Sunday, May 11, 2008
Life, Health + Fitness

Can’t take the heat?

Get out of the yoga studio. Bikram yoga, that is.

By Colleen Oakley

I hate being hot. During the summer, when the mercury creeps over 90 degrees outside, you’d be hard-pressed to find me in a place without air conditioning.

And while we’re on things that I hate—yoga tops the list. I tried it two or three times over my fitness career and never once felt centered or enlightened; I typically felt bored and irritated.

It doesn’t take a genius, then, to deduce that I’m not going to be a fan of hot yoga—a form of yoga also known as Bikram that is performed in a studio topping 112 degrees F. As I was driving to the studio, I was dreading the 90-minute class looming in front of me.

“It won’t be that bad,” said my friend Blane, who’s been taking hot yoga for years. “Just remember, if you feel like you’re going to pass out, sit down.”
Pass out? Awesome. I feel better already.

We walk into the class, and I quickly realize that I’m the only newbie in the class of about 20. The teacher Cristina, who is also co-owner of the studio, positions herself in front me to teach me the proper breathing technique to begin. We take quite a lot of deep inhales and exhales, and I start to feel light-headed. Sweat trickles down my face. My head is tilted back on the exhale and my neck is tired so I bring it forward.

“Tired already?” Cristina chides me. “Did you go last night? Hmmm?”
“Uh, no,” I reply, and quickly put my head back where it’s supposed to be. What is she—some kind of yoga Nazi?

After about five positions and 20 loooong minutes, I do begin to feel dizzy. Cristina had reiterated what Blane said before class and told me to sit down if I started feeling light-headed. So I sat.

“Your body is not used to this heat,” Cristina assured me in front if the entire class. “You have many toxins.”

Great. Thank you.

“But you are only 27, you should be able to do these moves,” she added. At this point, I don’t know how I’m going to spend 70 more minutes in this room.
But I stuck with it and joined in when I felt up to it, chugging water in between moves. The last half of the class involved positions where you are either lying or sitting on the mat, which was much easier for my toxin-filled body.

Cristina also gave me really helpful tips about where to train my eyes so as not to get dizzy, and she did say some encouraging words about how flexible she could tell I was and that in a few classes I should be able to do the moves really well.
At the end of class (aka: the longest 90 minutes of my life), I was glad it was over and that I had survived.

I thanked Cristina on the way out, and she asked me to come back a few more times. “You really can’t judge just one class,” she said. “You have to take it seriously and give your body time to adjust to the heat.”

I’m sure that’s true, and I probably will give it one or two more tries before I hang up my yoga mat for good—I know that there are a lot of health benefits and that I probably do need to detoxify. But I also think that you have to find the fitness regimen that works best for you. And as far as I can tell, hot yoga and I just don’t mix. SP
Colleen Oakley is a freelance writer in Atlanta and the former editor of Women’s Health & Fitness magazine. Got a fitness challenge for her? E-mail her at colleen@sundaypaper.com.