Hailed in the US as one of the most popular yoga styles among movie stars, Bikram yoga has now found its way to Thailand. The instructor is Benjaporn Karoonkornsakul, a former investment banker who learnt Bikram yoga while working in Hong Kong.
Benjaporn, 31, followed a training course and received certification as a Bikram yoga instructor in New York earlier this year.
Introduced to the Western world for the first time in Los Angeles in 1974 by Bikram Choudhury, this form of yoga immediately differentiated itself from other schools.
Bikram yoga does not require the numerous and complex asanas (postures). A 90-minute session is composed of just 26 simple postures and is carried out in a room heated to about 34 degrees Celsius. Thus, it comes as no surprise to hear that many people have nicknamed Bikram yoga the ?hot yoga”.
“That’s the main way in which Bikram differs from other types of yoga. I personally feel it?s a perfect combination of yoga, a work out and meditation. And that makes it even better! You get to stretch, meditate and sweat a lot. It gets rid of all the pain and aches in your muscles and also clears your mind,” says Benjaporn.
Its inventor drew up new postures and drew upon some basic yoga poses to help strengthen his muscles after a severe childhood injury crippled him. Benjaporn says that all the 26 poses of Bikram yoga are easy yet offer maximum muscle strengthening.
“You won’t find any compromising poses in Bikram yoga. That’s because Bikram himself wanted to create yoga poses that were easy for him at that time, but I assure you that all enable the same maximum muscle build-up, stretching and strengthening effect. And during the 90 minutes of our class, we want to make sure that you can complete all 26 poses without skipping or compromising any particular one to make it easier on yourself. It?s simple and I’m sure everyone will be able to follow it. Here, we encourage you to work at your own pace and stay within your own limits. But we also make sure that you don?t short-change yourself,” says Benjaporn.
Benjaporn recommends Bikram yoga to anyone in good health aged 10 and above. She also stresses that beginners should come to classes regularly ? she suggests three or four times a week ? to see and feel the improvements in their well-being.
“Most people will experience an improvement in the knee and back area. Many also say that they’ve shed some unwanted kilos. During and after class, I encourage my students to drinks a lot of fluids so they won’t dehydrate.”
Benjaporn Karoonkornsakul, the Managing Director, founder and owner of Absolute Yoga Bangkok (http://www.absoluteyogabangkok.com) has trained to become the first bikram hot yoga teacher in Bangkok. After the first year, Absolute Yoga Bangkok branched out to offer other traditions of yoga and opened more locations to distinguish ourselves as Bangkok’s dedicated yoga place. Our future plans are to continue to expand both in locations and in what is most beneficial to the practioners of Thailand.
Showing posts with label Bikram Choudhury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bikram Choudhury. Show all posts
March 1, 2009
Sweatin’ with the Yogis
I’d say one of the successes of Bikram yoga is this immediate result. I’ve never sweated so much in my life. Before even starting the postures sweat was pouring off my body. This may sound awful, but the heat quickly escapes your mind as your focus is redirected to maintaining the 60-second poses. A 60 second hold is quite difficult because it involves balancing and holding your own body weight, resulting in a serious workout that reaches muscles never worked before.
Fortunately, Bikram yoga is easier than other yoga programs. It isn’t usually necessary to skip postures because you are unable to do them. Each posture is performed in sets of three so it’s no trouble to learn and perfect them faster. Bikram yoga requires two sided mirrors, and detailed, repetitive instructions so it isn’t necessary to look at the instructor. I was able to adjust my own posture and correct myself, providing an added benefit to yoga ? self-confidence.
What if I’m not flexible? Yoga isn’t all about flexibility. The aim of Bikram yoga is not to twist the body into bizarre pretzel shapes, but to strengthen the body’s natural range of motion, to restore flow throughout all bodily systems. The heated environment ensures a safe stretch as you loosen up over time. It isn’t necessary to reach all these positions in order to do yoga. All that matters is to attempt to go to your personal ‘edge’. As Khun Karoonkornsakul said, “Don’t expect so much. Yoga is not competitive. You have to let your ego go.”
