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!

Day 72 - Bikram Culture Shock

Today I went to the Bikram studio near my new digs in Brooklyn for the first time. I was a little nervous because even though my Manhattan studio has 4 different locations, after 71 straight days I had become super comfortable with all 4 spots. I knew the layouts, the best places to lay my mat down, which showers were the best, and so on.

The thing about Bikram yoga is that because it’s the exact same class every time and everywhere you go, it’s easier to pick up on the small differences.

This Brooklyn location totally threw me for a loop. I walked in 25 minutes before the class started, and while the teacher was there to check me in, not a single other student showed up for another 10 minutes. At Bikram Yoga NYC this is unheard of. People arrive obscenely early for class to stake out their spots. When I walked in the room, however, I realized why no one felt the need to show up that early – the studio is massive and the 6:30 am class (yes, that is correct) is so sparsely attended that we all had more than enough space.

I walked into the locker rooms to find not lockers, but open cubbies. I guess people in Brooklyn are more trusting about people not stealing their stuff. While the locker rooms were equipped with the usual showers and hair dryers, there were no q-tips, no plastic bags for your sweaty clothes, and a few other things that I had sort of taken for granted. Towels are no longer free with my membership, and my Nalgene does not fit under the faucet in the tiny bathroom sink, which means if I don’t come to the studio with a full bottle of water, I’ll need to pay a dollar to have them fill it for me with filtered water (they have this in Manhattan also, but it seems that most people just fill up in the sink – NYC tap water is the best, as everyone knows).

The class was more or less what I expected it to be, until one part in the standing series. For 71 days I had been accustomed to a part of the class where you stand facing the side of the room for a few poses. The reason for this is that there are several poses that involve standing with your legs wide apart, and they have you face the side so that both feet can still be on your mat. So today, on day 72, I stood facing the side of the room, and I realized that no one else was doing the same. Everyone was still facing the front. So I followed suit. Instead of both feet being on the mat, everyone kept one foot on the left side of the mat, and one foot on the right.

This was super weird. With my feet on the floor and not on my mat and towel, I had nothing to prevent me from sliding. No one else seemed to have an issue with this, but I could barely focus on the postures because I was trying so hard not to fall into a split.

A quick Google search shows that apparently this is how it’s supposed to be done. Doh. My guess is that some studios have you face the side because it takes up less space that way, and lord knows that during the rush hour classes at Bikram Yoga NYC we are just short of being stacked on top of each other.

And finally, at the end of the class, the teacher said, "Have a nice week!" and walked out of the studio. No "namaste." I mean, this is a YOGA class. If you don't say "namaste" at the end, does the yoga even exist?

I miss my old studio but I’m excited to be able to practice 4 blocks from my apartment. And I assume I’ll get used to the changes soon enough.

Day 50

I can't believe I'm still doing this. Bikram yoga owns my life. To the point where today I even considered signing up for workstudy shifts at the studio (you do fun things like launder sweaty towels or check people in at registration) in exchange for free classes. I would actually do it except for, you know, the issue of having NO TIME. TIME, WHERE ART THOU? Okay.

One great thing I've noticed is that there have been 4 occasions in the last 2 weeks where someone has complained about a room being warm (in a non-yoga situation, let's clarify). In none of those situations did I actually feel warm in the slightest. I'm thinking this means that spending almost 2 hours a day in 105 degree heat and sometimes 50% humidity means I am more tolerant of heat the rest of the time. This is glorious news because summer will soon be upon us and I really hate summer. Sorry, I know some of you are offended now but really, why does it have to be so damn hot all the time? I pretty much never want it to be above 75 degrees.

So, New York City gross awful summer, BRING IT ON.

In other exciting news, I am moving to Brooklyn on SATURDAY.

This weekend, I painted my future bedroom. It went from this:


To this:
It looked even better once I got the second coat on there. Less splotchy. I am very proud of myself for painting because even though painting a room isn't exactly rocket science, I consider myself pretty not-at-all-handy. So this was a big step for me. I really didn't feel like painting at all but..you know what they say about orange bedrooms?

THEY SHOULDN'T EXIST BECAUSE THEY ARE HEINOUS. No one should live in a room like that.

Day 33

Well, I made it to 30 days of Bikram! WOOWOO! As a reward, I got a free week of yoga, 2 guest passes, 10% off my next purchase, a t-shirt, AND my name on the whiteboard at one of the studios.

I'm definitely making progress in a lot of poses. This is wonderful because I think the whole process would be insanely frustrating if I didn't see myself getting better. What's funny though is that the progress isn't always a slow, gradual shift - sometimes, I'll be in a posture, and then all of a sudden a random muscle lets go of all its tightness, opens up, and I'll move an inch or 2 further in the span of a second. And it's like this lightbulb moment where my body goes, "Oh, THAT'S what it's supposed to feel like."

And then of course there are the poses where I seriously feel like I will never progress and I mean, whatever. Can't win 'em all.

