain. Soon after, I traveled from Hawai'i to Palo Alto to meet Jean, who was teaching alignment principles she had learned from Noëlle Perez. Both Jean and Noelle had previously been yoga teachers.

I didn't expect a whole lot from that first session, mostly an introduction to something I’d found more than a little intriguing.  What I got was a complete reorganization of everything I thought I knew about my own body.

Jean showed me the chronic misalignment I had been living with — and compensating for — my entire life. Within that single session, something shifted. Not just physically. Perceptually. I began to understand, for the first time, why I had needed to stretch so constantly just to feel okay.

Not long after, I made two decisions that surprised everyone around me, including myself: I stopped teaching yoga — and I stopped stretching altogether.

What happened next 

Once my children were all launched out into the world, I headed off on a solo journey around the world in search of something specific: women and children who carry heavy loads on their heads without effort — people whose bodies had never lost the natural alignment we are all born with.

What I found confirmed everything Jean had shown me, and more. From the rice terraces of Indonesia to the villages of rural Myanmar and the hillsides of Portugal, I photographed,  observed, and sometimes interviewed people of all ages moving with ease, strength, and vitality that most of us in the modern world have simply forgotten is possible.

I came home with a mission, which I’ve been expanding upon ever since.

Thirty-two years later 

I'll be turning 80 this year. I am more limber, more comfortable, and more vital than I was in my 20s, 30s, or 40s — and I have not stretched in over thirty years.

I know how that sounds. It flies in the face of almost everything we've been taught about flexibility, aging, and what bodies are supposed to do as the decades pass. But easy mobility is what becomes possible when bones are doing the job they were designed to do — and muscles are finally free to do theirs.

In the years since that first session with Jean, I've written books on natural alignment, taught workshops and classes to thousands of people, designed posture support products, and created an online course that makes this work available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Nothing gives me greater satisfaction — besides time with my grandchildren 😄 — than watching someone who has struggled for years with stiffness and pain discover that their body was never broken. It simply forgot something it once knew.

My work is helping people remember.

A note on what this is — and isn't 

Natural alignment is not a method I invented, a technique I developed, or a brand I created. It is a description of the human body's innate design — the way every one of us was built to sit, stand, move, and eventually age. My mission is to make that description so clear, so accessible, and so well-evidenced that it eventually finds scientific validation and its way into mainstream medicine and movement education.

We're not there yet. But we're getting closer — one happy dog at a time. 🐾

"Even now, at 79, I'm far more limber and comfortable than I was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s—and I haven’t stretched in over twenty-five years!"