What I have learned through Hot Yoga...
I first want to acknowledge the controversy surrounding Bikram Choudhury and the harm that he has caused. I hope that all affected may get the healing they need. At some point in my life I considered going to a Bikram yoga teacher training and while I will no longer support the man himself nor any facilities associated with his name, this blog post will speak specifically to my experience with hot yoga and the style of Bikram Yoga.
The first time I went to a hot yoga class, I couldn’t really handle it. I wasn’t used to the heat, and while it was a slower hatha class I still laid down for the majority of the class. Fortunately for me, I am a try everything twice kind of gal so when I saw a Groupon deal for a Bikram Yoga studio near me, I decided to try it. It was one of those 30 days unlimited, and as someone who was notoriously cheap, I went as many days as I could to get my money’s worth!
If you have not experienced a Bikram Yoga class it is the same 26 postures, each repeated twice broken into a standing series, a 2-minute savasana, and then a floor series. I had never experienced anything like it or a yoga class so difficult, everything ached. Some poses I really excelled at due to my competitive nature, and some I could barely do, particularly salabhasana (locust pose), see image below.
To perform the pose, you are supposed to keep your palms and forearms underneath your hips and flat on the floor while first lifting one leg at a time and then both at the same time. My forearms were too tight; I could barely lift my feet 1 inch off the ground when I first tried. I felt a bit embarrassed since my ego was in the lead and I was a fairly competitive person, still am in many ways but I’m growing. But I kept at it and again, as I wanted to get my money’s worth, I went often. I really thought I wouldn’t like doing the same 26 poses every class but I was pleasantly surprised by how I could feel my body shifting and my awareness growing. I was able to feel into the little adjustments and understand how engaging different muscles would affect others in my body. In just 30 days, not only could I lift both my legs at the same time in salabhasana pose, I could actually lift my legs a few feet off the ground, which I envisioned looked something like the image above.
It was incredible. Such big shifts after a seemingly short amount of time. I knew that through bowling I have been able to see significant improvements when I kept practicing and being curious at something but I had not really applied to other activities. Initially, I was so resistant to hot yoga. I didn’t like being in the heat and humidity (40°C/105°F and 40% humidity)! Being Canadian, I felt like I was too hot and suffocating, okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme but it felt icky. The postures were hard. I felt like people were not yelling necessarily but definitely talking sternly, almost like yoga boot camp. Did I mention the postures were hard? They pushed my body to its limits, things I really didn’t think I could do.
Yet, in time, with perseverance and a deepening awareness I was able to:
Listen to my body – know when to go deeper and when to ease off
Overcome the mental chatter that occurred during hard poses and simply breathe through them
Slow my breathing down during particularly difficult poses, observe, and relax certain areas of my body
Learn the balance between strength and stretch to both strengthen and lengthen different muscles at the same time
Understand and experience cause and effect, when you’re sitting on the ground with both legs out in front of you, if you inner rotate your thighs your inner feet automatically rotate and align in a straight line (see Staff Pose and give it a try, it’s pretty incredible to observe)
The more I practiced in the studio, the easier I could apply these lessons to my day-to-day life, whether it be singing, bowling, work, or any stressful situation. As I deepened my yoga practice, this became more and more evident. I eventually did end up taking a yoga teacher training, but not Bikram Yoga, ashtanga yoga, where I travelled deep into the philosophy and background of the practice. More on what I learned through different facets of my yoga journey in the next post!