connie dennison

The Scotsman 

‘Yoga teacher to teach again after ‘she turns 100’… A woman who is believed to be the world’s oldest yoga teacher has vowed to continue holding her popular classes after her 100th birthday…. Class member Sophie Henderson, 90, from Dunfermline, said: “I’ve been attending the classes since 1975 and I would definitely put me still going strong at 90 down to Mrs Dennison’s classes and yoga. She really is an inspiration.”

Connie Dennision was the oldest yoga teacher in the world for a while. She was also my grandmother. She died in 2018 at the ripe old age of 102. She is still the best advertisement for yoga I know. She was fit and full of life in her 80s, active and alert in her 90s and was slowing and peaceful in her 100s! She did over half a century of yoga and I hope to follow in her footsteps.

She has been on STV and is rather famous! This one made me laugh so much – Oldest.org  have her lined up with Pattabhi Jois, Iyengar & Krishnamacharya, now that would give her a laugh! The following links are articles and videos about her…

 

The Times

‘Secret of stretching out the years…. A Scottish centenarian could well be the oldest yoga teacher in the world. Connie Dennison is not your average centenarian — she can push her body to an extent that many people a third of her age would find difficult. The reason, she says, is because she has taught yoga for the past 40 years. At 100 years of age, Mrs Dennison extols the benefits of the ancient Indian tradition, whose physical poses, or asanas, have become a modern western devotion. “It’s so good for you,” she says. She holds regular classes at St Leonard’s church hall in Dunfermline. When she started to teach, some cultural difficulties had to be overcome. “This man asked me, ‘Do you lie on beds of nails?’,” she recalls with a chuckle. Every shelf and ledge in her small, sun-drenched conservatory in North Queensferry….’

This is a short interview from her.

Yoga is good for you. I’ve  been doing 40 odd years. The benefits of yoga to me are fact that I’ve lived to this age, that I’ve been mobile until now, able to drive until now.

I started doing yoga in Australia in the 60s, when my daughters were teaching in Scotland. In the trams there were little pictures of a yoga position. Risha, the owner of the beautiful house where we lived, said she was going to keep fit, so I went to keep fit with her. Then Risha said was going to yoga, I asked if it was like the keep fit, she said ‘oh no’ – so I started to go, and I liked it, and I continued with it. The teacher was a Yugoslavian girl, very attractive, she’d had 4 children and had a lovely figure. She said her children were so stiff because they didn’t do yoga, but she wasn’t at all. We would go and she had pink blankets in the corner of the room, it was a big room, we’d take our own blankets. They would do the pose of tranquillity, twice sometimes.

They do it much slower than I do it, because I think my class prefer to do more exercises. I’m really pleased about my class because they’re really so nice, and so good. They gave me all sorts of things, plants and flowers.

We had great difficulty getting places in the day time, and also I was at the High School I had quite a big class and they put me next to the police having test crashes and blowing their horns. How can you teach yoga when there’s someone making a noise like that?

Most of the people in my classes find yoga really good for them. Some people have been coming to my classes or 20 or 30 years. There was a lady who came to the classes, then went away for 30 years, and to her surprise I was still teaching yoga and as sprightly as ever.

‘I was delighted to find that in 2011, the nimble Mrs Dennison is STILL taking the yoga class on Thursday mornings from August to March – which must be a great advertisment for its benefits!’ Morna Thomson

I had a slipped disk, I cured it with stick pose: I lay on the floor with my hands above my head. I’m sure yoga keep you young, Id be in a wheel chair if it weren’t for yoga. If you don’t use it you loose it.

You should do yoga for the good of your health, mentally and physically. Yoga is good for you in every way – if used sensibly.

Daily Record

Yoga instructor hailed inspiration by class members as she continues to teach classes.. aged 98… Connie Dennison, 98, of North Queensferry, reckons she would be in a wheelchair by now if she didn’t have yoga in her life….. Marion Slaughter, who has attended Connie’s classes for 20 years, said: “She is the most fabulous person I’ve ever come across….I love the class. Anytime I feel down, I think about what Connie would do and I bounce back. She’s brilliant.”

The Courier

“I am not one to hog the limelight so I couldn’t care less about any records, as I am quite happy doing my own thing in my own time. I’m just determined to get back to my ladies at St Leonard’s as the new session starts in September.”

 The Dunfermline Press

‘Connie has been teaching yoga for more than five decades, after she began attending classes in her 20s while living in Melbourne, Australia. She has taken a weekly yoga group at St Leonard’s Church in Dunfermline for more than 40 years and credits the discipline for her good health…. On her 100 years, she reflected, “Before I was married, an old woman told me, ‘You will have some awful sadness, you will meet important people, and you will have a wonderful life.’ And I have.”

Subscribe

for yoga freebies &  updates

Book now