How did yoga become so popular?It always helps when you know someone ‘in the business’ ? that is, the entertainment business. Bikram Choudhury has Hollywood swearing by his program; some of his more famous followers including Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Candice Bergen, and Brooke Shields.
It all started in 1972 when Richard Nixon visited the South Pacific. According to CBS, the former President suffered from phlebitis and summoned Choudhury for his special hot yoga. Nixon was supposedly so impressed with the treatment that he gave Bikram an open invitation to come and live in the U.S.
Choudhury has recently been granted copyright protection for his Bikram yoga sequence. In order to guarantee the teaching quality standard, only certified Bikram yoga teachers who have graduated from the 600-hour intensive training course at Bikram Yoga College of India in L.A. are allowed to teach or obtain a franchise to open a studio. As a result, up until now only two Bikram studios existed in Asia, namely in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Putting Bangkok in the forefront of the Asian yoga movement Thailand has now become the third milestone of yoga in Asia by the introduction of Benjaporn Karoonkornsakul, an ex-investment banker who’s been attracted to the Bikram yoga circle since her first Bikram hot yoga experience in Hong Kong. Wanting to stay fit during her travels, Koon Karoonkornsakul agreed to take a Bikram yoga class recommended by a friend.
Having no idea it was going to take place in a hot room, Benjaporn was surprised to find herself sweating profusely. As she said, it’s difficult for Asians to sweat, herself in particular, so this one time adventure was highly rewarding. So much so that she decided to enroll in Bikram’s training course and has now been practicing yoga for 25 years. This interest has brought her hometown, Bangkok, the first certified Bikram yoga facility, Absolute Yoga.
For Benjaporn, yoga is a serious workout without the dangers that tend to limit the range of other fitness programs. With running one usually tends to turn on a music channel and say, ?just give me five songs then I’m done.” Many people like yoga for the same reasons as Benjaporn: a 90 minute yoga workout entails a lot of stretching and focus ? you can’t look around or let your mind wander, you just do it and you’re done. 90 minutes have never gone by faster for me, nor have they been, when it comes to exercise, as mentally and physically rewarding.
So, what do they mean by asanas or poses?
Awkward Pose: What a suitable name. A seated, or better yet, squatting pose with knees bent and buttocks near the heels. To add difficulty, all this is done on the balls of your feet with arms held straight out in front. By the second repetition my thighs and upper arm muscles felt hotter than the room.
Toe Stand Pose: It looks more awkward than the awkward pose. This time squatting on the ball of one foot, the other leg rests on top of the thigh. Arms are in a prayer position, which is a good idea, because by this point I was praying to hold this pose as my muscles struggled to balance my body weight.
Camel Pose: Another one on my list to master, it’s almost like an inverted Bow Pose. Perched on the lower legs and bent over backward in order to place your head between your ankles, the lower back gets a further workout.
Bow Pose: Not even a locust could reach this state. Ideally the Full Locust Pose is taken to its ultimate limits. Upper body and arms reach up to meet raised legs behind you. Absolutely impossible for me at the time, but like yoga tends to be for most people, I’m destined to come back for more.
Full Locust Pose: The locust in flight. Now the upper body should be lifted with arms spread up and back, but that wasn’t about to happen for me. There was no way my ribs were going to get off the floor. Clearly my upper back and shoulder muscles are really out-of-shape.
Locust Pose: Named after an Oriental straight-winged grasshopper with legs and thighs so powerful that it can leap to heights two hundred times the length of its body. In this pose, one lays face down with arms to the side. The legs are lifted up, similar to a grasshopper, providing an intense workout of the buttocks, lower back, and back of the thighs.
Benjaporn Karoonkornsakul, the Managing Director, founder and owner of Absolute Yoga Bangkok (http://www.absoluteyogabangkok.com) has trained to become the first bikram hot yoga teacher in Bangkok. After the first year, Absolute Yoga Bangkok branched out to offer other traditions of yoga and opened more locations to distinguish ourselves as Bangkok’s dedicated yoga place. Our future plans are to continue to expand both in locations and in what is most beneficial to the practioners of Thailand.
