Really Hot Yoga

I have never considered myself particularly fit or agile. Yet, when a good friend of mine asked me to try out Bikram Yoga, I couldn’t go against my life philosophy, “I’ll try anything once.”

Plus, the life of a college student can be riddled with stress and a lack of concentration. This sounded like as good an escape as any.

Bikram Yoga is a system of yoga, 90 minutes in length and practiced in a room heated to 105 degrees. It cycles through a very specific set of 26 postures and two breathing exercises, rejuvenating every part of the body.

The first thing that I notice when arriving to the Bikram studio is that it is hot. It’s not just a tepid heat that your body can acclimate to, but a heat that’s just on the border of unbearable, a heat that lingers in your head as you sit and stare in the excess of mirrors, sweat dripping from places that have never felt sweat before.

But once the class starts, none of this matters. It all melts away.

My body goes into an ethereal, lucid state of raw focus. I don’t notice the other people in the room. Sweat doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t even occur to me.

I’m straining my body, but it doesn’t feel strained. The heat is comforting and my movements rhythmic. I don’t know if it is the soothing, repetitive voice of the instructor or the acutely timed and planned-out sequence of poses, but I go into The Zone.

And it is fantastic.

Bikram Yoga is certainly not for everyone. But, I must admit, I am a regular now. It is hypnotic. A different type of meditation—a state of mind you can’t imagine being in until you try it. And I urge you to. You should try anything once.

Our lives are cluttered with the woes of bills to pay. Most of us can’t go 10 minutes without checking a status message or sending a text message. In an age of short attention spans and moving at a mile a minute, being completely focused on just one thing for 90 minutes can work absolute wonders.

Which is especially true when it’s cold outside and the room is hot.