Some Like it Hot

Yoga and I have a strange relationship. I do it every few months, greatly enjoy it, then inexplicably ignore it for a while. Recently, however, a friend told me about Hot Yoga, and would I want to try? I agreed. How different could it be?

What follows is a partial record of my Bikram experience.

6:55 PM: I arrive at Yoga One. Exhausted looking yogis trudge out of the studio as I enter. They stare straight ahead and avoid eye contact. They are replaced by a stream of attractive men and women in their 20s and 30s gliding into the studio.

6:56: I have to register at the front desk. “Would you like a towel?” the lady at the desk asks cheerily. She has the most wholesome smile I’ve ever seen.  Not wanting to appear novice, I shake my head no. “Oh, I’ll be fine,” I say. She nods her head, her eyebrows arching slightly.

6:57: I walk into the hot yoga room. The air is warm and wet, and it sends shivers down my spine. It was a warm 82 degrees in Houston that day, a comfortable 72 degrees in the studio lobby, and at least 90 degrees in this room. My friend tells me the heat goes up to 98 during the class, smiling. Humans are strange creatures.

6:58: Slight panic as I realize that all the good spots near the teacher are taken. The only ones left are near the large, jet black, wall mounted heater that looms ominously from the wall. I spread my mat out, take off my shirt, and sit cross-legged.

6:59: The teacher enters wordlessly, and sits at the front of the room. Forty faces look up at him, reflected on large mirrors on the wall. They are stoic faces, focused and attentive.

7:00: I get a good look at the teacher, Clemente. He seems to be about 30, with a shaved head and a neat, well-manicured beard. His proportions are, and I’m trying to be as scientific as I can here, impossible.  He’s absolutely ripped, with pecs and traps that bulge out of his sinewy yoga tank top.  His torso looks like an upside down triangle.  “Let’s begin,” he says softly, invitingly. “Oojayee breathing.”

7:01: The class begins breathing in unison. The large heater, approximately 10 feet from my head, whirs to life.

7:02: We’re breathing in and out, in and out. We’re standing now, stretching our arms out and puffing out our chests out as we breathe in, and then bringing our hands together in front of us as we exhale. It feels really good.

7:04: A bead of sweat forms on my brow, cascading down my face and falling with a plink on my yoga mat. All we’re doing is breathing. I ponder the rejected towel offer. What was I thinking?

7:05: Sun Salutations. We spread our hands to the sky, then bend over, forward fold, and drop into downward facing dog. We move to cobra and arch our backs. Then it’s back to the forward fold, with hands to the sky, then back at the heart. My heart’s racing.

7:06: Oof. It turns out we are doing circuits of sun salutations.

7:10: “We’ll begin our standing series with Warrior One,” Clemente says. My entire body is now covered in sweat. There is an audible, rhythmic pitter patter in the room as my sweat droplets fall to hit my mat. I spread my feet into a lunge and spread my arms sideways. The convection cooling of my soaked arm as it moves through the air feels wonderful, but only for a second. The heat is oppressive and stagnating. I feel my senses dulling.

7:12: Clemente walks around, making subtle corrections. A hand on a back here, a sculpting of a stance there. “Maybe you try to sink a few inches deeper with your heels,” he says. “Maybe you only focus on keeping your vertebrae aligned.” My thighs are burning. I begin to notice that my feet are wet, and starting to slide along the yoga mat in slow motion.

7:15: “Maybe you let something go today,” Clemente offers. I’m letting go of my serum sodium level, at least.

7:20: We are now bent at the waist, looking through our legs upside down. I can’t tell if it’s the impending heat stroke or the hypovolemia, but I feel like I’m in a dream. It looks as though the class is now attached to the ceiling, clinging like spiders with their hands and legs. Clemente, our arachnid mother, delicately walks between us, patrolling his web, training his spiderlings.