Fortunately, Bikram yoga is easier than other yoga programs. It isn’t usually necessary to skip postures because you are unable to do them. Each posture is performed in sets of three so it’s no trouble to learn and perfect them faster. Bikram yoga requires two sided mirrors, and detailed, repetitive instructions so it isn’t necessary to look at the instructor. I was able to adjust my own posture and correct myself, providing an added benefit to yoga ? self-confidence.
What if I’m not flexible? Yoga isn’t all about flexibility. The aim of Bikram yoga is not to twist the body into bizarre pretzel shapes, but to strengthen the body’s natural range of motion, to restore flow throughout all bodily systems. The heated environment ensures a safe stretch as you loosen up over time. It isn’t necessary to reach all these positions in order to do yoga. All that matters is to attempt to go to your personal ‘edge’. As Khun Karoonkornsakul said, “Don’t expect so much. Yoga is not competitive. You have to let your ego go.”
How did yoga become so popular?It always helps when you know someone ‘in the business’ ? that is, the entertainment business. Bikram Choudhury has Hollywood swearing by his program; some of his more famous followers including Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Candice Bergen, and Brooke Shields.
It all started in 1972 when Richard Nixon visited the South Pacific. According to CBS, the former President suffered from phlebitis and summoned Choudhury for his special hot yoga. Nixon was supposedly so impressed with the treatment that he gave Bikram an open invitation to come and live in the U.S.
Choudhury has recently been granted copyright protection for his Bikram yoga sequence. In order to guarantee the teaching quality standard, only certified Bikram yoga teachers who have graduated from the 600-hour intensive training course at Bikram Yoga College of India in L.A. are allowed to teach or obtain a franchise to open a studio. As a result, up until now only two Bikram studios existed in Asia, namely in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Putting Bangkok in the forefront of the Asian yoga movement Thailand has now become the third milestone of yoga in Asia by the introduction of Benjaporn Karoonkornsakul, an ex-investment banker who’s been attracted to the Bikram yoga circle since her first Bikram hot yoga experience in Hong Kong. Wanting to stay fit during her travels, Koon Karoonkornsakul agreed to take a Bikram yoga class recommended by a friend.
Having no idea it was going to take place in a hot room, Benjaporn was surprised to find herself sweating profusely. As she said, it’s difficult for Asians to sweat, herself in particular, so this one time adventure was highly rewarding. So much so that she decided to enroll in Bikram’s training course and has now been practicing yoga for 25 years. This interest has brought her hometown, Bangkok, the first certified Bikram yoga facility, Absolute Yoga.
For Benjaporn, yoga is a serious workout without the dangers that tend to limit the range of other fitness programs. With running one usually tends to turn on a music channel and say, ?just give me five songs then I’m done.” Many people like yoga for the same reasons as Benjaporn: a 90 minute yoga workout entails a lot of stretching and focus ? you can’t look around or let your mind wander, you just do it and you’re done. 90 minutes have never gone by faster for me, nor have they been, when it comes to exercise, as mentally and physically rewarding.
So, what do they mean by asanas or poses?
Awkward Pose: What a suitable name. A seated, or better yet, squatting pose with knees bent and buttocks near the heels. To add difficulty, all this is done on the balls of your feet with arms held straight out in front. By the second repetition my thighs and upper arm muscles felt hotter than the room.
Toe Stand Pose: It looks more awkward than the awkward pose. This time squatting on the ball of one foot, the other leg rests on top of the thigh. Arms are in a prayer position, which is a good idea, because by this point I was praying to hold this pose as my muscles struggled to balance my body weight.
Camel Pose: Another one on my list to master, it’s almost like an inverted Bow Pose. Perched on the lower legs and bent over backward in order to place your head between your ankles, the lower back gets a further workout.
Bow Pose: Not even a locust could reach this state. Ideally the Full Locust Pose is taken to its ultimate limits. Upper body and arms reach up to meet raised legs behind you. Absolutely impossible for me at the time, but like yoga tends to be for most people, I’m destined to come back for more.
Full Locust Pose: The locust in flight. Now the upper body should be lifted with arms spread up and back, but that wasn’t about to happen for me. There was no way my ribs were going to get off the floor. Clearly my upper back and shoulder muscles are really out-of-shape.
