Ana Maria Cristina starts her classes at the Asahi Culture Center in Shinjuku with stretches, bends, dynamic shakes of the upper torso and even punchier wiggles of the hips. She then demonstrates how to produce a voice from deep inside, as if reaching into her very soul. Japanese students have trouble with such activities, she says. For one thing, they don't know where their hips are! But once they learn how to let go, there's no looking back.

Ana Maria Cristina is an art therapist who published a book of her poems and paintings last August under the title (in translation) "World of Art Healing." The poems have English titles such as "Life Is a Journey -- Life Is Art," "Why Do I Live?" and "The Answer Is Inside You." Each is illustrated with a vibrant watercolor accompanied by a caption, also in English. That for the poem "Red" (one of seven using color as the theme) reads, "Smile into your bones and all disease will leave you." Others urge, "Do something extraordinary today" and "Don't say I can't, just do it."

I don't know if she smiles into her bones, but she does get up at 4:30 every morning to work her way through 180 exercises based on what she calls "the five Tibetans." She began this endurance test 41/2 years ago as health insurance. "I don't believe in doctors. The exercises help eliminate waste and tune the body, while loading all the chakras with energy." Only then does she commence regular daily training.