Yoga instructor Bette Calman may be 83, but she's still bending over backwards to spread the benefits of the ancient Indian discipline.The nimble grandmother can really pull some shapes and with her set hair and pearl earrings she looks as glamorous as Greta Garbo in a pink jumpsuit.With 40 years of teaching under her belt, the Australian wonder is living proof that a lifetime's dedication to yoga will keep you flexible as a rubber band.
While others her age complain about aches and pains, Mrs Calman focuses on getting tough balancing manoeuvres right.Mrs Calman from Williamstown, southeast Australia, can do all the difficult moves including the agonising 'peacock' where the body is held in a horizontal position by the strength of the arms alone.The bendy granny can also pull off a tricky raised 'lotus', 'bridge' and a headstand with ease.She can also put her head between her knees and hold her ankles putting her inflexible grandchildren to shame.
'I'm proof that if you keep at it, you'll get there. I can do more now than I could 50 years ago,' Mrs Calman said.So when will she give it up? 'You're never too old. The body is a remarkable instrument.'It can stretch and stretch, and get better all the time. Forget age,' said Mrs Calman, the author of three yoga books including one called Yoga for Arthritis.'Even a basic posture, or just going to a window and breathing deeply, can have big benefits.'It's that spirit that has made Mrs Calman a legend.She was a pioneer of the regime in Australia in the 1950s, ran yoga centres for 33 years and made regular TV appearances in the 70s.
She thought she would take it easy in Melbourne, but was drawn back to teaching as yoga interest grew.'I came here to retire, but my daughter, Susie, who's also a teacher, kept being pestered for fill-in teachers at her health centre. That was eight years ago,' she said.Mrs Calman teaches up to 11 classes a week with no sign of stopping and she keeps the 'corpse' posture strictly for her classes.'Yoga keeps you young,' she said.'Never have I gone to a yoga class and wished I was somewhere else, because I know I'm going to come out feeling on the top of the world. There'll always be yoga.'
There are baby bumps and then there are baby bumps.But there must be few women in history who have ever had a baby bump quite like octuplets mother Nadya Suleman.These extraordinary pictures show the 33-year-old baring her stomach eight days before having her brood.
Smiling proudly, the mother-of-14 hoists her green patterned smock to show off her hugely distended stomach to the camera.The photographs, which first went up on tmz.com, show the strain her body was under as she reached the end of her record-breaking pregnancy.Single mother Suleman, who already had six children by IVF, used a fertility doctor to give birth to her babies.The new pictures surfaced on the day it emerged she had fled her house in Whittier, California, to go into hiding with her older children after receiving death threats.She has even taken on the services of a security firm to ensure the safety of her family.Her publicist Michael Furtney said: 'There has been some really nasty stuff about wanting to physically harm Nadya, and outrageous statements about both her and her children.'We have a security firm that we've been working with and they have certainly made contact with the police about the threats. I don't know where that will go, but we'll see'Much of the anger surrounds the eight babies' conception by IVF.
Yesterday, Suleman launched a website, encouraging readers to give her money via credit cards and send parcels.The American mother, who already receives a raft of state handouts to care for her growing brood, also left a message to well-wishers.'We thank you for the love and good wishes sent to us from around the world,' she said.And she adds that the octuplets, born on January 26, are 'all healthy and growing stronger by the day.'The babies have been named Noah, Maliah, Isaiah, Nariah, McCai, Josiah, Jeremiah and Jonah.Earlier this week, it was revealed that Miss Suleman has three disabled childrenDespite previously insisting that she will not be claiming benefits, her publicist confirmed that she already receives food stamps and child disability payments to help feed and care for her six other children.But he would not disclose the nature of the disabilities, or the type or sum of the payments.The news came as it was revealed that all of Suleman's children were conceived with help from the same fertility doctor - Dr Michael Kamrava.The 57-year-old, who runs a clinic on glamorous Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, is being investigated by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Dr Kamrava, who helped pioneer embryo implantation, is a controversial figure in the field.'He's tried some novel techniques and some of those methods have been controversial,' said Dr John Jain, founder of Santa Monica Fertility Specialists.He criticised the decision to implant so many embryos, saying: 'I do think that this doctor really stepped outside the guidelines in a very extreme manner, and as such, put both the mother and children at extra high risk of disability and even death.’Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, a professional acquaintance of Dr Kamrava's, said he worked to develop an embryo transfer device that allows doctors to implant an embryo - or sometimes sperm with an unfertilised egg - directly into the uterine lining.
