Insights after a month of Bikram Yoga…

A little over a month ago, I thought that I would undergo a self-experiment or two since I tend to find myself in agreements to do things for periods of time [see: Photo365, PhotoPrime157, attempting to train and run a marathon during my first year of grad school]. Almost half a year ago I bought a Groupon for Bikram Yoga in La Jolla with the premise that once I finished classes I would have time to pursue other things I’ve been intrigued by but never had time to try out before.

 

With my Groupon days from expiring, I went to a Bikram Yoga studio in La Jolla [much closer to my apartment for this current school year] for the first time on a Sunday morning at 7:45am ready to try my hand at the infamously hot yoga that is Bikram.

 

Rewind a little: I’m a warm-blooded, no make that hot-blooded, individual by nature. For the first 22 years of my life I lived in Sugar Land, TX [close enough to the Gulf Coast to be inhabited by more mosquitos than human beings, at times it felt like] where people make it a point to spend all their time either at home, in a car, or in an air conditioned building because it is that hot for three-quarters of the calendar year. Also, I’ve made many trips to visit family in Taiwan, which is an itty-bitty island even more prone to mosquitos than Sugar Land, and there, central air conditioning is unheard of so people are sweating profusely at all hours of the day. Oh yeah, I was also in marching band for four years in high school, and those two-a-days on the parking lot in the blistering sun will train you how to handle the heat better than many other living creatures. Needless to say, I am no stranger to dealing with hot temperatures and humidity.

 

But, I have lived in Southern California for the last 12 months of my life, where my Texan roots leave me in need of a jacket most hours of the day. I think it is awkwardly chilly here most of the year, so I wondered what I would think of the hot yoga temperature.

 

Back to my first yoga class: [Having read a handful of Yelp! reviews before coming to class, I brought the necessary 1L bottle of cold water, yoga mat, and towel, not to mention I wore as little sports clothing as possible since the only thing worse than sweating a lot is sweating a lot and having loose, damp clothing flapping around your limbs and torso.] Walking into the yoga classroom, I could instantly feel the wall of humidity punch me in the face, but it wasn’t unbearable or strangling at all.

 

For my first class [and for about 13 of the 15 classes I ended up attending; aside: my goal was to attend at least 15/30 days that my Groupon would cover me for] I had a nice teacher who kept the class focused and instructed us on how to bend, compress, stretch, and tend our bodies into all sorts of poses. Said poses have all sorts of health benefits, which many of the instructors mentioned in class, but I am not one to concern myself specifically with massaging my ascending and descending colons; for the most part, I believe that yoga has fantastic health benefits, and I don’t find a need to know what every single one of them is. Coming from a most recently running-heavy background, I enjoyed the change of pace and meditative focus that yoga demands. Back in my pre-teen and teenage years, I did a little bit of gymnastics and have always appreciated the bit of acrobatic tendency that has stayed with me all these years, so it was definitely nice to go back to something that focused on stretching and strengthening my core. I have also managed to maintain a decent level of flexibility after all these years [although I was once able to do my left split and now have no chance in hell of doing so], so Bikram gave me a chance to recover a lot of that, especially since the temperature of the room majorly helped unwind my muscles.

 

A note about being a room above 100 degrees for 90 minutes at a time: you will sweat like a beast [that is, assuming you have correctly hydrated yourself the day before/day of]. This is nothing to be ashamed of [because there will always be people in the class who sweat more than you, I promise], and I discovered that my skin and pores actually felt fantastic against the cool winds after class because they’d been flushed clean. [Aside: I can't believe how much some men sweat. PUDDLES next to their mats after class. PUDDLES. Eep.] This is why you are supposed to bring a towel for your yoga mat and one to wipe your face/hands off with. I also don’t think the heat [as much as 99% of people cite their apprehension about being in a room so hot] will cause you to feel sick unless you have not hydrated yourself properly/gotten enough sleep.

 

I learned over the course of the month that my body did not like the hot yoga on mornings after nights of little sleep, days where I drank any coffee [because this dually dehydrated my body and meant I drank less water], or evenings where the yoga instructor had the room above 110 degrees. [113 degrees is unnecessary!] Perhaps my favorite classes to go to [as lame as this is going to sound] were on Sunday mornings at 8am and Friday evenings at 6:30pm. There’s something about a room half-full of focused people who truly want to be there to practice in earnest that unwinds your mind like nothing else.

 

So, after completing my self challenge of going to Bikram yoga at least half of the days of my month-long Groupon, I’m going to [finally] start running again after a few months off, and I am confident that my little stint into Bikram helped loosen up my muscles and joints in preparation to pack on the miles. Of course, I have another hot [but not Bikram] yoga Groupon in my queue for the winter months when the temperatures “drop” here in La Jolla.

 

Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to get my left split back. Namaste.

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