"They're always coming back to me with back pain and injured knees," Bhat says. "People are always looking for changes, like the Ab Roller or the Nordic Track. They're not listening to their bodies."

Bhat trusts a slower, more therapeutic method of yoga than the quick, results-oriented styles popular today, but she has students who have stuck with her since she began teaching in the Cupertino area 15 years ago. On May 14, she left for Hawaii to personally certify even more instructors in her style, also known as Vasantha Yoga, which has been immortalized in a series of books and tapes.

But what truly matters to Bhat is that her students learn to use yoga as a balancing force in their lives, and she incorporates her philosophies on the topic into her classes. Her reputation as a teacher has spread through her students and through articles written about her. Earlier this year, Bhat returned to India, where she originally learned yoga, to speak about its role in her life at the International Conference on World Peace.

"People do yoga for flexibility, but it shouldn't just be a muscle flex," she says. "It should be a mind flex." Bhat, 49, took up yoga in her native India after the birth of her youngest child in the mid-1970s. "People were telling me, 'You're only 20? You look like you're 30!'"

She began studying yoga under the care of Indian swamis, and soon found that the relaxation that came with the practice helped her lose weight and heal her thyroid problems. The healing properties of yoga inspired her to teach others, including her family. She says it helped ease her mother's arthritis problems. Bhat claims that she's also been able to stave off diabetes, which runs in her family, partially due to yoga.

"Yoga takes away the tension that can affect your immunity system," she says. "Many of the seniors in my classes have to sit in a chair to do yoga, but after one time, they can sit on the floor." Bhat also touts a number of students who, using yoga in combination with Western medicine, have helped resolve medical problems.

Josephine Smith, who now teaches chair yoga at Santa Clara's Valley Village Retirement Center, suffered from a stroke at 75 and says that taking Bhat's class helped ease her symptoms. "Yoga is a scientific exercise. Relaxation and breathing helps the essence of pain," she says. "It may not alleviate everything, but it sure helps."

Bhat's teaching resumed after she and her husband moved their family from India to San Jose 18 years ago, but it wasn't an easy task. "The first 10 years were so hard. Nobody was doing yoga then, and people made fun of you," she says. She first held classes in her home near Lynbrook High School and was finally able to branch out to teach classes in local studios and businesses when the yoga trend hit in the 1990s.

But she worries about the way yoga is taught in many places. "Yoga books tell you to do the full shoulder stand right away, but most people aren't ready for that," Bhat says. She compares yoga to a prescription medicine—one pill or position isn't going to fit everyone. "It's like a blanket for everyone. If people keep practicing yoga the way it is now, it's going to go downhill," she says.

Her method emphasizes paying attention to the aches and pains of the body and not pushing whatever doesn't feel right. It's popular enough to maintain fanatics who have counted themselves among Bhat's disciples for 15 years and to support the creation of her 13 yoga videotapes and two books, which are sold via her website. While the production costs were pricey—$5,000 for one video—she says she doesn't know how much money the products have made. To her, it's just about spreading the word and helping people relax.

The word went back to India, in fact, notifying Dr. Yajneshwar Shastri, a philosophy professor at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad and director of the International Conference on World Peace. He visited one of her classes and then invited her to speak at the conference that took place between Dec. 29 and Jan. 4. Bhat accepted and spoke about her philosophy, which serves as a backdrop to her teaching.

"Everyone claims that their religion is best, but I see divinity in everyone," she says. "The gods all said that they're inside you, so no one has to stretch too much to unfold the spirituality inside of them." Bhat, a Hindu, says that releasing tension through practicing yoga can clear the lines of communication, which facilitates understanding among everyone, even in the smallest units. "Openness and forgiveness starts from family life and spreads out," she says.

Bhat's family has fully supported her efforts and practiced yoga alongside her while she continues to do what she loves. Her current plans involve converting her videotapes into DVD offerings. She also hopes to teach her 15-month-old granddaughter the yoga positions, just like she did her own children. "I was called the cool mom," she laughs.

For more information on Vasantha Yoga, visit http://www.vasanthayoga.com.