Jane Adams found her calling when she was just 17 years old.

Now, as one of the Flathead Valley’s longest-running yoga instructors, none of the passion for her career has vanished.

In fact, the 56-year old has just released two instructional DVDs in time for the holidays, starring herself.

The two DVDs, “Gentle Yoga: 7 Practices for Your Day,” and “Yoga for Seniors,” provide comprehensive yet gentle yoga routines for different levels of ability.

But it wasn’t always such a peaceful journey. As a troubled young woman, Adams’ future was unclear.

“I was having a tough time as a teen,” she said. “A friend of mine gave me a book about yoga; she said ‘this might be good for you.’ I just started doing it. It really helped me get my act together.”

The peaceful, strengthening movements associated with yoga allowed Adams to channel her stress and angst into something more productive. The book, Richard Hittleman’s “21 Day Yoga Plan,” proved to be the decisive factor.

She graduated high school and went on to college, but still was unsure where her life was going. Yoga was a hobby that promoted flexibility and reduced stress, but for Adams, it wasn’t her passion, not yet anyway.

Inspiration struck in an unlikely place.

“I was reading Mother Earth News and saw a yoga training ad in the back,” she said. “It was a five-and-a-half week residential training program.”

Adams said she knew instantly that this was what she wanted to do. It called out to her from the page and she left college after three years to jump into the intense, live-in program in Nevada City, California.

After completing the program in 1980 she began to teach. Along the way, she has continued to learn from anyone who is willing to teach.

“I’ve studied with lots of different teachers,” Adams said. “I take out the best from a lot of different styles. In my opinion they all have benefits. It’s like if all you eat is American food. That’s fine, but eventually you’ll want Italian food or Chinese food.”

By taking different methods, positions and mantras from different schools of yoga, Adams has brought a balanced teaching style to Kalispell Yoga. Her classes begin with Viniyoga, a gentle, therapeutic style and all moves are safely aligned according to the Iyengar school of yoga, which focuses on safety and technique.

For more advanced students, she links the poses together in a technique called Vinyasa Flow yoga, which smoothly moves from one pose to another.

Specialty training for seniors, low back pain and yoga anatomy have broadened Adams’ client base.

Recently, she completed a

500-hour training course approved by the Yoga Alliance.

She also teaches a regular class at Buffalo Hill Terrace for the senior residents.

That’s what inspired her “Yoga for Seniors” DVD.

“I was looking for yoga videos for seniors and I realized the ones out there weren’t that great,” Adams said. “It was all very slow-moving and they didn’t do balance poses. That’s the most important thing. For seniors, balance is huge.”

Some of the simple movements in the senior video are ones that can be done at home. Adams said a good balance-improving pose is steadying yourself with a kitchen counter and rising up onto tiptoes and back down.

She demonstrates many more poses in the senior video, filmed at Bibler Gardens. The other new DVD (Adams has several more she filmed in the past) was filmed on the shore of Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park.

Several routines, depending on the day and how the viewer feels, are available in the “Gentle Yoga: 7 practices for your day,” DVD.

For someone who has been doing yoga since 1976 and teaching it in the Flathead for nearly two decades, Adams was surprised how difficult putting together a video was.

“Working on the DVD is so much work,” she said. “You have to think about what poses to choose, what is safe for a video intended for a variety of people and then you have to put them all together. You have to think about what words you use, ones that everyone can understand. And then, after it’s all filmed, you have to time your voice-over perfectly.”

Adams offers her classes for just $10 on Thursdays and Saturdays and for $8 for Wednesday “gentle yoga.”

The DVDs are available on Amazon.com for $15, and are also sold in Wheaton’s and Think Local Art Gallery in Kalispell.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.