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LET RODNEY YEE guide you through a yoga meditation.

Rodney Yee first discovered yoga in 1978 while a student of physical therapy at the University of California at Davis and a dancer with the Oakland Ballet. Rodney had been a gymnast as a child but a frustrated one. He was always struggling against his body's rigidity, hoping to find a way to improve his flexibility.

"When I took my first class, it was an enormous physical and emotional relief," Rodney recalls. "Of all the physical disciplines, yoga changed my body the fastest. It also cleanses me emotionally and mentally. Each time I practice I feel as if I'm waking with a clean slate out of a deep sleep."

Rodney left the Oakland Ballet in 1981 and spent two years in Japan dancing with the Matsuyama Ballet Company of Tokyo. He continued taking yoga classes in Japan, and by the time he returned to the U.S. in 1983 Rodney was committed to sharing his knowledge. He began teaching at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, where his classes doubled and tripled in size during the two years he taught there.

In 1987, Rodney, with two partners, opened his own teaching center, Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, California. In 1993, Rodney inaugurated a teacher training class, which culminated in the Advanced Studies Program, a one-year program that has trained hundreds of yoga teachers.

With the growing popularity of yoga and widespread demand for his teaching services, Rodney turned to videotapes. Flip is neither the first nor last person to call Rodney's videotapes life changing.

More Rodney Yee at his Web site: www.yeeyoga.com.

Contents Copyright 2001, National Public Radio