New York City · 2001
How Doga began.
A memory. A mat. A dog who was already there.
Before September 11, New York City felt like a city that could hold anything. I was training as a yoga teacher — learning to pay attention, learning to be still, learning to trust what the body already knows. I did not yet understand that the deepest teachers would not be human.
I began teaching private yoga to Elizabeth Swados — Liz. She was a composer, a poet, a playwright, a director, a teacher. She had previously directed me in theater. We knew each other's work. We trusted each other's instincts. There was no need to explain things.
Liz had three dogs. I had Coali — my black cocker spaniel. When we practiced together in her apartment, the dogs were simply there. On the mat. Between us. Breathing alongside us. We didn't plan it. We didn't invite them. They arrived, and we noticed.
What happened in those sessions was not a class format. It was not a trend. It was something quieter and older: the recognition that the animals were not interrupting the yoga. They were participating in it. They were, in their own way, teaching it. They were already in the Now — and their presence was an invitation.
In 2001, I began teaching what I first called Ruff Yoga at Crunch Fitness in New York City. I named it Doga that same year. Over the following 25 years, the work grew — into studios, television, books, and a developing community of students and teachers around the world.
Coali is gone now. Liz is gone now. But the practice they helped me find is still here — still growing, still teaching, still rooted in that first quiet recognition: your animal already knows how to be present. The practice is learning to meet them there.
"Before Doga had a name, Coali was already on the mat."
"Twenty-five years of learning to meet the animal beside us with greater presence."
"Just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment."
A personal reflection
There is a tree in my backyard. Some mornings a bird calls from it — a sound so particular, so unhurried, that I stop whatever I am doing and answer. Not in words. Just a pause. A breath. A turning toward.
I don't know if it is Liz. I would never say it is. But I feel something in those moments that I cannot explain any other way — a quality of attention, a humor, a tenderness that was hers. The bird calls. I answer. We go on.
Maybe that is what she taught me most: that presence doesn't require a body. That love keeps finding its form. That the practice — the real practice — is simply learning to notice.
25 years of love, laughter, and paws on the mat.
Elizabeth Swados was a private yoga student and a dear colleague. This account is Suzi's personal memory of their shared practice. It does not imply that Liz Swados endorsed, promoted, or was affiliated with DogaDog's current courses, programs, or offerings.