Body Smart

Yoga, half baked

By Amrita Narayanan Bruce

Om Ah Hum Vajra guru Padma Siddhi Hum. The chanting is enthusiastic, even if the Sanskrit pronunciation is a little shaky. And, blonde heads apart, we could very well be in India. The temperature is 90 degrees and rising, mimicking the notoriously hot summers of India, yoga’s ancestral home. The mostly greater-Portland residents who form the group inside this tiny white-walled studio see yoga as more than just stretching. Hot yoga has come to Portland, if in a form very different from its controversial origin.

Hot yoga — the term used to describe traditional Indian yoga exercises performed in a heated room — has been both wildly popular and hugely criticized in America. The devotees say the profuse sweating during the 105-degree class cleanses them of toxins and the heat promotes flexibility. The dissenters claim that hot yoga classes are largely populated by faddist, type-A, over-competitive, skin-tight-gym-clothes wearing body worshipers who are missing the point of yoga in pursuit of tighter abs.

A great deal of the criticism seems to be centered around the teaching style and personality of hot yoga’s primary proponent in America: Bikram Choudary. Bikram is credited with introducing America to hot yoga in the 1970s. Along with the concept of the heated practice room, Bikram also brings his own series of 26 asanas (yoga postures) that he bills as the “the most exciting, hard-working, effective, amusing, and glamorous yoga class in the world.”

Since yogic texts such as the yoga sutras emphasize self-transcendence rather than self aggrandizement, many look askance at a teacher who promotes the practice for its sexiness and himself as “yoga teacher to the stars.” Bikram teachers’ butt-kicking teaching style is also considered counter-intuitive to the yogic ideal of “Ahimsa,” or non-violence to oneself and others.

“A lot of folks who teach hot yoga are basically throwing a bunch of styles together to appease the masses rather than going deeply into one set of teachings,” says Gary Gurney, who teaches Ashtanga yoga at the YMCA and at Portland Yoga Studio. “So the power for transformation is lessened.” To Gurney, and to many other teachers, the words “hot yoga” refer to a marketing strategy rather than a type of yoga practice.

Yoga purist protests aside, the 120-plus Bikram studios world-wide, not to mention numerous non-Bikram affiliated hot yoga classes, stand testimonial to the appeal of a more aggressive and “athletic yoga.” Or is it just the heat?

When I attended my first hot yoga class, a balmy 95 degrees at Cape Yoga in Cape Elizabeth, I found myself thinking “this is delicious, and I wish it was even hotter.” Take into account I grew up in Madras, India where it is 100 degrees for days at a time during the summer — most of the Mainers were finding the room pretty toasty. The radiator was turned as far up as it would go, however, so I resigned myself to the temperature. Even at this not-quite-scorching level, I found a dramatic increase in my flexibility. Heat lovers say warmth allows muscles to relax and extend and I found this to be true.

“The heat carries the memory of India and brings us closer to the source of yoga,” says Michel George, who teaches hot yoga in Cape Elizabeth. “It allows the body to open much more than it might in a colder climate. It’s easier to relax and release tension as you cultivate internal and external heat.” George’s class carries none of the yelling and body-limit pushing instruction that supposedly characterizes the Bikram brand of hot yoga. Nor is it missing the spiritual dimension that critics say is either hurried or absent from other “hot” or “power yoga” classes.

Om Ah Hum Vajra guru Padma Siddhi Hum. The students are chanting a mantra in Sanskrit, perhaps the only language in the world in which the sound of each word is said to have an auditory frequency corresponding to its meaning. The ramification of this is that quite literally, repeating a Sanskrit word such as “shanti” which means “peace” will actually bring that quality to your mind. “A Mantra is defined as that which protects the mind from negativity or that protects you from your own mind,” reads George from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a spiritual classic by the Buddhist monk Sogyal Rinpoche. When you are nervous, disoriented, or emotionally fragile, chanting or reciting a mantra can change the state of your mind.” This particular mantra is said to banish “samsara” — negative emotions and the resultant false perspectives of reality.

