The yoga boom

How popular is yoga?

It’s as big as jogging was in the 1970s. Some 18 million Americans currently practice the ancient spiritual discipline—a 300 percent increase in less than a decade. Three-quarters of U.S. health clubs teach it. So do many corporations, battered-women’s shelters, and inner-city churches. Insurance companies pay for it, psychotherapists recommend it, and luminaries as diverse as Christy Turlington, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Sandra Day O’Connor swear by it. “You used to say ‘yoga,’ and people thought you were saying ‘yogurt,’” says Todd Jones, a senior editor at Yoga Journal. “Now Aunt Ethel in Des Moines does it.”

Is anyone making money off it?

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Of course. In theory, all you need to practice yoga is a small, comfortable place on the floor or ground. But the average practitioner now spends $1,500 a year on lessons, props, designer clothes, incense, CDs, and books (with titles like Yoga for Pets and the People Who Love Them and Yoga Mom, Buddha Baby). It all adds up to a $27 billion–a-year industry. If yoga were a single entity, it would be slightly bigger than Dow Chemical and only slightly smaller than Microsoft. Not surprisingly, those who are faithful to yoga’s traditions find the commercialization embarrassing. Yoga, they say, was not meant to be the latest health fad. “There are people doing yoga who don’t even know that yoga is a spiritual tradition,” says Georg Feuerstein, president of the Yoga Research and Education Center in California. “They are shortchanged.”

What is yoga really about?

Named after the Sanskrit word yuj, meaning “union,” yoga began in India about 5,000 years ago as an attempt to join body, mind, and spirit. Like t’ai chi and other Eastern healing arts, yoga is based on the premise that life energy flows through channels in the human body. The insults of stress and daily living, according to yoga theory, cause blockages in these channels. Yoga’s precise movements and stretching, along with deep breathing and visualization, are designed to pump energy through the channels, making the practitioner both healthier and more aware—and thus more in touch with the divine energy of the universe. In traditional yoga teaching, practicing the postures is part of an overall approach to life that includes nonviolence, austerity, purity, and meditation. Today, most yogaphiles are happy to jettison these components in favor of yoga’s strictly physical aspects. As Julia Roberts put it, “I don’t want it to change my life, just my butt.”

How many kinds of yoga are there?

Dozens. Over time, yoga has split into several major branches or schools, each with its own emphasis and flavor. What Americans usually think of as yoga is actually a branch known as hatha, or the yoga of force. Introduced to the U.S. in 1919 by yoga master Yogendra Mastamani, hatha stresses self-improvement and yoga’s physical benefits. After gaining wide acceptance during the countercultural 1960s and ’70s, hatha has in recent years spawned several highly popular variants. There is Iyengar, which uses props like pillows, ropes, and chairs to help the body reach and stretch in ways that it normally could not, and to stay in poses for longer periods of time. In Bikram, or “hot” yoga, 26 poses are repeated in the same order in a room heated to at least 100 degrees. Ashtanga, aka “power yoga,” synchronizes breathing with a series of rapid movements to build strength, stamina, and flexibility. Among the more unorthodox incarnations are boga (a combination of boxing and yoga) and paloga (a cross between yoga and Pilates).

What do people get out of it?

As Julia Roberts points out, yoga is good for your butt—and for overall muscle tone and strength. More importantly, perhaps, practitioners credit yoga’s gentle twisting and massaging of their muscles and internal organs with giving them increased energy, stronger immune systems, fewer aches and pains, sharper concentration, and improved circulation. Some say yoga has boosted their performance on the golf course during the day and in the sack at night.

Are yoga’s benefits proven?

To a degree. A few scientific studies have found evidence that yoga has beneficial effects on carpal tunnel syndrome, asthma, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and substance abuse. Several major hospitals offer yoga to cardiac patients, and Dr. Noel Merz of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles says his patients have gotten “tremendous benefits,” including lower cholesterol and blood pressure. A 1990 study by California physician Dean Ornish found that patients with coronary heart disease could actually reverse their atherosclerosis through a radical change of lifestyle that included yoga. Skeptics, though, say that the scientific evidence for broad health claims is not yet there. Skeptics also point out that in some cases, yoga can hurt.

How?

Yoga’s postures can be extremely demanding, and if not performed precisely and carefully, they can strain or tear your muscles and tendons. The Yoga Research and Education Center recently found that one in every 20 yoga practitioners had suffered some form of injury, ranging from broken toes to ligament tears and nerve damage. Because there are no national certification or licensing standards for yoga teachers, many push their students too hard or fail to properly supervise their overcrowded classes. Many yoga injuries are also self-inflicted by those who bring their competitive Western attitudes to what is essentially a contemplative Eastern technique. Some students get frustrated when they cannot keep up with more advanced practitioners, even lashing out at anyone who steps on their mat or disrupts their concentration. This phenomenon is now so widespread there’s a term for it: “yoga rage.”

The bad boy of yoga