The practice seriously lacks diversitybut some studios are trying to change that.

Teacher J. Cole Thomas leads students Rochelle Citizen (left) and Kris Williams (right) in tree pose. (Rosalie Murphy)

Thick, glossy copies of LA Yoga, Yoga Journal, and Yoga Magazine cover the rickety folding table in the lobby of Green Tree Yoga and Meditation. The magazines share tales from Malibu, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. Nearly every spread features a thin woman, usually in slim yoga pants and a tight tank, stretching her arms toward the sky or closing her eyes in meditation. Nearly all of these women are white.

But in South Los Angeles, where Green Tree opened last year, fewer than one percent of residents look like the people in those pictures.

You can look at all those journals and you'll not see one woman of color, said Raja Michelle, herself a white woman, who founded the studio. We associate yoga with being skinny, white, and even upper class.

You go to classes and youre the only black person, or there are very few, said Robin Rollan, who practices yoga in New York and D.C. and runs the popular blogBlack Yogis. People who find my blog say, I thought I was the only one.

The magazine images may seem like stereotypes, but theyre grounded in reality: About one in every 15 Americans practices yoga, according to a 2012 Yoga Journal study, and more than four-fifths of them are white.

You have to have an education about yoga. Otherwise people think it's some kind of devil-worship.

Racism is so implicit that you never even notice that its a white girl on the cover every single time, added Amy Champ, a PhD from the University of California, Davis, who wrote her dissertation on American yoga. But when you begin to ask yourself, What does yoga have to do with my community?, then you begin to question all these inequities.

L.A. yoga studios are heavily concentrated in wealthy white neighborhoods. In a corner storefront beside a tattoo parlor and across from a used car dealership, Green Tree recognizes that religious, economic and social divisions underlie yogas racial divide. Its neighborhood is about 80 percent black and 20 percent Latino. Household incomes hover around L.As average, but crime rates are high and college diplomas are rare.

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Why Your Yoga Class Is So White