Yearning for yoga

New audiences are discovering the ancient art, fueling a growth spurt for studios and classes.

Joan Obra THE FRESNO BEE

Frank Esparza teetered on his left foot as he lifted his right leg and stretched his arms wide.

It wasn't Esparza's idea to do yoga. A trainer told the 48-year-old retired gas station owner to improve his balance.

So Esparza started coming to yoga classes at Dan Gamel's Health and Racquet Club. Tuesday night, he and about 24 other men and women packed the room, bending, stretching and sometimes struggling on their rubber mats.

"I feel like I'm looser, like I can stretch better," Esparza said afterward. He's also unexpectedly found "peacefulness and tranquility" in the darkened room and the recorded Sanskrit chants.

Yoga has arrived in the Valley.

Well, sort of.

Many local yoga teachers still encounter folks who mistake yoga -- a more than 5,000-year-old spiritual practice that works the body, mind and spirit -- as a religious ritual. Some teachers, worried about offending new students, won't even say "om" in class. And no one here offers the Bikram yoga popular in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, where sweltering rooms hold sweaty people twisting themselves into the same 26 poses again and again.

But the practice is growing nonetheless, due to students such as Esparza looking for a low-impact workout.

The local offerings keep increasing. Of Fresno's five yoga studios, three have opened since 2002. Clovis got its first one in December. Three Rivers, Hanford and Visalia each have a yoga studio, and Porterville's first is in the works.

As the studios cope with start-up costs and increased competition, health clubs are cashing in.

About 45 people a month express an interest in yoga during sign-ups for memberships, said Gb3 general manager Sean Clinton. Along with cardio kickboxing and spinning, yoga is one of the most popular classes at Gb3, a health club at Cedar and Nees avenues.

Unlike the step aerobic routines, "you can't look like you're doing [yoga] wrong," Clinton said.
Indeed, yoga is the fourth most popular program in health clubs after personal training, bench and step aerobics and fitness evaluation, shows a 2002 survey by the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association. In 2002, 86% of health clubs offered yoga. In 1990, only 30% of health clubs offered it.

The yoga market is poised for more growth. Thirty-five million adults nationwide plan to try yoga in the next year, joining more than 15 million who already practice, says a study released last month by the magazine Yoga Journal.

The phenomenon is evident in places such as the San Francisco Bay Area, where yoga's popularity is well established and supports the opening of five to 10 yoga studios a year, said Adam Ducker of real-estate consultants The Concord Group. Yoga is also becoming a tourist attraction, with hotels adding the exercise to their gyms, he said.

But in the central San Joaquin Valley, where yoga is emerging, entrepreneurs in the field contend with a slower market.

"It's been a hard go financially,"said Brenda Proudfoot, 43, the owner of Valley Yoga in downtown Visalia. Proudfoot opened her Main Street studio in January 2002. She also teaches at a dance studio in Porterville and is planning that town's first full-time yoga studio.

"I'm paying my bills," Proudfoot said. "As for whether I've recouped the money I've put into it, I haven't really kept the books in that way."
Her start-up costs were about $5,000, spent mostly on yoga props such as mats, blankets and straps. To save money, she made other props, such as eyebags and wooden blocks. Her mother also helped by sewing sandbags used in restorative yoga. And when the studio opened, Proudfoot's students helped clean it.

"There were months that I had really small classes, five to 10 people," she said of the launch. Though some of her classes now hold about 25 people, Proudfoot said she needs more students.

Michael Downing, owner of Yoga for Living in Fresno and Clovis, called the launch of his studios "a tough time."

A yoga instructor for eight years in Phoenix, 56-year-old Downing had taught a couple of workshops at karate studios in Fresno. His girlfriend also lived in the Valley. But Downing didn't decide to move to Fresno until October 2001, when a meditation on the banks of the Ganges River told him to open a yoga studio here.