Locust Pose: Named after an Oriental straight-winged grasshopper with legs and thighs so powerful that it can leap to heights two hundred times the length of its body. In this pose, one lays face down with arms to the side. The legs are lifted up, similar to a grasshopper, providing an intense workout of the buttocks, lower back, and back of the thighs.
Benjaporn Karoonkornsakul, the Managing Director, founder and owner of Absolute Yoga Bangkok (http://www.absoluteyogabangkok.com) has trained to become the first bikram hot yoga teacher in Bangkok. After the first year, Absolute Yoga Bangkok branched out to offer other traditions of yoga and opened more locations to distinguish ourselves as Bangkok’s dedicated yoga place. Our future plans are to continue to expand both in locations and in what is most beneficial to the practioners of Thailand.
February 26, 2009
My Beginning Yoga Experience
As I walked out of the Bikram Yoga studio toward my car after my first class, I found myself declaring, “If I can actually do this yoga, it will totally change my whole life.” I had only been able to attempt half the postures, with the rest of the time lying down, just dealing with the heated, humid room. But it was a revelation as to the sorry state of my body’s condition, and the pathetic condition of my mind-body connection.
I had already made the firm decision to do yoga class every day for two months, after reading Bikram Choudhury’s introductory yoga book. He says, “Give us two months. We will change you.” After living with years of back pain due to compressed lumbar discs and a sedentary lifestyle, I was ready for that change–so ready, in fact, I was willing to subject my de-conditioned body to 90 minutes of vigorous cardiovascular activity in 105? heat and 60% humidity (making the “apparent temperature” somewhere around 145?). But the prospective discipline of it appealed to me, and soon I was actually enjoying the gentle torture of it, as I began to move muscles, bones and cartilage that hadn’t been moved in years.
Beyond the rewards of seeing my body stretch and reach new ranges of motion in class, it was after and between classes where the payoffs truly lay. Bending over to pick up something no longer hurt, standing up after sitting for a while no longer involved pain and stiffness, and I began noticing how good I felt instead of how bad.
Of course, getting to these improvements took a while; and although I had committed to two months of daily practice, it has now been nearly eight months, and I can now say yoga is an indispensable part of my life. This path has blatantly announced to me how I had incrementally reduced my own range of motion with each tiny discomfort, each injury, each bout of stiffness, in an attempt to protect myself from future pain. It is a common life strategy, but a very wrongheaded one. The body needs to increase its range of motion over time, and each discomfort or injury points the way. As the World’s Stiffest Person at 50, I was on the fast track to being a crippled old man by 60.
I drew a valuable conclusion from this, that all the little aches and pains and microconditions we had as twentysomethings, if not dealt with in a broad and holistic way, are the exact pains and conditions that amplify over time leading us to our ultimate demise. From this perspective, what is commonly referred to as “aging,” is actually more like an excuse for not answering the body’s calls for help early on. I’m just not buying the “I’m just getting too old for this” refrain I hear from my friends. Time, friction, and gravity will take their respective tolls, but only with permission from you. If I end up dying at 94, I would rather have gotten there vital, active and pain-free, instead of feeble, crippled, and tormented.
The main thing I’ve learned from my beginning yoga experience is that it takes MUCH MORE WORK than I thought to reverse my past slothfulness, and much more diligence on the day-to-day to maintain what gains I have acheived. Bikram refers to the “body’s bank account.” You invest into the account with yoga, and then spend the account when not doing yoga. Of course, I found I was sorely and deplorably in DEBT, and am only now seeing the light at the end of that tunnel, striving for the day I can touch my forehead to my toes, rest my leg on my shoulder, and nap on my back with my head on my feet.
SEVEN MORE THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN BIKRAM YOGA
# 1. If yoga turns it on, yoga will turn it off. I’ve had many classes where a muscle or joint will “release” (I used to wrongly identify it as “strain”), causing pain and stiffness or soreness after class. By the end of the next class, invariably, that soreness and pain disappears.
