Yoga studios crop up across Washington

Washington, June 13: Yoga, the stretching exercise for fitness, is fast catching up here with several real estate developers seeking to build its studios, along with retail and office space.

Yoga was made famous on the West Coast by an Indian immigrant, Bikram Chaudhary, who set up 'Bikram Yoga Center' in California.

Now the yoga studios are moving from the West to East coast and across the national capital to give a fillip to the real estate developers and re-vitalising long stagnant and run down neighbourhoods in the city.

''Owners of yoga studios are drawn to cheap rents of transitional neighbourhoods, naturally, but some developers actively recruit them. They see the studios as symbols of safety for women and amenities for their target demographic,'' according to the Washington Post.

Mr John K McIlwain, a senior fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute, said: ''Yoga tends to be an activity done by well-educated people, it's a quiet, subtle sign that things are changing. It doesn't mean upper-income people necessarily, because students do it, but they are much more highly educated people. These tend to be the gentrifies.'' Even though there are no exact figures on how many yoga studios have cropped up in and around Washington, an informal survey has put it at 25.

The oldest of these yoga centers are clustered around affluent Georgetown, Tenleytown, Cleveland Park and Dupont Circle, with six on Wisconsin Avenue alone, while the newest have set up shops on steadily gentrifying U Street, Logan Circle and beyond. The most recent arrival is Yoga House, which opened on Georgia Avenue, trying to attract students and teachers from the neighbouring Howard University in Maryland.

''A yoga studio would bring people to the building,'' the builders said adding it would also send a message: ''Women tend to practice yoga more than men, and when you see a woman walking down the sidewalk with a yoga mat under her arm, it says she feels safe enough to do that,'' they added.

The clientele of the yoga centers range from an economic consultant, a federal analyst and a foreign aid professional to students who sit cross-legged on the gleaming bamboo floor called 'Padmasana'. The class is overwhelmingly young and female and the teacher invites the class to chant 'Om' signaling the beginning of a new session of yoga classes.

UNI