How Doga began.

Before September 11, New York City felt like a city that could hold anything. I was training as a yoga teacher — learning to pay attention, learning to be still, learning to trust what the body already knows.

I began teaching private yoga to Elizabeth Swados — Liz. She was a composer, a poet, a playwright, a director, a teacher. She had previously directed me in theater. We knew each other's work. We trusted each other's instincts. There was no need to explain things.

Liz had three dogs. I had Coali — my black cocker spaniel. When we practiced together in her apartment, the dogs were simply there. On the mat. Between us. Breathing alongside us. We didn't plan it. We didn't invite them. They arrived, and we noticed.

What happened in those sessions was not a class format. It was not a trend. It was something quieter: the recognition that the animals were not interrupting the yoga. They were participating in it. They were, in their own way, teaching it.

Those lessons continued for years. What grew from them became Doga. I named it in 2001. I began teaching it. I brought it to studios, to television, to people who had never thought of their dog as a teacher.

Coali is gone now. Liz is gone now. But the practice they helped me find is still here — still growing, still teaching, still rooted in that first quiet recognition: your animal already knows how to be present. The practice is learning to meet them there.

"We didn't invite the dogs into yoga. We noticed they were already there."

"The dogs were not interrupting the yoga. They were teaching it."