Today is the first day off of yoga that I have had since Sunday. I went to Bikram yoga for five consecutive days after work. I worked myself deeply but yet I still feel slight pangs of guilt that I didn’t go to yoga today. Instead I stayed home and cleaned house but I found myself thinking about yoga several times throughout my chores. I had to work at staying present and focused on my tasks which were important and not thinking about missing today’s Saturday Community Yoga class. I know full well that I am MORE than entitled to take some time off but somehow it feels as though I am only cheating myself in the end. The way I feel after doing a yoga class is far better than the way I feel after cleaning house. Yoga has replaced housecleaning as my preferred method of physical prayer and meditation. It has become my physical mantra.
I bought my first Amazon Local voucher for yoga classes back
in November thinking it would be a good thing to alleviate any holiday
stress. I never got around to using the
voucher until January and it just wasn’t a good fit for me. The studio, although lovely, was further from
home than I wanted making it difficult to motivate. I used what I could of the voucher and was
just about done when the next offer from Amazon Local came in – a smaller
downtown studio called Yogini’s. The
name sounded fun but this time I decided to do some research and found they
were a hatha yoga studio and did the Bikram – hot – yoga that I was interested
in trying. I looked up the schedules and
they had a beginning Bikram class at 4:30 which was perfect with my work schedule. I would be able to hit the place after work. I looked up Bikram
yoga and read what I could about it. I read the schedule and decided it had perfect timing for me after work and I thought the hot aspect sounded awesome after a day in a cold building; air conditioning blasting down on me plus I could get a good 90 minute workout in and be home by 6:15. Almost too good to be true. I was excited about finally
having a way to work out on my way home and Yogini’s sounded reasonable if I
found I liked them. I decided it sounded like worth a try so I went ahead and bought the voucher for 2 months. With classes that
would work with my schedule downtown I was excited to start taking hot yoga. 
I showed up for my first class unprepared at best. I showed up all excited and found that I was
the only student that night. I met the
owner Kim and her daughters Roz and Ruby.
Roz did the class with me that first night where I stumbled through the
poses but enjoyed it. I found that my
mat was useless without a towel because they heat the studio to 104 degrees and
increase the humidity as well. Kim put
some essential oils in the humidifier which was terrific. She was patience as she explained the hatha
yoga practice. Since it was my first
time doing hot yoga she gave me a bottle of water on the house but let it be
known that the next time it would cost me a buck. I did the poses the best I could and although
I sweat like a mule I felt FANTASTIC afterwards! I was ready to sign up forever right them but
wanted to do the 4:30 Beginning Bikram listed on the schedule on the
website. Kim explained that was a silent
Bikram class and that until I knew the poses I should focus on some of the
Synergy classes listed until I was familiar with the poses and hot
environment. I thought that sounded
reasonable so I started going to the later classes at 6:15 to learn what I
could about the practice of hatha yoga.
I bought a used copy of Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class at Ruby’s
suggestion. 
I talked my sister in to going to a month of classes on
another voucher since she worked a couple days a week close to the studio. Her first visit she was surprised and excited
to see a picture of Yogananda, on the wall since she’d been reading his books
for many years. She learned that Kim and
her family had studied with Yogananda for many years they were a very spiritual
group of women. My sister bought me a
copy of “Autobiography of a Yogi” and I read that while she and I would meet
for classes a couple days a week and then I would go by myself the other
days. Despite getting home – again –
close to 8 pm it was a spiritual awakening for me. I was inspired by reading about Paramahansana
Yogananda and it did help with my understanding of hatha yoga to learn of his journey in kriya yoga. His
brother Biksnu Ghosh was the guru of Bikram Choudury so it all had its
roots in hatha yoga. I knew that I had
been lead there to practice Bikram yoga and I wanted to take that 4:30 Silent
Bikram class!
After her month was over my sister started going to a place
close to her home and she encouraged me to go ahead and go to the class at 4:30
since I already knew the poses and it would be fine – I had this. By the time I got around to telling Kim that
I was going to start showing up for that class she had decided to make that a
Beginning Bikram class with a Silent Bikram class at 3 as there had been so
much demand for a Beginning Bikram class.
She’d been running a lot of different social media coupons and it was
working out for her new studio. More and
more students had started coming in the time I had been going so it was fun to
watch this local business grow.
It was also fun to be a part of something greater – a
community of other people committed to the practice of hatha yoga. It felt very strongly spiritual for me as I
started learning the poses and by the time I started going to the Bikram classes
it started to feel like a personal mantra that I do with my body. It is a way to renew my body and also my
spirit. To be still, to enter the
stillness with intent to heal and practice peace while sweating and using the
heat of the studio to go beyond my edge is very fulfilling for on a spiritual
level. Although I am not really excited
by the Hindu/Self Realization Fellowship aspect it does have some Zen things
that give me a great sense of peace. The
meditational aspect of it and the staying present worked into my Buddhist
leaning Unity faith.
So now it’s a part of my schedule. I get off work and drive a couple miles down
the road to Yogini’s and I do 90 minutes of yoga and sweat like a fool
then I come home and change/shower and decide what we should have for
dinner. I wish I could say I have lost a
lot of weight but I haven’t. In Bikram’s
book (which is very funny!) he says that your metabolism levels out where it
wants to be because the poses have stimulated those glands. I do see that my arms and legs are
firmer. I do so wish I could say the
same about my stomach but I think it’s just something that I will have to live with. I have the stomach of a 53 year
old mother of 2 because I AM a 53 year old mother of 2. However, I have taken this step as one of
many with the intention of in improving my health both physically and
spiritually.
I do love the staff and the studio. I love the smell, the feel and the light in
the building. I love everything about it and even after 2 months of going I
still get excited to think about going there after work! I have met other women there and even took one class next to a man my adult kids had as an elementary school choral music teacher. It’s been a liberating experience just like
the hubby said it would when I first started taking classes at the place that
didn’t work out. He was right. It’s been a journey of discovery into what
works for me to meet the need I have in my life for a practice of yoga. It took a while but I found a home at
Yogini’s. I signed up for membership and
I am enjoying my daily routine of doing my full body mantra.
We are expansive. We
are but a small part of something bigger but no less important than any other
parts. When I go back to the basics of
breath I can see that. Yoga has taught
me that.
