Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1184228
F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H 2 0 1 9 M A C O N M A G A Z I N E | 7 7 L ong-time local yoga practitioners will tell you that Macon yoga began with Molly Martin. For decades, Martin has inspired the men and women of Middle Georgia to embrace the wonders of the practice. Her former students refer to her lovingly, and many of them have gone on to become instructors themselves. Former student and now yoga instructor Ashley Dunwoody describes Martin as "effervescent" and "beloved." Dana DeHart, now a practicing massage therapist and yoga instructor, says of Martin, "She was then, and continues to be, the most grace-filled person I have ever met." An adjunct faculty member at Wesleyan College since 2000, Martin continues to grace her students with her unique style of teaching. When asked to describe her own yoga journey, she humbly recalls and honors her own teachers, past and present: "My grandparents were global citizens, traveling twice around the world when I was very young. I grew up reading (my grandmother's) travel diaries and having my imagination sparked and challenged by her stories and grand perspective. "They did not practice yoga that I know of, but they did spend time in India in the 1950s and she, at least, was interested in yoga philosophy. Her underlined books, copyrighted 1904 and 1905, "The Science of Breath," "The Yoga of Mental Development" and the "Yogi Philosophy of Physical Well-Being" are still on my bookshelf today. "Gladys Lasky had a ballet studio in downtown Macon and, in the mid 1960s, also taught yoga at the YWCA, where, at age 11 and under my grandmother's influence, I was the youngest student in her class. As far as I know, Gladys was the first to bring yoga into our community. "During the yearlong recovery from a lumbar fusion in 1973, I fell utterly MOLLY MARTIN Macon yoga icon GLADYS LASKY