A 56-year-old woman has become the oldest woman to give birth to triplets – but they are actually her grandchildren. Jaci Dalenberg acted as a surrogate mother for her daughter, Kim, who battled with infertility after a hysterectomy, and has given birth to three babies, each weighing less than 3lbs, a minute apart.
The three girls - Ellie, Gabriella and Carmina - were delivered by emergency Caesarean and rushed to intensive care but all three have pulled through.Kim, 36, already had two children from a previous marriage, but desperately wanted more children with husband Joe, 30, who she married in 2005.But the mother-of-two was unable to conceive after she had a hysterectomy to treat cysts and fibroids seven years before.
The desperate couple went through two failed adoptions and considered surrogacy and adopting from abroad before Jaci stepped in.The hospital manager had been researching surrogacy and was confident she could carry a baby despite her age.Kim underwent IVF at Cleveland Clinic, where eggs from her remaining ovary were fertilised by Joe’s sperm.The doctors had only performed one other surrogacy procedure, on a woman in her 40s who was not related to the biological mother, but they said Jaci was in 'perfect shape for her age.'It took three attempts before Kim’s fertilised eggs successfully implanted in her mother’s womb, on 5 April this year.But the drama was far from over as an ultrasound 10 weeks into the pregnancy revealed three babies, rather than the expected one.Then, on 11 October, two months before the due date, Jaci was forced to have an emergency Caesarean because one of the twins was starving in the womb.Jaci told Closer magazine: ‘When the babies were born, I was ecstatic. The hardest part was leaving them in the hospital when I was released four days after the birth.She added: ‘I don’t feel like I want to care for the babies myself.'I have already raised four beautiful daughters.'My time for being a mother is over. I’m their granny and I have no plans to ever be pregnant again!’Kim said: ‘It’s the most amazing thing any mother could do for her daughter.‘Of course, we’ll tell all the girls how they were born – I want them to know what an incredible thing their grandmother did for us.'I want them to know how special they are and all about their unusual start in life.’
One is the smallest man in the world, the other is the woman with the longest legs and the instructions from the former to the latter when they met this morning: 'Don't look up.'At just 29.37in tall, He Ping Ping's little head barely reaches Svetlana Pankrtova's knees.But then, her legs do go on a fair way - measuring 51.96in long.
At 6ft 7in from head to toe, Pankratova is well short of being the tallest living woman. That honour goes to Yao Defen, who stands 7ft 9in.But the Russian's relatively short body means that those pins are the longest ever recorded for a woman.An impression she seemed keen to emphasise this morning by wearing what appeared to be the world's shortest skirt.Not that He Ping Ping seemed to mind, happily posing underneath Pankratova's legs - and he even had a sneaky look up.The 20-year-old had jetted in from his home in northern China to help launch the latest edition of the Guinness World Records Book in Trafalgar Square, Central London.Craig Glenday, the book's editor, recently told the Daily Record newspaper how much he enjoyed his work.He said: 'It's a great job, and there's so much travel involved. Earlier this year I did my own world record for travel, which was 44 hours non-stop.'I was in Inner Mongolia meeting He Ping Ping, the world's shortest man (74.61cm) who actually lives quite near Bao Xi Shun, the world's tallest man (2m, 36.1cm).'I was on my way, via Paris, to Chile for a flight to Antarctica with the band Fall Out Boy, who were trying to set a record for the shortest time it would take to play on every continent in the world.'Unfortunately the weather was so bad that we couldn't make it in the end.'The Guinness World Record Book is out tomorrow.
