More than 30 million people in the United States can’t be wrong. That’s the estimated number of people who practice yoga. What keeps them returning to classes, day after day, week after week?

I could write this column about my experiences practicing yoga, from the first class I took in a college gym in the 1970s to waking up each morning in my east side Manhattan studio apartment, to Lilias, Yoga and You on TV and practicing once again to Richard Hittleman’s yoga show at 11 p.m. each evening before bed.

My yoga practice has waxed and waned over the years, but I always return to the stillness that envelopes me when I breathe, relax and move in unison with my spirit.

While many of us look for new adventures and a way to clean up our acts at the beginning of a new year, I thought it would be a good time to take a first or second look at the ancient practice of yoga through the eyes of yogis themselves. What’s the lure? Each person has a different story to tell.

The physical benefits are obvious: increased flexibility; increased lubrication of joints, ligaments and tendons; detoxification; organ massage; and muscle tone. But these are just side effects of a way to move, think and live that can harmonize the mind with the body and affect one’s life in ways that can be both subtle and astonishing.

Anne Kennedy has been practicing yoga once a week for decades in Philadelphia. When she moved to the Hill last year, her daughter took her to a Bikram yoga class. “I thought the heat would kill me,” she said. “But it was so cold out, and I wanted to be warm so I tried it.” During the first class she didn’t think she would live through it. “I did. It was a miracle.” She laughed. “The second time was easier though I was looking at the clock every 10 minutes.” She noticed after just the second class that when her head hit her pillow she slept through the night. “I haven’t been sleeping like that for years.” She also noticed that the stiffness in her joints was gone. As a teacher of middle school children, Anne said she felt as if she was on a level plane. “The kids didn’t seem as crazy to me anymore. I have an incredible sort of evenness that life is great.” When she tore her meniscus (knee) gardening this past June, she found that yoga helped with swelling that was making her knee painful.

Last summer Anne was diagnosed with a rare form of slow growing leukemia. “Yoga has kept me from going into that panic space. I am 60, and my life is so full of joy, yet I have this incurable disease. Somehow it presents itself as not something so major.” She practices every other day. “It just strips you down to what you are. You don’t have to have a yoga body to get a tremendous amount out of class both physically and spiritually.”

Maurice Chesley, 35, sits at a computer all day. His profession as a Web developer, assistant program manager and systems analyst keeps him immobile, hunched and stiff. At night whenever he can and on weekends Maurice races motorcycles. Yoga keeps him limber. “When I started taking classes in 1987, I did a lot of indoor and outdoor cycling. I was fit, but I was stiff.” Two years ago while racing in West Virginia Maurice crashed going 110 miles an hour. “I was supposed to be dead.” He spent a month in the hospital, two months in a wheelchair, then a walker. Thirteen operations later he said he feels great. “When I did my physical therapy, my therapist said my range of motion was far beyond average. I attribute that to yoga.” Before his accident he took yoga once a week. Now he’s upped it to twice after two hours of indoor cycling. “It seems like it works. I’m dedicated to exercise that helps my racing. When I travel on my bike at 130 miles an hour, my knee often drags on the ground. It’s impossible to get good without being limber. I really see a difference with my posture, breathing and flexibility with yoga.”

Yoga gave Christine Romero and Kelly Moore life-altering experiences. Both gave up their successful careers to teach yoga.

Fifteen years ago Christine went to a yoga class with a friend who suggested it may help Christine relieve pain in her back from being hunched over a film editing table 14-15 hours a day as well as help relieve some of the grief she was experiencing after the death of her sister. “At first I just went on weekends at St. Marks Yoga Center or when I didn’t have an editing project scheduled. I kept going for the sense of peace that it brought to me, which I now attribute to the effect of pranayama (technique of breathing and breath control which regulates energy flow and aims at maintaining energy balance.)”

About seven years ago she began to feel less satisfied with her documentary career and began looking for what else she could do with her life. A yoga teacher called and asked if she could substitute-teach a class for her. “I did and loved it.” Her five-year plan eased her out of film editing and into teaching yoga. During yoga teacher training Christine said, “All manner of things physical, mental and spiritual began to make sense to me, as if I had known but forgotten them along the way. I began to feel as vibrant and enthusiastic as I did when I was a child.” Now Christine teaches 12 classes a week including seniors and is the director at St. Marks Yoga Center where she began her practice. “It’s a delight to honor those teachers who started me on the yoga path.

“I was 37 when I started practicing. I was 46 when I started teaching, and I’m 52 now and healthier and happier than I’ve ever been in my life.” Her back pain? “My back has never been better.”