DOGGY STYLE: Michel George directs a student in the asana called downward facing dog.

As George explains how a mantra works, through vibrations that calm the breath and mind, I look around at the students. All of them seem tuned in. Someone says “please say the mantra only a few words at a time so it’s easy to repeat.” Turns out that while Sanskrit and samsara are new concepts to the class, the malaises of craving and negativity are familiar to everyone. Is it in search of an end to this kind of “suffering” that many are embracing yoga?

George emphasizes that hot yoga students are seeking more from yoga than just a workout. “There are eight limbs of yoga and people are drawn to different limbs,” she says. “The physical practice is just one of these limbs.” The other limbs of yoga include meditation, breath control, and yogic observances and practices for how we interact with ourselves and others. “For example a month ago we dedicated a class to the principle of “ahimsa,” or non-violence. First we talked a little about the meaning of ahimsa — showing gentleness and compassion to all including yourself. We began the class with a gentle restorative pose. Throughout the class, I’d remind the students to find that balance between exertion and pain. After class, we talked about how this principle is applied off the mat. How can we observe ahimsa in our language, houghts, and treatment of others?”

George’s students seem to be down with this whole “way of life” idea. “My practice of yoga reflects in the way I relate to other people,” says Yoga enthusiast Sara Page. “[Yoga] helps me be not so frazzled when things don’t work out right.”

Another student overhears this and looks up from her mat. “It helps me be less neurotic,” she says frankly. “Yoga takes me away from focusing on the external world and brings me into the internal world. I look inside for peace and serenity.” This student is an ex-banker, now a full-time mom, whose killer gymsuit and all-American look speak volumes about how eastern thought has gone mainstream in the US. “Running just wasn’t doing it for me anymore,” she adds. Many hot yoga fans are finding that the practice gives them the dual benefit of a workout and a spiritual practice; with none of the negative side effects of high-impact exercise such as running.

If you’ve ever read any of the reviews of traditional hot yoga classes you’ll know this one sounds different. In a recent story on Bikram yoga in our sister paper, a Boston Phoenix journalist calls hot yoga “Rambo Yoga,” and describes “a dictatorial environment with shouting instructors, speaker systems and imperative commands.” At Cape Yoga, there is no reference to the “lose your pudge” credo that is supposedly touted by typical Bikram and “power” hot yoga classes. As the popularity of hot yoga grows, it becomes inevitable that teachers who have not been trained by Bikram, and who may not agree with his aggressive style, will keep the hot yoga baby while tossing the Bikram bathwater. Some, like George, are combining gentle words with high temperatures to keep their yoga classes hot but not scorching.

The controversy surrounding hot yoga really calls upon a larger question. What is American yoga all about? In its recent photo-essay on yoga, TIME magazine reported: “Fifteen million Americans include some form of yoga in their fitness regimen — twice as many as did five years ago; 75 percent of all US health clubs offer yoga classes.”

Certainly yoga has been around in America for long enough now that it can no longer be written off as the Tai-bo of the moment. Elaine McGuilicuddy, owner and founder of Portland Yoga Studio recalls: “In 1978, when I first started practicing, there was only one yoga teacher in the city. Her name was Jennifer Cooper and she taught using churches and schools as studio space.”

Today there are five yoga centers, each with six to 10 teachers, in the Greater Portland area and there are yoga classes even in outposts such as Brunswick and Topsham. In addition, there are perhaps more than twenty other teachers who teach individually or at health clubs. Every respectable gym has a yoga class, usually more than once a week. Planet Fitness, for example, holds four yoga classes a week and is in the process of adding a fifth. Their reason is simply the bottom line — manager Steve Brackett says that a corporate office poll showed yoga was one of the top five activities that people looked for at the gym.

