Kathryn Taylor

Rebuilding a Life, One Step at a Time

In 1996, Kathryn Taylor's life fell apart.

That year, the professor in the respiratory care program at Crafton Hills College was stricken with life-threatening pneumonia. During her recovery, Taylor learned her father was dying. As she stood at her father's bedside in the hospital, she mentioned to her brother, a doctor, that she had a lump in her breast.
Get it checked, her brother insisted. Don't wait.

Within one week of seeing the doctor, Taylor was on the operating table undergoing a radical mastectomy. To put her body back together, doctors had to tear it apart with chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Taylor suffered from fatigue, nausea and severe swelling. She lost all her hair. And she started to search for some answers.

One month after surgery, Taylor signed up for her first yoga class at UCR Extension. Like many first-time students to yoga, Taylor did not tell her teacher, certified Iyengar yoga instructor Peggy Cleve, about her condition until her first class was over.

Today, Taylor laughs when she talks about her first class.

Cleve asked her students to take the yoga pose Sarvangasana, or shoulderstand, in a chair. The pose requires that the students go upside down. It's an intriguing pose, especially if you're wearing a wig.

"I was as bald as they come. Here I was in shoulderstand in the chair trying to keep this wig on," Taylor recalled, grinning widely.

That class changed Taylor's life and helped piece it and her body back together.

"I wanted to come back," Taylor said. "I needed it. I knew I needed it."

Taylor continues to study in the yoga program at UCR Extension. The program is the only Iyengar yoga certificate program offered by a university in the United States. Iyengar yoga, as developed by Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar of Pune, India, uses props, such as blankets, blocks, straps and other accessories, to help students achieve perfection in asana. Regular practice of Iyengar yoga integrates the mind, body and emotions.

At UCR Extension, students can earn two certificates: Fundamentals of Yoga and Yoga Theory and Practice. Taylor has earned the first two certificates and is working toward her third.
Taylor also had the incredible experience of having her first certificate presented to her in the presence of Geeta Iyengar, Mr. Iyengar's daughter, who visited UCR Extension in 2000.

"I was so in awe," Taylor said. "It was so fantastic."

As a result of her rigorous study and practice and the guidance of UCR Extension's yoga teachers Peggy Cleve, Deb Murray, and senior Iyengar yoga teacher, Gloria Goldberg, Taylor was able to travel to India last October to study at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute. There, she was able to meet Mr. Iyengar, the yoga master whose work she credits for changing her life.

Taylor teaches yoga at The Little Yoga Studio in Lake Arrowhead. She continues to teach at Crafton Hills College and also teaches the anatomy classes for the yoga certificate program at UCR Extension. She serves as an inspiration to her students and her classmates.