Hot Bikram Yoga
The sun salutation is not a move used in Hot Bikram yoga; which made me sad because it is one of the only ones I know. But salute or not, the sun was definitely in the room with us. Either that or we were in a furnace. The temperature (around 40˚C) is almost unbearable to some, but my inner lizard uncurled itself to enjoy the balmy warmth of the room. The heat, I have since learnt, is not to recreate Indian summer temperatures; it is to allow deeper stretching of the muscles during the series of poses.
It starts with breathing: long, deep, audible breaths to pull the heat from the room into your cold body. I find the breathing hard. I think I am a lazy breather; I try to use my lungs to push my rib cage out when instead I should be using muscles to pull my rib cage open and allowing my lungs to fill. But as the warmth of the room fills our bodies I can hear the breathing in the room change from the hissing of flattening bike tyres to the yawns of basking lions. And then the postures begin. It is a dynamic sequence that pushes your body in a series of compressions and stretches, always encouraged to go further than you think you could and find that extra inch that stretches out your spine and opens up your chest.
I can describe my body in numbers. I can tell you how tall I am, what shoe size or dress size I buy, the number of inches it takes to get from my belly button round my waist and back again. Yet I think I rarely am aware of what it is like to live inside that body, I’ve forgotten what it feels like. In the heat of the room my consciousness is drawn out of my head and my thoughts flow back into my limbs and soak onto my skin like the sweat that is dripping off me. I exist exactly in my body again, and I see that after years of bad habits it has lost the symmetry it was born with. My hips bend better in one direction than the other, on one leg I balance and on the other I wobble. There are many ways in which the body I woke up in today is different from the one I walked around in yesterday: today my nose itches and my heel is rubbing against my shoe. I barely notice that the keys under my fingers are cool and smooth until I remind myself that I am more than just a mind; I am a whole.
My reflection in the mirror swam in and out of focus and I was glad when the standing series ended and I could try to lose the dizzy feeling I had as we lay down on the floor, my body melting into my matt and my heart beating across the surface of my whole body.
When we came in to the room the air was hot and empty but now it is like soup; hot and full of all our effort and energy. The class ends again with breathing, this time quick breaths to push some of that heat back out of your body. And we leave the room so different from the grey pavement creatures that went in: we roll out like ripe tomatoes, with the heat of our bodies glowing on our cheeks.
Namaste.