Twenty years ago this month I took my first yoga class. A friend took me to a men’s naked yoga class in a third-floor walk-up above Teddy Shoes in Central Square. I attended weekly for a year or so, until one evening a new guy with incredible form invited me to Bikram hot yoga.

One class and I was hooked on my first and only addiction. I practiced yoga six, seven days a week for four years. Over a thousand 90-minute classes at 110 degrees. I woke at 5:30 every morning to practice before work. When people asked, “Where do you find the time to do so much yoga?” I replied, “I don’t have enough time not to do it.” Looking back, all of those hours in the hot room merge into a unified fusion of struggle and satisfaction; body and mind. I never felt better in my life, loose and light and full of energy. Like all zealots, I had to share my good news. Thus, the birth of this blog.

Eventually, like all addictions, Bikram proved to be both too much and not enough. I started exploring other forms: Iyengar, Ashtanga, restorative. I cut back to four, maybe five classes a week. I took up sculpt, which purists pooh-pooh as Americanized exercise.

After I retired, in 2014, I took yoga teacher training, and for a brief period, I taught. At the men’s class where I first learned. At the Cambridge Y. I invited small groups of middle-aged men to my place; guys too self-conscious of our girth and sag to frequent upscale studios so often tilted towards lithe young women. My favorite teaching gigs were one-on-one sessions with older men suffering Parkinson’s. The deep coordination and repetition inherent in yoga cannot cure Parkinson’s, but it slows its progression.

All of that came to a halt when I took on months of bike riding. Many would not consider pedaling fifty miles a day as yoga. But it was for me. Hours of meditation on the shoulder of the road aligned my momentum and balance surely as any asanas.

When I returned to Cambridge in late 2016 I dabbled with every aspect of my life. A variety of yogas, but I also joined a gym, and found new focus in walking. Yoga became but one ingredient in my recipe for fitness and well-being.

Then COVID arrived and everything stopped. There were no places to go; no classes to attend. I walked and walked and walked. Until we all became Zoom literate and everyone started streaming everything and yoga studios, like everything else, started creating content. I joined Down Under On Demand, which is where I practice still, alternating virtual yoga with in-person gym days. I’m not sure how easy it is for beginners to learn yoga online, but online yoga provides me enough structure of an in-person class that my mind releases while my body mindlessly, mindfully, goes through the motions.

For most of my life I’ve looked my age; felt it too. These days, people often underestimate my age. I feel mighty good, prescription-free, healthier than most anyone I know pushing seventy. I credit my graceful aging (so far) to yoga.

Who knows how my practice will evolve. The time may come when the body demands that sculpt yield to restorative. If I’m lucky, there’ll be chair yoga in my future. No worry. It’s all yoga. It’s all good.