Page 113 of 524

Some Like Their Yoga Hot


Bikram Yoga - with Bikram Choudhury

Image by tiarescott via Flickr

I have resisted the Bikram yoga thing because it seemed gimmicky and … stupid. Extreme yoga? In front of mirrors and wearing hot pants? It reminded me of that terrible Jamie Lee Curtis flick about aerobics from the ’80’s. Or Jane Fonda meets wet heat.

I am sweaty enough without an external compulsion, and it seemed counter to the idea of building heat using the breath. Yoga is all about the breath. Breathing stokes the internal fire figuratively and literally.

But okay, hot yoga is everywhere. It’s often what first sucks people into the idea of yoga at all, so I tried it.

And it is fucking hot. 37c and 50% humidity and that’s before everyone started moving and breathing.

The Bikram sequence is actually pretty easy. I can completely understand why heat is introduced as the poses themselves are not going to cause anyone but the most unfit person to break a sweat.

I didn’t go to a Bikram studio. I tried Moksha. A variant with a much more challenging set of asanas. One that provokes sweat with only one’s own combustion and then turns up the volume to 11 with external sources.

Moksha is not easy. Beginner’s should be wary and maybe even try a lite version to start.

The allure of yoga in a heated room was not lost on me. As the practice progressed, I could totally envision how awesome a passive yin class could be in that kind of warmth, but an active asana practice is not yin and the heat makes it harder.

And a bit more dangerous.

I sweat easily. Years of running in sweltering Iowa summers primed my muscles well and taught my body how to cool itself.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I wouldn’t have enough water for the practice. And that I needed an extra towel. And Jamie Lee’s hot pants.

“I need to get yoga shorts if I am going to do this regularly, ” I told Rob at supper that evening.

Dee, who is no stranger to yoga duds, was appalled.

“You mean those little short-shorts? On you?” she gasped.

Nice.

I also realized that I can’t do a 90 minute class in extreme heat. Mostly because it is a lot of forward bending and couple my scary low blood pressure with the up and down of inversion to standing and throw on some heat? It’s a small miracle I didn’t pass out.

When I was a kid, a crowded 8AM Sunday mass in mid-summer would have me seeing spots and listening to a train roaring through my eyes with all the up and down from our knees to feet. Hot yoga is surprisingly similar but not as mindlessly bobbing.

The next day, I was sore but not tremendously and most likely because the heat fools your body into giving you the extra length beyond what simply warming and breathing into a pose will allow.

I could get used to that. I would do hot yin in a heartbeat, but active poses give me pause because unlike most people, my body actively checks my more foolish tendencies to push it in ways that mother nature didn’t intend.

The Moksha studio offers a short version at 60 minutes and a cooler version of about 27C, so I am not going to write it off as a yoga option just yet. The hot adventure does have me looking forward to home practices in front of the fireplace Rob is installing in our new living room. Possibilities abound.

But short-shorts?

Well, I did strip my shirt about half way through the practice and finished up in my sports bra. The shirt was so wet that when I threw it into the wash the next day, it was still heavy and damp.

The shorts I was wearing were knee-length and sweatshirt-like. Far too thick and equally soaked through by the end of the practice.

I could wear the tiny yoga hot pants. I wouldn’t look great but that’s not the point in hot yoga. It’s seriously too dimly lit in the room to see anything clearly anyway, so I am still wondering why there were mirrors.

And nudity doesn’t bother me. I strip, shower and redress without any towel acrobatics. It’s a women’s change room (and omg, it was luxurious!) and wish more women could just relax and change without the whole eye avoidance thing.*

I could do hot pants yoga style.

Tomorrow I will give the short class a go. Can’t hurt. I am more prepared and as my birthday is coming up, will consider it a gift to myself.

*Though I try to respect the discomfort by not glancing about too much. Women and body image issues is something I know personally. I am just too old to really care much.

Related Articles

Domestic Extremists Go Home!


U.S. Marshal with prisoners being transported ...

Image via Wikipedia

Or stay home? Or emigrate to a Central or South American garden spot?

There’s always Canada? Or is there? I’ve written this before but it bears repeating, Canada is not a Blue State‘ers utopia. Our federal government is Bush-lite minus the enhanced interrogation and the whole nationalized health care thing is a bit of a bait and switch in practice as opposed to the nirvana theory it puts forth.

So who is a “domestic extremist” anyway?

According to an internal memo making the rounds at Homeland Security and the TSA, I would resemble that designation for my written opposition of the new enhanced screenings being administered at airports. Going on record (cyberspace is the ultimate in documentation) and writing in support of Opt Out Day could have earned me a spot on some super double secret list of people my homeland government sees as a threat.

A threat to what?

Good question. Not so easy to answer and still maintain the facade that the United States isn’t as dictatorial as the Jihadi’s they are waging war against in the Middle East (and sucking up to as well though the contempt revealed in the recent Wikileaks makes one wonder if the American government has any idea of what it stands for or whose side it is on).

During our routine lunch time chat today, Rob wondered if I might have made this new list and if it could cause us issues when we travel to the Midwest to see family next year.

“You could get denied entry,” he said.

It’s not something I haven’t thought about actually. Crossing the border gives me the willys, as my dear readers well know.

