Judith Hanson Lasater

Judith Lasater (born 8 March 1947) is an American yoga teacher and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, recognized as one of the leading teachers in the country.

She helped to found The California Yoga Teachers Association, the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, and Yoga Journal magazine.

She is the author of numerous books on yoga practice and philosophy.

Lasater gained her bachelor's degree in physical therapy, and a doctorate in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.

In 1970, while still a student, she developed arthritis and, feeling debilitated, began yoga at the YMCA in Austin, Texas.

She stated that she instantly felt better, and has not suffered from arthritis since then.

She taught her yoga classes in the 1970s in a simple rented room, hanging a photograph of Iyengar on the wall.

The journalist and historian of yoga in America, Stefanie Syman, writes that the key was doing away with all religious elements in her yoga teaching.

In this way, she helped to popularize Iyengar Yoga in America, and was instrumental in creating the slow, gentle Restorative Yoga based on Iyengar-style asanas.

She began teaching yoga in 1971 when the YMCA instructor left, and she took over the class.

She was an early disciple of B.K.S. Iyengar.

To widen their knowledge, she and her husband Ike took their honeymoon in the Bahamas to attend Vishnudevananda's yoga teacher training course at the International Sivananda Yoga Ashram there.

She co-founded The California Yoga Teachers Association (CYTA) in 1974, and later became its president.

Lasater co-founded the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco (it had been the CYTA's teacher training institute) and Yoga Journal magazine.

With her husband and William Staniger, she published the 300 copies of the first issue of the journal, becoming its copy editor and later associate editor.

She helped to make the journal accurate, technical, and with a strong emphasis on yoga's therapeutic value, continuing a tradition started by Indra Devi.

In so doing, Lasater helped to bring about what Syman describes as a revolution, "wresting [yoga] back from the swamis", something that in Syman's view was possible only because of her teacher Iyengar's stubbornness, determination and knowledge.

Syman states that Lasater went on to argue that physical yoga was sufficient, able in Lasater's words to absorb "elements of the other Yogas, such as Mental (Jnana) and Devotional (Bhakti) Yoga".

She continues to serve on Yoga Journal's advisory boards, and is a regular presenter at its annual conference.

Lasater has been called "One of the nation's [i.e. the USA's] foremost [yoga] instructors", and a "yoga teaching star", having led workshops in 44 American states as well as in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, China, England, France, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, and Russia.

She has written numerous books on yoga; they have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.

The yoga therapist and teacher Janice Gates devoted a chapter of her book about women in yoga to her.

Gates quotes Lasater as saying that the problem is always practitioners' attitude, not the practice itself; people in the West often seek an austere yoga in the hope of controlling their bodies, but, Lasater notes, "When the Buddha sought enlightenment, the 'austerity stage' is the first one he tried and the first one he dropped".

Lasater is married with three grown children.