7:22: Vvvvhhhhhhhhhhh. The heater drones on. My thoughts are stretchy, now. Untethered. “The heat is the source of my suffering,” I think. “And the only way to defeat it is to finish this class.” Is Clemente my mentor? My enemy? What am I learning right now?

7:30: “Dancer pose,” Clemente purrs. “Allow yourself to reach out.” My arm stretches out, out, out towards the mirror at Clemente’s suggestion. In the mirror, it looks like we’re all reaching towards ourselves.

7:31 I lose my footing and have to abort the pose. Balancing on one foot is extremely difficult in my current situation. My yoga mat has become less of a mat and more of an estuary. My accumulated runoff now supports a burgeoning ecosystem. There are rivers, lakes, major and minor tributaries, dams, nature preserves, research stations. Hopefully it’s low tide soon.

7:35 We’re doing slow motion squats now. “Who’s feeling playful?” Clemente asks. I’m actually not feeling that playful. I’m feeling more like a prisoner of war.

7:37 “Maybe you wiggle your toes on the way down. Keeps you grounded on our heels, and also it’s fun. Yoga should be fun. Let me see those smiles.” My calves are screaming at me psychically. I make a mental note to google “early signs of rhabdomyolysis” if I ever escape this. I manage to curl a single toe. Close enough.

7:40 Suddenly, without warning, Clemente dims the lights. “Vapasanah,” he says, and everyone stretches out on their mats and rests. Clemente flicks another switch, and a few seconds later the infernal heater stops, and a large ceiling fan turns on. A glorious cool breeze wafts over my body.

7:41 I don’t think I’ve ever really felt happiness until this moment.

7:42 I’m staring up at the ceiling. Dim light is emanating from small lamps spaced every few feet, with dark patches in between. There seems to be something cosmically significant about it.  The light is happiness, or positivity, or contentment, or something, and it’s up to us to turn it on and eradicate the darkness in our lives. We want to be near radiant individuals, but we can also become radiant individuals and thus be a shelter from the darkness for others.

7:42 continued: Why did I reject the towel? Maybe I wanted to be seen as someone with foresight, someone who acted with purpose and didn’t forget things. But I think it’s deeper than that. Maybe subconsciously I wanted to play the role of the inexperienced practitioner, the outsider. Maybe life is about changing the roles that we set for ourselves.

7:42 continued, part 2: Am I hypoxic, or did I just have a major breakthrough?

7:42 continued, part 3: How long have I been sitting here?

7:44 Clemente flips the lights back on. Still more work to do. God damnit. Maybe the light isn’t such a good thing after all.

7:45 “Pidgeonnn,” Clemente says, knowingly. There are some chuckles from the class. This doesn’t sound too bad. I lower myself onto my mat, which creates a horrible wet sucking noise from all the moisture. In a former life, when I wasn’t on the brink of unconsciousness, I would have been embarrassed by this.

7:46 This pose is torture. You tuck one leg under the other then stretch forward, dropping your head as far down as you can. My quads erupt in a series of fiery spasms. There should be a new pidgeon pose, Modern Pidgeon, where you walk around cockily with a group of your friends and eat leftover food.

7:50 I’m in rhythm, now. My body moves mechanically to Clemente’s suggestions. I feel a deep sense of calm, triggering a feeling of elation.

7:56 The last stretch. Clemente clicks the lights and heater off for the last time. The angelic ceiling fan, my sun and stars, whirs to life once more. We return to the breathing exercise we started with in a seated position.

7:59 “Thank you for sharing in your practice today with me,” Clemente says. I would take a bullet for this man. “Namaste.”

8:00 I chase off a school of catfish from my swamp mat, roll it up, and leave the room. The lobby air is crisp and refreshing on my boggy, erythematous skin. I see my friend, who is all smiles. “What did you think?” he says.

I laugh. I have lived a thousand lifetimes, suffered a thousand deaths. My mind is free and clear. I’m swimming in endorphins. I’m whole. “It was good,” I say. “We should do it again sometime.”