Actress Karen Allen's yoga school is flourishing GREAT BARRINGTON - The overwhelming sound in the bright room is that of breathing — deep, deep, prolonged yoga breathing that sounds a lot like respirators at work in a hospital. The students are nearing the end of an hour and a half's workout in Astanga yoga. It's the most vigorous and physical of all, and the men and women are starting to look beat. They are all covered with perspiration, but their breathing remains very regulated and very deep. "This is the crux of it," says the teacher, who is also doing the postures herself. "Work through this section without letting the energy up." She looks around the room as the students assume the different postures, moving quietly to those who need a hand. Soon enough, the class comes to a close and the students lie down on their mats and close their eyes. The room takes on the appearance of a day care center at nap time. "If anyone feels chilly raise your hand and I'll get you a blanket," the teacher says. "Rest for as long as you like, but for anyone who needs to know, it's twenty-five to one." And so ends another class taught by Karen Allen, known to moviegoers around the world as a terrific actress. But to those seven students — and to many others — Allen is also known as a truly fine yoga instructor. She remains both — actress and yoga teacher — and refuses to be defined by either label. "If we identify with a certain role we take on in life, it can limit who we are," she said during a recent interview. "I act; I teach yoga; I teach design and multicolor knitting at the Interlaken School of Art; I'm a mother. There's all sorts of things I do with my life." Almost full capacity She is also the founder of Berkshire Mountain Yoga, the business she started here last June as an experiment which, seven months later, is now functioning at almost full capacity. "It's grown enormously," Allen said. "That's the single most amazing surprise of this experiment." Allen said she was not prepared to do something as significant as buy a building. "I knew I wanted to teach," she said. "I was friends with others who were having trouble finding places in which to teach. I knew it was something that everyone very much wanted." And so, Allen said, she spent a year and a half scouting the Berkshires for the appropriate spot and came across a barn, so far off the beaten track that her friends wondered if it would work. But Allen liked the idea of the wide open space that could be carved out of the second floor. Also, she said, it was next door to the Berkshire Co-op, which served the kind of people who also had an affinity for yoga. When the renovations started last year, Allen began receiving phone calls from people wanting to know when it would open. Often, she found notes tacked to the barn from others who wanted to know more. "Suddenly, there was an enormous number of people who wanted to teach yoga," she said. And once the school opened, the students followed. Seven days a week Starting with 25 classes a week, Allen and her staff of instructors were shortly up to 35 classes a week and several more workshops. Now, she said, the business is operating seven days a week, with a diverse schedule of classes. Allen, who is 44, said her experience with yoga dates back to when she was 19 years old and living in the West Indies. There, she found people involved in the ancient practice that promotes a sense of well-being through breathing, balance, strength, flexibility and focus. "I was fascinated by what they were doing," she recalled. "I did more traveling, but I continued to study and practice. At times, I had a private teacher." Allen moved on to experimental theater and continued to practice yoga daily. "Actors are meant to be centered, to have presence and an ability to relax under all situations," she said. Yoga helped provide her with those qualities, she said, plus gave her strength of movement. In time, she moved into films, earning parts in such memorable movies as Animal House, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Starman. Raiders was fun, she said; Animal House "a gas." Her favorite though not a box-office hit like the others — was The Glass Menagerie directed by Paul Newman. Five years ago, she and her husband, Kale Browne, had a son. "That was a turning point," she said. "I realized I had a stressful life working as an actress. After my son was born, I found myself saying I can't be a nurturer if I can't nurture myself. At that point, I went back to the study of yoga and I saw it at a totally new level. Yoga began to feed me, and I began to have a profound relationship with it." And after years of coming to the Berkshires for summer roles at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, the Williamstown Theatre Festival and Shakespeare & Company, Allen gave up her full-time residence in New York City and moved to the Berkshires. Vigorous yoga form She discovered Astanga yoga four years ago, she said. "I practiced yoga for 20 years to be able to practice that," she said of yoga's most vigorous form. Though committed to teaching, Allen said she has other opportunities as well. She has completed her own screenplay, which she anticipates will be made into a movie. And she has a new film expected out in May called 'Til There Was You, a romantic comedy also starring Dylan McDermot and Jeanne Tripplehorn. And she has yoga, which Allen said she plans to teach for the rest of her life.