He launched a studio at Bullard and Marks avenues in January 2002. His Clovis location across from Sierra Vista Mall opened in December.
Downing expected his business to grow faster than it has. A large class at his 1 1/2-year-old studio in Fresno has about 20 people. In Santa Monica, he knows of studios a mile apart that each have classes of about 60 students.

Downing also faces a shortage of local yoga teachers, especially those certified under a program requiring 200 to 500 hours of teaching. Downing plans to start a certified teacher-training program in January to fill the gap.

Audrey Tan, daughter of Fig Garden Yoga Studio founder Nancy Tan, moved back to Fresno to teach yoga once her mother needed more instructors for the quickly growing business.

Before Tan's studio opened at Palm and Celeste avenues, "our business was multiplying at a rate that was unnatural," said Audrey Tan, 32.
Nancy Tan, 63, started teaching yoga at the Tai Chi Center of Fresno on Van Ness Avenue in 1999. She opened the studio in 2000. The number of classes grew from four to 14 until 2002, the year COIL Yoga in downtown Fresno and Yoga for Living launched.

Fig Garden sales in 2001 were 74% higher than in 2000. 2002 sales were up 62% more than those of 2001.

Growth has since slowed. Sales for the first six months of this year were 20% above those for the same period last year.
Still, the opening of other yoga studios in Fresno raises the awareness of yoga, Audrey said. The studios also serve different neighborhoods and teach various styles of hatha yoga, which is known for its physical postures.

Fig Garden teaches primarily Iyengar yoga, in which students use blocks, straps and other props to ensure proper alignment in the poses.
At COIL Yoga on P Street near Inyo Street, owner Katie Flinn, 27, teaches Ashtanga, or power yoga. She is also known for a vigorous yoga known as Vinyasa flow, in which students perform sequences of poses without stopping.
Downing teaches a number of styles at Yoga for Living, including Ashtanga, Iyengar, and Anusara, a form similar to Iyengar that emphasizes spiritual growth.

At Perfect Balance Yoga at Fresno Street and Shaw Avenue, co-owners Joanne Bazarian, 45, and Giovanni Pivirotto, 42, teach styles such as Iyengar, Ashtanga and Vinyasa flow. Perfect Balance also offers pilates and bellydancing classes.

All studios market yoga as a lifestyle of good health and relaxation.

COIL -- an acronym for Conscious Open Integrated Life -- was designed according to feng shui, the art of using colors, furniture and other objects to encourage the flow of positive energy in a space.

Candles, white Christmas lights, and warm colors such as burnt umber and gold decorate the studio.
"The goal here initially is just to get people comfortable with yoga," Flinn said. She and other local teachers eventually introduce students to other facets of yoga, including meditation, good deeds and self-discipline.

"Spirituality and religion are two separate things," Bazarian said. "You're not going to be converted to Buddhism, or Hinduism or some other ism."
But the business of yoga has an unmistakable commercial aspect. Perfect Balance sells a body scrub that features sucrose, grapeseed, sunflower, macadamia and jojoba oil. Yoga for Living sells Burt's Bees Chamomile Complexion Mist with Lavender and Sandalwood, the same product Downing sprayed on students during a yoga class last Sunday. And at Fig Garden, sales of yoga clothing have taken off, Audrey Tan said.

Yoga wasn't always this way in Fresno. Since the 1970s, Charles Schoelen, 81, has been teaching Yoga of the Old Masters, a style he compiled after 30 years of studying yoga. Its purpose: to reach a complete physical and mental relaxation.

Students listen to compact discs or cassette tapes, following a sequence that alternates poses with rest and contemplation. Throughout the classes, Schoelen's voice explains how stimulating blood flow affects different areas of the body.

And instead of a studio, Schoelen formed a nonprofit, The Yoga Center, which holds classes at the Retired Teachers Education Center on Saginaw Way near Ninth Street. It's Schoelen's way of practicing karma yoga, the act of serving others.

"People are looking at yoga now as an exercise program," he said.

But yoga's evolution in the Valley " will only grow from that outside influence," he added. "It won't grow from what I'm doing."

The reporter can be reached at jobra@fresnobee.com or 441-6365