Fever in the Evening • 01.18.08
Hot Yoga, I believe originated from California, because only they would consider heating a room to 105 degrees a good thing. And somehow beyond all believability it is. Yet, developing a regular hot yoga practice has been a challenge for me. Maybe because my first class, I thought I’d faint, maybe because I continue to feel that way, the sweat, the crushing blow to my ego when I can’t do half the poses, or the defeat of having lost my grace in class. I console myself with the fact that despite my experiences, I return to the special torture.
But I may have discovered another reason for my ambivalence to this particular breed of vitamin, the way yoga is taught in a heated room. It strikes me that the people who gravitate to Hot Yoga, are markedly different from the people who attend ‘cool’ yoga. And not just the students, but maybe even the teachers. The students in hot yoga are more into the workout, you see a lot mis-aligned faces (including mine), less ohmming, chanting, meditating, or turning that drishti (gaze) inwards. Todays’ teacher pushed her students to give everything a run for it’s money, even if they were obviously uncomfortable. She gave the hard variations first, and almost as an after thought for the “wimps” she verbalized the easier variation. Nor was she apologetic for it, she admitted she wanted us to feel like we worked. By work, I’ll assume she meant sweat, and sweat I did.
By the time the class reached the half way point, I hadn’t managed to catch my breath, we were so busy moving from one position to another, I could barely keep from collapsing. Her voice and my ego, kept demanding that I push myself to the next expression, at it’s fullest, in 105 degrees! Those who managed it got non-verbal approvals, expressed in the form of a smile, a deeper adjustment. While I had lost my compassion, and my composure was fast following. Then as if by magic, I detached. I let go, and moved on to my own world, in my own practice, where the room and she didn’t matter.
By the time the class rolled down to it’s 2min savasana, I barely remembered my distemper.
My detachment and I went through the motions of changing and showering, at our own lovely pace. When I heard my instructor talking to another student, about how some people get really obsessed with hot yoga, and how some teachers push the workout too far. Seemingly she thought she was gentle, and the temperature, mild. Is it possible, that all people who do hot yoga, are type-A, demanding, unsympathetic, and pushy to the point of annoyance? I found that idea to be simple and satisfying, because it means everything is wrong with THEM and not me.
If only it was that easy, if only she didn’t have a sweet smile, encouraging words, a quirky sense of humor, and a knowing smile that let on, she knew I would be back. If only to experience that rare warmth of accomplishment you feel when you know you’re getting better at it. And there’s just something about being in that much heat.
