Yoga For Modern City Life: Yoga Is Now A Lifestyle

Is it any surprise models are wrapping their wrists in mala beads, fashion designers are heading off to India for yoga retreats and there's a new line of active wear that takes its name from the Sanskrit mantra om.

To the uninitiated, yoga is pretzel-like poses and a dim memory of the Beatles visiting the Maharishi in the 1960s.

Gurmukh Kaur, the Center for Living's white-turbaned founder, travels by limo -- in a blaze of camera strobes -- with one of her students, singer Courtney Love.

What she does is kundalini yoga, Ms. Love told a reporter covering the bash for fashion-bible Women's Wear Daily. It's better for me than Prozac -- and the clothes are nice, too.

Ms. Love is hardly the only celebrity singing the praises of yoga -- or helping to catapult the 5,000-year-old practice onto the cutting edge.

Yoga Zone, a hip New York yoga studio with a half-hour show weekdays on cable's Health Network, has an entire catalog dedicated to the joy of yoga. In addition to the predictable range of videotapes, nonslip mats and meditation cushions, there are multiple pages of clothing and accessories.

Cotton-Lycra hipsters are the definitive Yoga Zone look for practice and beyond. Spaghetti-strap camisoles and halter tops with subtle embroidered logos come in black, slate, garnet, moss green and other quiet but current colors.

Even the jewelry has a fashion angle: Pendant necklaces with the Chinese symbol for clarity or the Sanskrit symbol for om are crafted by the hot fashion duo Me & Ro.