I Tried Bikram Yoga and I Have Feelings About It

It was a Wednesday and I was hungover.

Inebriating festivities have been taking place most every day now that I’m up here in St. Augustine, catching up with friends and trying to find ways to put up with family — an exercise that’s always trying, but whose irritations are amplified when you’re trying to work at home and your parents insist on watching “Walker, Texas Ranger” all day long.

Regardless, I was exhausted. I knew exercise would make me feel better, but having given up my gym membership, my away-from-home workout options are pretty limited. Cardio = running, and running is an activity I’ve never loved and at which I can’t seem to improve despite my (admittedly, half-assed) efforts to do so. It’s been four years now since I lost all the weight and started working out regularly, and I’m still rocking those 12 minute miles like they’re an achievement. 

It’d been a full day of attempting to write interestingly while fielding questions like “Whatever happened to that girl from down the street you used to hang out with in 8th grade?” 

I needed yoga, I decided. If I’d ever needed yoga, it was today.

Bikram Yoga

A few hours later, I found myself walking into a heated room at the Bikram studio I’d passed countless times when I lived in St. Augustine. The air was thick; the room honestly smelled a little bit like a foot. There was a mirrored wall with a pedestal at its center. On a hybrid towel/mat of exactly the sort I’d had to rent (for $4!) to attend the class, an overweight man laid shirtless on his back.

It was hot enough that I already felt like it was a little hard to breathe. I’m especially sensitive to warmth and humidity, having once weakened to the point of nausea and dizziness just from closing the bathroom door during a particularly hot shower. But the girl behind the counter, whom I knew would be my instructor that day, had told me not to worry. “Since you’re a first timer, I’ll give you my little spiel: go to your practice without fear. Weird feelings — weird, dizzy feelings, nauseous feelings — are normal. It’s just for the first few classes. Just sit down if you need to, drink some water, dab it on the insides of your wrists. It’ll pass.”

So I sat on my mat (after an experienced yogi came up to me and told me, kindly through chuckling a bit, that the grippy part goes down and the towel part goes up), stretched for a while, and waited for the instructor — Daphne — to open the door and get us started.

If you’re familiar with Birkam, you know it’s a series of 26 postures taught in the same order and manner no matter which certified studio you attend. Our opening deep breathing exercise made me feel dizzy almost immediately, and its strange accompanying arm motions felt alien and uncomfortable and a little wrong — a room of half-clothed bodies already sweating and breathing in this completely unnatural way. We proceded through the series of poses, which ranged from challenging to simply impossible, punctuated by periods of lying back on the mat, relaxing, wishing so desparately for just a sliver of cool air it felt like dying of thirst. Daphne barked cues at us in a way that felt completely antithetical to what I’d come to expect of yoga, catipulting us into postures with a clap of the hands and the command “go,” demanding — immediately — that we “lock our kness,” stretch “beyond our flexibility.”

When Daphne finally did open the door, I thought I might have an orgasm.

It was hard work. When I left, I was swathed in sweat as if I had just gotten out of the shower fully clothed. But not only had I survived without passing out or throwing up — my hangover was decimated. Although I’d been exhausted all day, I couldn’t sleep that night I was so wound up with energy.

I felt elated. 

Although I’ve attempted and attended yoga on and off throughout my life, I’ve never been able to stick with anything that felt worthy of the term “practice” — mostly because I’d never felt physically challenged enough to consider the hour’s time investment justfied. Yes, I know, this sentiment might mean I need yoga more than most. 

But in Bikram, while sweat was dripping into my eyes and ears obscuring my senses, while my heart was thrumming like a massive beating fan, while I leaned back into camel pose and thought for sure I’d vomit if I stretched back even one more inch (but did anyway), I was completely unable to think about anything except what I was doing. This non-physical yogic goal I’d struggled to accomplish during traditional Hatha classes — the one thing that would have made them worth my time, in my eyes, even if I didn’t come out sweat-soaked and sore — was simply the inevitable result of the extremity of this new modality. I was down in the belly of the thing the whole time. It was excruciating. It was awesome.

I stopped by the front desk to explain my newfound elation to Daphne, who smiled quietly and said she was glad before looking back at her computer screen. It was true that she seemed a little bit aloof, but she’d just spent 90 minutes as something like a drill instructor, and I felt too cleaned out and overjoyed to be sour about it. I’d figured it out: this is how I yoga.

I went back the following day and the day after that. I gushed to friends and family. One of the instructors mentioned they were having free yoga on Friday the first, and despite the fact that it was a 9 a.m. class and I knew I had things to do on New Year’s Eve that were likely to make getting up that early unappealing at best, I begged people to come try it with me. In short, I was completely hooked.

But I began to notice that all the instructors had this military air about them, that they were cold even behind the front desk. I took a class with the owner, who mentioned a competition — and Bikram was harder, but like, isn’t “yoga competition” an oxymoron? What did “Bikram” mean, anyway, I wondered?

Bikram Choudhury

By all Google-able appearances, I’m late to the party and you probably already know exactly what Bikram means.

It’s the first name of Bikram Choudhury, the misogynistic, homophobic, accused-of-multiple-assaults and (I don’t think I’m out of line in concluding) crazy guru who started the club. 

Crazy like he tells his devout followers that his particular brand of yoga is going to save their lives — and the whole world. Crazy like he’s claimed he’s “the most successful man this country has ever had.” Crazy like he denies the assault accusations by claiming that he has to fuck his female students because they threaten to kill themselves if he doesn’t, and he wants to avoid the karmic repercussions. Seriously.

Also, every single certified Bikram yoga instructor attends his teacher trainings, which last nine weeks and include two gruelling yoga sessions a day and mandatory attendance to late-night Bollywood screenings where Bikram provides the commentary — all, of course, while being lavished and massaged by the most attractive female participants. The reason all the teachers sound alike and have a very particular, militaristic category? It’s because all certified Bikram instructors memorize the 45-page “dialogue” — that is, the transcript of him teaching one of his 90-minute sessions. It’s basically treated as a holy text.

Yeah, so… it’s a little bit of a cult. Would I be wrong to call it a cult? 

Also, all that “detoxifying” crap? All that “if you’re feeling nauseous, that’s good news and you should be happy your body is coming back alive” crap? It’s more likely the symptoms of heat exhaustion. It’s not sweating, specifically, but rather the evaporation of sweat, that cools us — a process which is obviously impeded in a room heated to 105 °F.

I’m not saying Bikram yoga is necessarily terrible for you. Movement is good. Sweating is good. Increasing your heart rate is good. Stretching is good. 

What I am saying it’s at least a little dangerous. That it’s pretty crazy when your yoga instructor chastises you for leaving the room to pee or for daring to wipe the sweat from your face. That Bikram telling his followers to perform a backbend that will “hurt like hell” but not be afraid is not actually safe or foolproof. That the command to “stretch beyond your flexibility” is literally a command to tear your muscles and hurt yourself. That Bikram feels like more of a workout than it really is, and that it probably doesn’t cure cancer.

I really did enjoy it. Hell, I’ll probably even continue to pursue “hot” yoga — although I’d rather not support a studio that uses the man’s actual name.

But my little venture into Bikram yoga served as a nice — and timely — reminder that that extremist sects become successful for a reason, even when they seem insane and obvious to outside parties or in retrospect. It’s easy to fall into the hands of the convincing and charismatic, and yes, they’re still among us — no matter how wholesome their guise.