Border guards are like the old feudal lords with absolute power and discretion within the confines of their tiny perches on the invisible line that separates sacred American dirt from socialist tinged Canada soil. They can detain a person with impunity as easily as they can wave one through. They can decide someone is unfit to enter – citizen or not – without explanation. Democracy? Constitutional Rights? A Border guard needs these things not.

Administering border authority is a bit like the old wild west when the local sheriff or U.S. Marshall was more powerful than the wealthiest merchants or ranchers.

Of course, working for the TSA has its own creative rules making perks too.

What’s a person to do?

Simon Black recommends ex-patriating. He uses as his example the Roman Empire and how those with gumption and means simply moved on once it was clear that dictatorship and tyranny had replaced the rule of law. But, as I mentioned earlier, Utopia is the name of a fictional place in a book by Thomas Moore (which interestingly is a satire, surprising given its creative source).  Although the U.S. is clearly heading toward a more restrictive form of governing than the Founders could ever in their worst case scenarios have imagined when they argued over the wisdom of allowing ordinary citizens the vote, Americans themselves still think they are mostly the most free people on Earth.

Search me. I have nothing to hide.  Let them search you – unless you have something to hide.   I could never be a victim of too much safety.

But American jurisprudence and government just about patented the idea of the slippery slope. Forget that at your peril.

It’s interesting that such a topic would come up on the same day I was reading about the new Canadian citizenship test and calculating whether or not I’ve put in my seat time to apply.  I have a few months to go, but it’s not out of the reach for the coming year.

And there is the small point of my being “home” already as home is a state of personal preference and the physical reality that one creates when all is said and done.

If I were turned away though? I suppose there’d be a few tears and then I’d suck it up and get over it. I’ve “gotten over” actual tragedies after all, so a pseudo one couldn’t be all that hard. Though my guess is that most Americans would feel like the Benedict Arnold inspired character in A Man Without a Country, who is condemned to a wandering exile aboard U.S. Naval ships, never to be allowed to re-settle elsewhere and never stepping foot on American soil, would it really be any different from the tales of those who migrated to the U.S., never to see their homeland again?

Home is where your heart is and one’s heart belongs to people – not imaginary lines on a globe.  If you had to choose between your country or your loved ones, would there really be a choice?

It’s just dirt and only toddlers find it tasty. What’s important really are the binding ties, and I don’t think that America has thought about that for a long, long time unless, of course, the subject was cutting them. But it might be something for its people to consider.

Related Articles

Accidental Polytheist


The Birth of Venus.

Image via Wikipedia

Began reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians novels to Dee this past spring. They are a bit old for her, but she adores mythology and I figure, it can’t hurt, right?

But it seems that her 8-year-old world view is still grounded enough in fairies and Santa and magic to latch onto the idea of gods, satyrs and demigods and add them to the moral base Rob and I are instilling in her.

Long ago I toyed with the idea of raising her in a creed, thinking that everyone benefits from having a theology to test the world against and use as a springboard to spiritual openness and independent thinking and analysis; the latter, I believe, is critical if one is to avoid being swept up in dubious (and sometimes blatantly self-serving) dogma.  But my experiences with Catholicism as it is practiced by more than a few and with the stench of hypocrisy that overwhelms whatever good there is about most religions, led me to discard the idea and allow Dee to question and come to her own decisions.

For the moment, she has decided to believe in gods and goddesses. Though she assures us that she knows they are make-believe, she seems to be forming her ideas of right and wrong moral behavior with a decidedly Greek Myth Meets Druidism perspective.

I am not sure if I am a complete failure as a moral guardian or a success beyond belief.

We ventured over to the arena today for the Country Craft Fair. The last Saturday in November, all the little rural communities around here hold craft fairs and there is a tree lighting and fireworks at the Firehall at the end of the day. The fair is decidedly crafty and bakey.

As we wandered, an older gentleman blocked our path and began that sort of grandpa-ish banter with Dee. Her curls, big blue-gray eyes and too serious for a child demeanor attract attention, and older folk in particular can’t help but try to engage her.

“Why aren’t you in school?” he demanded.

She backed away and frowned. Dee isn’t a child one should joke with. She has inherited my literal take and doesn’t always recognize “teasing”.

“It’s not a school day,” she finally replied.

“Well, do you go to school on Monday?”

She nodded.

“And Tuesday?”

Affirmative.

And the gent proceeded to tick off the other days of the week.

“What about Sunday?” he ended with.

“There’s no school on Sunday,” Dee said.

“You haven’t heard of Sunday school?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Well, Mom, ” he addressed me, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

If I’d had time to think, or even see this coming – though I should have because the community is quite religious – I might have retorted with something that could have cost me a bit in terms of acceptance in the rural society I find myself on the edges of, but I didn’t.

“Um, nothing,” I said. “No.”

It probably wasn’t what I said. I said literally “nothing”, but I’ve been told that my face is rather open and telling. And my eyes do this flat, squinty thing that served me well as a middle-school teacher and, apparently, frightens old men too.

He backed away and we passed.

Polytheism? Judgemental Christianity? Really not much to weigh, in my opinion.

Related Articles