Bikram? Part 1

Happy Christmas, readers! Hopefully you've been enjoying a bit of the magic that seems to come calling this time of year. We have an unanticipated (by me, anyway) blizzard warning for the area where I live, and being housebound is likely to enable me to enjoy some much needed snuggle time with my boys (all 3 - BIG one and small ones included!).

Every year, I have about a week off for "Winter Break", and it's always fun trying to plan out fun activities that we don't normally have time or inclination to do. This year, I thought I'd squeeze in a little "me time" among the other fun stuff by scheduling some time to take yoga classes - I do try to write a blog about it, afterall... There is a Bikram Yoga studio in a nearby town that is offering a "newcomers special" - 1 week of unlimited classes for $30! Seeing as a normal class is $25, I only have to go twice to amortize it and get a real bargain. So I decided to give it a go...

Most people know of Bikram Yoga as "Hot Yoga" - where you practice yoga in a room that is heated to 100 degrees. It is supposed to be a specialized sequence of 26 asanas, developed by Bikram Chowdhury (pictured above - love the skullet, dude), done in a "scientific order" to cleanse the body of toxins and deliver fresh blood to every last organ. I tried Bikram once about 10 years ago - before I was "into" yoga and practiced regularly - and was completely intimidated by the extreme athletes who were in the class. I'm talking ultra-competitive, less than 3 oz. body-fat athletes. I was completely out of place, and not really knowing what "regular" yoga was all about, this one Bikram Class almost scared me off. Thank goodness I didn't let it prohibit me from trying other disciplines of yoga, or I wouldn't be here today, writing my blog, trying out Hot Yoga again - all for the sake of "researching" and "commentating" on it for my readers (all 3 of you - thanks Kara, Evelyn, and Liz. My own mom doesn't even read my blog, so you guys rock.).

So Bikram Yoga is indeed "hot". The room is in fact 100 degrees, you feel it as soon as you walk into the room. The class that I took at 9am on Christmas Eve was also "hot" in the sense that it was p-a-c-k-e-d with people - at least 45! I haven't been in a class that packed since Diann was teaching Saturdays at the gym. There were college kids, there were grandmas, there were long, lean aggressive yogis, there were rounder, softer, go-with-the-flow yogis. Some people looked out of shape, but did every single posture, and some people looked like hard-core athletes who needed to sit-out a posture now and then. And there was me, tucked into the corner with my bright yellow mat and bright red face, sweating profusely, just trying to stay in the room for the whole 90 minutes. I did. Barely.

I attempted every single posture, and we did all 26 of them. Twice. The first time you visit a posture in Bikram, you hold it for 1 minute. You break, then return to the same posture for 30 seconds. If you do the math, you can see you're barely in asana for 40 minutes. Yet the class is 90 minutes...and you sweat enough for a marathon. I mean, it's logical that you'd sweat, and I seem to be making a big deal about something that makes sense, but I sweat from places I don't normally sweat from. My ankles? My shins? Under my eyes? It was weird. I started sweating right away. At first, the science teacher in me thought it was condensation forming on my skin - the room was so hot, and my skin was so cold that I was like a glass of lemonade on August 1st - but when it started dripping into my eyes, I realized it was honest to goodness sweat. But was it sweat that I had "earned"? Not so much. The heat was forcing my body to cleanse itself, but I think I prefer to cleanse my body the old-fashioned way - by drinking lots of water and doing regular old twisting postures that squeeze the kidneys and liver. The heat made my muscles warm and pliable, but I think I prefer to get my muscles warm the old-fashioned way - by slowly building up heat with a series of gentle postures.

So, I titled this post "Bikram? Part 1" because I think there's more to come. I'm not looking forward to it. At one point during the class, it felt like I was breathing in fire because it was so hot in there. My eyes were red. My face was red. The time spent in the 26 postures didn't even feel like I had been to a yoga class. But because every single article I've read explains that the benefits come after a few classes, I have to practice due diligence and give it another go. Plus, there was *one* really cool thing - after the class, my skin was actually steaming. I was driving home and the steam rising from my arms was steaming up the car windows so I had to roll the windows down. It was like 36 degrees outside, and I'm some loopy old broad driving down the road with the windows down. I must have looked crazy. I must BE crazy to do it again. All in the name of research, readers. All in the name of research...

"And looking back it was easy, easy, easy. 'cos I know that I can sacrifice" - Groove Armada

Ha ha ha. Good one, Groove Armada, good one.