About The Hard & The Soft

In 1974, to further her studies, she traveled to India for 6 months with her teacher, Jain monk Munishree Chitrabhanu. After her return to the US, she set up her school, The Hard & The Soft Yoga Institute, and began teaching yoga and meditation in Winter Park, Colorado. She introduced the practice to skiers, lodge owners, bartenders, ski instructors, cyclists, and hikers. But she also taught therapeutic yoga at the Winter Park Ski Area to those enrolled in the very first program to ever offer ski instruction to blind and amputee persons, which back then was called Hal O'Leary's Handicap Ski Program, and now is the renowned National Sports Center for the Disabled at Winter Park.

In 1979 she moved back to New York City, the place of her birth, and for the next two years began the daily practice of the aṣṭāṅga vinyasa asana system under the watchful eye of her teacher, Norman Allen. She then pioneered the introduction of this athletic form of yoga practice into, first, the running community and ultimately, the greater NYC athletic community at large. She became the Wellness Director of the New York Road Runners Club in 1980 and continued in that position until 2002, teaching yoga and stress management to over 100,000 doctors, actors, bankers, lawyers, teachers, college students, waiters, artists, professional athletes . . . people came from all over NYC in the 80’s and 90’s to attend these “power yoga” classes.

Beryl coined the term “power yoga” and her Power Yoga classes in New York (and in workshops all over the country) were the first and original “power” yoga program. Based on the aṣṭāṅga sequences, Beryl followed the basic methodology of the practice but modified some of the more extreme postures to make the practice accessible to athletes of all sports, ages, and abilities, which is one of the reasons the program rocketed to success.

In the 1970's yoga was thought of primarily as a form of “stretching,” and a “soft” form of exercise. Due to her personal practice of the aṣṭāṅga asana methodology, she became one of the first teachers to emphasize in her teaching, the equal development of strength, as well as flexibility, in a balanced yoga practice. Thus, to attract the attention of “western mind” and acknowledge the presence of requisite strength development in a yoga practice, she titled her first book, Power Yoga. It was published in 1995 and sold nearly 300,000 copies. She has since then written 3 more books, Beyond Power Yoga (the philosophy of the 8 limbed yoga path), Boomer Yoga (practice for aging athletes), and Yoga for Warriors (written for veterans and men and women in active duty military).

In 1984, Beryl began her nationally renowned yoga teacher training programs and developed one of the first and most comprehensive 200 and 500 hour year-long teacher certification programs in the world. Her school offered the courses at many locations and yoga studios around the country, and trained students in the history, philosophy, psychology, and methodology of classical yoga. In 2020, at the onset of the CoVid pandemic, due to the national restriction on travel, the programs continued online for several years.

In 2023, Beryl retired her famous The Hard & The Soft Yoga & Meditation Teacher Training programs and focused exclusively on workshops and The Hard & The Soft Retreats & Adventures, which today can take you from Costa Rica to Sardinia, Guatemala to Greece, or Italy to Mexico.