NEW YORK (CNNfn) - It's time to get bent out of shape.
Tired of spending your vacations at blowing your money at casinos, eating overpriced, nutritionally-devoid food, fighting crowds at beaches, and fossilizing on lines to see allegedly interesting sights? Well, here's a real stretch: try a yoga retreat. 
The Indian practice of yoga dates back some 5,000 years. Unlike Western forms of exercise, with their emphasis on pectorals and perspiration, yoga promotes flexibility, proper breathing and spiritual development.
Devotees include such celebrities as Sting and Madonna, and many say no other type of exercise develops the mind and the body the way yoga does.
"It's the premier form of healthy living," said Louise Leckner, public relations and advertising manager for the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, N.Y. "You can't find a more gentle, but efficient form of exercise than yoga."
Yoga studios abound throughout the country and many health clubs offer yoga classes as well. And if you go on vacation, there's no need to leave yoga behind. There are yoga retreats in some of the most exotic places on earth -- India, Costa Rica, and the Bahamas, to name a few -- where you can practice yoga in the morning and still see the sights during the day.
Joseph Dispenza, author of the "The Way of the Traveler: Making Every Trip a Journey of Self-Discovery," said yoga retreats and other types of spiritual vacations are fast becoming the way to see the world for many travelers.
"This [is the] travel of the future, which is right now," said Dispenza, who, with Beverly Johnson, will lead journeys to Santa Fe, N.M., Kaua'i, Hawaii, and Bali, through the travel company Mindbodytravel. "The future is going on journeys to enrich ourselves."
Travel Bug runs every Wednesday on CNNfn's Life Page.
Stressed to kill
According to experts, we, the people, really need to relax.
The American Institute of Stress, a non-profit clearinghouse for information on all things stressful, reports that 43 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects due to stress.
In addition, the Institute said, 75-to-90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints, which has been linked to all the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents and suicide. 
"There has been a 70 percent increase in the number of people going to spas over the last couple of years," said Institute President Paul Rosch. "And there is an increased interest in yoga."
The numbers seem to bear that out. About 10 million people practiced yoga a few times each week in 1998, about double the number in 1994. More men also are studying yoga, countering any "women only" perception some people may have.
"There has been an explosion of interest in yoga," said Srinivasan, director of the Sivananda Ashram in Woodbourne, N.Y., using his spiritual name. "It's becoming more and more popular all the time. We get people from every social stratum. It's amazing how universal it is."
Yoga comes in several varieties and experts say no one style is better than another. Hatha yoga is the most popular form of practice in the West, and there are many styles within this particular study, including: Ashtanga, which is said to be physically demanding; Ananda, which is described as a gentle and more inward style of practice; and Kripalu, which focuses on proper breathing and alignment.
Sun salutation
Many travel companies and organizations arrange yoga retreats both in the United States and locations around the world. Do some Web surfing and you're bound to come up with several retreats, including some of the following:
- Sivananda also has 80 locations throughout the world, including Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Rates are $89 per day for a single room, including two daily meals and all workshops, which can cover such topics as treating common ailments with yoga and oriental medicine.
- Omega Institute has retreats and training seminars in several places, including a 12-acre retreat called Pura Vida, or "Pure Life," in Costa Rica. The weeklong "Relax & Retreat Week" includes vegetarian meals, daily yoga or meditation periods, and "eco-adventure tours." There are full-day and half-day excursions, such as whitewater rafting, visits to a live volcano, and a canopy adventure, where you ascend to the treetops and zip from platform to platform harnessed to a tree and pulley system. The retreat costs $1,045, airfare not included.
- Soluna Tours is arranging a pilgrimage to India for its "In the Footsteps of the Masters" trip, which runs from Jan. 24 to Feb.12. The journey covers both northern and southern India and includes visits to the holy city of Tiruvannamalai and a boat ride on the Ganges River in the city of Varanasi. The three-week pilgrimage costs $3,595 double occupancy from San Francisco or New York City, with airfare from those cities included.
- Darlyne Chauve, director of Yoga Voyages in Miami, leads trips to Costa Rica as well, and she is planning a retreat in Provence, France in June on "Healing and Forgiving the Heart Center." Prices for the 10-day trip have not been finalized, but it is expected to cost between $1,400 and $1,600.
If you're looking for basic information about yoga, The Yoga Site contains definitions, descriptions, a list of retreats and, in some cases, reviews of the retreats. And, remember, the point of all this is to relax and renew. Rosch of the American Stress Institute said what someone finds soothing could be stressful to someone else.
"You have to find out what works for you," he said. 
-- Click here to send e-mail to Rob Lenihan
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