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Show Instructor Miko Cleverley leads the open yoga class through warm-up exercises at Yoga Jo's on 12th Street in Ogden. PETER CHUDLEIGH Standard-Examiner Practice helping to calm the country - and the Top of Utah By KRISTEN HEBESTREET_ Standard Examiner correspondent When Mary Sue Rasmussen's arthritis began to wear her down, her doctor suggested yoga. "I still have aches and pains, but nothing like I was," Rasmussen said seven months later. "I really have improved my strength, my flexibility and my whole attitude about life. Even my doctor -when I went back to her - she couldn't believe how much better I looked." Rasmussen, of Ogden, has been attending yoga classes since September at Mindful Women in South Ogden, one of several facilities in the region where yoga classes are now available. As in the rest of the country, yoga in the Top of Utah is having a burst of popularity. Yoga is becoming more popular because people are also moving away from exercising by "reading a magazine while working out on the Stairmaster," said Rachel Romaine, a yoga instructor at Mindful Women. "We're so much into sensation, we overload the system and we hardly realize what is happening," she said. Besides Mindful Women, classes are available locally at Yoga Jo's Studio, the FitLife Center, Weber State University, Gold's Gyms, Lady Fitness, South Ogden Athletic Club, the Ogden Nature Center and the Eccles Community Art Center. Romaine, who is certified by the nationally organized Yoga Alliance and has studied yoga in India, said yoga makes her a "saner, more loving" person. When she came home the other day with a big headache, she turned down the lights and restored herself with some mild back bends, forward bends and a few simple twists. "It's much more than a physical practice," Romaine said. "I know I'm a better-quality person for it. It's totally changed the way I deal with my family and friends. It's made me more mindful of the way I deal with myself. The more mindful I am with myself, the more I deal with other people much better." Yoga is originally from India, where there are 5,000-year-old sculptures showing people in yoga-like positions. In the United States, yoga reportedly began in Chicago in 1893, when Swami Vi- |