Instead, it was Lilias Folan’s Yoga and You, and Dr Steinberg, 68, looks back and laughs at how accidental her introduction to yoga was.
"Lilias had a beautiful long braid and bright red leotards, and I was at a very impressionable age.
"It could have easily been Richard Simmons, but I probably wouldn’t have been attracted to that. There was something about that braid."
She said she started following the yoga show on TV because she wanted to become more flexible.
"I wanted to be able to do a cartwheel — you know, just a normal desire for a 14-year-old girl."
While in college, a yoga friend introduced her to a book by BK Iyengar — one of the foremost yoga gurus in the world.
"My friend and I would look at the photos in the book and just laugh, because how is it humanly possible to do these poses?"
But her intrigue inspired her to go to India for a year and study the yoga style at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute with the man himself.
"He was brutal — very serious about it."
She later completed her PhD studies in nutritional sciences while teaching yoga, and started questioning whether nutritional sciences was for her.
"I was doing yoga all the time, but I never thought of it as a way of life all that time.
"I was saying, ‘I don’t know if I can just be a yoga teacher'."
Now, after 47 years, she has become one of the world’s leading specialists on Iyengar yoga.
She said in a medical sense, Iyengar yoga poses could be used to heal, treat or prevent common ailments and conditions such as back pain, hypertension or sciatica.
"Personally for me, I use yoga for my own ailments that happen with life.
"Even in the general classes, I can help people and include them by modifying something to help them and perhaps even learn what to do to get better.
"Miracles happen to this day in these medical classes. It’s amazing."
Dr Steinberg was in Dunedin at the weekend, teaching Iyengar yoga classes as part of a short tour of Australasia.
She said more than 70 people from around New Zealand came to Dunedin for the sessions.
"I was surprised at the numbers, actually. And the age group was people in their 20s to their 80s."
