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Ann Johansson for The New York Times

ME AND MY SHADOWS Studentswait to take Vinnie Marino’s class.

FITNESS

He Rocks, They Flock: The Yoga King


A HIGHER CALLING Vinnie Marino of Yoga Works, a recovering drug addict, was encouraged to teach by a rock star.

By DEBORAH SCHOENEMAN

Published: May 20, 2009

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The yogis arrived toting their mats and

towels and SIGG water bottles. Some had waited a half hour before

being allowed to claim tiny plots of floor just inches from one

another. They jostled and chatted while setting up their spaces, some

kicking up into handstands to loosen up.

It was 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday.

The decibel level rose to that of a

rowdy cocktail party. The crowd was a

mix of Type-A careerists and tattooed

freelancers who mold their work

schedules around their yoga practice

— or professionally accessorize their Lululemon outfits

with heavy engagement rings. Today everyone seemed

relatively calm; in the past, eruptions of mat rage have led

to tears.

And then the teacher walked in. He had a gray crew cut, a message-free tank top and

shorts, without a Buddhist bead or Sanskrit phrase visible anywhere.

“Come on people, let’s get started,” he said in a New York accent, as if leading a

conference call.

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Fitness - The Unlikely Yoga King of Los Angeles - NYTimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/fashion/21fitness.html?pa...

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Then he cranked up “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin and led the students through

a warm-up of sun salutations. Soon he had them stretching into a difficult split pose.

“Didn’t you see the torture memos this week?” called out Jane Harman, a 63-year-old

devoted student in the front row, who also happens to be the United States

Representative for the South Bay region of Los Angeles County.

The teacher responded, “That’s why I’m doing this.”

His name is Vinnie Marino and he is the unlikely Yoga King of Los Angeles. A few other

yoga teachers pack their classes, but Mr. Marino elicits a special kind of loyalty from his

students and rewards them with some very tough love. The 50-year-old recovering drug

addict says being from the other side of the country is one of his strengths.

“Coming from New York City, I have really good boundaries,” Mr. Marino said. “I know

when to let people in and I know when to back off.”

Mr. Marino leads challenging classes of nearly 90 people, six days a week, twice a day, at

the Yoga Works studios. His class fuses different types of yoga that incorporate flowing

from one pose to another (vinyasa and Ashtanga) and holding certain poses for a long

time while focusing on alignment (Iyengar). The sweat alone makes it seem closer to a

high-impact aerobics class than a discipline with a meditational aspect.

More than a grueling workout, Mr. Marino’s class is a community, maybe even a benign

cult. Students go almost daily to keep fit, as well as for the social life. They bond at his

retreats. Some have gotten married.

STAR sightings rival those at Chateau Marmont: students include Heather Graham, Kate

Hudson, David Duchovny, Jeremy Piven and Adrien Brody. (Mr. Marino teaches Robert

Downey Jr. in the privacy of his home.)

“It hurts so good and I feel euphoric after,” said Ms. Graham, who drives an hour to take

Mr. Marino’s class. She finds it a safe space for celebrities. “Yoga people on a whole are

super cool and everyone is there to work on their own thing,” she said. “I don’t find any

creepy people in his class.”

It would be hard for a gawker to fit in. “That class is torture if you’re not really good at

yoga,” said Ms. Graham, who dragged her boyfriend, the filmmaker Yaniv Raz, to class on

her birthday last year.

“It nearly destroyed me,” Mr. Raz said.

Mr. Marino, the son of Italian immigrants, grew up in New Hyde Park, N.Y. He took yoga

in gym class in high school and studied Transcendental Meditation on his own time. But

that wasn’t all he did. By 13, he was drinking and smoking pot, he said, and he soon

moved on to psychedelics and pills. He shot up cocaine and heroin until age 26, when he

went to rehab. (He has been sober for more than two decades.)

After moving to Los Angeles in the early ’90s, Mr. Marino discovered vinyasa yoga. At the

time, he was waiting tables and working as a massage therapist and as an assistant to

Grace Slick, the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane. She convinced him to become a yoga

teacher, even paying for his first teacher training program.

