Yes, but does it make you sweat?

I spent my junior year of high school as an exchange student in Finland. Why do I bring it up? Because the Finns invented the sauna and they won't have you forget it. The sauna is a cultural phenomenon in Finland. Every household has at least one, some have two or three! The Finns believe that the sauna will heal what ails you, and by the end of my time in Finland, I believed it too. There's something about sweating out your demons, throwing water on hot rocks, and trying to get an 8'x10' room to 150 degrees (F) that will heal you. I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it works.

So I decided to try Bikram yoga, where they heat the room to 105 degrees (F) and keep the relative humidity around 40-60%. I've had trouble finding an Ashtanga studio in Philly that lives up to my unreasonably high standards, and had heard a lot about Bikram. A colleague of mine recommended a Bikram studio in Center City with a huge number of classes and a schedule that allowed me enough flexibility to pick when I wanted to go every day. The whole thing sounded crazy to me, but I decided to give it a whirl.

Now, at the risk of giving you too much information, I'm not really a person who sweats a lot. I always say something cheeky like, "I'm a chic. I don't sweat. I glow." But trust me, in Bikram, you SWEAT. I've been to three classes so far, but at each class I thought, "I have never sweat this much in my life." I really didn't think I would like it. And I still don't love it like I love Ashtanga. I had it in my head that it would be extremely difficult. But its no more difficult than Ashtanga, except that you are sweating like there is no tomorrow.

I'm still keeping my eyes and ears out for an Ashtanga studio, but what one particularly wonderful teacher said in last night's class was this: "It doesn't matter how far into the pose you can get. What matters is that you come back tomorrow."

So I'm going to keep going back, at least for as long as I can. One of the best things I get out of yoga right now is patience-- patience to get into each pose and hold it, and patience to let my body heal and restore itself.

Namaste, y'all.