By Susan Reinhardt, columnist

Asheville Citizen-Times, Sunday August 29, 2010

Adam Laufer is no ordinary yoga teacher. Instead of quietly uttering the reverent salutation, “Namaste,” he shouts in his slight Puerto Rican accent, “Another day, another dollar.” He starts his classes with chocolates and joking and requires those who practice his yoga to have a good time while they're getting the benefits of deep stretches.

Life shouldn't be serious all the time, says Laufer who's been teaching at Lighten Up Yoga for 11 years and entertains by rolling his R's and trying to fish for fresh jokes.

The class attendees are all too willing to pitch in for the fun.

“The main thing for me is you don't have to be fit,” Adam said. “Just show up and have a good time. I'm trying to have community with people rather than yoga philosophy.”

That “philosophy” often means the traditional classes that begin with silence and dark rooms, and end the same way. No one talks to one another. It's an introspective, meditative practice, and some people need this.

For the rest of us, there is what Adam jokes is “Adam's House of Pain” or “Adam's Laughing Yoga.”

Invited to take one of his classes, I was first offered a hunk of chocolate cherry brownie. Then I took off my shoes and walked into a brightly lit room above the City Bakery on Biltmore Avenue and joined more than a dozen lively participants on the floor.

All were chirping and talking about their lives and funny experiences. None were in lotus trances or bellowing throaty “oms.”

There's no Indian music playing or Sanskrit coming from Adam's mouth. He moves from pose to pose, checking on people, miscounting “just for fun.”

“I know when people's eyes change colors to leave them alone, he said of helping one make the most of a posture.

During another pose, he quipped, “I learned this one in Tibet.”

“You mean Vegas,” and attendee said.

“I know. I've never been to Tibet.”

He promised us all if we could kiss our knee from a downward postiion, he would take everyone out to dinner. The Hot Dog King. No one tried too hard on that one.

While he was ordering poses, calling them his own names, such as “Fire Hydrant Pose,” saying “my dog taught me that one,” class members chatted incessantly.

Judy McDonough had just returned from Maine and had been delayed nearly 10 hours at the airport.

“I told who I thought was the flight attendant I wanted a bottle of Cabernet, and he said, 'Red or white?' He couldn't have really been the flight attendant if he didn't know that much about wine.”

“I'll take the red,” she said, and he asked, “Would you like ice with that?”

After one particular class, Adam said he had one guest who gave him a strange compliment: “That was so great I only have to come once a year.”

Thais Wiener, of Weaverville, has taken Adam's brand of yoga for years. “I don't go in for a lot of the spiritual stuff. That's private, and everybody needs to laugh more,” she said. “It's just wonderful and upbeat.”

Adam said he shows people all the yoga poses, but they don't have to be in deep meditation to get the benefits.

“The other week I was teaching,” he said, “and a guy was holding a pose and checking his email on his phone.”

Return to Adam's Philosophy of Stretch.