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SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, August 6, 2004: A Bay Area publisher is expanding its coverage to encompass yoga’s increasingly mainstream practitioners. Yoga Journal, of Berkeley, launches a redesign of its 310,000-circulation national magazine with its September issue. The magazine, which is published seven times a year, has brought more mainstream advertisers onboard, including Target stores, the Ford Motor Co. and General Mills. The Ford Motor Company approached Yoga Journal to buy an ad to promote the new Escape Hybrid SUV. Toyota already advertises its Prius hybrid car. The redesign is also intended to appeal to a younger group of women practicing yoga without alienating its original audience. The magazine will now feature more stories about the broader lifestyle of people who practice yoga–stories on travel, avoiding overeating, alleviating stress and dealing spiritually with relationship issues. When John Abbott bought Yoga Journal in 1998 from the California Yoga Teachers Association, the average age of a yoga practitioner was 47. Today, it is 38 and a recent rush of new practitioners includes women in their 20s, says this article. Market research that Yoga Journal commissioned pegged the number of Americans practicing yoga at close to 15 million, up from 5.8 million in 1998. Readership has grown with the interest in yoga, a Hindu tradition of exercise, meditation and controlled breathing that practitioners say provides spiritual as well as physical benefits. Yoga first gained publicity in America in 1968 when the Beatles made a pilgrimage to India to study under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Now yoga is regarded, along with swimming, jogging and aerobics, as one of many ways Americans stay fit.

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