“I felt very lost in my life,” Mr. Marino recalled. “Grace told me to do what I love and the

money will come, but she’s not New Agey. She’s a hard-core rock ’n’ roller. I believed her

because she was so successful. Also, she said something like, ‘I’d rather take yoga from

you than some weird dude in a robe.’ ”

Mr. Marino talks about his past while he teaches, making jokes about how it’s miraculous

that he is alive. He says he thinks his life experiences make him a better teacher. There

are parallels between an addict, or an extreme seeker, he says, and a passionate yoga

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The teacher, center, having brunch

with a few of his students after a

morning workout.

He Rocks, They Flock: The Yoga KingPublished: May 20, 2009

(Page 2 of 2)

“The intensity of a drug addict to find peace is a similar thing to

someone getting involved with a spiritual practice,” he said. “I think

my drug history lets people know that we’ve all been through some

heavy stuff and change is possible.”

After the recent Saturday morning

class, Mr. Marino joined three couples

for an alfresco brunch at Gjelina, a

restaurant in the Venice

neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Adrienne Stoltz, 31, a screenwriter,

said: “Before I went on Vinnie’s retreat, I loved that no one

knew me in yoga. Now all my friends in L.A. I know

through Vinnie’s class, including my boyfriend.”

Like most of Mr. Marino’s regulars, she knows about a

quarter of the faces in every class and practices almost

every day.

“People say it’s like going to a club,” said Mr. Marino, who had ordered pancakes for the

table to share while they waited for their entrees.

Bill Johnson, a producer, and his wife, Leah Forester, a stylist, showed up with their

toddler twins. They were married last spring, after attending a retreat Mr. Marino held in

Mexico.

At the table, one of the twins grabbed her toe, pulling her leg into a yoga pose.

“Her hamstrings are pretty open,” said Mr. Marino, nodding approvingly.

POPULAR as he is, Mr. Marino’s teaching style is not for everyone. A 33-year-old

producer who had practiced yoga for a decade tried Mr. Marino’s class after hearing

friends boast about it. She said she will not go back.

“I’m not sure if it was the insane heat of the room or because there were too many people

for Vinnie to make adjustments or if it was an off day for my body, but I did something to

my lower back that I’ve never done before,” said the producer, who asked not to be

named. (It’s not good karma to criticize yogis.) “It was pinched and cramped and was

blindingly painful. The pain persisted for the next few days.”

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Mr. Marino does offer easier variations of advanced poses and looks out for beginners.

“I’m an alignment freak and I make sure, even in crowded room, that I’m always helping

people keep their bodies safe in the poses,” he said.

For Ms. Stoltz, just dealing with the stress of taking Mr. Marino’s class — errant flop

sweat, securing a spot amid the stampede, the occasional outburst of mat rage — helps

her take life in stride. “I will be on the crowded subway in New York, freaking out,” she

said. “All of the sudden, I’ll find my breath. It will make me happy. That balance is a

direct benefit from Vinnie’s class.”

Other instructors in Los Angeles teach advanced yoga classes to crowds of devoted

followers, including Steve Ross of Maha Yoga in Brentwood, and Steven Earth Metz of

Earth’s Power Yoga in West Hollywood. But Mr. Marino teaches about twice as many

classes as those competitors.

Bryan Kest of Santa Monica Power Yoga, another star teacher, is often on tour; he will be

traveling most of the summer. At Yoga Works, Sara Ivanhoe is another popular teacher,

but her class is more spiritual, with traditional Indian chanting and music.

“Part of my appeal is that I’m not preachy in any way,” Mr. Marino said. “I’m a regular

New York guy who is teaching yoga. If I had a good singing voice, I would lead oms all the

time, but I sound like someone from Brooklyn yelling out the window.”

So he lets others do the singing. On Easter, he played “White Rabbit,” the psychedelic

anthem by Jefferson Airplane, a nod to Ms. Slick. (The day Phil Spector was convicted of

murder last month, Mr. Marino played “Back on the Chain Gang,” by the Pretenders.)

Ms. Graham likes that Mr. Marino never preaches during class.

“Vinnie doesn’t take himself super-seriously,” she said. “He doesn’t lecture at all. You get

into a great space from doing the yoga, not from listening to someone talk.”

After the Saturday morning class, sweaty students streamed out of the studio, an

intimidating sight for the next class waiting for the room to be mopped dry. Ms. Harman,

the congresswoman, paused on a bench to catch her breath before heading back into the

sunny day.

“I’m feeling very thin,” she said, grinning.

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