LOS ANGELES YOGA HISTORY

Meditate on this: Yoga is big business

Under dim lights and pulsating techno-trance music, the vast room in a mountain town northwest of Boulder, Colo., looked like a rave club, without the drugs. Some 140 people formed fluid concentric circles around Shiva Rea, a globe-trotting Yoga-dance instructor from Los Angeles.

Welcome to the 11th annual Yoga Journal conference, where yoga students and teachers from around the country spent hundreds of dollars to take classes from renowned instructors like Rea, Rodney Yee, etc. And to shop.

The conference taps into an ever-growing pool of yogis. The number of Americans who practice yoga at least twice a week jumped 133 percent, to 3 million this year from 1.3 million in 2001, according to Mediamark Research. In 2004, the most recent year tracked, Americans spent $2.95 billion on yoga classes, yoga-related products like clothing, books and mats, and on yoga retreats and vacations, according to a survey conducted for Yoga Journal.

Yoga has stretched far beyond its meditative, baggy-sweats roots to become a fashionable lifestyle pursuit appealing as much to competitive marathon runners and college students as is does to om-chanting meditators. Curve-hugging styles in Lycra, cotton and microfibers come from a variety of yoga-inspired brands, including Prana, Be Present, Inner Waves, and Lululemon Athletica, as well as Nike and Fila.

In a sign of how this niche is gaining mainstream appeal, last year Liz Claiborne bought Prana. Beaver Theodosakis and his wife, Pam, founded Prana 13 years ago to design flexible and stylish clothes for Yoga practitioners and rock climbers. Prana’s sales had reached $30 million by the time Liz Claiborne bought it, according to Theodosakis.

“Yoga has moved into a much broader marketplace,” said Bill Harper, publisher of Yoga Journal. “So many people are introducing products for the space, and they’re all rising with the tide.” Increasingly, major corporations outside the athletics and mind-body arenas are aiming their advertisements at this lucrative market. For instance, the ads for Ford’s Fusion car featured a woman in her 20s taking a yoga class. “This woman is in the target audience. Yoga is very popular for that age group,” said Elizabeth Boone of JWT, which created the ads .

Jewelry designers are also tailoring their products to serve this burgeoning niche. Energy muse Jewelry for example, sells necklaces that come with messages, or “intentions” —confidence, tranquillity, happiness and so on.

Back at the Yoga conference, Angie Amburgey, a marketing professional selected a necklace at the crowded Energy Muse kiosk. She said she was drawn to its “voice” message and its elegance. “I can’t believe I paid $100 for this necklace,” said Amburgey. “It’s brilliant marketing, isn’t it? I should know. But they said it’ll help me with expression issues. Besides, I’m on vacation.”

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