Yoga

IRVINE, Calif. - It's 6 p.m. when Susan Hagg emerges from her corporate cubicle at Skyworks Solutions Inc. and heads to a meeting where deep breathing and body twisting are required. In a room where the semiconductor company normally holds engineering classes, Hagg and a handful of other T-shirt-clad co-workers contort their bodies while listening to soothing music during an after-hours company yoga class. By the end of the 90-minute session, the employees practically float out of class.

Darlind Davis, whose father was a golf pro, can't remember the first time she picked up a golf club to begin learning the game. She was too young. Now 56, the Columbia resident still spends much of her time on the golf course. And when she's not there, a likely place to find her is at the yoga studio. The combination of those two activities are a natural fit, Davis says. And more golfers seem to be agreeing. Last year the Golf Channel added the show Yoga for Golfers. Magazines devoted to golf regularly feature articles on yoga, and pros like Ty Tryon, Annika Sorenstam and David Duval are said to be devotees of the ancient mind-body exercise regimen.

Mary Pappas-Sandonas, an instructor at Unity Woods Yoga Center in Bethesda, is blissfully unimpressed by a new study claiming yoga can be an effective tool for weight control. "We've known that for a long time in the yoga community," says Pappas-Sandonas. Three years ago Pappas-Sandonas, 46, gained about 20 pounds as a result of taking fertility drugs and her subsequent pregnancy. She had never been overweight, and responded by putting herself on a stepped-up yoga regime. "Lo and behold," she says, "weight started to come off."

Head Start instructor Yolanda Oliver, her hands joined at the heart, bowed her head to her young pupils. "Namaste," Oliver said to the room of preschoolers sitting cross-legged on purple yoga mats. "The good girl in me sees the good girls in you and the good boys in you." "Namaste," the 15 boys and girls repeated, giggling as they bowed to Oliver and to one another. Then -- their minds and bodies reinvigorated by the nearly hourlong yoga session -- they filed back into their classroom for playtime at the Meade Village Head Start center.

When B.K.S. Iyengar first visited the United States in 1956, he was an alien presence, some strange goodwill ambassador from Planet Bliss. He extolled the physical, mental and, above all, spiritual virtues of an eons-old Indian tradition known as yoga. This at a time when Ike was president and big-finned Cadillacs and Elvis Presley were all the rage. Yet the diminutive man who could tie himself into slipknots was undaunted. "I never dreamed in my life," Iyengar said back then, "that my method of yoga would spread to so many places."

I HAVE BEEN standing on my head, off and on, for about 35 years now, as well as sitting cross-legged, breathing through one nostril at a time, and - my favorite - lying flat on my back, utterly relaxed, in the so-called "corpse pose." I am, in other words, one of the 15 million Americans who, according to a 2003 poll for Yoga Journal, have fallen in love with this ancient Indian practice - part meditation, part exercise. To the cognoscenti - and our numbers grew by nearly 29 percent from 2002 to last year - yoga is a pleasant practice that seems to enhance physical and emotional strength, flexibility and balance.

The outrage begins with the full-page advertisement on page 11 of the Yoga Journal's April issue. "Invitational. Yoga Pose Off. $30,000 First Prize!" Then in smaller print: "Watch the world's best as they battle for prestige and cash!" Below are photos of several characters who look like competitors from the X Games, including: Cedar, "2001 Vancouver Yoga Instructor of the Year"; Tara-Lynn Williams, "West Coast Power Yoga Regional Champion"; and "Ananda Kumar, owner and founder of Kumar's Kundalini Kiva."

The title of the CD -- Yoga in the Car -- made my editors laugh hysterically. And as I'm The Sun's resident yoga "expert," they asked me to check it out. The goal of the recording, by Los Angeles yoga instructor and cancer survivor Jen Swain, is laudable: to get people to chill out behind the wheel. But as I bopped around Baltimore attempting to do the exercises, I had to ask which was more dangerous: road rage or the risk of driving off the road? And if it's not safe to drive while gabbing on a cell phone, how can it be safe while doing neck rolls?

Cary Murphy had doubts about offering yoga-style relaxation classes during the holiday season."I thought that nobody would come. The holidays are crazy. Why bother?" the yoga instructor said.But he decided to try anyway, figuring the worst thing that could happen would be that no one would sign up for the six-week sessions held at the Merritt Athletic Club in Annapolis.He was wrong. All three classes, even one on Friday night, have at least eight people enrolled -- largely, Mr. Murphy says, because people really do need a mental break from the good cheer, party plans, shopping, wrapping, cooking, entertaining, decorating, travel, family scenarios and daily workload of the holidays.

As she perfected a yoga pose demanding a balance of strength and surrender, Myriam Klotz "understood in a flash" a parallel principle developed by spiritual master Baal Shem Tov, founder of Judaism's Hasidic movement. The principle stresses the importance of remaining both firm and supple in one's spiritual explorations. "Once I got that in yoga through a bodily experience, I saw insights into that teaching ... and vice versa," says Klotz, a yoga instructor and rabbi trained in the progressive Reconstructionist movement.