Stiles doesn't manipulate her clients physically or mentally. During our class, instead of forcing me "deeper" into certain poses or correcting my poor form with her long, tapered fingers, she simply advises me on a better way to go about getting into position which explains the success of her DVDs, This is Yoga and Yoga Anywhere. She's nobody's "master" she says, and she doesn't want anybody "pledging allegiance" to her at the end of a class.

"Anytime I do get someone doing that kind of thing I just toss it back at them," she shrugs. "Sometimes people get overwhelmed and they come up to you after a session crying and saying that you're changing their life. I make sure I tell them that it's them, not me who's doing anything."

It's too much pressure for her to take, she says. Besides, what she's telling them is true. "A lot of the time when people make a change and they feel good, they think that the change is coming from outside and they want to hand that power over to somebody else, but actually it's all coming from them. The thing about yoga is that it activates parts of your body and brain that aren't usually activated."

It's hard to separate fact from mythology with yoga. After 20 minutes of gentle stretching movements with Stiles (of the two she teaches I decide to opt for the "relax" class rather than the "strong") I certainly feel better but I don't know if that's a combination of Stiles's husky yogic tones and blood to the head, or something more. It doesn't feel like exercise yet my tank top is damp by the end. And I can feel my heart beating. "In the strong classes everybody sweats buckets," she assures me. "It not only lengthens your limbs but you lose weight, too."

This is a subject of some contention in the yoga nerds' blogosphere, where Stiles was accused of pitching yoga as another "quick weight-loss tool". "I don't care what Tara Stiles says yoga is," one instructor raged. "It's not about making your body beautiful." This only prompts another ladette laugh from Stiles. "People want to make the body and mind separate but you are your body. Yoga is about making your mind clearer and your body beautiful. You will lose weight with yoga, because everything just starts to work better. Your insides work better and because it makes you feel better you start to eat healthier."

The yoga aristocrats may have been antagonistic to Stiles to begin with, but the longer her success continues and the larger her empire becomes (she has opened a studio in West Hollywood, plans to spend an increasing amount of time in London and is helping Bill Clinton bring yoga to US schools as part of his Alliance For a Healthier Generation initiative) the kinder they've become. "I think they're starting to realise that I'm not taking anything away I'm just adding to what's already there. I'm not attacking anybody: I just want people to see that you don't have to be a part of some elite club to like yoga."

At Strala, Stiles gets a whole jumble of characters. There are the businesswomen and men, who "come after work and walk home in their sweats and their brogues", the seven- and eight-year-olds who come in with their parents and the 60- and 70-year-olds. On Saturday mornings, she also gets the hungover and sleep-deprived young, hip crowd for whom she has designed a special "yoga for hangovers" class. "Actually most of the people who come on Saturdays seem to be hungover," she laughs, "but I like that they don't feel like they can't come in just because they went partying the night before."

I get the feeling Stiles had a pretty lively youth herself. The daughter of a couple of "straight-edged hippies" from Newton, Illinois, she "used to do everything", she says. "But nowadays my boyfriend and I don't drink that much and we try to eat healthy."

It was while she was still dreaming of becoming a ballerina that Stiles discovered yoga. "It made me feel the same way I felt as a little girl, when I would go and meditate in the woods near our house," she says. She recently went back to Newton, yoga mat under one arm, to make a documentary on bringing yoga to the small-town folk of Illinois. "They had tons of misconceptions but by the end they were, like, 'this feels good and it doesn't conflict with my church'."

Whatever it was that Stiles made me do down on the carpet of that East Village loft did feel good. I wasn't expecting to meet a religious leader when I rang her doorbell but I was expecting a spiritual zealot.

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Tara Stiles: 'Yoga is not an elite club'