# 2. Your body is stronger than you think it is, and you have more energy than you think you do. One day in class I decided to completely ignore my thoughts as to what I could or couldn’t do in class, and was surprised to find a whole new range of motion, and a whole new area of energy and strength. The body obeys the limitations imposed upon it by the mind. Because Bikram Yoga is one of the most strenuous forms of hatha yoga, it is easy to claim to myself that I MUST be tired after all that exertion. Letting myself engage in this way, certainly obtained the result. The REALITY of yoga class is that it CREATES energy. Although it is natural to feel weakness or exhaustion, that feeling is actually RECOVERY, and in a few minutes, I claim to myself that I am refreshed and energetically ready for life. And, magically, I am.
# 3. Trust your body to know what it needs to do. Patience. As obedient as the body is to the limitations of the mind, it has also retained the awareness of the sequence of how those limitations were imposed, and knows how to undo them. The deeper problem with this is that many times there seem to be opposing limitations and confused commands operating within the body. These were put there by the mind, resulting in the wrong muscles being used to do certain motions. The trick, of course, is to get the mind out of the way, and it WILL resolve.
# 4. How you do yoga is how you do your life. The corollary to this is what happens during yoga practice is a microcosm of what happens to you in life. Paying attention to this is the road to revelation–as well as some inner grins.
# 5. Flexibility and core strength are the keys to health. Nutrition is important, drinking lots of water is important, getting proper amounts of sleep is important–all things I had been doing throughout my life. Unfortunately, I had overlooked the two most important things. Exercise is inadequate (and I dare say useless) without flexibility and core strength training. Again, it has taken much more than I thought to keep my body’s bank account from going into the red, and the quickest way into the black is with flexibility and core strength training. (By “core strength” I mean the deepest core muscles that create movement in the body, such as abdominal and back muscles.) With a high degree of flexibility, all the enzymes, minerals, blood flow, and myriad other rejuvenating substances the body creates to heal and build itself can get to those areas that need it. Without flexibility, there is withering and dying. I also noticed that I didn’t engage my abdominal muscles when I should, such as when bending over, lifting, carrying, walking, standing up. This set up bad habits of motion, and the obvious developing flacidity and inappropriate muscle recruitment.
# 6. Breathe. Combine this command with how you do yoga is how you do your life, and you’ll quickly see where you cut off your life force in daily living. I would stop breathing when I felt weak, for example. Ooops.
# 7. Use your mind to guide and expand. This is a corollary to Number 3 above. I noticed that by setting and visualizing goals on each posture, as well as for the entire class, and by refusing to entertain any other thoughts–such as how hot it is in the room, what hurts, what I’m afraid of, etcetera, etcetera–lo and behold progress gets made. The body wants to feel better. Help it out by concentrating on improving each posture, and when not doing that, concentrating on breathing. I’m saving myself a lot of unnecessary torture by applying this point in my practice, and in my life.
EMOTIONAL/SPIRITUAL CHANGES
These are life’s small potatoes…The most impressive effect underlying all the physical changes has been my greatly increased ability to confront life in the proper perspective–what I’ll call the “Small Potatoes Effect.” This is where one does something so monumentally difficult that the rest of life’s daily conflicts, conundrums, irritations and niggly stresses seem to all pale in importance. Or, more accurately, they begin to assume the quality of merely the backdrop texture accompanying my personal goals and purposes. They become the tiny, swirling dust devils stirred up by my atmospheric movements of intention. These are no longer “stresses”–they are revealing acknowledgements that life is changing according to my desires.
As the practice advances, I’m wondering if perhaps it is not so much that it is “monumentally difficult” to do this yoga, but that certain firmly embedded toxic conditions residing for decades deep within organs, muscle and bone are at last being purged–and that translates as a monumental achievement on some subliminal cellular or auric level.
Whatever it is, it has restored my sense of humor, allowed me to rediscover my enjoyment of living, and added an aura of leisure in everyday activities, even as I find myself accomplishing more.
And so I continue on with my daily practice of Bikram Yoga with an inner smile, remembering that Bikram says, “You gotta go through hell to get to heaven,” and remembering that the only reason the “hell” is there was my own doing. But with yoga, my days of redemption are at hand.
