Word: bikram
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...Bikram or Choudhury (Hot Yoga) Hot and sweaty. With the thermostat set to 100[degrees]F or more, students are led through 26 postures "scientifically" designed to stretch muscles and tendons in a certain order. The heat warms the muscles, helping them stretch farther. One of the newest variations, this one is not for the faint of heart...
...conscientious but nondenominational exerciser, and coming to Bikram (a.k.a. "Hot") Yoga began more as a scheduling convenience than devotion to its unvarying regimen of 26 poses (asanas), each performed twice and held for what can seem like forever over the course of the nearly two-hour class...
...truth is, I hated this Bikram class when I started. At first I returned only because I was desperate--the victim of a muscle-kinking bout of business travel (cramped airline seats and strange beds). Our teacher, Leah Weisman, seemed to talk incessantly. The room was always full, from 30 to 50 people. And the space was intentionally overheated...
Some people criticize Bikram for being too arduous, but as with all yoga, much of the responsibility falls to the individual. I welcome this opportunity to eschew faster, higher and stronger in favor of deeper. In this regard, the simplicity of Bikram's poses is one more way to avoid being distracted from myself...
True Hot Yoga requires a room temperature as high as 105[degrees]F, supposedly so muscles warm up quickly and stretch more easily. This gym's drafty old studio achieves only Balmy Yoga--about 81[degrees]F--which is just as well. I've experienced optimal Bikram temperatures just once, and frankly, that's way too much bodily fluid shared and dripped and flicked around among a bunch of people who know one another in anything less than a biblical fashion...