THE DIGITAL REPOSITORY FOR THE BLACK EXPERIENCE
"God's World."
Elementary school teacher-turned-yoga instructor Rebecca "Becky" Love was born on May 2, 1916, in Buffalo, New York, to Johnetta and Robert Grant. After relocating to Chicago, she married Edison Love, a Chicago politician, in 1942. She took night classes at Northwestern University, earning a B.S. in education in 1951, and went on to study English and psychology there, receiving her M.A. in 1966.
Love taught third-grade students at Doolittle West School, in the Douglas community on Chicago's South Side, for thirty-eight years.
Her fascination with yoga began when Love was just a teenager. However, it was not until she was in her forties that she began formal training. Love studied yoga with Sivananda Yoga Vendanta group and began teaching in the early 1960s. Love conducted master-level training at the Temple of Kriya Yoga. She earned the title master teacher of Hatha yoga in 1972. Since then, she has trained hundreds of yoga teachers at the Temple and has taught classes at the Sears Tower, Harold Washington College, Lawson YMCA, the New City YMCA, Michael Reese Hospital, Neiman Marcus and the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Over the years, she has become one of Chicago's most beloved yoga instructors.
Love has lived in the same home on the South Side for the past sixty years. Her only daughter, Candace Crolley Love, died of kidney problems in the early 1980s at the age of thirty-five. Her husband died several years later.
Love has been featured in numerous local publications and on March 7, 2002, was the focus of Harry Porterfield's "Someone You Should Know" segment on ABC Channel 7. She regularly lectures and conducts workshops on health and nutrition in addition to teaching eleven yoga classes, six days a week.