“We’re going to do the Hula,” 95-year-old Ida Herbert shouts out to the packed yoga class at Breathe Yoga Studio in Toronto’s Junction area. “Let it go, girls!”

Dressed in black tights and a navy leotard, Herbert swirls an imaginary hoop around her tiny 4’10” frame. The 50 female clients, aged from 30 to 70, follow her lead.

Photos at Breathe

It’s warm-up time, Ida Herbert-style.

Next Herbert wraps her legs in rock-the-baby pose, crossing them over her chest to hug them in. She implores everyone else to do the same and “get the fluid around the cartilage moving.”

“Don’t let it sit there — take a breath and enjoy yoga,” she says encouragingly as she raises her arms and legs into the v-seated boat pose for five-minutes. It’s a move that’s arduous even when you’re many years younger.

Herbert has been a yoga practitioner for 45 years and a teacher for the past 20. The former secretary, who was born in England during the World War I and came to Canada with her late husband Michael after World War II, regularly teaches yoga to a dedicated group known as Ida’s Girls at her Bayshore Village housing complex, near Orillia.

She was invited to teach the special workshop and share her years of wisdom at Breathe studio.

Ida’s Girls and the folks at Breathe are not Herbert’s only followers. Guinness World Records is currently assessing her claim to be the oldest living yoga instructor, said Jamie Panas, public relations manager at Guinness World Records NA, Inc.

“Since we announced Bernice Bates (91) as the oldest yoga instructor last November, we’ve been flooded with applications for this title,” Panas said. The successful candidate will be announced at the end of the summer and recorded in the Guinness World Records 2013 book, which launches Sept. 13.

Herbert discovered yoga in the l960s, long before Angela Farmer invented the yoga mat or Kareen's Yoga hit the television airwaves in the ’70s.

As a 50-year-old school secretary in Toronto, Herbert, who “quite disliked exercising,” had never heard about yoga until she spotted a woman teaching asanas in a hotel gym one day.

“What on earth is that?” she recalls thinking. “It looked so nice. I had to learn more.”

After asking around, Herbert discovered she’d been watching yoga and enlisted a friend, who was taking classes, to teach her at home. She learned a couple of new asanas each week and read books to learn more. Eventually she became a dedicated practitioner — rising at 5:30 every morning for yoga, something she continues to this day.

Little did she know, she was a yogini pioneer breaking into the historically-patriarchal yogic ranks populated by legendary teachers like Vanda Scaravelli and Indra Devi, masters who lived healthfully past 90 years of age.

“That’s what yoga can do for you,” Herbert reflects in an almost inaudible whisper. “Your limbs are working but your inside is very peaceful and quiet. It quietened my mind, my body, my senses, my emotions. I realized this one day when I was touching my toes.”

Especially peaceful for Herbert is holding asanas for long periods. “I love all the poses, but have never done headstands. And never will,” she says, adding that she prefers to protect her neck.

After retiring in 1986, Ida and Michael started snow-birding in Florida. When the local exercise teacher moved away, Ida began teaching yoga for free. “I fell into it quite naturally. I don’t even consider it teaching. I just like to encourage people to do things that are good for themselves.”

When the couple moved from Toronto to Orillia, Herbert taught at the local Y, which gave her special certification. Now, no longer able to drive because she has macular degeneration, the community centre at her housing complex is her primary studio.

“I don’t advertise them as yoga classes, however. Just as ‘exercise classes’ so as not to scare off the men,” she jokes. Alas, the men have never shown up. And with the plow and boat poses, the “girls” caught on that it’s yoga.

Fifteen years ago, on her 80th birthday, a dozen or so of Ida’s students — all women from 60 to 80 years old — arrived at class in shirts emblazoned with “Ida’s Girls.” The name stuck.

So, is it Herbert’s daily yoga practice that’s kept her looking seventy-something, with a sharp wit and mind?

“You could attribute some of my longevity to that,” she answers. “But I also eat no junk food, love gardening and drink sherry after lunch. Oh, and I love to flirt.”

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A keen cyclist, Herbert had to stop biking around town two months ago after a bad fall, but she has no plans to give up teaching yoga.

“I plan to go on until my body stops me! Or until my girls do!”

Lisa Miriam Cherry is the editor and co-author of Stories from the Yogic Heart www.yogicheart.com