Remember that time when you met a really nice girl at a conference and she told you she was a yogi and she invited you to take a Bikram class with her and then you showed up and you realized you wore pants (and some people were straight up just wearing their underwear) and you took the class anyway and almost passed out and then vowed you'd still be her friend even though you will never do that again?
Do you see where this is going? Right.
So last week, I was giving a presentation at a conference, and the room monitor started chatting with me about yoga. I told her I taught at a studio in town and she invited me to take a class with her. I had always been curious about Bikram; I had friends who were completely addicted, hitting class between 4 - 5 times a week.
Apparently, there is a protocol of things you need to know before taking your first Bikram class. A quick Google search would have probably revealed an easy "How-To Bikram" but alas, in my mistake, hopefully the rest of you can gain some wisdom.
Things I did wrong (that probably should have led to instant death, but didn't. Thankfully.):
1) Wore pants. The room is 103 degrees. Pants are a bad idea.
2) Did not hydrate at all during the day. Fatal, fatal mistake.
3) Forgot about eating food. Sometimes, when you are about to sweat 80% of your body weight, food beforehand is pretty important.
4) Did not bring a towel. A virtual slip-and-slide on my yoga mat, my friends.
5) Did not bring water with me. I am miraculously still alive (but just barely).
Things that were so batshit-crazy to me I almost lost consciousness (no, wait, that was from sweating through every piece of clothing I had on):
1) You cannot leave the room. You should try to actually lose consciousness so that they let you leave the room, but short of a full-on pass-out episode, your ass is stuck in there.
2) You cannot take a drink of water for the first, like, thirty minutes. Which is okay if you're sitting at your desk, but when you are losing seven gallons of water a minute, you should probably temper the effort until that first water break
3) They want you to stretch so far it hurts. What? Wait, what?
4) The instructor is your friend at the beginning and at the end when she is trying to sell you an unlimited, one-month package, but during those 90 minutes of class, she hates your fucking guts.
5) The class will be packed with people. I want to run up to them and say "BUT THERE'S ANOTHER YOGIC WAY! WHY ARE YOU TORTURING YOURSELVES?!" but alas, it was not my mitzvah.
In all fairness, it wasn't that bad, but hilarious to look back on. Have any of you guys tried Bikram? Tell me your love/hate stories!
5 comments:
I tried it about 2 years ago and hated it so much, I started referring to it as "90 minutes in satan's colon." It was horrible.
Then I did it again with a friend aboug 2 weeks ago, and I didn't hate it. I think it was because I knew what to expect, so I drank water all day and wore spandex shorts and a sports bra. I don't think I could ever do it 4 or 5 days a week because it's a little too boring for me, but I do think going once a week could be really beneficial to my workout routine.
I think it should be required of people to tell you EXACTLY what to do if they are bringing you to your first class, whether they assume you know or not. It's one thing that will make you miserable no matter what if you don't prepare.
Between this post and Mandy's comment ("90 minutes in Satan's colon" HAH), I am really not interested in trying this anytime soon! Especially since I've had the tendency to pass out in public places anyway. I am suck a freakin' wimp. I commend you for making it through that hell.
Cassie, in retrospect, I probably should have done a little research beforehand. But I think my proudest moment was when I made it through the entire class without hurling. So if you don't need "not hurling" to be on your list of "proudest achievements" then maybe stick to a different kind of yoga. Or tennis or something.
Mandy, I've heard that the more you do it, the less scary it becomes. So maybe the title of this post should be "Things I Will Never Do Again, Except Maybe One More Time To See If It Still Really Sucks As Badly As It Did The First Time."
The first and only time I did Bikram, I cried. Legit. The instructor yelled at me! My zen was ruined...
That said, I do love hot vinyasa, only because it makes the flow more challenging. I don't think I believe in the extra calorie burn/twisting out the toxins, though (:
I took it a few months ago and liked it... BUT. I do not find it nearly as challenging as another (good) yoga class; it's just the heat that makes it tough. Sure, you sweat like crazy, but that's much more b/c of the heat than what you're doing. I think it'd be good to go before a special event where you want to look good (wedding, ball, etc), because you could sweat out excess water weight, but otherwise I think you could get the exercise benefits in much better ways.
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