kfitz

Bikram, Day 1

Holy moly. Having settled back in here in Claremont, and having spent the last five days mourning the loss of my beloved yogalates class, I managed to cart myself down to the Bikram place a few blocks from here. And I’m not sure I’m going to be terribly articulate about the class and how it felt yet–today’s state of yoga brain took a couple of hours to arrive after class ended, but arrive it did, apparently with enough supplies for a lengthy stay.

I’m positively dopey. In a good way.

Anyhow, class was amazing. The instructor was sitting at the front desk when I arrived, and was instantly welcoming, friendly, and informative, with lots of good advice for how to approach this first class. Even so, though, when I walked into the studio, I was immediately terrified–it was entirely like walking into a sauna, and I just couldn’t imagine being in the room for 90 minutes, much less doing strenuous yoga. But I adjusted to the temperature fairly quickly while waiting for class to start. And once class began, I was quite hot, and clearly working hard, but really fine.

It turns out that the yoga portions of the yogalates classes I was taking were quite Bikram-inspired; many of the poses were the same, as were several of the sequences. But because the class had a slightly slower pace, and of course because of that heat, I was able to get farther into several poses than I ever have before. And the way that the instructor talked us into and out of poses made me understand them quite differently than I have in the past.

The studio has a special week-long introductory rate, so I’ve got six more days pre-paid; I’m looking forward to seeing how these classes feel in the coming days. But I’m pretty sure I’m already hooked. The trick is going to be figuring out whether I can, say, think afterward.

Webmentions

No replies yet.