Yearning for yoga

'MOVE THE FOCUS to the buttocks,' says a booming, amplified voice. 'There is intelligence in the body. You move that intelligence by aligning the body. When the intelligence can move, then awareness can move, then consciousness can move in the body. This is the meaning of Ishtanga.'

About 300 bottoms clench as the packed room of Hong Kongers do their version of the 'Downward Facing Dog'.

I am at the Fila Yoga Extravaganza, an enormous event organised by the Yoga Society of Hong Kong, California Fitness Centres and sportswear brand Fila to start a week of yoga activities in the SAR. The 5,000-year-old Indian discipline, which fuses asanas (postures) with pranayama (breathing exercises) and meditation, has become a hot ticket here.

This convention, which has drawn a wide cross-section of Hong Kong society, is proof of yoga's growing popularity. Since the Raja Yoga Society formed a meditation centre in 1971 and the first yoga studio appeared in Wyndham Street in 1999, a bewildering number of choices has become available: hot yoga, power yoga, Iyengar yoga, Hatha yoga, yoga for babies. Yoga is becoming big business. 'Yoga and meditation are now the two most popular forms of exercise at our clubs in Asia,' says Andrew Ward, regional group manager of California Fitness Centres.

The twin workshops on Sunday morning and afternoon that I attend kick-off the yoga festival, which has seen studios throw open their doors to the public (charging $20 per session instead of the usual $200). There are visiting instructors: Dutch yogi Cle Souren is in town, and meditation guru Swami Veda Bharati is leading a week-long meditation retreat at The Excelsior hotel, Causeway Bay

I arrive at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Hall to find a group of local yoga instructors demonstrating asanas to the accompaniment of flutes, tablas and fluid drums. One man in the pack looks like a character from the Japanese cartoon Dragonball. He is dressed in black kung fu pants, has a mane of blond streaked hair and is able to suck his entire stomach up behind his ribcage. This is Dixon Lau, Hong Kong's answer to Rodney 'Stud Muffin' Yee. The celebrity teacher holds court at glam venues such as health and beauty club Philip Wain and the Gold Coast Yacht Club, and has already inspired a small forest of flower offerings placed lovingly at the swinging entrance doors to the hall.