Becky Gelatt

Still Listening, Still Learning, Still Lifting Others

by Mimi Greenwood KnightBeckyGelatt

THERE’S A QUOTE scrawled on the whiteboard at The Yoga School in Covington. “The important thing is this. To be able to sacrifice at any moment what we are for what we could become.” (Charles Frédéric Duboi) It’s a philosophy Becky Gelatt has embraced for most of her 83 years. And she’s helped others do the same. Born and raised in New Iberia, Gelatt moved to Covington in the early ’80s with her husband, Dick, and quickly applied that same thinking to her new hometown. Over the past four decades, she’s not only served on existing civic committees but envisioned and initiated new ones, always with an eye toward preserving and restoring her beloved Covington—at the same time imaging what it could become.

It was Gelatt who conceived and launched the Keep Covington Beautiful campaign and the Tree Board, working with then-Downtown Development Coordinator/later Mayor Keith Villere. Gelatt served as president of the Covington Chamber of Commerce Auxiliary and president of the board of directors of the historic Playmakers Theatre. She helped start Covington’s Old Towne Festival with lifelong Covington residents Pat Clanton and Carol Jahncke, launched the Mayor’s Council on Healthy Lifestyles under then-Mayor Mike Cooper, and is now directing her insights and passions toward a seat on the board of Council on Aging St. Tammany (COAST).

To spend time with Gelatt is to feel fully seen and fully heard. As busy as ever in her ninth decade, she never hesitates to offer the gift of herself to anyone she encounters, be it the barista serving her morning coffee, one of her yoga students, a fellow member of a civic committee, or any one of her Covington neighbors. >>

As Gelatt walks around downtown Covington or enters a local business, faces light up at first glimpse of her. With each encounter, Gelatt not only enquires about the other person’s life and loved ones but genuinely listens for and cares about their responses.

One of the many gifts Gelatt has given her adopted northshore community over the past 40 years is the gift of yoga. In fact, if you practice yoga in the Covington-Mandeville area, there’s a good chance your teacher was taught by this beloved yogi. Gelatt’s studio, simply named The Yoga School, has been open since the ’80s and a dedicated teachers’ studio for the past 16 years. Surprisingly, Gelatt herself didn’t find her way to the discipline until her 40s. “There was one woman at that time who came from New Orleans to teach yoga in Covington once a week,” she says. “I was at an age where I began to think, ‘My life is half over. How do I want the second half to look?’ I thought yoga might figure into it.”

The more Gelatt learned the more she wanted to know. So, she began attending week-long yoga seminars around the country. “My first one was in Florida. When it was over, I told the teacher, ‘I want more. What should I do?’ So, she helped me work out a schedule. I went from Florida to Montana to Ohio and back to Florida. I did that for eight or nine years. What I found as I studied is that there’s no end to it. The more I learned, the more there was to know.” She began teaching at a local health club and then opened a small studio herself. In 1991, she opened The Yoga School in a tiny storefront in Covington.

“I thought, ‘If I have enough students to pay the rent, it could work,’” Gelatt says. “Of course, I didn’t >>

think about things like insurance and upkeep on the building.” But for Gelatt, there was no turning back. Three years later, she moved The Yoga School into what became its longtime home in the old Art Lemane Photography Studio on Tyler Street in Covington. As word spread, her classes grew and the school flourished. Hundreds of students moved through, and some went on to be yoga teachers themselves. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Gelatt decided the community needed the healing nature of yoga even more. “I felt like it was more important for me to train others to become yoga teachers,” she says. “I have students who’ve been with me for 30 years, so I still offer classes to them. But since Katrina, most of my efforts have gone into teaching others to become yoga teachers.”

Dozens of students later, Gelatt now has graduates teaching across the U.S. and Europe—even one teaching yoga to medical students in Japan. Janice Rousell is one of her graduates and biggest fans. Although she’d been doing yoga with a teacher in New Orleans for about 30 years, Rousell says she learned things from Gelatt she hadn’t known before. “She teaches a lot of the yoga philosophy, a lot about the anatomy, and how each pose affects the anatomy. She goes very in-depth about proper alignment and proper thinking and the ‘whys’ of yoga. And we learned each pose in Sanskrit. Becky is very interested in people. When we go out to eat, she knows everybody, and people get so excited to see her.”

Erin Morvant studied under Gelatt herself before she headed off to teach yoga in Colorado. She even had the chance to study under Gelatt’s primary teacher, Gary Kraftsow, one of the top yoga teachers in the world and founder of the American Viniyoga Institute. “He told me, ‘Becky’s more of a teacher to me than I could ever be to her,’” Morvant says. “Becky is the kindest, most empathetic, caring individual I’ve come to know in my life. She’s someone who can speak to >>

your heart and be completely present when she’s with you. I recently moved back to New Orleans for graduate school and to be near family. It’s been such a gift to be in a place where I can learn from Becky again.”

At an age when most of her contemporaries are slowing down, Gelatt is looking for a new challenge and recently began training to offer therapeutic yoga. “Yoga therapy can help with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual trauma,” she says. “We’re living in stressful times. I want to learn to treat trauma and anxiety and then teach others to help heal physical, emotional, and spiritual injury with yoga.” Yoga therapy uses yoga postures, breathing exercises, meditation and guided imagery to improve mental and physical health. “I’m learning a lot more about anatomy, which is important in therapeutic yoga. I’m learning poses and breathing that can help treat anxiety, depression, and anger management. My yoga lineage is Viniyoga, which translates ‘for the individual’. Yoga therapy is very individualized. Some of my students need chair yoga because they can’t get down on the mat. One of my teaching students is using therapeutic yoga to work with those in 12-step programs. Yoga can be adapted for anyone.

“I’m at an age now where I’m >>

Becky Gelatt, Coast board member (center), with Jorie-Brae Morgan, marketing and resource manager (left), and Julie Agan, executive director.

thinking, ‘What do I want my legacy to be?’ I’d like to leave a legacy of loving Covington,” says Gelatt. “With my work at COAST, I want to help younger people have more integrity in dealing with older people. I want to teach them to have a conversation with a senior and really hear what the senior wants, not what they want for them. At 83, I can speak for those in their 80s. I hope I can make a difference in the way they are heard. And I want to continue making a difference through yoga.”

The past few years have brought a lot of change for Gelatt, most notably the death of her husband, Dick. “When Dick got sick, life changed a lot for us,” she says. “Then he died, and that was another huge adjustment. Then came COVID, which changed what we were able to do at The Yoga School.” Then we had Hurricane Ida, when Gelatt had several trees hit her house and gardens. “Through it all, yoga has grounded me. Yoga gives a whole different concept on aging and whatever life brings next.”

Whatever that is, I feel certain at least one octogenarian in Covington will still be listening and learning ways she can use it to become an even better version of herself.