Last year, a survey of Saks Fifth Avenue customers revealed that many had felt as uncomfortable shopping in the upscale stores as a country cousin at a Country Club. Management, eager to overhaul the store's image, rolled out a whimsical ad campaign that urged potential customers to "Live a Little." One ad featured a barefoot CEO-type in a charcoal Hickey Freeman suit and silver tie, meditating atop his desk. He sits in a near-lotus position, as incense smoke wafts to the ceiling. The copy reads: "Monday9:27AM. Ommm..."

Saks is hardly the first merchandizing giant to shill goods and goodwill, using ideas and images pilfered from the spiritual traditions of the East. In recent years, yoga imagery has been popping up in ads for Ford, Nike, Zippo Lighters, Ameritrade, Beth Israel Hospital and even Alpine Lace Deli Cheese - the latter instructs consumers to "taste the balance." Some ads strain to associate their message with the enviable mental and physical control attributed to Indian yogis. Others mock the pretensions of yoga neophytes or wink at their Western take on Eastern wisdom.

Ameritrade's 'Mantra' spot, for instance, spoofs a meditation class who can't keep their minds off $8 online trades. A few years earlier, a Ford ad showed a man meditating next to his new truck and a mountain of camping gear; the copy line read: "To be one with everything, you've gotta have one of everything..."

These ads have some yogis up in arms.

While others would covet the powerful embrace of Madison Avenue, some yogis aren't feeling the shakti. John Cassota, an instructor at Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in Greenwich Village, scolds advertisers for not knowing their ashtanga from their elbow: "Yoga allows you to commune with the divine. It's a prayer, a celebration of the understanding of identity beyond ego, but advertising depreciates the truth, the backbone of the forms. "

To Georg [pronounced Gay-org] Feuerstein, a scholar of yoga who heads the Yoga Research and Education Center in Santa Rosa, California, the very nature of advertising violates two of yoga's five basic yamas (principals), specifically asteya (non-stealing) and aparigraha (non-greed). "Any time we accumulate more than we actually need, we are actually stealing from our fellow beings," explains Feuerstein. "Non-stealing is constantly violated by advertising. And greed comes into play when advertising executives position products to promote consumption. . . Advertising is the - let me use the word - the whore of the post-industrial society."

Though no yogis interviewed for this article singled out Saks for a karmic spanking, Russ Hardin, the executive who dreamt up "Live a Little", bent over backwards to mollify potential critics: "To me, it doesn't seem exploitive, rather it shows that whether you are in an ashram in the desert or in an office in New York, yoga is a means to find yourself, to calm yourself and that it's good for everyone."

Some yoga devotees - certainly including the owners of a San Francisco studio that hypes itself as the place to "Get A Bikram Yoga Butt" - buy into advertising as a recruiting aide. "All the commercialization is doing is simply reflecting back how yoga is being integrated into our culture," says Kathryn Arnold, editor-in-chief of Yoga Journal. "That [yoga's] not just for people in orange robes, wearing Birkenstocks and eating granola."

Actually, Birkenstock-wearing granola eaters are exactly the target of marketers, according to Carrie Hollenberg, an expert in the psychology behind buying at SRI Consulting based near Berkeley, California. She classifies buyers into neat demographic niches. Among those customers susceptible to yoga-tising are what Hollenberg calls the "Primary-Fulfilleds" - picture a bearded college professor with a salary approaching six figures who might dabble in vegetarianism.

So-called "Actualizers/Fulfilleds" also respond well, notes Hollenberg. She paints a portrait of a 40-year-old yuppie who rises early in the morning, goes for a run, grabs a decaf latte at her local Starbucks, scans at least two newspapers before heading off to their management-level job, which she sees as a "creative outlet" rather than a way just to make money. "That group is most-likely to be influenced by imagery of yoga, because they are into self-development and want more inner-peace in their lives and are open to other cultures."

As long as the discipline's ranks continue to swell - between 15 and 20 million Americans are estimated to practice yoga - markets will continue to tap into this value-rich pool of shared images. "Advertising is basically a copycat medium," points out Robert Sawyer, an independent advertising consultant in Manhattan. "People see others use yoga, so they'll use yoga, because they say to themselves: 'Ah, here's what's happening now. I don't know what's happening now because I live in some suburb.' Also, advertising is self-referential, so as long as yoga is popular among the class of people who create advertising, you will see yoga in advertising."

What's a swami seeking solace to do?

Yoga scholar Georg Feurstein suggests a solution: "The whole goal of yoga is to be balanced so I would recommend that people practice yoga harder if they get upset about advertising."