93-year-old popular yoga instructor still loves what he does
By Sheba Turk
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SANTA MONICA, California (KCAL, KCBS) — One Santa Monica man is proving that age really is just a number. At 93 years old, Salomon “Raghavan” Delgado has had some of the same yoga students for 40 years.
Raghavan said his yoga classes at 24 Hour Fitness are not about exercise. “It’s sana, sana means posture. Most people come to do exercise, which is not recommended,” he said. “No, you come to relax. You come to surrender yourself into your posture and be there with your mind.”
While he can’t offer a foolproof formula for aging and staying fit, he does focus on being stress-free and following a vegetarian diet for the most part, sometimes adding fish.
“But I have a good diet, and I meditate very often. (No) stress, which is very bad for your health,” Raghavan said.
His yoga story begins as a love story. He fell in love with a yoga teacher and followed her to class. Eventually, he became a teacher.
“(It was) the way I felt doing it, and I became terribly flexible, and it was wonderful for me to do that. And then, I started teaching and never stopped (to this) day,” Raghavan said.
Ragahvan doesn’t actually do the poses in class. He wants to make sure he’s paying attention to his students. And for his students, he asks them to pay attention to what they’re doing and stay with their breath. “If you do that, then it’s going to be good,” he said.
Los Angeles may have claimed Raghavan, but he grew up in Ecuador. He said he met Sonja, his wife of 54 years, in LA, and he misses her dearly. She died two years ago.
In 93 years of life, Raghavan has experienced great loss, and even greater love, and he’s used yoga to keep breathing through it all.
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