My experience with Bikram Yoga

OK, well, first of all. It wasn't this.

Thank goodness.

But I will tell you it was just this awful. AWFUL.

For those of you at home saying, "What's bie-cram yoguh?"...it's pronounced bih-krum and it is 90 minutes of hell. HELL.

Bikram yoga is also known as hot yoga. Hot because you do it in a heated room. It's not new; it's been around for years and I just suddenly, against my better judgement, decided it might be fun to try it. I like to be hot. I like to sweat. I like yoga. Great, right?! Not so much.

I took, Laura, a friend of mine who is really into difficult, strenuous activities. We are both in good shape, she likes to sweat, too, so I figured this was right up our alley. Before we went into the ROOM, we spoke with the instructor for a bit and told her we were knew to this, that we both had knee issues that we had to modify certain poses, and so forth. My first red flag should have been when she said, "You will at times feel dizzy and lightheaded. Just stop and take a break at anytime; grab a drink of your water. The goal for your first class is to just stay in the room for the full 90 minutes". I figured, sure, no problem. How hard is it to stay in a room? However, what she meant to say was, "Your goal for the first class is to not run screaming from the room. It is disruptful to the other participants".

But she didn't actually say that so we figured, sure, no problem, we can stay in a room. Then Laura made the mistake of asking what the temperature in the room was. 105 degrees with 45% humidity. Wow, I thought. They're not kidding when they call it "hot" yoga. Then the instructor asked us if we brought a yoga mat and a towel. Sure! We had mats and we waved our little sweat hand towels at her. She kinda shook her head and gave us each a large towel, like a beach towel. That is to go over your mat. Because the mat gets slippery when it is wet. And guess what. The beach towel is SOAKING wet after like half an hour. By the end, I seriously could have wrung water out of it. Uh, not water actually. It was sweat that had POURED from my body. Eeeewwwww.

SO. We made it through the entire class without leaving the room but let me tell you. I wanted to run screaming from that room the second class was over. (Before, actually). Unfortunately, I couldn't run because I was reduced to a limp rag. And I felt like crap for the entire rest of the day although I drank like a gallon of water asap. And there were several times during the class that I just had to force myself to not whimper pathetically. I was afraid it might disrupt the other participants. But I really did feel whimpery and on the verge of bursting into tears at any moment.

The worst part, though, was that the instructor was evil. OK, not really evil, but she did not like letting me modify to my own abilities. At one point, I was not doing "tree pose" the way she wanted me to do it. Because of my bad knee(s), I have to do it this way. Except I usually don't have my arms thrown up to catch a giant ball. Nor do I usually have a big belly. Depends on how many M&Ms I had that week.

Anyway, the instructor kept saying to me, "In this class, we do tree pose like this". And then she would show me. I just kept nodding to her and waving to let her know I understood what she was saying. Finally, after like three tries to get through my thick skull, she walked over to me and tried to get me to do it the way they do in Bikram yoga.
I said, "Yeah, I know. But I can't bend my knees that way".
She said, "Stop saying you can't do it. You can."
I said, "No. I had knee surgery. I can only do it like this."
She still tried to get my to shove my foot up into my crotch and when I couldn't do it, she said,
"Well, you just need to work on your balance."
As though my problem was poor balance.

And then as my knee was throbbing afterwards, she had the gall to insinuate that the throbbing is good because it means increased circulation to the joint, and healing, and blah blah blah. I wanted to slap her and inform her that I have a degree in physical therapy and throbbing joints does NOT = healing. But hey, what do I know.

So that was my experience with Bikram yoga. I'm gonna give it a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. Sorry to offend those of you who might enjoy hot yoga. I know some of you enjoy running marathons, too, which I think is equally torturous and un-fun. I guess we're all different!