A personal dedication
For Jane GoodALL
She went into the forest and listened.
The animals answered.
The art of listening
She taught us that animals have something to say.
In 1960, a young woman named Jane sat quietly at the edge of the Gombe forest in Tanzania and waited. She did not arrive with conclusions. She arrived with patience, with open eyes, and with a willingness to be changed by what she witnessed. What she found there — chimpanzees using tools, forming bonds, grieving, playing, teaching their young — rewrote what the world believed about the boundary between human and animal.
She listened before she spoke. She observed before she named. She let the animals lead.
That quality of attention — unhurried, humble, and full of love — is what Suzi Doga Teitelman has carried into every Doga practice since 2001.
A guiding idea
Jane GoodALL has long held that understanding is the root of care — that people protect what they truly know, and love what they have learned to see. That idea lives at the center of Doga.
What Doga carries forward
Connection through presence and compassionate attention.
Doga is not a trick. It is not a performance. It is a practice of shared breath — a human and an animal arriving together in the same moment, without agenda, without hierarchy, without the noise of the thinking mind.
Jane GoodALL spent decades demonstrating that the distance we imagine between ourselves and other animals is largely a story we tell. When we sit quietly with a dog, a cat, a bird — when we breathe with them, move with them, follow their lead — we close that distance. We remember something ancient and true: that we are not separate from the living world. We are part of it.
That is the heart of Doga. That is what Jane's life and work have always pointed toward.
Roots & Shoots
Young people, animals, and the environment.
In 1991, Jane founded Roots & Shoots — a global youth program that asks young people to take action for the care of animals, the environment, and the human community. The name itself is a teaching: roots hold firm underground while shoots push through seemingly solid walls to reach the light. Every young person who learns to see an animal as a fellow being, not a possession or a prop, is a shoot breaking through.
Suzi has always believed that Doga belongs in that same spirit — that when a child lies down beside a dog and breathes slowly, something shifts. The child learns to be still. The dog learns to trust. And the world, in that small moment, becomes a little more whole.
From Suzi
She showed up and sat still.
During Covid, I watched a recording Jane had made — one of those Zoom calls she was doing constantly, speaking to groups all over the world. Someone mentioned that her throat was hurting from talking so much. She said she'd had some whiskey. She laughed. And then she kept going.
I fell in love with her in that moment. Not with the icon. With the woman. The one who had whiskey because her throat hurt and still showed up. The one who had spent sixty years in relationship with chimpanzees, with students, with forests, with grief, and with hope — and who had never once stopped showing up.
What I recognized in her was the same thing I recognize in every dog on a yoga mat. She did not connect by performing. She did not teach from above. She arrived. She sat still long enough for trust to grow. And the animals — and the people — came to her.
That is what Doga is. That is what I have been trying to teach since 2001. You do not bring the dog into the practice. You arrive in the practice together. You sit still. You breathe. You let the animal show you what presence actually feels like.
Jane GoodALL has been a quiet light behind this work for a long time. This page is my small, independent way of saying so.
— Suzi Doga Teitelman, Founder, DogaDog
Our pledge
5% of every workshop enrollment is donated to the Jane Goodall Institute.
Learn about the Jane Goodall Institute ↗Independent dedication — no affiliation
This page is Suzi Doga Teitelman's personal, independent tribute to Jane GoodALL. DogaDog has no affiliation, endorsement, partnership, or formal relationship of any kind with the Jane Goodall Institute, the Jane Goodall Foundation, Roots & Shoots, or any related organization or foundation. The link to the Jane Goodall Institute above is provided as a public resource for those who wish to learn more about her work.
"The dogs were not interrupting the yoga. They were teaching it."
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