Yoga Once A Favorite Fitness Activity For The Counter-Culture, Yoga Has Gone Mainstream In A Big Way, Catering To A Cross-Section Of People Looking For Peace In The Body And Soul

When Bach becomes too much, harpsichordist Beverly Biggs drains off tension by bending into a languid yoga mudra posture.

Mountain climber Chris Kopczynski has long been known for conquering Mount Everest. These days he’s also tackling the warrior pose.

Yoga has hit the mainstream, and stressed-out members of the baby boom generation appear to be soaking it up.

“It’s everywhere now,” says Alison Rubin, who teaches 10 weekly yoga classes at four different locations in Spokane. “It’s at Sta-Fit, the YMCA, the YWCA, Gold’s Gym, the Spokane Club. It’s everywhere.”

Granted, stodgy old Spokane wasn’t the first city to burn with yoga fever. When Rubin started a class at the Spokane Club three years ago, only five women showed up.

Rubin changed the name to “Power Stretching,” and suddenly the room was filled with men.

Now she’s got them hooked, and the class is back in the club magazine as “yoga.”

“It’s not just the counter-culture people who are drawn to it,” she says. “I’ve got a whole cross-section - doctors, attorneys, secretaries, teachers, nurses, athletes - in my classes.”

Harpsichordist Biggs never misses her twice-weekly yoga class. She says, “I put it on the calendar just as if it were the most important concert of the month.”

The upsurge of interest in yoga - available in more than 20 health clubs, schools and churches in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene - mirrors a nationwide trend.

“I know teachers all over the country,” says Rubin, “and everybody is noticing an influx of students now.”

Kathleen Mulcahy, director of Healing Arts Publishing which co-produced a series of yoga videos for Yoga Journal magazine, says, “It’s a big phenomenon. It’s like standing-room-only in New York and L.A.”

Last year Yoga Journal commissioned a Roper poll on Americans’ interest in yoga. Based on the results, publisher Michael Gliksohn estimated that 6.1 million Americans regularly or sometimes practice yoga.

“My generation is getting older and we’re looking for something a little less jarring than aerobics and something more personally unifying,” Gliksohn says.

Yoga Journal’s 1990 “Yoga Practice for Beginners” video sold close to half a million copies, in outlets such as Blockbuster and Costco, and launched the video yoga wars, says Mulcahy.

Now celebrities such as Ali McGraw, Jane Fonda, Dixie Carter and Kathy Smith sell competing yoga videos.

And, Mulcahy says, men such as Sting, Jerry Seinfeld and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are into yoga.

Kopczynski notices Spokane men tend to be a tougher sell.

At the Spokane Club, he encounters a batch of skeptics on his way to class.

“I just think to myself, `When I’m 65 or 70, I’ll be running past you guys and you’ll be crippled up with arthritis,”’ Kopczynski says.

Certainly a new, mid-life interest in longevity has fueled the yoga trend.

“People are so stressed out and overwhelmed with their daily lives,” says Jackie McCarthy, who teaches classes at the YMCA. “They’re looking for a place to relax.”

Biggs believes her twice-weekly yoga classes with Rubin help her weather the frenetic pace of her life. “I feel healthier,” she says. “There’s no way to document how many colds you’ve avoided, or how many times you didn’t catch the flu.”

Rubin, a slender, flexible woman with long graying hair, steady grayblue eyes and a no-nonsense British accent, adores yoga.

A pair of blue and green parakeets chirp in one corner of her South Hill living room. A basket of teal and purple yoga mats sits in another.

Between her private workouts at home, and her classes, she logs 20 hours of yoga a week. She teaches a rigorous form developed by an Indian teacher named B.K.S. Iyengar. She dreams of opening a yoga center in downtown Spokane.

“For me, yoga is my life,” Rubin says. “It doesn’t seem strange at all. Doesn’t everybody live and dream yoga?” Yoga began in India more than 2,000 years ago. “It is clear,” says Rubin, “it was developed by spiritual seekers who used it as a way to free up the body so their energy could flow more smoothly for meditation.”

The word yoga means yoke, or union, of the body, mind and spirit. The most common form is hatha yoga.

Through a series of postures, with lyrical names such as mountain, cobra and child’s pose, hatha yoga practitioners increase their flexibility, strength and stamina.

They breathe deeply, working their way through a series of standing and sitting poses, twists, back bends and inverted postures such as head and handstands. They finish, relaxed and contemplative, in the corpse pose.

