COVER STORY : YOGAMANIA : Weary of Body-Pounding Workouts, Fitness Buffs Turn With Relief to the Ancient Healing Exercise

After years as a ballet dancer and aerobics instructor, Kim Silver’s body was disintegrating.

Painful ailments dogged her daily routine and kept her awake at night. She suffered from tendinitis of the hip, fallen arches, arthritis in her toes and knees and shin splints. Whiplash from a car accident in 1986 left her with severe migraines. Months of physical rehabilitation failed to achieve any relief.

Near despair, she took a yoga class with a friend that incorporated flowing movements with a series of postures.

“It completely transformed my life,” said Silver, 33, who was so taken by the experience that she became a yoga instructor. “Within three months I was pain-free, headache-free--it was heaven. I finally had some hope.”

For decades, yoga’s abiding image in this country centered around incense, flaky gurus, Eastern religions and chanting hippies in pretzel poses. But in the last few years, the practice of yoga has exploded into the mainstream, and perhaps nowhere more so than on the Westside.

Thousands of new devotees are flocking to yoga classes in studios, sports medicine clinics and health clubs. Some see the trend as a response to the power workouts and physical excesses of the 1980s. Experts say that yoga has become a refuge for baby boomers seeking something kinder and gentler to treat their aging bodies and frazzled psyches.

“Our society has become so fast, and stress is epidemic,” said Anne Cushman, associate editor of Yoga Journal, a leading trade publication based in Berkeley. “Yoga encourages an attitude towards the body which is not as brutal. It focuses on the right balance of consciousness--staying alert but relaxed, peaceful yet aware, and joyful.”

For more than 2,000 years, yoga--whose name is derived from the ancient Sanskrit word yuj, meaning to yoke or join together--has remained an integral part of the Hindu religion. The most popular form, brought to public attention in the Western world in the 1960s, is hatha yoga, which emphasizes a series of physical postures ( asanas ), breathing ( pranayamas ) and some meditation.

Many practitioners say yoga is an art form that stresses the spiritual rather than the religious, and provides untold medical benefits.

For those reeling from physical injury caused by more aggressive aerobic activities, yoga is a welcome relief. Most enthusiasts report a greater sense of well-being and peace of mind. Others say their posture, digestion, coordination, circulation and respiration have improved greatly.

Many in the medical profession have taken notice.

Linda Gajevski, a spokeswoman for the American Yoga Assn., a national education network based in Cleveland, says her organization has received requests for information from hundreds of patients referred by their doctors and chiropractors. The association recommends yoga for such illnesses as diabetes, arthritis, asthma, back and neck problems and depression.

Other doctors believe yoga is a powerful antidote to heart disease, the nation’s No. 1 killer.

The link between emotional stress and heart disease is much more documented,” said Dr. Dean Ornish, director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito and author of a book that advocates yoga as a means of reversing heart disease. “The stretching, breathing and meditation exercises in yoga provide a synergy and a powerful system of quieting the mind and body and reducing stress,” Ornish said.

Some fitness instructors say yoga has gained more followers as people become more aware that a toned and well-muscled body is not enough.

“Athletics is now more mind/body, combining every aspect of fitness, which also means having a fit mind,” said Toni Brown, aerobics manager at Sports Club Los Angeles, who manages the facility’s yoga classes.

Evidence of yoga’s burgeoning popularity abounds. A recent Roper poll commissioned by the Yoga Journal showed that more than 6 million Americans now practice yoga, and about 17 million others expressed an interest in learning the ancient art.

Yoga videos by Jane Fonda, Kathy Smith and Ali MacGraw have heightened interest.

In recent years, a wide range of yoga classes has sprung up across the Westside. The flourishing yoga industry, which has also become a significant portion of the fitness business, now offers such mutations as yogarobics, yoga dance, yoga therapy, astro-yoga (tailoring exercises to one’s astrological sign), double yoga (exercises with a partner), nude yoga and yoga with weights. Sessions usually range from 60 to 90 minutes and cost from $8 to $15.

Many yogis have for years conducted classes in the back yards of their homes. Now instructors teach crowded classes at athletic chains such as the Sports Connection and the Spectrum Club and have a dedicated at other sites.

One of the most successful studios, Yoga Works in Santa Monica, employs about 30 instructors who teach 98 classes a week that range from introductory to expert.

On a recent evening, more than 40 students packed a class in power yoga, which incorporates a vigorous series of linked postures that combine strength and flexibility with aerobic conditioning. With the windows and doors shut, and students encouraged to breathe deeply through their nostrils, the room quickly assumed a greenhouse atmosphere. But participants reveled in the purifying effects of the hothouse environment, which is supposed to simulate the climate of India.

