VANCOUVER — When the weight of the exam and essay schedule begins to tightens around her shoulders, Nicole Stobbart turns to yoga for relaxation and help to focus.

With yoga mats being sold alongside fashion magazines, stars like Madonna extolling its virtues and models like Christy Turlington designing trendy workout wear, yoga is fast being becoming a hot extracurricular pursuit.

Fleur Palliardi, a health education manager at the Vancouver YWCA, said it's a miracle that Hollywood has resurrected yoga. Otherwise studios wouldn't have popped up like smiling Buddhas all over Canada and people like Stobbart would never have discovered local teen yoga communities.

"And, even though it's not about this at all, teens can now buy cute little outfits to go do yoga in, and if that helps get them into a healthy lifestyle I think that's great," she said.

Stobbart, a 16-year-old Winnipeg high school student, said the fitness trend that caught on like granola among 1960s hippies has come full circle.

"My mom started doing it again and she remembered how much she had loved it when she was in high school and university, so she sort of got me into it, too."

Palliardi said it's a relief to finally see a holistic fitness trend take hold, especially among teenagers who are still growing into their bodies.

"It was step aerobics in the '80s, personal training in the '90s and now the new millennium is all about getting back to the mind-body connection with yoga," she said. "And thankfully, it has less focus on losing weight and more on being fit and treating your body well."

At Vancouver's Wandering Yogi studio, instructor Rhonda Fogel said she has seen a yoga session brighten the moods of young people.

"Stretches and breathing brings them freedom, the exercise can improve their self image, even their outlook on life," she says. "And the strength they build up by doing some of the postures can give them courage to try new things."

After calls from parents and an increasing number of young people turning up at her studio, she decided to organize a teen-only class that will start this month.

A class is almost like a therapy session, with calming little messages to help students take life's curves.

Christine Anderson, who teaches a teen class at the Downward Dog studio in Toronto, said she talks constantly with her students during class, imparting bits of yoga philosophy.

"One girl asked me if I ever get discouraged when I'm trying to get to a new posture," Anderson said. "I told her it's like life, it's not about getting there, because what are you going to do when you're there?"

"It's about experiencing the journey, which never finishes and you don't ever really want it to."

Taking that approach to life has been an amazingly calming and inspiring for both Stobbart and her 16-year-old yoga instructor, Nikolas Svenda, who practises at Winnipeg's Yoga On Corydon.

"A class will leave me feeling more refreshed and I find it rejuvenates my energy," Stobbart said. "Even if you had a bad day it helps you let go and realize whatever happened isn't the end of the world, in the whole scheme of things."

Svenda, whose parents do yoga and who has been doing it himself since he was young, said it brings him to a restful state, a state yoga teaches people to be aware of and to value.

"Most young people just drag themselves home after a long day and crash out in front of the television. They aren't connecting with any real point of relaxation within themselves."

He said that's not a simple thing to do and he needs an instructor to guide him to that spot, but the process, he says, erases tension so much more deeply than zoning out in front of a video game.

Most classes begin with this "guided relaxation" and then students are led through a series of postures or exercises.

Svenda, a basketball player, and other young athletes who do yoga, say the postures help build strength and sharpen focus which only benefits their performance.