Is It Hot Enough?

Today’s Mantra: Through challenge comes greatness

The first thing that you notice is the smell, pungent and harsh. You want to block your nose but you realise that you can barely breath in the heat.

Lie down and be calm. It’s fine, it’s just heat. Once you begin to focus on the heat and the effect it’s having on your body, the smell disappears. All you can concentrate on is how you are feeling.

A connection to the body that is rare in this life.

A feat you are supposed to undertake in normal yoga but the mind keeps you from unless you are an expert at meditation.

Bikram Yoga managed to cease the mind chatter. It slowed my monkey-jumping thoughts to one.

“It is soooo hot.”

I was very happy to discover that the practice was Hatha Yoga, my favourite. It also included a lot of the poses I like and none of the ones I dread.

The heat is your greatest obstacle and your champion. I have never been so focused, challenged or flexible. I could get straight into positions I thought would take me years to master. I was brimming with enthusiasm at the same time as begging for it to be over.

Love and hate were both upfront and present. I was never one to enjoy a sauna. Imagine you are exercising in one and that is Bikram.

But…the benefits are:

• You are detoxifying your body through sweat, which literally pours out of your body (some people more than others);
• The mind stills and takes a well deserved break;
• Your flexibility is heightened and the yoga poses (with their individual benefits) are taken to new heights.

Yoga can assist with everything from back pain to indigestion to stabilising blood pressure. It tones and squeezes both inside and outside of the body.

If you can stand the heat, Bikram Yoga is the holy grail of exercise.

Namaste Guru Bikram.