Bikram yoga: the time I called it quits

Yes, dear friends, the end has arrived. I quit Bikram. After 87 days.

For the record, I'm not quitting forever, but I AM quitting this drop-the-rest-of-your-life-and-go-every-f'ing-day nonsense.

You may recall that I was trying to make it to 90 days. So the fact that I made it to 87 days seems pretty pathetic, but I can't even pretend like I'm upset about it.

The thing is, I hit a wall. Not a physical one, because my practice was actually continuing to improve all the time. The wall I hit was mental. And I hit it hard.

Nearly 3 months of daily practice, as much as it made me physically stronger and healthier, was slowly driving me insane. I was exhausted from waking up to go to yoga before work on the days where I had post-work plans (which was most days). I was sad about not playing nearly as much volleyball as I would have liked. I was tired of hand-washing clothes and towels DAILY because there's no way that I could do laundry at the same pace as I was getting my belongings sweaty and gross. I was annoyed at having to constantly rearrange my schedule in order to fit in the nearly 2.5 hours you have to allot for class. Bikram was starting to own my life.

Mostly, though, I got bored. Doing the same 26 poses and listening to the same dialogue every day no longer kept my attention the same way it used to. I found myself daydreaming in class, going through the motions because I had long since learned what came next, the teacher's voice more background noise than instructional tool.

On day 87, last Tuesday, I spent the entire class fantasizing about not going anymore. As weird as it sounds, I was longing to swim laps, or go to a spin class, or really ANY other form of exercise. I also realized that if I was going to stick to the terms of the challenge I set out for myself, I wouldn't have been able to stop at 90 days. I was supposed to do 2 classes in one day for each time I missed a class, and while I had missed 6 classes, I had only done 4 doubles and there was no chance I could squeeze in 2 more before day 90. So to get my doubles done, I'd have to keep going until who knows when.

By the end of class that day, I was unsure about whether or not I was going to continue. I thought maybe I'd try to stick it out.

On day 88, my alarm went off at 6 AM, and I groggily reset it for 8 AM and went back to bed, assuming I could go to yoga after work. I later saw some emails about hanging out with my cousins that night, and realized that by not getting out of bed at 6, I had missed any opportunity to go to Bikram that day. An hour or so later, I realized I had developed a (thankfully very mild) case of athlete's foot (gross overshare, sorry yo), which I am about 95% sure stems from walking around barefoot in a studio where tons of other sweaty feet go and that is definitely not disinfected between classes.

I took this as a sign and have not been back to yoga in the week since. And it feels wonderful.

To be clear, I still love Bikram. In fact, I will probably go to class after work tomorrow. And I hope that I will continue to go at least a few times a month. I truly believe that it offers a ton of health benefits. But practicing daily is intense and while I didn't mind it at all for the first 80 days or so, it was starting to wear on me. I, dear friends, am a Bikram burnout.

From now on, I will be attending casually. I refuse to let Bikram run my life any longer!