I'm the one running east on Northwest 56th Street in shin-length cotton pants and clogs, a yoga mat under one arm. Some day I'm going to trip and chip my teeth while cutting through the Washington Mutual parking lot, jumping curbs and then hurtling down the bright yellow tunnel to Ballard Health Club for drop-in yoga. On a good day I'm checked in and sitting cross-legged on a sticky mat in the semi-dark room within 90 seconds, bones and teeth still intact.

As with many other aspects of my life, I am a gadfly when it comes to yoga: an irregular attendee who flits from class to class, teacher to teacher, from mornings to evenings. That's the beauty of the class schedule at the Ballard Health Club - many choices. The varied instructors are linked by superb muscle control and soothing tones. Despite differences in their descriptions of positions, their sun salutations, how they begin or end the class, each instructor refers to participants as having a "practice." "Depending on where you are in your practice..." they say. I don't know about the others rushing in beside me, but I don't have a yoga "practice," I have an hour.

Increasingly there are beautiful yoga studios throughout Ballard, such as Moving Space on Ballard Avenue and Shakti Vinyasa on Market, but the exercise room at the Ballard Health Club is not one of them. I lie on my back with knees pulled in and study the brown stains on the ceiling tiles. Behind the instructor there are windows framing the main equipment room. While balancing on one leg for tree position you can see sports on the TV monitors, the bouncing faces of men and women running on machines, the movement of cables and weights. Always louder than the instructor's choice of calming music is the pounding beat of popular rock, the clank of barbells being replaced on the shared wall, the grunts and thumps of member sweat.

Somehow these conditions are perfect for a monkey mind like me; even during what is supposed to be deep relaxation I never let go of the majority of my thoughts, at best clearing my mind to just considering what I will eat next. The gritty quality of the floor makes me feel less of a fraud than I would in a studio with exquisite bamboo floors and silence. All classes at Ballard Health Club are open to drop-ins hence the variety in wardrobe and shape, from lithe women in custom yoga apparel to large men in bicycle shorts. Ranging in age from 18 to 80, we are every shape and size, some accommodating knee replacements or damaged wrists, united only by sticky mats, cracking knees and the instructor's patience. It is a veritable yoga for the masses as we do our twists around the pillars of what used to be The Backstage, a destination club for music.

No cell phones, no speaking, dim lights - just a foam block, a mat, a voice, the sounds of breathing. Each of us is there for our own reasons, whether for our joints or our stress, perhaps even for our "practice." It's always worth the $8 fee. The basics with MJ, flow with Heather, wind-down with Tracy, Carey's sweet voice, David's adjustments on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Just to escape into that subterranean room for an hour I will do whatever they ask of me, regardless of the oddness. I will weave my toes together, I will chant OM or do a should stand. I will attempt chair, bow, dolphin, fish, plow, down dog, up dog, dead dog, anything for the instructor, for the occasional counter pressure on low back, the stretch that seems to decompress my mind as much as my spine. One instructor calls our time internal massage and on certain days, that's exactly what it feels like.

As we slowly roll out of corpse pose, sit up and then bring our hands down in front of our hearts, the instructor always thanks us for the coming and then takes care not to turn the lights on too abruptly. Sighing, we roll up our mats or fold them back onto the health club's stack. Outside of the former kitchen's swinging doors the new version of a club is still bustling, music still blaring, the lighting no longer concentrated on just one stage. Too relaxed to be able to walk a straight line, I drift to the water fountain, the stairs, slowly aiming for the yellow chute, climbing my way back to the world of cell phones and traffic and dinner.

Peggy's e-mail is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com. She writes additional pieces on her blog At Large in Ballard at

http://www.seattlepi.com.