Kelly Moore started practicing yoga out of desperation. She was working at a high-stress job government job and used running as a stress reliever. Then she injured her left hip flexor. “My doctor who did yoga suggested I try it. I knew nothing about it. I asked him, ‘How will this help my hip? Don’t they chant and stuff like that?’”

In her first yoga class at ResultsTheGym, Kelly noticed how dramatically imbalanced her left and right hips were. She also made the startling realization that she couldn’t sit up straight. “I thought I was, but when the teacher adjusted me, I couldn’t hold the position. I was hooked.”

Kelly thought she was in great shape. She worked out two hours a day, six days a week. She’d run seven miles then lift weights for an hour.

“I could do a chin up. I was hard core about my workout.” A light bulb went off during that first class. “How healthy can I be if I can’t even sit up straight? I began to rethink my definition of what healthy was and how I was going about it.”

It took her about four years to give up the weight training and to reduce her cardio workouts. “It just felt like I was pounding my body. I also realized that I thought I was strong, but then in yoga class I didn’t have the strength I thought I had. If I wasn’t doing a seated row or lat pull down I couldn’t sustain the pose. I didn’t have strength to work muscles together.”

Kelly left the State Department, started her own national security consulting company and then joined the 9/11 Commission. She also enrolled in a program to become a holistic health practitioner. Last year she gave up her national security gig to start her own business, Harmonia Health. She teaches yoga throughout Washington, DC. “I came to yoga for a physical injury, and I felt it renewed my spirit. It wasn’t something I anticipated.”

John Hanson started doing yoga more than 30 years ago in his early 20s. He incorporated it with running and rock climbing into his fitness regime. It was more of a mental and spiritual practice. Twenty years later he said his practice became more diligent when he discovered stiffness and loss of flexibility that comes with aging. “Yoga helped build my strength as well as flexibility for rock climbing.” Then, at 47 years old, John took a flying trapeze class and injured his shoulder. “Physical therapy only returned my shoulder to 50 percent of its strength and flexibility. Yoga brought it back to 95 percent.”

Yoga also helps him be more centered and calm in rock climbing competitions. “The body awareness that comes from practicing yoga really pays off.”

Arin Farrington woke up one morning 10 years ago and couldn’t get out of bed. It took her 45 minutes to rise to a seated position. “I developed a pinched nerve from bad posture.” Her chiropractor told her that if she didn’t start doing yoga the pain could return. “I started going to yoga class six times a week, stopped doing weight and cardio machines. It didn’t make sense anymore.”

Arin pursued her yoga interest with gusto, traveling to India several times a year to try different styles. “My concept of energy changed. I confused energy with nervousness. It became clear that it was quite the opposite. A strong quiet core produced true energy which is a profound thing.”

Her yoga practice has influenced her sense of self and her view of her professional work. “I’m calmer now. I’m more aware of my present space. I meditate and have done a huge amount of chanting that made me feel tied with the rest of humanity. I feel like I’m doing good when I do yoga.”

Arin also discovered that as a writer/editor, frenetic activity is not necessarily good work. “I slowed down a lot and am not interested in being overwhelmed with work and money. I’m much more comfortable with what I don’t do.” She can’t imagine her life without yoga.

Barbara Diskin lives in Alexandria, Va., yet she travels across the bridge several times a week to attend yoga and meditation classes at Capitol Hill Yoga. When she started six years ago she never expected to continue because over the years, she tried a lot of things and never stuck with them. She took a class on the advice of a coworker. “I’m not a person who likes physical exercise.”

From the moment she started yoga, her life changed. “I started writing again (her blog is looking2live.blogspot.com); I discovered massage and met people who have become wonderful friends. I didn’t realize how important friends are. I got caught up in the frenzy of raising children.”

Barbara is content with her once-a-week class. She’s in it for the long haul to maintain calmness, flexibility, strength and ease of movement. “I was looking to live, and I think I figured out how.”

Choices for Yoga on Capitol Hill abound.
Bikram Yoga 202-256-9156, www.bikramyogacapitolhill.com; Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) 202-547-6839, www.chaw.org; St. Mark’s Yoga Center 202-546-4964, www.stmarks.net/arts/yoga.html ResultsTheGym 202-234-5678, www.resultsthegym.com; Capitol Hill Yoga 202-544-0011, www.capitolhillyoga.com; Gold’s Gym 202-554-4653, www.goldsgym.com; Washington Sports Club 202-547-2255, www.mysportsclub.com; Joy of Motion 202-399-6783, www.joyofmotion.org