Last month, I went down to the World Barefoot Center to spend a few days barefoot water skiing with Keith St. Onge, the two-time World Barefoot Champion. Keith has been instrumental in helping me to lose weight and adopt a healthier lifestyle.
I was lamenting about the plateau that I had hit in my efforts to shed the rest of the weight that I wanted to lose. "I know what you need," said Keith. "Bikram yoga."
I knew that Bikram was done in a hot room, but beyond that, I didn't have a clue. Keith explained that Bikram yoga consisted of 26 different poses done twice, with some rest between several of them.
Oh, and the class was a mere 90 minutes.
"The room is very hot," he said. "You'll be dripping sweat, but think of it as the toxins leaving your body. It's tough to get through, but you'll feel great when you're done."
Ninety minutes of poses in a room heated to 105 degrees?
"I can barely make it through a one-hour yoga class at the local gym," I told him. "I'm not flexible and I can't balance well. How am I going to manage 90 minutes in a hot room? You've gotta be kidding me!"
I agreed to give it a try. Keith's fiance, Lauren Lindeman (from Willowbrook, Illinois) brought out a book by yoga guru, Bikram Choudhury and demonstrated the 26 poses. She explained the transition between some of the poses. That preparation was tremendously helpful. With the class being so hot, there was no way that I could wear my hearing aids in there and it would be impossible to lipread the instructor during some of the poses.
During the first five minutes of class, the sweat began to drip and my face turned a bright red. The heat was overbearing and I found myself tightening up during the breathing exercises. Panic started to set in and I had the overwhelming urge to run out of the class.
That's when my childbirth training began to kick in. One contraction at a time: breathe through it. One pose at a time: breathe through it. I pushed away the "how-am-I-going-to-survive-90-minutes-of-this" thought and focused on the pose at hand.
An amazing thing began to happen. I dove deep into the postures and the breathing, and lost track of the time. An hour into the class, I discovered that the heat made my muscles more flexible. Before I knew it, the class was over and Keith was motioning that it was time to leave. Every pore in my body was drenched in sweat, but my mind was energetic and clear. I felt triumphant in the fact that I managed to survive the class, but there was something deeper and more profound: a state of bliss.
When I arrived back home, I signed up for the unlimited classes for first-time customers at Bikram Yoga in Naperville. Some days were easier than others, and some days the classes proved tough to get through. I found myself looking forward to the 90-minutes of meditation.
As the quote from Pantanjali goes, "Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind." If you find yourself running through life on a treadmill with the incline rising like crazy, yoga may just be the thing you need to slow it all down.
