But don't be fooled. Baptiste knows he's part of a five thousand year old tradition, even if he doesn't buy into all of its trappings.

"I feel no obligation to tradition, to India or to any certain teachers. I have to be true to myself and hopefully that helps others be true to themselves. To thine own self be true," he says, the smile spreading across his tan face, his brown eyes crinkling in a knowing, almost private confidence.

OK, it sounds a little new-agey, and yes, there is some chanting and a hint of sandlewood in the air, but Baptiste has more clients move through his studio in a day than most area yoga centers service in a week - 24 classes of about 45 students each, to be exact. Many in his classes will tell you it's the unique workout, not the wisdoms which bring them back.

What strikes you when you walk into the studio is how different it is from other health club classes - instead of a roomful of exuberant twenty-something hard bodies and a handful of older middle-agers and old-niks hanging on for dear life, there are all ages, shapes, and sizes spread out on their mats. So what is it about this workout that satisfies the exercise demands of the x generation without intimidating the old-nik baby boomers.

"Power yoga is not for wimps," says Larry D'Onofrio, 44, a television marketing consultant in Cambridge who found yoga after years of abusing his rapidly aging joints with running, cycling and spinning. "Here I am, middle aged, and I finally find an exercise that is non-competitive and allows me to get stronger while and more flexible without the joint pain and fancy footwear."

This is indeed bare-naked yoga; There are no mirrors, no blaring music, no egos flexing for effect. In fact it it's just the opposite, with yoga there is an emphasis on concentration when you're in the middle of your practice, sweating up a storm and pushing yourself into a pose you once thought you'd never come close to, it is like you're alone in the room. Just you Baron's voice.

Although Baptiste has introduced hundreds, perhaps thousands to a practice they never would have

"If the yoga purists don't like me, maybe it's because I'm just more honest about who I am and what I think yoga is, I'm not putting on this holier than thou packaging, that yoga can make you holier," he says, again fiddling with the studio's heat gauge. Instead, he's selling whole versus holy. You have a body, and in his yoga class you're gonna use it. Or at least sweat like hell trying.

Unlike most American yogis, Baptiste didn't discover yoga, he was born into it. His father was a Mr. America, who along with his father, studied the Eastern religions and ancient disciplines of yoga. Baron's mother demonstrated the benefits of Yoga during pregnancy in a San Francisco magazine when he was still in her womb. By twelve, Baron was fasting, studying and meditating in a Himalayan ashram. By fifteen he was teaching yoga for children in San Francisco (a similar program has recently begun in his Cambridge studio). He eventually decided he didn't need the degree in Health Sciences he was pursuing at UCLA to achieve what he wanted, and never looked back.

"God has given me the ability to teach yoga, so why not?" he asks rhetorically. He doesn't need an answer.

Neither do his co-instructors. For example, there's Tara Carey, 30, a bubbly and enthusiastic instructor and former school teacher from the Montessori model of experience as education, who has studied many of the more traditional forms of yoga and meditation for 10 years.

"Baron has all the knowledge of the purist view of yoga and he's able to translate it in a way that people understand," says Carey, flush from teaching a recent class and from talking of her passion. "Yoga is my life."