Hot 26 Yoga

Formerly known as Bikram Yoga

Bikram Choudhury earned a nasty reputation for his sexual assault and abuse on yoga teachers in his yoga training institutes. Listening to an interview with him where he defended himself that he simply wouldn’t do that because he has enough women falling all over him, begging and pleading for just one drop of his semen, was enough for me to get rather repulsed by him.

Because of all that, this yoga, formerly known as Bikram yoga, is often renamed Hot26 yoga.

And, as icky as the Bikram sexual assault stories are, the yoga is pretty amazing and has had some pretty amazing effects on my own mental health and overall wellbeing.

(Also, there are those who contest the belief that he really created it, but rather assembled the knowledge through the knowledge of other medical doctors, etc, etc.)

But for me, quite frankly, it really doesn’t matter who created it and that he is attached to it, because of how much better I feel after doing Hot 26 yoga.

There are many types of yoga, but this one, Bikram Yoga is a series of 2 sets of 26 postures, over a course of 90 minutes in 105 degree heat.

I know. Whew, hot.

Many friends and acquaintances tell me simply couldn’t endure that heat. Fair. And true, that is really hot; even other forms of hot vinyasa and other heated yoga classes are only held in a room with 90 degree heat.

I have read it is meant to mimic the weather/heat of India, where the yoga was created.

It does take a while to get used to the heat. My instructors have told me that you need to give your body at least three classes for it to adjust to the extreme heat. Some say that in those first three classes your goal is just to stay in the room, don’t even pressure yourself to do the postures. They say it’s okay to just “take a knee” if you feel dizzy or light-headed. After a few classes, you do get (much more) used to the temperatures though.

I feel fortunate that I can handle heat well. Though, I understand this practice isn’t for everyone.

But I want to share my experience here because, more than any other form of exercise, none has benefitted my mental health as much as this particular type of yoga. (Though others, like cardio workouts do help, but nothing can hold a candle to the after effects of this, for me.)

Also, there are benefits to just doing the postures by themselves, in non-105 degree heat. I’ve done this before and while the process and results, I think, aren’t as intense, you do feel good afterwards—say my students and friends that I’ve roped it into trying it out.

The poses help with spine strengthening, balance, flexibility, hip opening, increased mobility, alleviating carpel tunnel syndrome.

Actually, one of my favorite parts of this yoga was that they would tell us what each of the postures were doing to benefit us.

“This is really good for digestion, massaging the transverse colon.”

“This is a perfect marriage between the heart and the lungs.”

“This is flushing out your kidneys.”

“This gives you a mini heart attack so you can avoid the big one in the future.”

“This gives your pituitary gland a natural boost, jump starts your metabolism.”

Etc.

Sweating really does help the process. The heat increases the cardiovascular work of it. The heat makes you work harder; your heart pumps more. Your body can stretch more. You burn more calories.

It is hard. But as I’ve heard one of my yoga instructors say— “About a third of the way through the floor routine, I start to feel much better.”

Me too.

I don’t know why exactly, other than, at that point, my spine is warmed up, I’m sweating and breathing, and I am starting to feel the benefits from the first 2/3 of class.

At the end of the class, they emphasize the importance of the two minute (minimal) dead body pose/ savasna. I’ve heard my instructors say so many times: “This is where the magic happens. This is where you get to absorb the benefits of your work here. You can now relax and absorb the medicine you’ve created for your body. Now let body absorb it.”

It may sound hokey and it may sound all new-age, hippie-esque, but there is something to it. At least for me and for my mental health.

I usually walk out the door, after class, feeling oh-so much lighter.

I consider it one of the best anti-depressants that I have ever had/tried. And this one comes without the crappy side effects of weight gain, lethargy, nausea, low libido, etc, like the others do.

There are times where I have almost cried because of how much better I feel then when I walked in the studio. I feel light, happy, normal-like, a foreigner to someone with mental illness/depression. My mood is amazing.

They say to go three times a week to really get the benefits. Though as often as you can, even better. I hear this a lot from my yoga instructors.

For me, there’s a genetic element: I remember my mother telling me that cardio/exercise really helped her mental health. After she had her first heart attack in her early 40’s, she started to play racquetball, to improve her cardiovascular health. But she told me that she was amazed at how much it helped with her depression.

That is a bittersweet recollection; I so wish she could have/would have stuck with it.

Nonetheless, I am thankful for the lesson that she learned and shared with me. (Though it did take me a good decade to make the change myself, to my own lifestyle.)

I too never would have believed that exercise would have such an amazing impact on my mood and mental health as it does.

I know it is often times discussed that runners get a natural high, a runner’s high, and that exercise helps with endorphins, the feel-good hormone.

But I get that many of us have a hard time getting started with exercise, and establishing it as a routine, doing the work, period. How much more if you’re in a depressive episode and can barely get out of bed?

Please don’t misunderstand: I also am not saying that any exercise will have these amazing results and that all people will benefit from Hot 26 as I do/have. (Though…I also don’t think I’ve ever heard of or read that exercise hurts mental health or makes depression or a mood worse, quite the opposite. It certainly seems worth a try.) But for me, and whatever genetic makeup and type of depression that I seem to have inherited from my mother, cardio exercise and hot yoga really help improve my mood and mental state.

…To walk out of a hot yoga studio, with teary-eyes, in pure joy and gratitude, because you feel like an entirely different person, and look up and thank God for that moment of renewal, it is truly mind-blowing. And this happens to me. I’ve experienced it many times. And it always astounds me, that it can have that much of an impact.

Again, I share this because—had I stayed where I grew up—I never would have known of the options available to me. The various methods of improving my mental health, including hot yoga.

And I think we should know options and to share them with others. We should try and explore different things to see if they can work for us, to improve our moods and mental health.

Depression and anxiety are tricky things. I don’t think there is a one-size fits all to what will treat them and work for everyone. (God, it would be so much easier if that were true.) There are so many varieties.

But, please, believe me, I *do* understand—from my own experiences the utter hopelessness of depression—the feelings and thoughts of: “I’ll always feel like this” or “what’s the use or the fucking point of even trying” and “I want to get hit by a mack truck and die.”

(So, if you’re reading this like—she wants me to work out? She has no idea and not really serious depression if she is suggesting I do that shit…)

I do hear those objections. I’ve raised them myself at a different time. But I am also in another place now and I am so glad for others words of encouragement they extended to me when I was elsewhere, when they encouraged me to try hot yoga or EMDR, or hell, even cbd oil.

I am so grateful for my mama who said to me, “Danielle, there is no point of suffering when there are options out there and things to try.”

My mama gave great advice:

So, I want to say to those hurting and looking for hope: Please know there are many options and resources. Please try. Hang on to the belief even if it isn’t something you can believe right now, but have to take it from others:

It will not always be *this* bad.

Sometimes words of hope from others are all we have to go on, to hang on to, in our darkest moments.

But YOU are worth it; to try. Even if you have to drag yourself out of bed amidst a red face, full of tears and sobs, and just take a deep breath and take all the energy and willpower you have to just fucking press play on the cardio workout…(That was me…because I knew I’d feel better at the end of it and it was an unhealthier option than nursing a bottle of wine.)

You are not alone; there are others of us out there.

Please, please, please don’t give up.

<3