Hot Yoga

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Western culture has adopted an age old religious and meditative practice more commonly known as yoga. One of the most prevalent form of hot yoga that exists today stems from the yoga master Bikram Choudhury. Bikram yoga is a synthesizing of breathing, stretching, and climate control. This article will attempt to map some of the benefits and common practices that you can expect in this form of hot yoga.

Bikram yoga was developed in the 1970s and became heavily popular due to its created Bikram Choudhury. Bikram began learning yoga poses at the age of three. At the age of five he began to study yoga under Bishnu Ghosh and won the National India Yoga Championship four times in a row when he was a teenager. By 14 he was declared the king of the yogis and began his career opening yoga schools throughout India and Japan. At age 20 he was crippled by a weightlifting accident. Doctors told him he would not be able to walk again. Bikram refused to accept this prognosis and went back to his master. After months of rehabilitation and dedication to his youthful art, he regained the ability to walk. After this he began his highly popularized form of hot yoga which seized western cultures via the purifying of body and the meditation for the mind. Eastern cultures still incorporate religion into the practice of yoga, but the western culture has focused primarily on the physical stimulation provided by yoga.

In Bikram’s hot yoga, the room is heated to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It is further complicated with an average of 40 percent humidity. This makes for a hot swampy environment that assists in loosening the muscles and allowing the individuals to stretch to their maximum potential. With such a demanding climate, most of the sessions do not last longer than 90 minutes or an hour and a half.

There are 26 petitions in these hot yoga exercises, most of them complex. The postures (asanas) and breathing exercises (pranayama) are used during the period to facilitate better mobility and the usage of all the muscles. Choudhury claims that most individuals use only 50 percent of their total lung capacity and the lungs, similar to all muscles, must be exercised in order to reach their maximum potential. The exercising of muscles in important, but the lung is not the muscle that is exercised. The diaphragm is the control mechanism for the organs which are the lungs. The focus is still on exercising as many of the muscle groups as possible.

Choudhury also claims that there are two primary methods by which his hot yoga program increases blood circulation. Extension and compression are the two modes that are acclaimed. The idea is that during the poses you are contorted in such a way that circulation is temporarily cut off to a certain region of the body, and that when you move fresh new oxygenated blood moves in. The stretching encourages blood flow in the same area, which restricting another part. The complementing of these two modes is said to deliver fresh oxygen to every bone, muscle, joint, and organ in your body. Hot yoga works to increase blood and oxygen flow in these two ways.

Another common, although controversial, aspect of Bikram yoga is the competition. In most forms of yoga competition is considered faux pas because it is contradictory to the tenants of peace and unity. Choudhury claims that competition is the foundation for the numerous democratic societies in the world and that without competition there can be no democracy. He encourages competition in regional and national levels with this understanding.

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