Boyd Martin is a well-known writer and musician (drummer) in the Portland, Oregon, area, having toured the U.S. and Europe with national-level musical acts. He is an avid, daily Bikram Yoga student, with a keen interest in metaphysics, natural health, and alternative healing methods.
I had already made the firm decision to do yoga class every day for two months, after reading Bikram Choudhury’s introductory yoga book. He says, “Give us two months. We will change you.” After living with years of back pain due to compressed lumbar discs and a sedentary lifestyle, I was ready for that change–so ready, in fact, I was willing to subject my de-conditioned body to 90 minutes of vigorous cardiovascular activity in 105? heat and 60% humidity (making the “apparent temperature” somewhere around 145?). But the prospective discipline of it appealed to me, and soon I was actually enjoying the gentle torture of it, as I began to move muscles, bones and cartilage that hadn’t been moved in years.
Beyond the rewards of seeing my body stretch and reach new ranges of motion in class, it was after and between classes where the payoffs truly lay. Bending over to pick up something no longer hurt, standing up after sitting for a while no longer involved pain and stiffness, and I began noticing how good I felt instead of how bad.
Of course, getting to these improvements took a while; and although I had committed to two months of daily practice, it has now been nearly eight months, and I can now say yoga is an indispensable part of my life. This path has blatantly announced to me how I had incrementally reduced my own range of motion with each tiny discomfort, each injury, each bout of stiffness, in an attempt to protect myself from future pain. It is a common life strategy, but a very wrongheaded one. The body needs to increase its range of motion over time, and each discomfort or injury points the way. As the World’s Stiffest Person at 50, I was on the fast track to being a crippled old man by 60.
I drew a valuable conclusion from this, that all the little aches and pains and microconditions we had as twentysomethings, if not dealt with in a broad and holistic way, are the exact pains and conditions that amplify over time leading us to our ultimate demise. From this perspective, what is commonly referred to as “aging,” is actually more like an excuse for not answering the body’s calls for help early on. I’m just not buying the “I’m just getting too old for this” refrain I hear from my friends. Time, friction, and gravity will take their respective tolls, but only with permission from you. If I end up dying at 94, I would rather have gotten there vital, active and pain-free, instead of feeble, crippled, and tormented.
The main thing I’ve learned from my beginning yoga experience is that it takes MUCH MORE WORK than I thought to reverse my past slothfulness, and much more diligence on the day-to-day to maintain what gains I have acheived. Bikram refers to the “body’s bank account.” You invest into the account with yoga, and then spend the account when not doing yoga. Of course, I found I was sorely and deplorably in DEBT, and am only now seeing the light at the end of that tunnel, striving for the day I can touch my forehead to my toes, rest my leg on my shoulder, and nap on my back with my head on my feet.
SEVEN MORE THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN BIKRAM YOGA
# 1. If yoga turns it on, yoga will turn it off. I’ve had many classes where a muscle or joint will “release” (I used to wrongly identify it as “strain”), causing pain and stiffness or soreness after class. By the end of the next class, invariably, that soreness and pain disappears.
# 2. Your body is stronger than you think it is, and you have more energy than you think you do. One day in class I decided to completely ignore my thoughts as to what I could or couldn’t do in class, and was surprised to find a whole new range of motion, and a whole new area of energy and strength. The body obeys the limitations imposed upon it by the mind. Because Bikram Yoga is one of the most strenuous forms of hatha yoga, it is easy to claim to myself that I MUST be tired after all that exertion. Letting myself engage in this way, certainly obtained the result. The REALITY of yoga class is that it CREATES energy. Although it is natural to feel weakness or exhaustion, that feeling is actually RECOVERY, and in a few minutes, I claim to myself that I am refreshed and energetically ready for life. And, magically, I am.
# 3. Trust your body to know what it needs to do. Patience. As obedient as the body is to the limitations of the mind, it has also retained the awareness of the sequence of how those limitations were imposed, and knows how to undo them. The deeper problem with this is that many times there seem to be opposing limitations and confused commands operating within the body. These were put there by the mind, resulting in the wrong muscles being used to do certain motions. The trick, of course, is to get the mind out of the way, and it WILL resolve.
