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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, March 9, 2004: In the U.S. the ancient discipline of yoga has boomed in popularity over the past several years. Yoga is now practiced by 7 percent of U.S. adults, or 15 million people, according to a market study conducted by Harris International this summer for Yoga Journal. That’s up 28.5 percent in the last two years alone. The same study found that more than half of the general population has at least a casual interest in yoga, and one in six respondents planned to try yoga in the next year. Three-quarters of fitness clubs now offer some form of yoga class, according to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association. Yoga is now recommended to pro athletes by their coaches, pushed by cardiologists and physical therapists and taught in East Bay high schools for physical education credit. In workplaces around the Bay Area, employees and employers make room for weekly yoga sessions. “Even the most traditional types of companies are now coming to me,” says Christine Chang, owner of Yoga Motion in San Francisco, which offers yoga lessons exclusively to business. “People are more aware of the need to de-stress and center and find quality of life.” If yoga is changing Americans, so, too, are Americans changing yoga. For one thing, students in the United States are embracing sweaty, strenuous varieties of the discipline, lumped together under the term Power Yoga. Many longtime teachers and practitioners share mixed feelings about yoga’s popularity. One major complaint is that today’s students tend to see yoga merely as the process of perfecting difficult poses, ignoring its meditative and spiritual components.

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