“Sometimes it can be awkward with people dripping all around you . . . but the heat creates an aura in the room and allows you to go deeper into your posture. It helps your body move,” said Petrula Vrontikis, a student.

Said Sita White, another power-yoga devotee: “I’m athletic and have a lot of nervous energy, and I couldn’t just sit in another class with my foot behind my head. This gives me a vigorous workout challenge that strengthens and tones but without jarring my body.”

But some yoga purists remain critical of what they see as a potentially hazardous combination of larger classes and increased aerobics.

“It’s getting harder and faster, and I think you’re going to see a backlash,” said Silver, who a few years ago suffered an umbilical hernia by stretching too far while doing a backbend in an intermediate-level yoga class. “Sometimes the energy is intense, and you want to go for it . . . but teachers need to take responsibility. With 55 people in a class, you can’t keep everyone safe. Yoga really needs to take a look at itself and have a humility stage.”

But a period of humility could be far off.

New forms of yoga continue to sprout, offering mind-boggling choices to both aficionados and initiates.

The Triangle Studio in Santa Monica offers yoga with live flamenco music. Elysium Fields, a nudist camp in Topanga Canyon, runs clothing-optional yoga classes. Many facilities have yoga classes for children and pregnant women.

Kevin O’Kane, an instructor and owner of Angel City Yoga in Studio City, conducts a series of popular classes in yoga therapy for the mind as well as the body. Students assume various postures, which are meant to stimulate an emotional release.

“It can be a sad and beautiful thing,” said O’Kane. “I’ve seen people collapse out of their postures and into a ball, crying.”

Anna Forrest, owner of Forrest Yoga Circle in Santa Monica, says her classes focus on healing, and that includes administering to everything from car-accident injuries to spiritual wounds. “Putting the body in certain positions . . . releases numbness and suffering and all those little emotional pus balls.”

Next month, the Center for Yoga in Larchmont will begin classes in yoga dance, which involves assuming poses through a sequence of flowing movements. The center also operates double-yoga classes for partners.

“It’s a great way to get into deeper poses . . . to do what we can’t do by ourselves,” said Nancy Campbell, a director at the center. “It’s a unique American creation that works best with a partner you know. Because of the physical closeness, doing it with a sleazy, smelly (stranger) might not be too great an experience.”

For those seeking a higher plane, there is no need to look farther than Beverly Hills. For the last four years, Siri Dharma Galliano, which means “Princess on the Path to Infinity,” has offered astro-yoga classes for the cosmically inclined. “I put exercises together to match what is going on in the sky,” she said.

She currently teaches such celebrity clients as Rosanna Arquette, Linda Gray and LeVar Burton.

Each individual’s sign represents an area with a focal point of tension. For Geminis (lungs), Siri Dharma recommends extensive breathing exercises. An assortment of belly grinds are best for Cancers (stomach). Scorpios (genitals) need postures that increase circulation to the pelvis.

“If all else fails, there’s sex,” she said.

Beyond trendy or offbeat practices, traditional Eastern yoga regimens are still taught.

For the roughly seven live-in students at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in Venice, most of whom are on a work-study program, yoga instruction comes with spiritual guidance, a vegetarian diet, philosophy, chanting and meditation. The center also offers separate hatha-yoga classes to the public in several sunny rooms in its two-story house.

“Many people look at yoga as just an exercise, but here we emphasize tradition--the exercise is just part of a complete holistic system,” said Swami Atma, the center’s executive director.

Some students prefer picturesque settings.

Estelle Jacobson, who calls herself “69 years young,” has taught a popular Saturday-morning class on the beach in Marina del Rey since 1990. A recent group of more than 25 students included newcomers in their 20s to 77-year-old John Devonshire, who is recovering from quintuple-bypass heart surgery.

“The yogis say that you don’t measure age by chronology but by the flexibility of the spine,” said Jacobson.

For the past two decades, yoga in America has continued to grow with hybrid abandon, refusing easy categorization and reveling in the cross-pollinations of its practices. Such dynamism--and its recent surge of mainstream popularity--gives many veterans hope.

“It’s a little amusing to see it marketed as the new fitness thing with all the money, the celebrity, the videos and the hype,” said Yoga Journal editor Cushman. “But ultimately it’s a positive thing . . . they will all eventually benefit--more in touch with their bodies, healthier, stronger and more relaxed.”