The Bikram's Experience

Yoga means different things to different people. To some, it's merely another deviation on the term "workout", a physical means of stretching and posturing with a physical end of increased flexibility, balance, and well-developed muscle tone. To others, it's more an experience of the mind, designed to draw you into yourself and promote greater mental, emotional and spiritual well-being through a highly meditational experience. For most practitioners, it's a combination of these two. Yoga students can be distinguished from the general population by several noticeable traits: they usually carry themselves with better posture and a grace of movement that comes from properly developing muscle groups to maintain balance and alignment, and they're often "stringbeans", or, very very skinny people with longer, leaner muscles resulting from toning through stretches rather than weight training.

Then again, to some people, yoga is the quickest way to lose five pounds in ninety minutes. No, I'm serious. When you start sweating the moment you walk through the studio door and are wiping away streams of perspiration (who knew you had so many pores?) within the first fifteen minutes, you can lose five pounds rather quickly. That's not the goal and since it is entirely waterweight you must rehydrate--and therefore, replace--those five pounds as quickly as possible or face the rather severe consequences of extreme dehydration, but it is a rather interesting little fact. The Bikram style of yoga, championed by former hatha practitioner Bikram Choudhury, is a practice combining a series of postures and bookended at the beginning and end by breathing exercises. Some of the postures are well-known hatha poses, such as the camel pose or the tree pose, and some are designed specifically for this particular style of yoga. It's all performed slowly and deliberately, and boasts the benefits of any standard yoga practice, from hatha to power yoga, of increased flexibility, mental clarity, muscle strength and development, balance, etc.

Did I mention that the room you're doing these postures in is a requisite ninety-five to one-hundred-and-five degrees Fahrenheit?

What sets Bikram's apart from the rest of the yoga world is, in a word, the heat. High-intensity heat is a part of this practice, designed to increase your body's ability to remove toxins. It also makes it more of a cardiovascular workout than yoga often is, and, at least for some of us, ratchets up the intensity of the meditational quality. I haven't ever tried abother form of yoga and don't think I ever will; I have kind of found my niche here, I'm a born multitasker; allowing my mind to wander freely at all virtually guarantees a shut-down of any sort of transcendental or meditational experience. Forcing me to contort my muscles into odd positions only guarantees that I will be a little more flexible; forcing me to contort my muscles into odd positions in 100-degree heat guarantees that I will be focused on it. When it's that hot, you can't afford to let your mind wander; it MUST be entirely focused on the postures. That's why this form of yoga is the one for me (knowing that I will be leaving with towels and clothing I can literally wring out is NOT).

So, I've been doing Bikram's on a very occasional basis for the past three years or so, usually going to a studio in Boulder run by a woman who makes the Nazis look like cuddly little teddy bears in her approach to critiquing her students and, as often as I can or every time I'm visiting my mother, attending the classes at the Fort Collins studio, run by a much nicer man with the unique ability to find something kind to say to eacj of his students, especially those of us who struggle. Recently a Bikram's studio opened at the Flatirons Crossing mall, a massive, expansive shopping center that very nearly has its own zip code (I think the lack of residential space is the only reason it doesn't) just up the street from lovely Boulder, Colorado. Aside from being entirely too amused at the idea that someone would actually, in mid-shopping, shed their street clothes for the lightest, skimpiest outfit they own and toil for ninety minutes in an oven only to emerge red-faced, dripping and stinky with perspiration, I figured it was nice to have an alternative to the neo-Nazi who ran the main studio in Boulder. I've been off-and-on bugging Gregory to give yoga a shot and, somewhere in the midst of the post-half-Ironman reverie that has apparently been clouding his better judgment, he agreed. We picked up a schedule at the mall studio and decided to attend a ten a.m. Sunday class.

Now, dating an athlete in training for an Ironman comes with its advantages...as well as its disadvantages. Some of the advantages are: almost always having something athletic to do, because you can just jump into his routine and do as much or as little of it as you can stomach at any given time, feeling like what you're doing is relatively easy because endurance training involves lengthy distances at a generally slow pace, and, yes, bragging rights to dating a bona fide lunatic. I mean who else would take on an event with those dimensions (2.4mi swim, 112mi. bike, marathon or 26.2mi. run) but the completely insane? Some of the disadvantages are: waking up alone on a fairly regular basis (my wake-up greeting is often a note: "D- Went running/cycling/swimming. Back in about three hours. -G 10:30am...when I wake up at ten-forty-five), feeling like a total bum while recounting that, while your boyfriend was out on a 70-mile bike ride you were at home devouring Sex & The City reruns, and suffering frayed nerves all weekend because your boyfriend just did one of the most intense half-Ironman courses in the world but it's out in the middle of nowhere with no cell service or signal of any sort and you can't even get an "Are you okay?" text message to him. The pros significantly outweigh the cons, but aside from being elated that he was going to come to yoga WITH me (nobody ever comes to yoga with me), there was definitely a little fiendish devil in me rubbing her hands and laughing maniacally. The boy had no idea what he was getting himself into. My mother, an avid cyclist, Tour de France follower and former triathlete, has been to one Bikram's class with me. When I told her that Gregory and I were going to take a class together, her first comment was: "He's screwed."

The heat isn't really the worst part about Bikram's, at least not after awhile. Some of the postures are torturous, heated room or not, and they are all designed to really amplify the intensity of muscular stretch and tone. What becomes difficult is trying to acclimate to the heat and do the postures and take enough water breaks so that you're properly rehydrating. I've seen people go through a gallon and a half of water in one class, and I've seen people pass out because they're not drinking enough. The heat is brutal, but the dangers come from not being aware of it. I love it because it turns my muscles into slightly more viscous Jell-O; I can bend and move in ways I never thought possible. Because I've been a fair-weather student I end up paying for it the next day, but I'm always grateful I've gone, no matter how sore my shoulders, triceps, hamstrings, pecs, quads and other assorted muscle groups are. BUT, Gregory hates high heat. And to his credit, he admits readily that his flexibility and balance leave something to be desired.

So we attended the class. I informed him that the shirt he had on wouldn't last long; he left it in the locker room. I told him to drink a lot of water, and he did. I told him that the most important goal was to stay int he room for the entire class, and he did, exiting flushed and dripping at the class' finish with me. He'd done an excellent job for a first-timer, completing most of the postures and sitting out a few at the end. I'd tried to keep my eye on him, mostly because I felt entirely responsible for dragging him into this to begin with, but also because...well, I never really saw my boyfriend as much of a yoga person. The man is built like a linebacker and trains for long-distance endurance events, not knock-down-drag-out ninety-minute sweatfests. By the time the class was over, I couldn't gauge his expression. For all I knew he fell in love with it...or absolutely hated it.

"I loved it!" He announced, striding up to the desk and paying for two more classes. Uh-oh...

We may have created a monster.