Yoga teacher who can still bring legs over head at 98 shares secrets to a healthy life

She puts her incredible health and physical strength down to yoga, gardening and her love of food.

She said: “I love fruit, I love vegetables, I’m not so enamoured by fish or meat though I have them occasionally.”

Dorothea says she also always has a can of Guinness handy, adding: “I love Guinness and I drink it because of the iron.

"I love wine, I have wine every evening with what I’m eating, one glass maybe one and a half but never in excess.”

The veteran says she has mostly avoided sugar as she doesn’t have a sweet tooth.

Some of the women who attend her weekly yoga class have been doing so for decades and they also attribute their physical health to the practice.

Susie Hunt says the benefits for her began with mental health, stating “you become immersed in the yoga, you can think about nothing else, and I think that’s very good for you for an hour and a half”.

Remarking on Dorothea’s physical ability, one of her friends who attends the class said “Dorothea is unique, she can still do things I have never been able to do.

"[Yoga] keeps you supple, inevitably in life you get various injuries, and it helps recovery from that too.”

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The yoga teacher who was part of the Women’s Royal Naval Service during WWII says age should not matter.

She said: “Age doesn’t interest me, people are people they’re not an age, age doesn’t exist, it shouldn’t exist, it’s the person you’re talking to not the age. Living beings.”

As Dorothea prepares to celebrate her 99th birthday she says she plans to continue doing what she loves, teaching yoga, gardening and enjoying life.