# 4. How you do yoga is how you do your life. The corollary to this is what happens during yoga practice is a microcosm of what happens to you in life. Paying attention to this is the road to revelation–as well as some inner grins.
# 5. Flexibility and core strength are the keys to health. Nutrition is important, drinking lots of water is important, getting proper amounts of sleep is important–all things I had been doing throughout my life. Unfortunately, I had overlooked the two most important things. Exercise is inadequate (and I dare say useless) without flexibility and core strength training. Again, it has taken much more than I thought to keep my body’s bank account from going into the red, and the quickest way into the black is with flexibility and core strength training. (By “core strength” I mean the deepest core muscles that create movement in the body, such as abdominal and back muscles.) With a high degree of flexibility, all the enzymes, minerals, blood flow, and myriad other rejuvenating substances the body creates to heal and build itself can get to those areas that need it. Without flexibility, there is withering and dying. I also noticed that I didn’t engage my abdominal muscles when I should, such as when bending over, lifting, carrying, walking, standing up. This set up bad habits of motion, and the obvious developing flacidity and inappropriate muscle recruitment.
# 6. Breathe. Combine this command with how you do yoga is how you do your life, and you’ll quickly see where you cut off your life force in daily living. I would stop breathing when I felt weak, for example. Ooops.
# 7. Use your mind to guide and expand. This is a corollary to Number 3 above. I noticed that by setting and visualizing goals on each posture, as well as for the entire class, and by refusing to entertain any other thoughts–such as how hot it is in the room, what hurts, what I’m afraid of, etcetera, etcetera–lo and behold progress gets made. The body wants to feel better. Help it out by concentrating on improving each posture, and when not doing that, concentrating on breathing. I’m saving myself a lot of unnecessary torture by applying this point in my practice, and in my life.
EMOTIONAL/SPIRITUAL CHANGES
These are life’s small potatoes…The most impressive effect underlying all the physical changes has been my greatly increased ability to confront life in the proper perspective–what I’ll call the “Small Potatoes Effect.” This is where one does something so monumentally difficult that the rest of life’s daily conflicts, conundrums, irritations and niggly stresses seem to all pale in importance. Or, more accurately, they begin to assume the quality of merely the backdrop texture accompanying my personal goals and purposes. They become the tiny, swirling dust devils stirred up by my atmospheric movements of intention. These are no longer “stresses”–they are revealing acknowledgements that life is changing according to my desires.
As the practice advances, I’m wondering if perhaps it is not so much that it is “monumentally difficult” to do this yoga, but that certain firmly embedded toxic conditions residing for decades deep within organs, muscle and bone are at last being purged–and that translates as a monumental achievement on some subliminal cellular or auric level.
Whatever it is, it has restored my sense of humor, allowed me to rediscover my enjoyment of living, and added an aura of leisure in everyday activities, even as I find myself accomplishing more.
And so I continue on with my daily practice of Bikram Yoga with an inner smile, remembering that Bikram says, “You gotta go through hell to get to heaven,” and remembering that the only reason the “hell” is there was my own doing. But with yoga, my days of redemption are at hand.
Boyd Martin is a well-known writer and musician (drummer) in the Portland, Oregon, area, having toured the U.S. and Europe with national-level musical acts. He is an avid, daily Bikram Yoga student, with a keen interest in metaphysics, natural health, and alternative healing methods.
February 23, 2009
Why Not Try Bikram Yoga?
There are many types of yoga, but Bikram yoga tends to stand out from the rest. Even though the practice is largely the same, you’ll immediately notice the difference in the environment — the room in which Bikram yoga is performed is heated between 90 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit!
Bikram yoga follows a consistent program, employing 26 various poses, each of which you practice twice during a session.
The poses flow as follows. You’ll start with Standing Postures, then progress to Backbends. Then you’ll practice Forward Bends and Twists. You will do the poses using the Kapalabhati Breath or the Breath Of Fire techniques, which are advanced techniques known for their energizing and cleansing qualities.
