132Phone: 516-328-3970www.technocnc.comCNC ArticlesA well-known Yoga instructor helped express his artistic talent at a commercial level by turning a new exercise machine concept into a profi table business with the help of a Techno CNC router. The new concept involves wooden, multipurpose exercise machines that are designed to simulate the movements used in ballet, swimming, gymnastics and yoga. When Juliu Horvath began designing these machines about 10 years ago, he built them with a jig saw and templates. Each machine took so long to build by this approach that it Computerized Router Turns Yoga Instructor’s Labor of Love into Profi table Exercise Machinebreathing patterns to movement patterns. Teachers and students from all over the world continue to flock to his studio in New York City to learn his original Yoga system. Horvath’s system includes a unique series of fl oor exercises designed to enhance flexibility while increasing strength. Finding that many students had difficulty learning these exercises, he began building wooden machines to make it easier to perform them. “I saw that existing exercise machines were too rough and too linear,” Horvath says. “Length and breadth were missing. They made it hard to build coordination and flexibility.”Horvath’s machines incorporate the kind of sweeping organic curves one expects to find in Art Nouveau furniture. The platforms are curved in the Santa Cruz style of wavy red and blond woodwork and patterned after the swirling shapes of bonsai trees. They are created to command a “melodic movement” that increases the individual’s effective range of motion. According to Horvath, “My machines are designed for athletes, dancers and health conscious people, not body builders.” While the concept was developed in the mid-1980s, it took until 1994 to develop the design to absolute fullness, including determining the exact proportions to fi t any body type.Horvath set up the fi rst machines in his Yoga studio in New York City called White Cloud Studio. The machines, which he calls the Gyrotonics Expansion System, developed an almost cult-like following from the very start among the New York dance seemed impossible to build a profi table business from his concept. Several years ago, however, he switched to a Techno computerized router that has allowed him to cut the time required to build the machines by 80% and turn what was previously merely a labor of love into a growing business.Horvath began his career as a ballet dancer in Romania and defected to the United States in the late 1960’s. Not long after his arrival, he gave up dance to pursue the study of Yoga. He developed a Yoga system based on the underlying principle of translating
