Turning cliches inside out

"When I'm reaching for things in the cupboard or making the beds, everything feels a lot easier," says 66-year-old Eleanor Flynn.
"Certain movements are just easier than they used to be."
Beside her in class, Margaret Harper has perfected her asana (pose) and still has the breath to explain how eight weeks of Iyengar-style yoga have restored some youthfulness to her 91-year-old muscles.
"I go home feeling stronger," Mrs Harper says.
"You feel different. Like you've achieved something."
Age and arthritis had affected her ability to go walking, but yoga had given it back.
"It's frustrating when you can't walk; walking was my great joy."
Iyengar yoga has become something of a craze among the elderly in Havelock North, with the local branch of U3A (University of the Third Age) - an educational organisation for retired people - signing up for classes with yoga boffin Sylvia Goff.
Trained in Iyengar yoga, a form that uses "props of intelligence" to encourage alignment of the body, Sylvia is an advocate for everyone - especially toddlers, schoolchildren, sportspeople and the elderly - learning the ancient technique.
Sylvia discovered the yoga style when she, like Mrs Harper, was struggling with walking.
Having owned a fitness centre in England and coached her daughter into the British National Squad for gymnastics, it was a simple broken toe that led to her eventual debilitating limp.
Having avoided walking on the toe for so long, Sylvia's pelvis had been put out of alignment and it was by luck that she met some Iyengar teachers working in Auckland.
"I was so impressed with what they were teaching and I knew straight away this was what I needed," Sylvia said.
"I began to practise with them, studied everything I could about Iyengar yoga and decided to enter into teaching myself."
But when she came to Hawke's Bay, Sylvia couldn't find any Iyengar following, so set out to spread the word.
She is vocal about yoga being taught in all schools, where she says computers are to blame for rounded shoulders and a lack of stretching for tight muscles.
"I am appalled by the state of some younger people's bodies. They have extremely tight hamstrings and very bad posture," she says.
"The mums I speak to would love [yoga] in schools."
Children love yoga too, in Sylvia's experience, and it's a case of "the younger you begin yoga, the better".
Despite starting late in life, however, the U3A students are buzzing about their life-changing, but tough, yoga classes.
"I don't go easy on them," Sylvia says.
She's not as tough as founder B.K.S. Iyengar, whose hands-on approach to teaching led one of his students to quip his initials probably stood for Bang Kick Slap, but she doesn't let the older people use age as an excuse.
"I give them a hard time but they keep coming back for more," Sylvia says. Despite most being in their 70s, they stretch their spines over chairs, hold themselves in unnatural floor positions and some do inversions with their feet in the air.
Mary Duncan says she has started using muscles she has only now - while approaching the octogenarian years - discovered.
John Tait, 76 and one of only two men in the class, had been preached the benefits of yoga by his daughters and decided to head along to Sylvia's class with his wife.
"When you stay in a position for a long time it gets quite painful," he says.
"But I think I stand a little bit straighter and I feel more aware of my body."