Yoga fuels resident’s foray into business ownership, authorship and athletics

by Charles Cassady

It is the time of year when many Hudsonites turn over new leaves. Some will investigate new fitness options and workouts, and a few may join the legions of those who have discovered yoga through Hudson’s own Larry Terkel.

Terkel is an author, athlete and founder of Main Street Yoga at the Spiritual Life Society, 1 East Main St. He started the center 45 years ago before “namaste”entered the common parlance and “downward-facing dog” might have referred to Snoopy. 

“I’m a longtime resident of Hudson,” said Terkel. “We built our home here in 1975, when Hudson was humble. There was one traffic light at 303 and 91.”

Publicly offered yoga sessions then were not merely uncommon, “it was underground!” he explained.

Terkel said he and his wife, Susan, bought the Church on the Green, which now houses the Spiritual Life Society, in 1978 building on a year of study with yoga masters in India. The incipient Main Street Yoga was greeted with anxiety and suspicion.

“We organized as the Spiritual Life Society, a 501(c)(3), buying the Church on the Green struck a nerve,” he said. “In that era of Jonestown Peoples Temple massacre-suicide and fresh memories of the Manson family, Hudson thought a cult was moving in on the town square. I had several death threats. Someone said the devil was moving into the old Church on the Green.”

Along with the yoga practice, the couple ran a day-care center at the old church. Terkel said there was an unexpected windfall for the Spiritual Life Society when the Yellow Pages listed it as an “interdenominational church.” The site attracted numerous alternative marriage ceremonies – interracial couples, divorced Catholics and visibly pregnant brides referred by uneasy pastors. Terkel, who now holds a religion degree from Kent State and is a licensed minister, has officiated an estimated 2,500 weddings, including five in one day. 

“By 1990, we were on the cover of the Hudson phone book, promoting Hudson’s diversity. They thought a young hippie was buying the church, but I think we’ve proven to be upstanding stewards,” he said. 

Weddings and the pre-school primarily carried the business along for two decades as a gradual recognition emerged that the key elements of yoga – “the flexibility, breath control, meditation/serenity, stamina-building,” Terkel said – are not only spiritual but also efficient, productive exercise. 

“We went through a period when we were inundated over yoga,” he said. Sessions could balloon to 50 people. 

At present, according to Terkel, “it ebbs and flows.” An average class size can go from five to 15. “I’ve had students who have been coming for 30 years.”

There is an increase each January and February with New Years resolutions, he said, but also in September when the kids go back to school.

One of Terkel’s early students was Hudson High graduate Matt Lerner, who had taught yoga in his college days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison prior to moving back into town. Lerner became Terkel’s first hired teacher and is now partnered in the business. Thanks to Lerner’s connections, Main Street Yoga branches now serve Badger State communities of Madison and Stoughton. 

And, new for 2025, there is a Spiritual Life Society/Main Street Yoga satellite in Akron at the Highland Universal Gatheringspot, at 133 Merriman Rd. Terkel said it was a gradual re-opening of the former synagogue address, following COVID lockdown/quarantine that prompted the new venture with landlord Tony Troppe. 

Meditation has been Terkel’s new focus and subject of his book How to Meditate: Secrets to the Easiest and Most Effective Meditation Technique.

“I have meditated every day since India, 54 years,” said Terkel, who said that meditation is currently as enigmatic to many as yoga was in 1978. “I get calls from all over the world from people who didn’t understand meditation until they read my book.”

His earlier book It’s the Little Things in Life that Make a Big Difference, written with Susan (a prolific author in her own right, with books covering medical history, drugs reform and public-health policy), has been translated into several languages. And he lives the example of a yoga/meditation lifestyle by being an award-winning athlete, at 77.

In 2023, Terkel took seven gold medals at the Senior Games in Pittsburgh, and he is getting back into shape for the 2025 Senior Games in Des Moines, Iowa. 

This after Terkel’s rebounding from what he said was his first real health scare, a gall bladder issue late in 2024. “Because of yoga I’ve never, ever been sick. I’ve never been overnight in my life in a hospital, until this gall bladder attack,” he said, adding that he expects to be resuming training this month. 

photo caption: Resident Larry Terkel, a longtime yogi and yoga instructor, is founder and director of Hudson’s Spiritual Life, one of the oldest holistic centers in America