Beating the Blahs

In this Age of the Blahs, many thousands of Americans are finding a new way to assuage money worries, insomnia, angst, neuroticism and neglect of liver and lungs. Their new-found route to tranquillity is yoga. Long regarded as a freak clique, yoga practitioners in virtually every community in the country, from suburb to ghetto, Y.M.C.A.s to churches and American Legion halls, are discovering that yoga, shorn of incantatory mysticism, is a highly practical way to relax tensions, tone up the physique, reduce the embonpoint and turn off tranquilizers, cholesterol-laden food, even smoking and drinking. In short, yoga, no longer an ogre, is rapidly becoming as much a part of American life as organic apple pie.

In New England alone, there are more than 3,000 teachers of yoga, many of them instructed in the "nondogmatic" regimen by Yogi Shri T.R. Khanna Ho, who arrived in Boston from the Himalayas 15 years ago. Author and teacher, he also maintains an ashram, or yoga retreat, in Newton, Mass., which lists as permanent residents some 20 devotees ranging from salesmen to scientists. An internationally known yoga Merlin is Californian Richard Hittleman, 47, whose expertly produced Yoga for Health TV series is shown in a dozen foreign countries, and last week made its debut--twice daily each weekday--on Manhattan's Channel 13.

Bend and Stretch. The Manhattan telephone directory lists 27 yoga instruction centers. One of the most attractive yoga studios is a converted loft organized by Dick Shea, 35, a sometime naval frogman, demolition expert and dancer, and Alan Levy, also 35 and a licensed chiropractor. Patrons come in for an average half-hour twice a week, to bend and stretch, arch their backs, swing their pelvises and breathe deeply, all at their own speed. They find that unlike conventional calisthenics, which tend to be exhausting, yoga renews their energy.

For $3.50, Levy-Shea offers not only a 30-minute yoga session but also a low-calorie lunch (sample menu: organic apple juice, four raw string beans, tomato wedges, sliced cucumber, green pepper, celery, radish, figs, unsalted cashew nuts and a slice of Russian black bread with a hunk of Norwegian Jarlsberg cheese). Regular yoga conditioning, says Levy, "reduces colds and other respiratory problems. People say they have fewer headaches and sleep sounder." It also--Masters and Johnson, please note --improves one's sex life. Sex? Well, explains Levy, "you have fewer tensions, you're relaxed, and you learn to isolate your pelvic muscles and control them."

Persuasive Manner. Nondogmatic American yoga is about to get its biggest shot in the pelvis, and from no guru. On 124 stations throughout the U.S., PBS will air three color shows a week featuring yoga demonstrations by Lilias Folan, a charming and svelte Cincinnati housewife. Folan, who has already become a success on Cincinnati's WCET-TV, producer of her current show, has sold 35,000 copies of a book called Lilias, Yoga and You (with a Braille version that allows the blind to feel embossed pictures of Lilias doing the Cat Stretch). With a persuasive manner that can drive any executive to lock his office door and stand on his head, Lilias promises to become the Julia Child of yoga.

Lilias recommends a 30-minute daily workout, ranging from exercises such as Chest Expander 1-3 for women (good news for husbands) to Stomach Flattener (good news for wives). She herself--a vegetable gobbler--is the proof of the non-pudding.

Lilias, 39, underwent long and frustrating psychiatric treatment before discovering yoga. Now, twelve years later, and 15 Ibs. lighter, she convinces audiences that daily yoga should be as much a part of anyone's routine as brushing his teeth. The exercises, she argues, can help mollify almost any fragile condition from hangovers to hangups ... mens sana in corpore yoga.

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