In honor of my 30 day mark and all my lovely progress, I posted the above photo of me in my favorite posture, standing bow. CAMERA SELF TIMER SKILLZ, MOFOS. If you look closely, you can even see my pretty blue underwear. Class - it's not just something you attend!

The thing about standing bow is that it's my favorite because it looks awesome. It is not my favorite to do. In fact, during class you are a) tired and b) slippery with sweat and it actually makes the whole process really difficult. So even though I'm not warmed up in this picture, it's probably not a far stretch from what I can actually do in class.

For the record, they tell you not to do most Bikram poses randomly without warming up. They are right. It hurts.

I wish I took a picture of me doing this pose earlier on, because my leg definitely did not come up over the top of my head during the first week or 2.

And for the record, here is what the pose is actually supposed to look like. So...I have a ways to go.

Photo credit

Day 24

Well, my 30/60/90 day challenge is progressing quite nicely, if I do say so myself. However, I missed a day a few weeks ago and have yet to do a double to make up for it. I might do it on Wednesday. I’m nervous.

Here are some observations that I’ve made about Bikram Yoga thus far:

- My whole life smells. This may seem like an obvious observation when it comes to something that involves exercising in a 105 degree room, but it still amazes me. My Bikram clothes have a very distinct smell unlike regular sweaty clothes. And even though I take more showers now than ever, I still feel like it hangs on me. Sorry, real life friends, you still have to hang out with me. And sorry, all my many male suitors, you can't stop swooning. I get it. I’m too sexy for this shirt blog life.

- For those of you who run – do you ever sometimes feel worse when you stop running? It’s like, you’re running along creating a breeze for yourself, and you’re tired but you don’t know how overheated you are. And then you stop, the breeze is gone and suddenly it feels like your heart is pounding in your face. This is how I sometimes feel in savasana, a position which involves lying on your back doing absolutely nothing, and it’s supposed to be your rest in between the floor postures. Sometimes it feels great. Sometimes it makes me feel like crap and I’d almost rather forego the 20 second break and just move on to the next posture. Focusing on getting your arms and legs to do the right thing is a nice distraction from thinking about how f’ing hot you are, which is pretty much the only thing I can do while in savasana.

- If you start doing crunches at the end of class, I will have the desire to twist up my sopping wet towel and smack you with it, like we used to do in sleepaway camp when we were 13.

The 30/60/90 day bikram challenge

I have decided to do a bikram yoga challenge. Somewhere between 30 and 90 days.

The thing about the 30 day challenge is that I’m already halfway through one, technically. So it’s sort of like cheating to start now. So then I decided to bump it up to 60. And then maybe I’ll decide to bump it up to 90. Because, why not?

The reason why I’m not committing to 90 days is because, well, bikram is really time consuming. Between the travel to the studio and the getting there early to spend time in the room getting used to the heat and the 90 minute class and the shower afterward and the traveling to wherever you have to go next, this is a multi-hour endeavor. And while I’ve only missed one day since February 27th, I’m not positive I can continue finding the time to do it every day from now until the end of May.

Also, there is the whole moving-to-Brooklyn thing that’s happening in May. Though apparently there is a bikram studio 4 blocks from my new apartment (!!!!). So at some point in the 90 days I might switch studios. Or maybe I’ll just quit bikram altogether because kids, I may as well have picked up a really fancy drug addiction for this price.

So anyway, I’m going to do bikram yoga every day for as long as I feel like it, but if I could do it for 90 days I would feel...accomplished, I guess. I’m pretty bad at motivating myself to do a lot of things unless there’s a CONTEST or a CHALLENGE or a COACH or some other word that brings motivation that comes from outside one’s self (such words do not have to start with “C” even though these all do).

Here are the rules for my challenge:
- My studio allows for 2 missed days (and thus, 2 doubles on other days) for a 30 day challenge. So I’ll allow for 6 doubles in 90 days.
- Der..I guess that’s it for rules.

Here are my goals for the challenge:
- Stop falling out of the balancing poses so much. While my balance is typically pretty good (I used to do back handsprings on a balance beam in gymnastics, ya’ll), but you would never know this by my practice.
- Assorted other posture-specific goals that I'm not going to go into for fear of boring everyone.
- Learn to use my biceps more in the poses where you’re supposed to use your f’ing biceps to pull your body this way or that way. Sometimes I rely on the fact that my quads are pretty strong and my hamstrings are pretty flexible to not work as hard in some poses. Not okay.

On this note, the other day I had the privilege of having a spot in the room near a side mirror. So I had a rare view of myself during the poses that face the side, whereas normally you just get a view of the wall or of the person next to you. Guys, my quads are scary. I almost died during triangle pose (where you work your quads pretty hard) because I realized exactly how much I would not want to meet my quads in a dark alley.

This is Bikram in triangle pose. I'm going to wager that mine does not look quite like this yet.
Photo credit.

Goal for my quads: do not get bigger.

The word “quads” has officially lost all meaning to me. Quads quads quads.

Okay, that’s about it for now. I will try not to turn into a bikram-obsessed blogger, even though it’s sort of all I want to talk about recently. I am totally drinking the Kool-Aid.