Yoga’s evolution: From basement studios to big business

“You weren’t a real yogi if you were trying to make money off it,” says Beet, who held 90-minute prenatal yoga classes at St. Matthias church on Bellwoods Ave. north of Queen St. W. Her 30 or so students paid her $10 per class.

But by 1996, Beet’s classes drew more yogis than could fit inside the church, and she relocated to a repurposed photo studio nearby and named her business Yogaspace. A year later, her weekly revenue had grown 10 fold.

Since then, hundreds of studios have sprouted up in the GTA. Ruth Dargan, co-founder of the eight-year-old Yoga Conference, which expects 20,000 people at its event this weekend at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, keeps a database of Toronto-area studios. She says there are 669 studios in the GTA, more than twice as many as five years ago.

The yoga explosion “was so rapid it was unbelievable,” says Beet, who incorporated Yogaspace and moved into a 4,000 square-foot studio on Ossington Ave., near Dundas St. in 2004. Earlier this month, she opened a second Yogaspace studio, in Thornhill.

Once the mysterious practice of new age spiritualists and countercultural hipsters, yoga has moved out of the ashram and into the mainstream. Superstar American gurus and high-profile celebrity practitioners have helped transform the 5,000-year-old Indian philosophy into a multi-million-dollar, transnational industry.

According to the most recent numbers from Statistics Canada, 1.4 million Canadians practiced yoga in 2005. Estimates of the number of global yoga practitioners are as high as 250 million. As a result, yoga has become a cash cow, with American yogis, for example, spending more than $10 billion annually on classes and equipment, according to Yoga Journal magazine.

Last year, Lululemon, the Vancouver-based yoga-apparel brand, earned more than $1 billion worldwide. And the 15-year-old company’s success has been partially responsible for a recent upsurge in yoga-related entrepreneurism. From 2010 to 2013, 138 people filed trademarks on yoga styles and products, compared with 160 submitted from 2000 to 2010, according to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

While Vancouverites claim the heart of Canada’s yoga community is out west, Toronto yogis insist the GTA is the country’s yoga capital, with more studios on a per-capita basis than anywhere else in North America.

“Yoga has boomed in Toronto more than anywhere else, in terms of the number of studios that exist, their density and that there is not much turnover,” says Raj Gandhi, co-founder of Passport to Prana, an eight-year-old Toronto-based coupon program that offers deals to yoga centres in 18 North American cities.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint why, yoga has a tendency to take root in major cities where, Gandhi says, health-conscious urbanites need a way to escape the stresses of big-city life.

Across the GTA, there are studios geared toward the strictest aspirants of mind-body bliss, for the neophytes experimenting with ashtanga and kundalini styles, and for fitness junkies simply after a sublime “yoga butt.” Hybrids, such as Spynga (yoga/cycling), Yogalates (yoga/pilates) and Yoganetics (yoga/kinetics), and other variations (naked yoga, anyone?) are now widely offered.

But while the industry has taken on a something-for-everyone mindset, some say yoga’s rapid expansion has diluted its foundational core: to achieve serenity in our bodies and minds, shut off from the burdens of daily life.

“(Hybrids) might be interesting as a physical discipline, but … if it’s not focused on the concept of body and mind integration, I don’t think it’s yoga,” says Tama Soble, co-owner of Esther Myers Yoga Studio, which opened in Toronto in 1979.

Regardless, local studio owners have realized their niche market has grown into big business, rife with competitive pricing and territory disputes. At her new Thornhill location, Beet has installed heating panels to draw customers looking for hot yoga, a popular form where students do their practice in 40C rooms.

In September, smaller studios will face added competition when YYoga, a massive Vancouver chain with a slate of wellness services, opens its first Toronto location in a 10,000 square-foot downtown space. Investors have reportedly funneled $9 million into the expansion, which YYoga CEO Terry McBride hopes will eventually reach 40 locations across southern Ontario.

McBride, a former digital music executive, insists that despite their corporate exterior, his yoga centres promote community — among students and teachers — just like neighbourhood studios.

Beet, however, offers a harsher comparison — an ominous sign, perhaps, of how far yoga has come in Canada’s biggest city.

“It’s the difference between the neighbourhood book store and Chapters.”