If the incense image continues to haunt you and you can't see yourself signing up for a class because it's not the stuff of, well, real men, meet Rolf Glessner Gates -- 36, yogi, social work student and ex-Army Ranger. Yes, Army Ranger. These ground based navy seals represent the most elite soldiers in the Armed Forces and their training is more strenuous and demanding than any on the planet. This is athleticism as survival. The stakes don't get any higher. So how does a man who trained with the world's ultimate killing machines find harmony in a studio in Cambridge?

"I believe I am a recovering soldier," he says, sipping his strawberry protein smoothie between classes, "I didn't know what yoga was, but I've always expressed my spirituality through physical discipline. Now I see yoga as social work," he says.

Along with his studios' phenomenal successes, Baptiste has also sold hundreds of thousands of his videos on the QVC infomercial circuit and organized sold-out yoga retreats all over the world. This merchandizing has led to charges (again from the yoga purists) that he is huckstering an adulterated yoga, and in the process missing the whole point of it being an ancient process taught over a lifetime, not 90 minutes.

Hooey, he says.

"Why should I be held back by some tribal standard?" he asks. "They say I am some sort of heretic, bastardizing yoga. I can't even give energy to that asinine stuff. Life is short, why not live it to the fullest?"

That's a question which brought Neely to Baron.

"Because of my [old injuries] I'm really limited as to what I can do to get a really good workout in," says Neely who swears he's soon to be a regular at the studio, "and yoga is a real workout with Baron."

But even as Baptiste is bringing yoga to the mainstream, Neely and others admit, it's still fighting a perception of being somehow "out there."

"Yoga is still thought of in a very new-agey, chanting, burn some incense mind set," says Mike Boyle, a strength and conditioning coach who works with individual, collegiate and professional athletes, nevertheless, "a lot of the stretching we're doing now is yoga-based stuff. Yoga is a very well-thought-out method of stretching, but there's this persistent mysticism about it that turns off the conventional sports community."

But apparently not Jeffrey Lurie, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, who was a Baptiste client in Los Angeles before bringing him to Philly to work with his football team.

"For me it is a tremendous method of becoming not just stronger, but also more flexible," Lurie says, " and I wanted to offer the players an adjunct to their traditional strength and conditioning training, for both fitness and injury prevention."

From Philadelphia Baptiste found his way to Cambridge at the urging and assistance of his friend and student Max Kennedy. But don't expect the vagabond Baptiste to grow roots. He'll only be here "another year or so, although I like Boston more than I thought I would."

And Boston appears to like him. Most of his classes are filled mat-to-mat with upwards of 50 people and more classes are being added to the schedule to accommodate the demand, not only for the workout he offers, but yes, for the serenity as well, if only for 90 minutes of your day.

"I find most other forms of exercise as hectic as life is hectic," says D'Onofrio, "but yoga offers those of us frightened of the aging process finally something to do that really pays off physically and with peace of mind. Baron has mainstreamed yoga, so that people like me keep coming back."

"Stress is the enemy, yoga is the enema," Baptiste says, only somewhat jokingly, because he does believe in shedding the shit, all of it - from yoga's culty image as well as from your body and your life.

"I think those traditionalists who feel the unwashed masses aren't ready for yoga because it's something so pure and clean, don't know what they're talking about," Baptiste says. "In yoga there's this guru, the leader, and you are not taught to think for yourself. You're taught to regurgitate. But being exposed to the masters when I was a little boy, watching all this [hero worship], it looked strange to me, like they were under some kind of a spell or hypnosis."

"Yoga can set you free, but if it's taught dogmatically, it can enslave," he says.

My Karma ran over your Dogma?

"Yes," Baptiste laughs, "something like that."