Bikram Yoga

In an effort to start leading a less stressful and healthier lifestyle I decided that I wanted to re-incorporate yoga into my life.  My mother has been doing yoga as long as I can remember and it is a great way to gain core strength and flexibility as well as have a little "me" time to meditate and inwardly focus.

Well, a couple years back I had been a member of one of the upper east side yoga studios.  I made the mistake of joining for a year without reading the fine print of the contract.  Apparantly, in order to stop being a member you have to give them 30 days notice via registered mail or fedex and if you don't do so they will automatically re-renew your contract for another year.  You can see where this is going...I thought that after a few months of inactivity my membership would have been terminated.  Unfortunately no.  I ended up having an unpleasant end to the relationship and vowed never to return.

The only problem is that it was actually a pretty great studio.

Now I have that itch to practice again and am stuck finding another studio that won't break the bank.  I decided to give Bikram a try...

In case you never heard of it, this is the studio where they practice "Hot" yoga.  Namely, they crank the room heat up all the way to round about 100 degrees and then over the next 90 minutes you do about 26 Hatha yoga poses.  There is no beginner, intermediate or advanced.  You just develop your own proficiency level with same poses.

The studio itself was pretty nice.  Had the sense I should use foot fungicide afterward though because of the high humidity in the place...

The workout nearly killed me though!!!!  The instructor welcomed me and told me that my goal for the day was to survive the room.  Little did I know how true those words would ring.  Honestly, the first forty minutes or so I thought were going really well, as I happen to like it warm typically.  But then I realized that I should have taken the woman at the reception desk's advice not to eat much.  I started feeling nausea, dizziness, and like my brain was melting.  I kept staring at the clock hoping the minutes would tick by faster toward 3:30 when the time was up.  The last half hour we spent a lot of time on our back and stomach and I hoped that it would make things better, but it only got worse.  Like the added blood to my brain made it get even more swollen and throbbing.

At the end, the room gave me a round of applause for finishing the class.  I had to slowly reacclimate to normal room temperature.  But my brain wouldn't stop boiling.  I think I gave myself a fever.  Today is more than 24 hours later and I still have a dull headache.  Needless to say, when I got home I though my brain might explode.  My face looked red like a tomatoe. 

That being said, the rest of my body felt great!  I don't know if I have the courage to go back.  Perhaps I don't have a strong enough constitution to deal with the heat.  How I long for my old studio's nice Vinyasa classes again!  Do I try to sneak back in?  Hopefully I wasn't blacklisted in the computer.  I have one other option to try first, a new studio called Pure Yoga.  I will keep you posted.