Hot Yoga Detox
This article was posted at Catonsville Bikram Yoga’s website during the month of December 2023. Grateful for the encouragement!
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Many students come to us without any yoga experience. As you'll read, Patricia comes with a wealth of yoga knowledge and practice. She has become a true convert while still practicing and teaching what was foundational to her. Along with yoga experience, she has a story that many can likely relate to and hopefully inspire to use these things not as excuses, but as reasons to come to class and begin to heal. Sometimes we need a myriad of things to get the perfect recipe for our own unique needs. Sometimes it's as simple as a Bikram Yoga practice. Enjoy learning more about Patricia and her journey in her own words..
"“Turn around, lie on your back, arms next to you, palms up, heals together, feet relax open.”
For the next twenty second, I get to let go. My body gets to enjoy the art of doing nothing but breathe and release all doing. And after a small battle with myself to give in to silence, every muscle and tissue in my body returns to stillness, and opens space for the next posture.
Bikram Yoga was never a style of yoga I craved in my practice. Vinyasa, Hatha, and Ashtanga were styles I related to much more. Most recently, Tantric Hatha Yoga has been not only the style I like the most, but also the one I usually teach. Hence, in the past, when I would see people voluntarily going to a Bikram Yoga class to repeat postures and sweat, I wondered – why?
As it turns out, I am one of those people now. And as I’ve learned, we all have our ‘why’. Over the past year I have been working on a detox program with my functional medicine doctor. I’ve been cleansing my body from environmental toxins, and helping my immune system work as nature intended. And when I joined this yoga studio, my intention was to sweat more. At first, I was attending only once a week. This was all the repetition I could bear at the time.
My honeymoon phase ended after the third class. I was bored to tears repeating the same twenty-six postures, two times, every – single – class. I found myself starting the classes wondering how fast the ninety minutes could pass so I could go straight to the blissful part. As with most things in life, it doesn’t quite work that way. If there is one thing I’ve learned in my yoga practice (all styles), is to breathe through discomfort and continue the loving effort. So, despite my monkey mind telling me to walk out and leave the class, I stayed and kept going every week, making sure to allow myself to gently take breaks when I needed them and not push my body too hard.
Every class the postures became more unbearable. A slow sweating torture going through the same sequence I had done just a week ago. So, hearing the transition words from the instructor was like an auditory elixir that triggered my body to let go of effort and simply relax. How was I not seeing what everyone else in class, including the cheerful instructors, saw in Bikram Yoga? I kept showing up.
In August this year, I started a career transition in my life. It was an unexpected, emotional, and frightening transition. This time, life was telling me: “Turn around, lie on your back, arms next you, palms up, heals together, feet relax open.” I didn’t want to – and it took a while until my mind silenced allowing me to go into a life Savasana-like phase to notice the silence. No one was asking me for anything – no coaching, no opinions, no reports, no assessments … nothing. Finally, after battling myself to let go, I relaxed.
Resting periods are essential in the Bikram Yoga sequence. It’s very easy to give in to the temptation to fidget, move in and out of silence, get a drink of water, wipe your sweaty face, or look around at your fellow yogis. As such, it’s hard to find stillness after movement and it's normal to want to keep moving. However, tranquility makes space to allow for what’s to come.
During this life-rest transition, to my surprise, I started to crave the postures and found myself signing up for more classes. As I’ve embraced this time of life, including resetting of priorities, re-budgeting, journaling, asking for help, receiving advice and well-intentioned feedback, etc., new doors and possibilities are starting to open. One day, I even opened my laptop and wrote again. I had forgotten how good it felt to allow the flow of words rush through my mind. Suddenly, I started to choose one word here, the other there, making sentences and paragraphs. It was that moment when I knew that after I had achieved full relaxation, creative and purposeful action was arriving again.
I now crave each one of the twenty-six postures and two breathing exercises, even the ones that are most challenging for me. Every class, I get to advance through the sequence with a heightened awareness of how the breath is moving through me and is helping me remain focused on the present moment. Somehow my mind found its inner Simba and the little distractions through the ninety minutes are there just so I can come back to my own center.
Similarly, this transitional phase is also permitting me to reset my routines and habits so that I write this next chapter of my life with actions aligned to my values and priorities. Fear of uncertainty is still there. Discomfort with ambiguity is as present as it was during my last day at work. However, Bikram Yoga is helping me sweat away what no longer serves me and breathe through this life roller coaster ride. With an open mind and a loving heart, I’m allowing this transition to make space for what’s to come.
Silence, along with those so-craved twenty seconds, have taught me so much. I never thought I would say this but … I found love for the Bikram Yoga practice!"
