The home stretch

Every Friday at 4:30 p.m. Ellen Pollis teaches her final yoga class of the day. But this class doesn't take place at Fitness Unlimited, the women's gym in Brookline Village where Pollis usually teaches. Instead, her six students meet on the third floor of a Victorian house in Brookline owned by one of the students. As day segues into evening and various shades of orange play against the wall, they enjoy a personalized yoga class in the comfort of their friend's home.

''There's something very serene about a small group in a third-floor quiet room," says Andrea Stairs, who's been taking the at-home class since January of last year. ''At the gym, you can never quite set the mood in the same way that you can in a cozy family-room space."

Stairs is one of a growing number of yoga lovers choosing to enjoy the exercise outside of the studio setting with their friends. The decision gives them the flexibility to receive specialized treatment from the instructor, the comfort of exercising with people they know rather than strangers, and the savings acquired by dividing the cost of an instructor among friends. The only trouble for people choosing this method is finding a space big enough to accommodate all of the students.

The group classes come in a variety of forms. Almost two years ago, Jen Wright Gifford began teaching yoga to two of her co-workers at The Travel Collaborative, a travel agency in Somerville, where Wright Gifford is office manager. Now Wright Gifford teaches twice weekly classes of up to eight co-workers who meet in an empty office in the building. Portia Brockway, owner of Yoga in Harvard Square, a studio housed in the University Lutheran Church, goes to people's homes to teach one-off ''yoga parties," as she calls them. Her clients will have a yoga class, says Brockway, then ''go in, drink their wine, have their dinner -- whatever they want."

There are no statistics to measure the number of people engaging in this trend, but Brockway, who's been teaching yoga since 1993, says, ''It's gotten more popular in the last two or three years."

The weekly at-home classes work well for someone like Stairs, a doctoral candidate working on her dissertation and juggling several jobs, she says, ''to try to make ends meet."

''My life's pretty stressful, so the gym has been a great place to meet people and find a way to release my stress," she says. ''But this yoga in home has been even more amazing."

The class began when a student in one of her classes at Fitness Unlimited asked Pollis if she'd be interested in teaching a class in the student's home. Stairs and four other women were invited to participate. They quickly agreed.

''They only offer so many classes at times that are convenient [to me] at the gym," says Stairs. ''But we know that when we're done with work every week on Friday, this is something that we're committed to."

The accommodating nature of the classes is the main draw. Wright Gifford's yoga students at the travel agency work in a hectic environment. ''Some of them can't even take a break to go to the restroom when they need to. It's that busy and that stressful, so we needed to find a way to make it available to people."

STRIKE A POSE

Watch 28 different one-minute videos demonstrating yoga positions at www.boston.com/yourlife/health.

The classes occur every Monday from 6:15 to 7:15 p.m. and Wednesday from 8 to 9 a.m. Most of her students have never taken a class at a yoga studio. The intimacy of the classes gives them a comfort level they may not have in a studio.

Wright Gifford focuses on beginner movements, working on body alignment and breathing techniques that promote relaxation. During a recent session in the office space lit by candlelight, she cautions one student to be careful because of a knee injury and helps another student achieve a deeper stretch by pressing against her back.

It's the type of focus that would be hard to get in a class, she notes. ''When I'm teaching a studio," says Wright Gifford, who also works as a yoga instructor at Blissful Monkey in Jamaica Plain, ''I do have regular students, but I have different people coming in every time I teach. It's not always the same people week to week. At work, we all know one another; we all know what's going on in each other's lives. I know about people's injuries or illnesses or things they're trying to work on."

The group Pollis teaches also gets personalized training.

''It's sort of week by week," says Stairs. ''She asks us every Friday how we're feeling? Is there a particular area we want to focus on? Inevitably, somebody has a request. We find that it works pretty well that way."

It also makes good economic sense, Wright Gifford said. ''I love taking classes at studios, of course, too, but it is expensive; it's $15 a class. Sometimes it's nice to have an alternative, another way to get the motivation of being with other people, but not paying through the nose."