This has been the yoga week, and stressed-out Mumbai honours the 5,000-year-old tradition by turning it into a part of its lifestyle.

"When one of the oldest yoga centres in the world The Yoga Institute started in 1918, there was a sense among yogis that their quest for spiritual bliss had no place in the business world," remembers Hansaben Yogendra the current director whose father-in-law Jayadev Yogendra started the institute.

She was speaking to DNA soon after a special session on World Yoga Day (June 21) with 100 senior police officers from 11.00 am to 1.00 pm. "This class was part of the global plan of similar classes in local time in each time zone, leading to a worldwide 24-hr yoga marathon."

Back in 1918, the teachers or yogis were far and few and they taught from their homes largely. "You weren't a real yogi if you were trying to make money off it," remarks Yogendra. "But now it's become a business. Mumbai has over 200 schools."

Today the world over several schools and styles have led to a mushrooming of Iyengar, Bikram, Anusara, Ashtanga, Laughter Yoga and Kathak Yoga classes. There are classes and schools 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 like yoga teacher for nearly two decades, Nilufer Patel says 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.

The 55-year-old who is known to be strict with her regimen and has had several celebrity clients says she refuses admission to more than she admits. "Yoga is not for people who come saying they want to fit into a particular dress or lose weight," she points out. "The weight loss will happen as a by-product but you can't come looking for that as a goal." While appreciating how fitness conscious people are becoming, she underlines, "Yoga is not excercise. It has ahimsa, satya all tied into it."

Echoing her, Tama Soble, co-owner of Esther Myers Yoga Studio, which opened in Toronto in 1979, says: "Hybrids like yoga-pilates might be interesting as a physical discipline, but if not focused on the concept of body and mind integration, I don't think its yoga."

What was once the mysterious practice of new age spiritualists and countercultural hipsters, yoga has moved out of the ashram and into the mainstream. Superstar gurus and high-profile celebrity practitioners have helped transform the 5,000-year-old Indian philosophy into a multi-million-dollar, transnational industry, which the Yoga Journal magazine says is worth $42 billion worldwide.This not only includes fees, but also includes yoga-gear like mats and outfits. For example, Lululemon, a Vancouver-based yoga-apparel brand, earns more than $1 billion worldwide annually.

Though some lament the fact that yoga has become more a sport than practice, others say yoga in any form still benefits the practitioner, and helps open one to its original aims: heightened awareness, focus, oneness with the outside world.

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Spynga, yogalates, yoga butt: whats your choice?