Skip to main content

Bikram yoga

My introduction to Bikram yoga was at the Funky Door Studio in San Fransico. I arrived with my friend and was warmly welcomed by the teacher, who called me by my first name - via a microphone headset - from the front of the class throughout the practice. The class was full of young scantily-clad yoga students, who all appeared to know the 26 poses in the Bikram series.

Before the yoga session starts a towel is placed on your yoga mat. The reason why becomes apparent very soon as the room is heated to sauna temperature and the sequence is commenced with a breathing practice (prananyama). In that first class my friend and I must have hit the floor at least five times to escape the heat. I found it amazing that anyone could stay on their feet for the duration of the class; the heat was so intense that I started to feel quite dizzy. As I looked around the classroom from my new position on the floor, I could see people standing in pools of sweat (hence the towels on the mat). It is, therefore, no surprise that you are encouraged to drink water throughout after the initial warm up poses.

As a yoga teacher I did not find the 26 poses used in this series particularly demanding, as I had come across most of them previously. What I did find difficult, and still do, is the intense heat in which the yoga is practised. I left the studio looking like a beetroot; a look that stayed with me for quite some time, much to the amusement of several of my fellow students.

Since then, I have attended Bikram yoga sessions here in London on a number of occasions. My yoga students often ask me what I think of this style and I always suggest that they give it a go. Bikram yoga does appeal to a lot of people and the only way to find a practice that suits your needs, is to try different styles.

From a personal point of view, the heat is a huge distraction from the yoga. Teachers often encourage students to push back and go deeper into poses, which – for inexperienced yoga students – can be quite daunting, and may unintentionally give the class a quite competitive feel. I think that lack of inversions (having the head lower than the hear) does not make this a very well-balanced yoga practice. The use of mirrors in the studio and the encouragement to look at your poses in the mirrors is, once again, something that I find quite difficult about Bikram. My understanding is that yoga is a “journey within”, by which I mean that you should feel your poses from the inside, rather than worry excessively about what you or your poses look like; something that I transmit to students when teaching.

All in all, people turn to yoga for a wide variety of reasons. Bikram may be suitable for some people's needs, but it is very - perhaps excessively - physical and there is less emphasis on the spiritual aspects of yoga as well. Ashtanga yoga can be physically demanding but, in my opinion, it is a more complete form of yoga.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Neti pot

When I was training to be a yoga teacher, one of the 6 purification techniques taught to us was Jala Neti ( also called Neti or Jaaneti). Purification techniques are sometimes performed as a way of preparing the body for a yoga practice. Whenever the neti pots came out, I disappeared, always needing to be somewhere else at that moment in time… I had many techniques to avoid it: the bathroom, the water fountain, the shop, anything but the Net. Pouring a saline solution up my hooter was really not for me and I have avoided it right up to today. I have got a steaming cold and, as a result, I now have sinus pain, so I have decided to give it another go. Talk about waiting until your back is against the wall! I rushed to the Sivanada yoga studio nearby and bought myself a ceramic neti pot and salt. I had to follow the one photographic image as the instructions were in German!!! Although I did not find it as unpleasant as some people describe, it was not as bad as I remembered. So I will us

Sharath Jois in London 2013

Sharath Jois will be in London teaching a week of primary and intermediate ashtanga yoga From 25th-30th of August- in a central London location. Booking for this will open mid May. Through  http://www.astangayogalondon.com/index2.cfm A rare and wonderful treat to have Sharath in my home town-A big thank you to  Hamish Hendry  and ashtanga yoga London for organising this. Going to have to set an alarm on my phone- as there will be a lot of takers for this....

All about the balance

A snap from inside my fridge this week. The mix of wine, beer and Vita Coca sort of sums up my family really. The ones that drink wine and beer don't go in for the coco water, and the coco water drinker doesn't go in for wine or beer. In summary, none of us need worry about the other nicking all the drinks. :-)