ANOTHER YOGA POSEUR CHECKS IN

Y eah, I do yoga. You got a problem with that?

There might have been a time, say, 70 years ago, when it wouldhave been cool or recherche for a bourgeois American male to beseeking "union with God" - the meaning of "yoga" - on a questionablypriced blue rubber roll-up mat. But not today.

Two yoga doofuses showed up in a Super Bowl ad. On the field, theOakland Raiders' yoga-adept Bill Romanowski - best known for spittingon an opponent on national television - tried in vain to staunch theTampa Bay tide. Itinerant hipster Geoff Dyer slyly exploits the yogacraze in his new book, "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to DoIt." Instead of practicing yoga, Dyer writes about losing hissunglasses and about watching porno in his hotel room while on amagazine assignment in Detroit.

A supple Yoga Lady showed up on the cover of the Jan. 20 issue ofTime magazine. Maybe 20 million Americans practice yoga; does JohnAshcroft know about this?

By way of personal disclosure, I should admit that I am notseeking inner peace, although, to paraphrase Mario Cuomo, I would notreject it were it thrust upon me. I attend yoga classes in the hopesof achieving better balance inside a rowing shell, where my bell-shaped physique contributes to a lack of stability. I realize thatthis is more than you wanted to know.

As it happens, a lot of yogis aren't seeking inner peace, either.Paul Keegan's hilarious recent article in Business 2.0 magazine,titled "Yogis Behaving Badly," documents the "mad dash to own a sliceof divinity" that has characterized the yoga business in America. Thenumber one yoga bad boy is Bikram Choudhury of Beverly Hills, theRichard Simmons of the yoga world, who turns his studio temperatureas high as 105 degrees for his "hot yoga" practice. Choudhury is bestknown for teaching Michael Jackson and Madonna, for running his mouth("I'm beyond Superman"), and for trademarking asanas, or yoga poses,which is a very un-yogic thing to do.

We have certainly come a long way since Swami Vivekananda ("Theparagon of Vedantists" - William James) introduced yoga practice inNorth America, at Chicago's World Parliament of Religions in 1893.Back then, many teachers taught for free. No longer. "Yoga has becomecutthroat, Mafia-like," a teacher told Keegan. "Many of these peopleare the biggest thieves, bullies, and sex addicts - all of it underthe veil of spirituality."

A friend introduced me to the delightful Kshatriya message boardat www.ez board.com, where the self-appointed Savonarolas of swami-tude hunt down and expose purported "yoga criminals" or "yoga crims."Said deviationists seem to be men and women callous enough toadvertise their services as yoga experts and who - their accusersclaim - are prone to exaggerate their proximity to the hot yogi ofthe moment.

Next door, as it were, is an Internet message board devoted tomixed relationships between yoga practitioners and non-yogis.("Dating a non-yogi.") That's the kind of relationship I am in, Iguess. One man confesses that he has been cheating on his wife, doing"it behind her back. Of course this involves a little lying. `I needto get to work super early' or `I have to work late' or catch a quickclass during the lunch hour." What he is doing is yoga.

Let me tell you my favorite yoga story. Back when independentvideo stores still existed, one set up shop about a mile from myhouse. The front door featured a sign promising free rentals tostudents who brought in report cards with As. The back of the storewas given over to pornography. Maybe the store owners were run out oftown. Maybe grade inflation ran them out of business. Whatever thecase, the space has been taken over by a Bikram Choudhury franchise,steamy windows and all. A leading cultural indicator if ever I sawone.

So there's the selling point. Yoga: It's like pornography butgenerally healthier. Yes, I am aware that there is a whole yoga-and-sex thing out there, as well as a whole yoga-and-abstinence thing,practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, among others. Apropos, I have learnedthat my strain of yoga encourages sexual relations only when the manhas been breathing through what adepts call the nighttime, or left,nostril. Fodder for another column, perhaps?

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.