After 63-year-old yoga teacher Ken Schweiger was profiled in the Star Tribune in January, a 51-year-old man came up to him and said he had always wanted to train to teach yoga but thought he was too old. Schweiger's story, he said, was the inspiration he needed to take on teacher training.
Schweiger got a lot of "nice feedback, and a lot of inspiration" after his story was published. People attending his classes have said, "I read the article, and I've decided to try yoga."
Schweiger is living proof that, as he says, "You don't have to be 25 years old, beautiful, and female to teach yoga."
At Schweiger's hot yoga class at CorePower Studios in St. Paul, the room is filled nearly to capacity. The dress code is the bare minimum. Schweiger follows suit, wearing nothing but big wire-framed glasses and spandex shorts. He adjusts the thermostat to make sure the room will reach 105 degrees, then glides to the back and, for the next hour, calmly talks the class through a series of breathing exercises and 26 yoga poses.
"Dandayamana bibhaktapada janushirasana," Schweiger calls, without stumbling over the Sanskrit. His effortless pronunciation, along with his gray hair and folksy manner, lend him an air of credibility, even though he's been teaching for just two years.
At the end of class, Schweiger bids the students all "namaste," a salutation often used in yoga.
It was a conventional class taught by an unconventional man.
Schweiger, who describes himself as a Catholic conservative, is the first to admit he stands out in the hard-body CorePower crowd, where the demographic skews female and young.