Bobbe Norrise: Trailblazer, Ageless and Timeless Heather Haxo Phillips

BOBBE NORRISE: TRAILBLAZER, AGELESS AND TIMELESS

BY HEATHER HAXO PHILLIPS

Bobbe Norrise, born Barbara Ann Elise Rogers, peacefully passed on May 24, 2017. Bobbe was one of the founders of

the Iyengar Yoga community in the Bay Area. Over her 40+ years of teaching and practice, Bobbe helped transform yoga in the U.S. from an esoteric pursuit to the mainstream practice it is today. As one of the first African-American yoga teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bobbe had a particularly important impact on the Iyengar Yoga community in Northern California. She was an outstanding woman, an inspiration, and a role model to so many.

Bobbe began teaching in 1975 and earned her certificate as a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher (CIYT) in 1983 during the earliest days of certification. Bobbe was a yoga professor for over 20 years at San Francisco State University in the Department of Kinesiology. These classes were among the first yoga classes ever sanctioned by any American university. During her years at SF State, Bobbe taught thousands of people the benefits of an Iyengar Yoga practice.

These young people were greatly moved by their studies with her. Shiri Goldsmith (CIYT) remembers her this way:

“My first yoga class ever was Hatha Yoga with Bobbe Norrise. I was only 18 years old. It was the first day of my first semester of my first year of college, and the experience planted a seed within me that would later shape the course of my life. Bobbe was so joyful and light of being, both in her personality and in her asana practice, that I found myself thinking, ‘I want what she’s having!’ From these classes, I learned that a yoga practice could help me to not only feel better in my own body, but that it also helped me to have more control over my moods and feelings. I studied with her for three years, eventually becoming a CIYT myself.”

Bobbe liked to be autonomous, and at venues such as San Francisco State, she was able to bring yoga to a big and broad audience. Bobbe engaged her students in personalizing their practice and encouraged them to journal about their experiences. Though she had to give grades at SF State, she used the opportunity to encourage students to do a service project as a way to explore yoga philosophy. In a 2014 interview, she Bobbe was a quiet but noticeable trailblazer who inspired many African-American practitioners. Her encouraging demeanor made everyone feel welcomed and comfortable.

explained, “Just putting that idea in people’s minds, that you can be of service to other people, that’s so important. Why else are we here?… I do think it is much more than just being in a studio doing some poses for ourselves.”

In 1990, Bobbe published “Easy Yoga for Busy People,” a home practice guide developed in response to requests from her students. “Easy Yoga for Busy People” is unique in that it includes a notebook format for readers to write their own sequences and reflect on their practice experience. It is also

Recognized as a trailblazer, the City of Oakland proclaimed “Bobbe Norrise Day” not once but twice—in 2011 and 2015.

one of the only yoga books published that features predominantly African-American students.

In this way, Bobbe was a quiet but noticeable trailblazer who inspired many African-American practitioners. Her encouraging demeanor made everyone feel welcomed and comfortable. “It was revolutionary in my mind what she was doing,” says Patty Hirota-Cohen, a long time friend of Bobbe’s, in an East Bay Express article from June 2017. “Back in the ’80s and ’90s, she was organizing retreats to Sonoma, and it was all people of color. She never promoted herself, but there are so many people I know [who had] Bobbe as their first yoga teacher.”

It is not an exaggeration to state that nearly everyone who has done Iyengar Yoga in the Bay Area was in class with Bobbe at

least once. She was a dedicated practitioner both as a teacher and as a student. It was Bobbe, in fact, who inspired others to do trailblazing of their own. “Knowing that Bobbe was there doing what she was doing was huge for me,” Hirota-Cohen said in the East Bay Express article. “Bobbe was so communitybased, so connected to her friends and family, that, in effect, she gave many of us the inspiration to teach yoga within our own communities.” In this way, over the decades, Bobbe inspired dozens of students to become teachers themselves. She strongly believed in the importance of thorough teacher training programs and the required discipline of having a consistent personal practice.

Bobbe was always a serious student of Iyengar Yoga, with a light heart. She studied Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and other original texts and taught yoga as it was originally intended—as an aid and physical foundation for self-realization. Bobbe was a yogi in all of her actions. She lived a healthy and balanced lifestyle in body, mind, and spirit. She was unfailingly generous to her friends and neighbors in need, personally cooking and delivering meals to the sick, sitting and socializing with the shut-in and bed-bound, offering a beaming stream of light wherever she went.

Recognized as a trailblazer, the City of Oakland proclaimed “Bobbe Norrise Day” not once but twice— in 2011 and 2015. We recognize Bobbe as a pioneer in Black Holistic Health. As one of her friends Kweli Tutashinda said, she “made doing yoga ‘normal’ in the Black community and gave it her own flavor.”

Bobbe is survived by her three children, four grandchildren, and loving sister. Bobbe will forever be fondly celebrated and deeply loved for her pioneering spirit, her generosity, enthusiasm, patience, a nurturing and fun-loving personality, and her courage to do what she loved the most. We honor her as she would wish: ageless and timeless!

Heather Haxo Phillips (CIYT Intermediate Junior III) is based in Oakland, CA. The Director of Adeline Yoga studio, she is most content in Sirsasana with her cats.