Why yoga is a yawn

Make way for a new breed of Smugs. If Bridget Jones were writing her diary today, she'd ignore those Smug Marrieds and be at her most acidic on the subject of Smug Yogis. You know who I mean. You'll see them on a Saturday morning, driving their people carriers to yoga classes, with blue rubber mats in their Christy Turlington Nuala bags and beatific smiles playing on their lips. You'll hear them in coffee bars, bleating on about how long they can stay in the headstand. You'll find yourself discussing the Lotus Position at dinner parties - and then doing it, too, if you've had enough Merlot.

Absolutely everybody's at it, primarily because we all took one look at Madonna's Ashtanga body two years ago and thought "I'd like one just like that". Since then, yoga has become the middle-class Londoner's badge of honour - in much the same way as rustling up a decent coq au vin was in the Seventies.

Either way, yoga is the bug you can't ignore. Just look at the explosion of yogas available to the unwitting Londoner. There's Ashtanga and its sister version, Jivamukti Power Flow. There's Bikram, the "Hot One" - a sort of chilli-sauce version which involves sweating buckets while standing on one leg. Alternatively, you could plump for Kundalini yoga, which apparently energises the genitals and is favoured by Courtney Love.

There's worse, though (if you can credit it). Just last week, I caught an ad for the "MTV Yoga" video, which featured men in tight pants bouncing around the screen to banging R'n'B tunes. Older readers might prefer Disco Yoga (presumably on roller skates, though I have no proof of this). Or perhaps Yoga Booty, designed expressly for thighs and bums.

Each strain has its own fiercely loyal devotees. I watched two women perform competing methods of Saluting the Sun (one Ashtanga, one Sivananda) in the loo at the Bush Bar and Grill the other day. Once completed, they touched up their lipstick and toddled off to the bar.

It's enough to make you want to kick them in the butt-chakra. Yoga in the city has become everything it was never meant to be: trendy, competitive and phoney. Personally, I blame Geri Halliwell, who gave the impression that yoga was responsible for her huge lard drop after the Spices split. You only have to look at the girl to know that stretching is all very well, but starving is the only way to achieve that look.

As a result of hanging out with celebrity chums, yoga has lost its homely, worthwhile heart and gone all glossy. Any space for pranayama (the dull breathing exercises that, alas, won't win you abs like Madge) or relaxation has been lost. Originally, of course, yoga was the preserve of men in lunghis and long beards, many of whom devoted a lifetime to perfecting the Mountain Pose. This involves standing. That's it: just standing. I know people who swear by their Ashtanga teacher but are unable to stand in a queue to pay for petrol.

Even if this doesn't perturb you, there are convincing medical grounds for questioning our current affair with glossy yoga. The British Wheel of Yoga - the governing body - estimates that only half of the UK's 10,000 yoga teachers are properly qualified.

I went to one session at my local gym where the teacher barked out orders, went straight into complicated croissant-shaped postures, and then proceeded to rebuke a well-upholstered woman at the back for not having the flexibility of "Suzie in the front here".

It's hardly surprising that Dr Robin Monro of the Yoga Therapy Centre in north London reports an increased incidence of injury in recent years. Many of the neck problems and ricked backs he hears about are the result of "strong and active yogas being taught by less-than-qualified teachers. The more classical types are, on the whole, safe, but yoga in the gym can be dangerous."

Of course it's dangerous. You can't fold yourself into a tortellini-knot with inadequate preparation, with one eye on the clock, one eye on Suzie-inthefront and half a mind on whether you look fetching in the pose, without asking for trouble. Those Smug Yogis will get their comeuppance, you'll see.