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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, January 18, 2004: Yoga Journal magazine is hosting its second annual West Coast conference, bringing together world-renowned faculty and yoga practitioners. More than 800 people will be attending the four-day affair, to be held at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency Embarcadero from January 30 to February 2, 2004. Celebrity instructors such as Judith Lasater, Rodney Yee and Baron Baptiste will be on hand to conduct classes and educate attendees about the range of health benefits associated with yoga. Though modern yoga originally moved across the country from the east, introduced first by young swamis and yoga masters of Indian origin, the movement quickly found fertile ground in the Bay Area, with acolytes such as Lasater, co-founder of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco and president of the California Yoga Teachers Association, traveling to India and bringing back its ethical and philosophical precepts. Today, nearly 20 percent of the country’s 15 million yoga practitioners live on the West Coast. “For a long time, people thought practicing yoga meant putting your foot behind your head,” says Elise Miller, a noted yoga teacher who founded the California Yoga Center studio in Palo Alto and will appear at the conference. “It’s much more than that, though. Among so many other things, it’s about quieting the mind and the nervous system. It’s about concentration, meditation, spirituality and reaching an enlightened state.” The Yoga Journal began as a not-for-profit newsletter launched by the California Yoga Teachers Association back in 1975. The magazine has become a slick glossy whose paid subscriber base has risen from 90,000 in 1998 to more than 300,000 today. It also organizes several well-attended conferences each year.

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