“It’s like a massage from the inside out,” says Rubin.

Altari Sunra, a Spokane yoga instructor, teaches “acu-yoga,” combining hatha yoga and acupressure.

In a forward bend, for example, her students lean forward while holding pressure points between the ankle and the Achilles’ tendon. That helps them relax the hips, and bend farther without pain.

Sunra, who has earned a master’s degree in holistic health education, has taught yoga classes to children, teens and seniors. She finds yoga brings rejuvenation to 70- and 80-year-olds.

“People in the class say, `I used to be able to stretch this much when I was 40,”’ Sunra says.

Certainly, not everyone can tackle yoga. People who suffer from acute medical problems should consult their physicians first, says McCarthy, who is also an occupational therapist.

Yoga is often safe for people who have back or neck pain, or who suffer from chronic conditions such as asthma.

Yoga teachers discourage musclestraining competition.

“If you’re saying, `Oh, I have to get my nose to my knees,’ you’re not doing yoga,” says Sunra. “You’re doing ego.”

Yoga instructor Kate Morel warns students to listen to their bodies. A burning sensation indicates they’re probably stretching tendons and ligaments, rather than muscles.

“There’s a sweet pain and a burning pain,” Morel says. “Let that be your guide.”

Yoga, of course, doesn’t appeal to everyone. In the Yoga Journal survey, 81 percent of those polled said they weren’t even interested in yoga.

Says Kopczynski, “I would not have had the patience to do it in my 20s or 30s.”

While not everyone will leave their first class enamored, yoga instructors preach that it pays to stay.

“There’s a wonderful nurturing, healing, encouraging kind of energy that takes place in a yoga class,” says Gliksohn. “You don’t get that anyplace else.”

Committed students report sharper concentration, improved athletic performance and heightened creativity keep them returning to their yoga mats.

“There’s a start-up period at first,” says Rubin. “Then it just starts to feel delicious.”

MEMO: Here are two sidebars that appeared with the story:

Instruction offered at many sites Yoga classes are offered six, and sometimes seven, days a week, mornings, afternoons and evenings throughout the Inland Northwest. Here’s a resource list:

Spokane Celebrate Life yoga classes and yoga therapy - classes at Manito Methodist Church and Balboa and Hutton Elementary Schools. Robin Marks, 747-7543. Institute for Extended Learning - yoga classes in local high schools and senior centers, 533-3770. Life Dance Yoga and Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy - classes at The Spokane Club, Cedar Manor and Unity Church. Alison Rubin, 624-9354. Kate Morel - classes at StaFit, Gold’s Gym, Unitarian Church, YWCA and Cedar Manor, 448-7762. Jackie McCarthy - classes at Lewis and Clark High School, YMCA, Hamblen Elementary School, and private classes at S828 Adams, 456-8486. Radha House - classes at W2328 Pacific in Spokane and at 11000 Avondale Loop Road, Hayden Lake, Idaho, 747-1844. Spokane City Parks and Recreation - yoga classes at local schools, 625-6200, beginning the week of April 10. Altari Sunra - classes at local schools and senior centers; an acuyoga class will be offered on the North Side, 466-3577.

Coeur d’Alene Christine Lovejoy - classes at Sta-Fit and private classes at Lifetouch, (208) 667-3813.

Hayden Lake Cynthia Poole - private classes, (208) 772-0600.

Sandpoint Debbie Dippre - classes at the Gardenia Center, (208) 263-6272. Yoga has its own vocabulary

This is the second sidebar that appeared with the story: Here are some explanations of terms used in the yoga stories: Hatha yoga is the physical practice of yoga in which the body as well as the mind and spirit are stretched and strengthened using a series of postures combined with rhythmic breathing. Iyengar yoga is a precise, rigorous form of practice developed by Indian teacher B.K.S. Iyengar that has become popular in the United States. Kundalini yoga is a form of physical and spiritual practice that helps harness energy and develop the mind. Downward-facing dog pose requires getting on all fours, straightening the arms and legs and lifting into an inverted V posture. The mountain pose requires standing with feet together, knees straight, neck extending upward and eyes facing forward. Yoga mudra involves standing with feet wide apart, clasping hands behind the back, bending forward from the hips and reaching arms over the head toward the floor. The warrior pose requires standing with feet wide apart, arms extended at shoulder level, turning left foot in, right foot out, bending the right leg to a right angle, keeping the torso vertical and extending the arms out to the sides.