Karen and Bob Dudra signed on as Wellness Center members the minute it was possible, back when the place opened in 2000, and they’ve been faithful attendees ever since. “I was so excited when they opened,” Karen says. “The area really needed something like this then.”
“We couldn’t ask for anything more here except for more classes and maybe bigger rooms for the classes,” Karen said. “It’s a blessing to our lives and to the region. I really mean that.”
Karen first gravitated toward Peggy Cappy’s yoga classes on Monday evenings because she was familiar with Peggy from her local yoga studio long ago. Bob was having some issues with his back in those early years, and so he opted for the yoga classes as well.
Karen says Bob has always been athletic and the two of them had weights and machines at home but, “We never really got motivated,” Bob says. “The equipment here really motivated me to use it.”
Bob also had a traumatic knee injury from his football-playing days. Doctors said back then it would need to be replaced in 10 or 15 years. So far his knee is doing fine, he says. Karen believes it’s their exercise routine and good nutrition that has kept surgery at bay.
The two are still yoga enthusiasts and try to get to as many classes as pos
sible. Both appeared in Peggy Cappy’s video “Easy Yoga for Arthritis,” and Bob is a featured yoga practitioner who solved his back issues through yoga. It has also turned the two of them into recognizable faces where they least expect it. At a recent trade conference Karen helped a customer and the customer suddenly realized she had seen Karen before—in her own living room on a yoga DVD! Bob works in sales and frequently gets recognized by secretaries and others on his sales calls.
Bob claims yoga has measurably helped his golf game, giving him the flexibility to have a really great back swing. “It keeps me limber. In golf your muscles are torqueing as you swing. Yoga helps so much,” he said.
Karen says, “I just love the range of motion I get,” she said. “It’s such a joy to be able to move fully in this body and not feel constricted and cramped. I love to dance and yoga is so fluid, it’s like a dance. It feels good after class.”
The couple has lived in the Monadnock Region since 1989. Karen works at Cobblestone Publishing in Peterborough, while Bob works in sales at Forebo Movement Systems, covering all of New England.
Karen and Bob are both 58 years old. The two attend classes together as often as possible, and have built their evening dinner schedules around them. Karen explains, “I like the idea that we’re going through this life together, so I like that we stay in sort of parallel fitness levels. It gives us the opportunity to be in the same place, at the same activity level.”
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