Michael Cheikin, M.D., medical director at Center for Optimal Health, in Plymouth Meeting, is celebrating 20 years of serving the community via the unusual combination of medical doctor and yoga instructor.

Cheikin first began teaching yoga as a means to help his chronic pain and fibromyalgia patients. While his patients benefited, his uncommon approach was not embraced by everyone. Cheikin explains, “When I started teaching yoga at a local hospital in 1998, the public relations department sent me a concerned memo stating, ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’ll ruin our reputation!’” 

Twenty years later, yoga options have expanded immensely, with myriad instructors available representing many levels of training and experience. Cheikin currently teaches in a spacious studio that he designed himself, and some of his students have been with him for nearly the entire 20 years he has been teaching. “Our classes have become a small community of people that seek a more comprehensive approach to yoga and health than is offered online and in fitness clubs,” he reports.

Cheikin is a holistic physician, board certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation (“physiatry”), pain management, spinal cord medicine and electrodiagnostic medicine. He is also licensed in medical acupuncture. He specializes in obscure, chronic and severe problems that have not responded satisfactorily to other methods of healing.

Location: 832 Germantown Pk., Ste. 3, Plymouth Meeting. For more information, call 610-239-9901, email [email protected] or visit CohLife.org. December 2018