Since 1998, Yoga Journal's circulation has more than tripled, from 90,000 to 310,000. In the past year, the magazine's national advertising has increased 35 percent -- including new advertisers such as Target, Kellogg, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and General Mills.
"When you start getting advertisers like that in a yoga publication, there's a reason for it," says Macy. "Yoga is mainstream and they want to reach the demographics of our reader -- female, twenties, thirties and forties, high median household income."
Yoga never went mainstream, says Beth Shaw, here leading stretching exercises during the DCAC conference. "That's why we've invented things that are fun."
(Katherine Frey For The Washington Post)
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Yoga intersected with Madison Avenue when it expanded from the incense-scented studios to the sweat-scented gyms, around 2000.
Last year, 2.2 million Americans were practicing yoga at commercial health clubs, up from 400,000 in 1998, says Bill Howland, director of public relations and research at the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, a trade group in Boston. Eighty percent of clubs now offer yoga classes -- twice that of six years ago.
"As little as three years ago, yoga was a very small part of the group exercise market," says Suzanne Olson, a Philadelphia fitness trainer whose company, DCAC, has produced the fitness conference in Reston for 13 years. "Now all the clubs have mind-body programs and they're much larger than other types of group exercise programs like step aerobics or kick-boxing. Now there's a yoga-Pilates studio opening up on every corner."
Yoga is on the schedules at D.C.-area fitness centers in one form or another. Members pay their monthly dues and take as many classes as they want -- a cheaper alternative to the typical $15 per class that yoga studios charge. Fitness First's 14 centers offer 18 types of yoga classes, from traditional beginner yoga to fusion classes such as yogilates. Gold's Gym, which made its name on serious weight training, offers something called Body Flow at its two dozen locations.
On a recent Friday morning, a dozen women move fluidly through a series of positions in Margie Weiss's Body Flow class at the Ballston Gold's Gym. Their average age is about 35.
Borrowing from yoga, tai chi and Pilates, and done to easy-listening pop, Body Flow workouts promise to increase strength, endurance and flexibility while reducing stress. In the first four days of August, says Weiss, 444 people took Body Flow classes at the Ballston gym.
"This Body Flow thing is awesome, you just kind of relax and do your thing," says Weiss, 55, mother of Olympian figure skater Michael Weiss and a fitness trainer for 30 years.
Christina Moore works out at this gym five days a week, doing step aerobic classes and Body Flow. "I'm a gym rat, but when you get to my age, you find that doing all that stepping and stuff, you really get kind of sore," says Moore, 54.
People like Moore are the reason yoga is going mainstream, experts say. It's the baby boomers returning to the gym for easier, gentler, low-impact exercise and the hope of staying forever young.
"You have someone turning 50 every eight seconds!" says YogaFit's Beth Shaw, who "at not even 40 yet" has stopped running and doing step aerobics. "I don't do things that are going to pound me. Why? Because I'm interested in longevity and maintaining my joints and staying youthful and supple."
Is fitness yoga just yogalite?
Yoga is a philosophy of life, not just a sweaty workout, some traditional yoga practitioners say.
