Lotus Blossoms : Demystified Yoga Making Its Way to O.C.

On weekend mornings on fashionably casual Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, the best way to disappear in the crowd is to carry a vitamin-fortified juice smoothie in one hand and a rolled-up rubber mat under the other arm.

The mat is a giveaway that its owner practices yoga, an activity that has made a steady comeback in the ‘90s and is now shifting into higher gear as a business.

Stylish, airy yoga centers--including at least one franchise chain--are opening throughout Southern California. More than 70 now exist, charging as much as $1,200 a year for classes.

“The rise is steady. People are just tired of killing their knees with jogging and aerobics,” says Maty Ezraty, who owns Yoga Works on Montana and recently opened a second studio on Main Street on the other side of town.

Incense and Eastern mysticism are downplayed at many of the new yoga centers; T-shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with the chains’ logos are in. They are being snapped up by aging baby boomers and a younger breed of yoga enthusiasts who need to be told to turn off their cellular phones before they can start doing the plow or sitting in the lotus position.

Invented 5,000 years ago by Hindus, yoga is a discipline that involves special postures, breathing exercises and stretching. In traditional yoga, these physical exercises are linked to meditation. But most new yoga buffs enjoy it mainly for its gentle toning and calming qualities.

Actress Julia Roberts is among this new class of customer.

“Yoga is my new fascination. I doubt I’ll ever become all about yoga. I don’t want it to change my life. Just my butt,” she recently told In Style magazine.

Yoga is enjoying a renaissance in the United States after its brief popularity in the 1960s. A Jane Fonda video three years ago helped relaunch it into the American mainstream, but observers agree that only in the last 18 months has yoga started to show the signs of a genuine craze, complete with franchise operators and merchandising efforts.

“It’s very metropolitan and upscale, and it is going to be a strong trend,” said John McCarthy, executive director of the International Health and Racket Sports Assn., a Boston-based group representing more than 3,000 fitness clubs around the world.

“The snowball has gotten so big that now it’s impossible not to notice it,” added Rod Stryker, co-owner of a Yoga Zone that opened six months ago in Brentwood.

In Orange County, several yoga centers are profiting from the craze.

At Randi Beck’s Yoga Place in Costa Mesa, there are now more than 60 classes scheduled a week, an accessories store has opened inside and the center has begun to train instructors. She also opened a second location in Mission Viejo last August to satisfy demand from South County yoga devotees.

When the Newport Boulevard studio opened in 1991, then as a franchise of Ezraty’s Yoga Works, there were no other yoga chains in the county. There still aren’t.

Beck discontinued the franchise when she found the name didn’t have quite the same cachet there that it did in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the yoga fad has been slower to grip Orange County. Beck’s competitors are mostly recreation center classes and health club chains, which offer a couple of yoga classes a week. Although she says this mass exposure is turning a lot of people on to the practice of yoga, she contends it’s not the same experience you get in a quiet studio.

“You can’t focus when the weights are clanking and people are walking in and out,” she said.

Of the eight studios listed in the Orange County telephone book, more than half of them are in Costa Mesa. Among them are the Yoga Center of California, a volunteer organization, and the newer Yoga College of India, which reportedly turns the heat up on its students so they can sweat away stress.

On the other side of the country, five Yoga Zones now operate in New York, all owned by a quartet that includes Howard Maier, who produced the “Abs of Steel” and “Buns of Steel” videos, and Allan Finger, who co-founded Santa Monica’s Yoga Works.

The group plans to open additional centers in New York, Chicago and other major cities.

“There will be growth, but it will be very controlled. We’re not trying to be the Starbucks of yoga,” said co-owner Greta Finger. Meanwhile, the group is preparing Yoga Zone videos and a Yoga Zone catalog that will sell “everything related to yoga,” she said, including mats, blocks, clothes and oils.

Stressed-out and stiff baby boomers tired of pounding their joints running or partaking in other high-impact fitness activities are helping to fuel the growth of Yoga Zone and other new centers, the operators say. But increasing numbers of Gen-X consumers are starting to share Drew Barrymore, Tyra Banks and Cindy Crawford’s interest in yoga. According to McCarthy, women between 21 and 44 are the main enthusiasts.

But Yoga Works’ Ezraty said one form of yoga is helping to increase the numbers of men who practice yoga. Younger crowds are attracted to “power yoga” or “ashtanga yoga,” an ancient form of the discipline that forces students to break a sweat as they continuously move from one position to another. At one recent class, participants were stretching and flexing their muscles at the command of instructors who looked more like “Baywatch” characters than disciples of Gandhi.

“I like it because it’s both about calm and energy,” says Rick Katz, a 36-year-old automotive technician from Sherman Oaks.

A sharp increase in teachers is one gauge of how quickly interest in yoga has grown. Michael Glickson, publisher of the Yoga Journal, the information arm of the California Yoga Teachers Assn., saw a 20% rise in the number of instructors who paid to be listed in the journal’s directory this year, from 675 in 1996 to 815 in 1997.

Yoga center owners declined to say how much money they make. But based on class prices and attendance, the biggest centers could bring in $30,000 a week.