Courtesy Bikram Yoga Tempe.
When I mention that I do this yoga in a really hot, humid room, and especially when I say I’m doing a class a day every day for 30 days, I get funny looks. Double-takes. Even head shaking. Which I understand. 105 degrees, 40% humidity, 90 minutes… sounds crazy.
People fixate on the heat. Oh my God, 105 degrees! I’m here to tell you, the heat will not get you. You have nothing to fear from the heat. At least, not by itself.
No, you need to fear the humidity.
I realize that doesn’t exactly jump out as a catchy movie poster tag line. “On August 6th… Fear… the humidity.” (The film: Dead Sweat. Bruckheimer and Bay will be all over this, trust me.) It’s easy to look at the 105 and say, “Sweet Mother of God. It almost never hits 105 in the summer in Boston. And you walk into that every day for an hour and a half?” But 40% humidity is an abstraction. In fact, 40% humidity in your home is fine, if you like to keep your home at a sane temperature like 70 degrees. At 105, it’s another story. The air feels thick, and after a while you may feel like you’re inhaling cotton instead of oxygen. But people focus on the heat—not just people who hear about Bikram Yoga, but people who practice it.
As Bill Clinton might say, “It’s the humidity, stupid.”
It’s really when the air gets thick that you’re likely to crack. I’ve been practicing for 18 months, and it’s only very recently—like the last week—that I’ve started to consistently power through when it gets a little suffocating.
The timing is no coincidence. During class #10, I hit one of those moments on the floor, where I’m on my back and I don’t feel like getting up. It’s humid, I’m breathing ash, I could just lie here and wait out the last 20 minutes of class. A week before, I’d have thought, “Screw it, I don’t feel like doing it.” Wednesday night I thought, “I don’t feel like doing this. Screw it, I’ll do it,” and got up and did it and finished the class.
You get acclimated to that environment. And when I say “acclimated,” I’m not talking about your body. It’s your mind that’s saying, “Screw it.” Where your mind goes, your body will follow. Your mind says, “I like it here on the floor,” that’s where you’re body is saying. “You’re body says, “Sit up and do this pose,” your body does that.
It’s the opposite of what the great cyclist Jens Voigt says, but it’s really the same thing at the end of the day:
In that spirit, let's end this with a look at the back of this Jens-themed T-shirt:
Courtesy Stomach of Anger, which also sells this T.
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