It’s Getting Hot in Here
The purpose of the heat in Bikram yoga is to help you ease in to a deeper, safer pose. The heat helps your body’s flexibility, making it easier to achieve better postures and making your overall practice more effective. Some of the poses you’ll do in Bikram yoga are quite challenging, and the heat will help you enter them more comfortably, and ideally get more out of them. Also, with the increased temperature, your body will sweat more readily, releasing more toxins from your pores. The heat also lowers your risk for injuries.
When you practice Bikram yoga, you aren’t simply stretching the muscles in your body. You’re also working and massaging the internal organs, which helps to strengthen and lubricate the body’s glands and improve the nervous system. With Bikram yoga, you’ll work and strengthen your muscles, joints and ligaments. All this work — especially with the help of Bikram’s specialized environment — helps to flush toxins out of your body and provides the kind of exercise your muscles crave.
Can You Stand the Heat? Get Into the Kitchen!
Aptly named, this yoga practice was developed by Yogi Bikram Choudhury, who first began his yoga practice at the age of three, then studied yoga for a long while with the renowned physical culturalist, Bishnu Ghosh. Together they developed this form as one of the ultimate ways to help the body through series of especially challenging stretches and poses. It goes without saying that the Bikram beginner requires a skilled instructor to get started, as these poses are more challenging than some. The high temperature is also key to the process. As a result, more than other forms, you’ll need to take instruction at a yoga school or some of the higher end fitness clubs.
You can easily learn more about Bikram yoga to any of the on-topic books available on the Web. You’ll find that Bikram yoga offers a wide range of challenging poses, and many people find it a wonderful way of widening their yoga experience. If you’re ready to branch out and try something new, be sure to try Bikram yoga.
About the Author
Ever thought of becoming a yoga instructor? Stop by http://www.YogiSutras.com to read about twelve ordinary people who made the transition from student to certified instructor. You?ll also find yoga accessories and yoga poses.
Bikram yoga follows a consistent program, employing 26 various poses, each of which you practice twice during a session.
The poses flow as follows. You’ll start with Standing Postures, then progress to Backbends. Then you’ll practice Forward Bends and Twists. You will do the poses using the Kapalabhati Breath or the Breath Of Fire techniques, which are advanced techniques known for their energizing and cleansing qualities.
It’s Getting Hot in Here
The purpose of the heat in Bikram yoga is to help you ease in to a deeper, safer pose. The heat helps your body’s flexibility, making it easier to achieve better postures and making your overall practice more effective. Some of the poses you’ll do in Bikram yoga are quite challenging, and the heat will help you enter them more comfortably, and ideally get more out of them. Also, with the increased temperature, your body will sweat more readily, releasing more toxins from your pores. The heat also lowers your risk for injuries.
When you practice Bikram yoga, you aren’t simply stretching the muscles in your body. You’re also working and massaging the internal organs, which helps to strengthen and lubricate the body’s glands and improve the nervous system. With Bikram yoga, you’ll work and strengthen your muscles, joints and ligaments. All this work — especially with the help of Bikram’s specialized environment — helps to flush toxins out of your body and provides the kind of exercise your muscles crave.
Can You Stand the Heat? Get Into the Kitchen!
Aptly named, this yoga practice was developed by Yogi Bikram Choudhury, who first began his yoga practice at the age of three, then studied yoga for a long while with the renowned physical culturalist, Bishnu Ghosh. Together they developed this form as one of the ultimate ways to help the body through series of especially challenging stretches and poses. It goes without saying that the Bikram beginner requires a skilled instructor to get started, as these poses are more challenging than some. The high temperature is also key to the process. As a result, more than other forms, you’ll need to take instruction at a yoga school or some of the higher end fitness clubs.
You can easily learn more about Bikram yoga to any of the on-topic books available on the Web. You’ll find that Bikram yoga offers a wide range of challenging poses, and many people find it a wonderful way of widening their yoga experience. If you’re ready to branch out and try something new, be sure to try Bikram yoga.
About the Author
Ever thought of becoming a yoga instructor? Stop by http://www.YogiSutras.com to read about twelve ordinary people who made the transition from student to certified instructor. You?ll also find yoga accessories and yoga poses.
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