LEGACY

ETHAN GREEN, MASTER CRAFTSMAN
FOUNDER OF PINE TREE YOGA PROPS

In late 1995 Mr. Ethan Green began studying and practicing Iyengar yoga with his still-favorite yoga teacher Jeri Hudak of the Moscow Yoga Center in Moscow, Idaho.  While sharing a meal in his home, Jeri noticed he had a table saw in the garage and asked if he could make her a bench about a foot wide, a foot tall and 42” long.  So he built his first Setu Bandha Bench.  Some weeks later, at a three day workshop taught by Gabriel Halpern, former owner of the Yoga Circle in Chicago, Jeri introduced Ethan to him as, ‘the man who made her bench’.  Gabriel looked it over and asked Ethan for five of them.  And so Pine Tree Yoga Props was launched.

In our early years we worked from directions in the brilliant little booklet of plans self-published by Francois Lozier, of Toronto, ON.  Since then, many of the dimensions and shapes have been updated or corrected.  Our arched props are all based on tracings of the originals and some of the other dimensions have been altered slightly.  The list of donors of these tracings and details of the original props at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) is too long to list here but it includes some of the most senior teachers in the US.  Our gratitude to this entire list is boundless.

When Pine Tree Yoga Props was formed, Ethan lived in southeast Washington State.  That is pine country and provided the name to the new business.  As usual, life took Ethan elsewhere and found himself outside of pine country.  Given our growing customer list the name remained.  Please note that we do not work in pine.  In fact we believe nearly all species of pine, as well as other soft woods and plywoods, to be inappropriate for the purpose of wood props.  For details of the species we do use, as well as a few other details of our building methods, please see the FAQ section. 

Our participation in the Iyengar Yoga conventions has put us in touch with  thousands of teachers and practitioners of Iyengar yoga from the US and abroad.  Many aspects of our props, while maintaining the important dimensions and curves from the originals, are the result of input from some of the most senior teachers in the Iyengar Yoga lineage.