The face of yoga is changing. In 1978, Cooper, the solitary Portland Yoga teacher, had had a t ransformative experience in India. Even up to the late ’80s Elaine McGuillicuddy says that students consisted mostly of ex-hippies who were swept up by the wave of Eastern philosophy that flooded America in the ’60s. Today, the market is populated with teachers who have had years of training in one school of yoga, like Patricia Walden of Boston, who has studied Iyengar yoga since 1976. At the BKS Iyengar Yoga Center of Greater Boston founded by Walden, it takes two years, sometimes longer, to receive a teaching certificate. Equally common are teachers who recently received a yoga teacher training certificate at a short course such as Baron Baptiste’s famous eight-day teacher training “Bootcamp” in Mexico; or others who studied at a medium-length, one-month course such as the one at the Kripalu center in Lennox, MA.

In general, teachers who have had substantial experience in a particular school of yoga will clearly state their affinity. For example, “Ashtanga” or “Iyengar” refers to a particular style of yoga exercise, the latter is more focused on body alignment and the former on coordinating breath with movement. Many teachers today, however, teach what they call “hatha yoga,” or just simply “yoga,” which tends to be a blend of one or more schools of yoga. “Hot” usually refers to the temperature of the class and the focus on internal and external heat building. However, news reviews and even some students use the word “hot” to describe the Bikram method or another form of vigorous yoga such as Ashtanga yoga.

With the variety of teaching styles and their different emphases, the Portland yoga seeker has a multitude of choices that were not available even six years ago. Gurney suggests that a good way of figuring out which practice of yoga exercise is best for you is through analyzing your intention. He begins his class by asking his students to spend a minute contemplating why they are doing yoga. “There are many different intentions and views that move one to practice yoga, from just wanting a tight butt to the desire to know God” he says. George feels that the process is evolutionary. “Cultivating awareness of yourself in the body,” she says, “eventually leads you to cultivating awareness of yourself in reference to your own thoughts and to others.” She explains that she started yoga for therapeutic reasons and now embraces it as a way of life.

As we go through a series of yoga poses I try to focus on “expressing myself fully in the pose.” I smile beatifically as I sweat my way through upward-facing dog, downward-facing dog, the cobra, the chair, and the lotus. Yoga asanas, George explains, are named after a variety of fauna, flora, and great sages in part to illustrate the interconnectedness of all things. In other words, if the body can contort itself into a dog or a king of the fishes, then perhaps the practitioner will be able to respect and love all beings, seeing the common thread that unites them. Interesting idea I think. If only they could crank the heat up 10 more degrees, I’m sure I could become one with the camel pose.

As with most yoga classes, the class ends with a lying meditation in “Savasana,” or corpse pose. Silence. Perhaps seven comfortable minutes of it. George talks us through relaxing our body. She closes with the traditional Indian greeting: palms folded in front of the chest and the words “Namasté.” The three Sanskrit words mean “I bow to my true Self,” or when offered to another, “the light in me honors the light in you.” This rather intimate greeting honors the interconnectedness of all beings by acknowledging a common energy between the Self and the Other. George namastés the class and then each student namastés the other students.

After class, I talk briefly with the other students. “What brings you here?” I ask. Really I’m wondering what motivates people from a relatively remote location of Cape Elizabeth to pay money for the privilege of chanting in a foreign language and watching their breathing in 95 degree heat. One student, a lawyer by profession and the only male in that particular class confesses, “People ask me why I do yoga and I don’t know what to tell them. As soon as I come into class, though, I know why I’m here.”

I don’t have a hard time figuring out why I was there. The heat. As soon as I stepped into the studio I began to smile. Not only did I feel more flexibility, but the heat slowed down my breathing a little. And slower breathing, as every good yoga student knows, results in long-term calmness and serenity.

So, I’m not converted to the Bikram method or anything. But I’m planning to buy a space heater for my personal yoga studio this winter.

Amrita Bruce can be reached at amritabruce@yahoo.com.