The 32-year-old singer, who is also a judge on NBC's The Voice, owes that body to a mix-and-match yoga regimen he practices at home, at the recording studio, and on the road. "At any Maroon 5 concert, you'll see a room backstage marked yoga," he says.
Living the plugged-in celebrity life in Los Angeles, Levine was aware of the yoga scene but initially kept his distance, turned off by what he calls "the cheesy clichés." But he began to worry that his gym routine was a dead end, hurting more than it helped: "Weights made my neck thick, and I would be like, 'I'm turning into a monster!'" As he grew increasingly frustrated by lower-back pain and tight hips and hamstrings, he decided to give yoga a try. That was five years ago, and Levine hasn't lifted a weight or entered a gym since. "Yoga takes what you have and molds and sculpts it, which is a much more natural way to look and feel," he says.
Credit Levine with a refreshing candor about the aesthetic payoff: "I don't like how people bullshit about how yoga is not about vanity." Not that he doesn't appreciate the spiritual benefits—Levine sees his routines as a therapeutic antidote to the distortions of his career. "Playing a show before thousands of people is a highly unnatural state," he says, "and when I get on the mat to do an hour of yoga before the show, I come out physically relaxed."
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