Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot in Bikram Yoga

I wasn't planning to ever go to hot yoga.  Like, never ever.  But then, I was at Erika's Super Bowl party and Christy wanted company while she used her gifted Groupon to Bikram yoga.  She convinced Erika and I to go.  I'm not sure how she did it.  All I know is that her husband made me a drink, and Erika was still recovering from getting her braces on.  Finally, I decided I would go to the class for one reason and one reason alone:

Yup.  I knew it would make a good blog post.

I turned to Facebook for advice about prepping, and I kept being told to wear 'very little'.  I was thinking of wearing shorts and a tank, but the only shorts I had were running shorts and well, those are too loose. I threatened pondered the idea of bike shorts and a bathing suit.

Ultimately, I was able to run out and get some capris.

The morning of our class, the three of us showed up eager to start.

Maybe "eager to leave" might be more accurate.

We walked into the "sweatbox" (that is honest-to-goodness what they call it.)   It smelled like someone was baking a sweaty sock souffle.

Kinda gross.

We put down our yoga mats, put our towels over our mats so we didn't play slip and slide during class, took out our various bottles of ice water and Gatorade, and worked on getting used to the room.  The lady in front of us was getting ready too.  She stretched her feet to her hips.  She was wearing very loose, very short shorts.

I may have snorted because I'm an immature child.

We started the class with a breathing exercise and I noticed beads of sweat on the tops of my feet.

Pretty sure I've never seen that before.

Then we began moving through the postures and the sweat storm got into full swing.

Sweat was dripping.

It was pouring.

It was flying.

It.  Was.  Insane.

We did a number of yoga postures, but had to do them all twice.  Then we did savasana.  My favourite!  And then, we had to get back up and do more yoga!

Huh??

That's NOT how yoga goes.  I fall asleep do savasana, and then I go home.

For the rest of the class, we would do our double pose, go into savasana for 20 seconds, then do a sit-up before moving into a new pose.

My enthusiasm waned a little.

I was a little nervous when the instructor told us we were going to do the "wind removal" pose. Fortunately, there were no discernable mishaps in the class.

Bikram lasted 90 minutes, which was a good 30 minutes too long for me.  But, I decided to go back the next day to get my $10 worth (10 consecutive days of classes.)

Personally, I would caution you against going 2 days in a row (and throwing in a run).  You might find yourself doing a lot of this:

And this:

And this:

QUESTIONS:

HAVE YOU EVER DONE HOT YOGA? DO YOU LOVE IT OR HATE IT?

IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE HOT YOGA, HAVE I CONVINCED YOU TO TRY IT, OR TO RUN AWAY SCREAMING LIKE A LITTLE GIRL?

(IF YOU WANT TO READ MORE RECAPS OF THE CLASS, CLICK ON ERIKA'S AND CHRISTY'S NAMES TO GO TO THEIR POSTS)

UPCOMING POSTS:  CYCLING, RUNNING, MORE GUEST POSTING


I'm back at Yeah Write this weekend, hanging out on their new moonshine grid. Join me for some great reads!