Day 26: Head to Knee (Janushirasana)

Bikram classes have the air of ritual. I find this comforting. It’s sort of like going to the hottest possible church. (Enter a hot room and you might think: Church of Lucifer.) The teacher is a sort of high priest, exhorting you to kill yourself in every pose. The words, even silly phrases like “Japanese Ham Sandwich,” have an air of incantation about them.

The hot room has certain rules. The heat and the humidity, of course. The black lines that run through the carpet, demarcating where to place your yoga mat (halfway, so you can line your toes on the line, the better for the teacher to see you). The sequence of postures and the reassurance brought by the routine it creates. The clothing—with a definite emphasis on less-is-more. There isn’t a rule against ogling, but only because you’ll be suffering to much to stare at anyone. The regimen is amazingly self-policing.

The front row is for the best students. They’re modeling for the rest of class. If you think you’ll need a break, the front row isn’t for you. The back row is for beginners. The back row is more likely to get cool air from a door or window, and if anyone needs it, it’s the beginning practitioner. The rows between cover the rest of the practicing spectrum. You get a water break 20 minutes into class, almost always with the cheer invocation of "Party time." You're welcome to take water anytime you need it after that--just don't do it while people are in a posture.

The poses don’t just build one on top of another, but often echo each other. You do Standing Head to Knee 20 minutes into class; with 15 minutes left to go, there you are, putting a head on your knee again, with a bit of Half-Moon’s sideways stretch. You twist your spine in each direction during Triangle; a half-hour later, you’ll be doing it even more drastically on the floor. The thing you did before, you’ll do again, only farther, deeper.

You would think the ritual would get boring. Boredom isn’t my enemy. Fatigue—mostly mental—is. The fatigue that comes from no days off, from every evening being occupied, from putting much my private life on hiatus. But within the room, the ritual, the repetition, carry me through. All I have to do is show up. The command comes to step into the middle of the mat. I do it. We all do it. We all do whatever’s next.