A personal dedication
For Jane GoodALL
She went into the forest and listened.
The animals answered.
The art of listening
She taught us that animals have something to say.
In 1960, a young woman named Jane sat quietly at the edge of the Gombe forest in Tanzania and waited. She did not arrive with conclusions. She arrived with patience, with open eyes, and with a willingness to be changed by what she witnessed. What she found there — chimpanzees using tools, forming bonds, grieving, playing, teaching their young — rewrote what the world believed about the boundary between human and animal.
She listened before she spoke. She observed before she named. She let the animals lead.
That quality of attention — unhurried, humble, and full of love — is what Suzi Doga Teitelman has carried into every Doga practice since 2001.
"Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, shall all be saved."
A guiding idea
Jane GoodALL has long held that understanding is the root of care — that people protect what they truly know, and love what they have learned to see. That idea lives at the center of Doga.
What Doga carries forward
Connection through presence and compassionate attention.
Doga is not a trick. It is not a performance. It is a practice of shared breath — a human and an animal arriving together in the same moment, without agenda, without hierarchy, without the noise of the thinking mind.
Jane GoodALL spent decades demonstrating that the distance we imagine between ourselves and other animals is largely a story we tell. When we sit quietly with a dog, a cat, a bird — when we breathe with them, move with them, follow their lead — we close that distance. We remember something ancient and true: that we are not separate from the living world. We are part of it.
That is the heart of Doga. That is what Jane's life and work have always pointed toward.
"Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference."
Roots & Shoots
Young people, animals, and the environment.
In 1991, Jane founded Roots & Shoots — a global youth program that asks young people to take action for the care of animals, the environment, and the human community. The name itself is a teaching: roots hold firm underground while shoots push through seemingly solid walls to reach the light. Every young person who learns to see an animal as a fellow being, not a possession or a prop, is a shoot breaking through.
Suzi has always believed that Doga belongs in that same spirit — that when a child lies down beside a dog and breathes slowly, something shifts. The child learns to be still. The dog learns to trust. And the world, in that small moment, becomes a little more whole.
A tribute to every being on the mat
Dogs. Cats. Chimpanzees. Every living being.
This dedication belongs to every animal who has ever arrived on a mat, in a forest, in a living room, or in a life — and changed the human beside them. To the dogs and cats who have sat still long enough for a person to remember how to breathe. To the chimpanzees of Gombe who taught a young woman that the boundary between us and them was always a story, never a fact.
To Coali — Suzi's black cocker spaniel, the original Doga dog. Coali did not wait for an invitation. She was already on the mat. She was already in the practice. She was the practice. Everything that became DogaDog began with watching her.
To Liz Swados — artist, composer, collaborator, and one of the first people to sit with Suzi and Coali in New York City in 2001 and recognize that something real was happening. Liz saw it before it had a name.
To Heinz — and to every student who has ever come to the mat, brought their dog, and been willing to be changed by the experience. You are the practice continuing. You are the roots and the shoots.
From Suzi
She showed up and sat still.
During Covid, I watched a recording Jane had made — one of those Zoom calls she was doing constantly, speaking to groups all over the world. Someone mentioned that her throat was hurting from talking so much. She said she'd had some whiskey. She laughed. And then she kept going.
I fell in love with her in that moment. Not with the icon. With the woman. The one who had whiskey because her throat hurt and still showed up. The one who had spent sixty years in relationship with chimpanzees, with students, with forests, with grief, and with hope — and who had never once stopped showing up.
What I recognized in her was the same thing I recognize in every dog on a yoga mat. She did not connect by performing. She did not teach from above. She arrived. She sat still long enough for trust to grow. And the animals — and the people — came to her.
That is what Doga is. That is what I have been trying to teach since 2001. You do not bring the dog into the practice. You arrive in the practice together. You sit still. You breathe. You let the animal show you what presence actually feels like.
Jane GoodALL has been a quiet light behind this work for a long time. This page is my small, independent way of saying so.
— Suzi Doga Teitelman, Founder, DogaDog
"You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
Our pledge
5% of every workshop enrollment is donated to the Jane Goodall Institute.
Learn about the Jane Goodall Institute ↗Independent dedication — no affiliation
This page is Suzi Doga Teitelman's personal, independent tribute to Jane GoodALL. DogaDog has no affiliation, endorsement, partnership, or formal relationship of any kind with the Jane Goodall Institute, the Jane Goodall Foundation, Roots & Shoots, or any related organization or foundation. The link to the Jane Goodall Institute above is provided as a public resource for those who wish to learn more about her work.
"The dogs were not interrupting the yoga. They were teaching it."
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