Vol 40, No. 08 | Feb. 19, 2001
Excerpt from "Stress shakedown"
Belly dancing is a holistic workout for the mind, body and spirit
By ELIZABETH HLOTYAK
Another health trend that has reached the corporate world is yoga. Yoga helps relax the body and mind together. The stretching techniques allow muscles to relax and tone, improve circulation, regain energy, lose or gain weight, feel and look young and improve concentration. It can relieve conditions like stress, back-pain, allergy, headaches, high and low blood pressure, insomnia and depression.
There are several different kinds of yoga disciplines but one that has become popular in the corporate world is called Bikram Yoga. Named after its founder, Bikram Choudhury who is known as the "yogi to the stars" and yoga’s "bad boy," it is physically challenging and is performed in a heated room, known as "sweat box," or "hot box"
The yoga alternative
Two yoga studios in Connecticut, the Yoga Center of Greenwich and the Bikram Yoga studio in Norwalk, offer this fitness alternative. Within the next couple of weeks a new yoga center will be opening in Westchester.
"It [yoga] is a major stress reducer and it helps tremendously with concentration," said Jacqueline M. Vernon, a bio-technical patent litigator with Clifford, Chance, Rogers & Wells in Manhattan, and the co-owner of the soon-to-open YogaSpa®, www.yoga-spa.com, on 321 Tarrytown Road in Elmsford. "As a professional, sometimes your mind is not where it is supposed to be, but with yoga you have no choice but to concentrate. If you don’t then you are not going to go through with it."
Vernon and her co-owner and friend, Patricia A. Fischer, a commercial real estate attorney with her own practice, decided to open the studio after taking Bikram Yoga classes at the Greenwich site.
"We have a waiting list of approximately 162 people," said Vernon. "We are getting an average of four to five phone calls a day from people who have checked it out on the web"