Judith Lasater (born 8 March 1947) is an American yoga teacher and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, recognized as one of the leading teachers in the country. She helped to found The California Yoga Teachers Association, the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, and Yoga Journal magazine. She is the author of numerous books on yoga practice and philosophy. Life Early life Lasater gained her bachelor's degree in physical therapy, and a doctorate in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. In 1970, while still a student, she developed arthritis and, feeling debilitated, began yoga at the YMCA in Austin, Texas. She stated that she instantly felt better, and has not suffered from arthritis since then. She began teaching yoga in 1971 when the YMCA instructor left, and she took over the class. She was an early disciple of B.K.S. Iyengar. To widen their knowledge, she and her husband Ike took their honeymoon in the Bahamas to attend Vishnudevananda's yoga teacher training course at the International Sivananda Yoga Ashram there. Yoga teacher She taught her yoga classes in the 1970s in a simple rented room, hanging a photograph of Iyengar on the wall. The journalist and historian of yoga in America, Stefanie Syman, writes that the key was doing away with all religious elements in her yoga teaching. In this way, she helped to popularize Iyengar Yoga in America, and was instrumental in creating the slow, gentle Restorative Yoga based on Iyengar-style asanas. She co-founded The California Yoga Teachers Association (CYTA) in 1974, and later became its president. Founder of yoga institutions Lasater co-founded the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco (it had been the CYTA's teacher training institute) and Yoga Journal magazine. With her husband and William Staniger, she published the 300 copies of the first issue of the journal, becoming its copy editor and later associate editor. She helped to make the journal accurate, technical, and with a strong emphasis on yoga's therapeutic value, continuing a tradition started by Indra Devi. In so doing, Lasater helped to bring about what Syman describes as a revolution, "wresting [yoga] back from the swamis", something that in Syman's view was possible only because of her teacher Iyengar's stubbornness, determination and knowledge. Syman states that Lasater went on to argue that physical yoga was sufficient, able in Lasater's words to absorb "elements of the other Yogas,