“If I weren’t teaching yoga, I’d be working for PETA,” [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] Suza Francina said while opening the door to the expanse of her home studio. She might still be working for them in her own way. She often gifts students with Gail Eisnitz’s book, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect and Inhumane Treatment inside the U.S. Meat Industry, to inform them of the realities associated with factory farming. She rescues animals: five cats wander the back garden as one of her two dogs rests beneath a rope station bolted into the wall. When Suza was the mayor of Ojai, Rosie, the pot-bellied member of her at-home menagerie, was affectionately referred to as Ojai’s first pig.
Students greet the animals before or after class, and Suza views these interactions as part of the yoga therapy offered in the studio, particularly for the older crowd. While Suza teaches students of all ages in settings ranging from private classes to groups of hundreds, she has a natural affinity for adapting yoga to people as they progress through life. Long before she approached 50, Suza wrote Yoga for People Over 50, published in 1977. Twenty years later, The New Yoga for People Over 50 was released. A subsequent title is Yoga and the Wisdom of Menopause, and this year, as Suza turned 58, The New Yoga for Healthy Aging hit the shelves.
Since childhood, Suza has been surrounded by influential older people who have made a mark in her books. For more than 50 years, she’s lived in the small enclave of Ojai where J. Krishnamurti literally lived down the street. “I didn’t choose to move to Ojai,” she reminisces. Her family was brought here. It was a dream of her Indonesian father’s to move to America, since it was the Americans freed him when he was a prisoner of war in Japan. While working in Japan’s mountainous coal mines, he saw the mushroom cloud billow up over Hiroshima. “If my father hadn’t been sent to the mountains,” I wouldn’t be here today, Suza reflected. He met her mother in Holland after World War II, and an American sponsor picked up the young family in L.A. and brought them to Ojai. Suza was seven years old.
In the first moments Suza arrived in the valley, known as Southern California’s Shangri-La, she met influential artist Beatrice Wood. Suza attended the Happy Valley School, where classes were cancelled when J. Krishnamurti was speaking, to allow students to participate in another type of education. Suza credits her time listening to the great teacher with giving her courage to always question and never follow an idea or person blindly.
A sense of questioning and curiosity led her to yoga; she watched women traipse with their mats and blankets into her neighbor Sarah Kirton’s living room. Suza joined the class. Inspired, she made a pilgrimage to the B.K.S. Iyengar Institute in San Francisco, where, in 1974, she began the teacher training program with Mary Dunn and Judith Lasater, earning her certification from the institute.
Influenced by B.K.S. Iyengar’s example, prop use features widely in her books and in home studio. Even while chatting, she doesn’t miss a beat to set herself up in a hanging posture. “I envision a day where everyone has a rope wall set up somewhere in their home,” she prophesizes. “It is preventive medicine.” With a gleam in her eye, she cites the benefits of the props arranged around the studio, a literal lifeline for students in their later years. The horse or trestle provides stability and a support for correct alignment. The ropes allow poses to be set up in a way to create a tractioning effect in the spine and hips. She just finished a training program with Brian Legere, in Ventura and she raves about the possibilities of setting up a yoga wall.
Suza maintains that yoga is the secret to staying healthy as we age. She’s witnessed it in her own students and written about in in her books. She credits yoga with helping to rehabilitate her 85-year-old mother after a fall fractured her femur in 20 places. “I knew if I didn’t work with her, and get her to stand up again she would be in a wheelchair the rest of her life.” Suza’s experience with her mother is a testament to her belief in the ability of yoga to maintain and even improve bone density in older practitioners.
The determination she brought to bear with her mother is a quality she brings to her entire life. After years of activism in local government, Suza was elected to the Ojai City Council in 1997, and served a rotating stint at the city’s mayor. Her election coincided with the publication of The New Yoga, which meant she was juggling city council meetings and a book tour. Activism runs in her family; her nephew, Das Williams, is currently serving on the Santa Barbara City Council.
Even though she’s no longer a member of Ojai’s local government, Suza maintains a public life. She’s filming a yoga-related segment for Retirement Living Television at Mediation Mount and writes regularly for a number of different publications. Her upcoming plans? “My secret ambition is to teach Dr. Phil yoga,” she smiles.
Suza Francina lives in Ojai, California, where she teaches at her home studio, Sacred Space Studio and workshops in various locations. Suzafrancina.com
