It was years after her four sons were born, after they became more independent, that Sarnie Ogus first took up dancing lessons. Inspired by the connection she felt between mind and body, she eventually became a dance therapist.
Later, at the age of 43, a chance meeting led her to discover the Alexander Technique of movement therapy, and she began using it to heal her own body after a serious car accident left her in need of spinal surgery. In 1972, she became a certified practitioner and then a trainer of Alexander Technique therapists, frequently traveling the country to lecture and teach.
She was interviewed for “Living the Alexander Technique: Interviews With Nine Senior Teachers,” a 2015 book by Ruth Rootberg. She retired a few years later.
Ms. Ogus, who lived in East Hampton from 1991 to 2012, died on April 2 at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx after a two-week hospitalization. Most recently of New York City, she was 97.
Sarnell Harriet Ogus was born in Chicago on Feb. 1, 1927, the youngest of four children of Albert and Minnie Ogus. She grew up there and in Green Bay, Wisc. After nearly dying of a serious ear infection at the age of 4, she was left with permanent hearing loss.
She was extremely bright, her family said, and she graduated from high school a year early. Because of the family’s financial circumstances, however, college was not an option, and she went to work.
When she was 18 and employed as a messenger for MGM Studios, she met a cameraman named Gerald Hirschfeld. After a two-week courtship, the couple married and moved to Greenwich Village. Their first son was born two years later. They would have three more.
“Due to the demands of her husband’s career,” her family wrote, Ms. Ogus raised their children mostly on her own, living for some time in the suburbs of Long Island before moving back to New York City.
Ms. Ogus and Mr. Hirschfeld divorced in 1968. Her second marriage, to Irving Levine in 1988, lasted until his death in 2012.
She is survived by her four sons: Alec Hirschfeld of Miami, Marc Hirschfeld of New York City, Eric Hirschfeld of Madison, N.H., and Burt Hirschfeld of San Francisco. She also leaves eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, as well as seven current and former daughters-in-law. Her three older siblings, Libby, Geri, and Bobby, died before her.
“By any measure, Sarnie had a full life,” her family wrote. “On growing old, she said, ‘Things sag, and your skin changes. It’s a good thing to embrace it, because the inevitable is going to happen . . . and hopefully, the more you embrace the fact that you’re aging, without succumbing, without being old,” you will “be young as you get old.”
A private memorial service for family members is to be planned in the future.
