When I moved to New York over four years ago, I had only been to one yoga class in Fort Collins, Colorado. It seemed to make sense to try out yoga in an area (see Uppereast.com's Yoga page) where the locals eat a lot of granola, climb mountains on the weekends, and maintain their own organic vegetable gardens. Moving to city, I didn’t think about yoga as an option for keeping in shape. I thought a good studio might be hard to find, let alone the people peaceful enough to operate it.

Four years later, I eat my words as I step on the palms of my hands, looking at my knees inside the newly redesigned studio at Yoga Works on 3rd Avenue between 75th & 76th streets. I look back on my yoga experience here in New York and realize that I have become more of a yogi inside this harried city than I ever was out West.

Yoga for me is many things other than just relaxing. It’s an anger management class, it’s therapy, it’s a date with myself, which can sometimes be more fulfilling than a date with my boyfriend. Most of all, it replaces the anxiety and stress I build up everyday in the city and replaces it with a short-term supply of wellbeing and kindness.

My introduction to urban yoga was through the New York Road Runners, located on 89th Street between Madison and 5th, where I signed up for a Power Yoga class nearly three years ago. The class was focused on helping runners to improve their breathing, gain flexibility, and learn how to release and shape their muscles through an Ashtanga-style practice. Ashtanga is a version of Vinyasa yoga, which combines breathing and movement together in a series of continuous poses. The class taught me all this, as well as how to give myself a Swedish massage and release the toxins from all those years of hamburgers and Slim Jims lodged deep within my core. More information about the Power Yoga program offered at Road Runners can be found at www.power-yoga.com, or through Road Runners web site at www.nyrr.org, which will be posting information about new sessions soon.

The yoga studio at Crunch was the next step in my yoga practice, as I fell in with the thousands of other New Yorkers who hit the treadmills and the weights to get a sweat. At the 59th Street and 2nd Avenue location you can grab a number of classes throughout the week, in assorted styles of yoga, from slow-paced Hatha, to vigorous Ashtanga, with certified instructors that practice with other yoga studios in the city, so it’s not just the weightlifting coach coming in to teach you a thing or two about stretching. Crunch yoga classes are included with membership, which can run as cheap as $50-$60 a month, and are most inexpensive when you sign up for two years up-front.

If the gym is not for you, local yoga studios offer a more serene atmosphere (no weights clanking in the background here!) and a broader schedule of classes. I first sampled the local Yoga Works studio in the neighborhood, taking advantage of a promotion offering $30 for 15 days of unlimited yoga for first time users. A monthly membership at Yoga Works, like many other studios I researched, costs around $120, which includes unlimited yoga at four locations throughout the city and one in Westchester. This chain of studios offers a wide variety of yoga styles, including Hatha, Vinyasa, Restorative, Pre-Natal, and ISHTA, which blends a number of ancient forms of yoga. The membership deal is great for those who have the time and the devotion to spend at least four classes a week in the studio. After my first two trial weeks, taking four classes a week, I view this membership offer the same way I view an all-you- can-eat crab legs buffet. Many buffet-owners know you will rarely eat them out of crabs before someone has to haul you away on a cart. In other words, a yoga studio membership like this will out yoga me before I can get the best of it.

So how can one get their yoga on for cheap you ask? If you can be flexible (okay, pun definitely intended) with your schedule, you can find discount classes. Yoga Works offers early morning student-teacher classes for $5, as well as community classes for $10 at assorted non-peak hours on the weekends and during the day.

There are also a number of low-cost community options outside the realm of formal studios. The Stanley Isaacs Beacon Center, located at P.S. 198/P.S. 77 on the corner of 96th Street and 3rd Avenue, offers free yoga classes on Thursday evenings during the school year with Chia-ti Chin, a Certified Yoga Instructor. The class is held in the cafeteria of the building and mats are provided. While the space does not encapsulate the height of peacefulness, Chia-Ti does a great job to help you reach a place where the buzz of the fluorescent lighting becomes therapeutic instead of nagging, with the help of breathing exercises and soft music.

Central Park conservancy also offers community yoga classes on the weekends, for $7 per class. Classes are taught at the North Meadow Recreation Center in the middle of the park at 97th Street, and focus on Restorative and Hatha yoga practices. Classes are held on Saturdays are from NOON – 1:30p.m., and on Sundays from 1:30 – 3p.m., and mats are provided with a photo ID. The classes on Sundays are reserved for those 18 and up.

Yoga can be fully engaging or peaceful, strenuous or restorative, cheap or expensive, and taken advantage off throughout the day on the Upper East Side. Take some time to stop into one of the local studios in the neighborhood and see what offers they may have. Many studios will offer a free class to show you what their specific yoga practice is all about, so go explore. Your body, mind and soul will thank you for it.