Hotttt Yoga

On this Friday afternoon on 4/20, when the door opens to the Hot Yoga room I think I can vaguely smell pot mixed with the usual pot puri of super heated body odor. The door to the Yoga room is the kind that has the thin glass window with the wire framing –usually the kind that you see in institutional type places so even if the glass is broken out there is a skeleton mesh wire frame. The window is covered with paper, and below reads a sign: PLEASE KEEP QUITE. YOGA SESSION IN PROGRESS. Inside is kind of a clusterfuck of anxious pre yoga people mingling in the tiny lobby area with post yoga people. Who is pre and who is the post is quite obvious. The post Hot Yoga people are flushed red and pirspiring and depending on their personal experience either collect themselves in an organized fashion, or spend some time doubled over on the benches complicating matters for the pre session people who are trying to sit down and take their shoes off after they sign in. But this is only a minor complication, for the most part the whole initial pre yoga spectacle is very exhilirating and simontanously anxious and calming. Your first introduction to your Yogi instructor is at the front counter. In my three week hot yoga career, I have had two intstructors. The first is an attractive, middle aged women with fogged over cat eye glasses who calls me boss when I am doing the Yoga pose wrong: “tuck in your elbows. That’s it boss.” I can’t really tell if she says this because she thinks I’m cool and attractive or if she’s saying boss like someone would call a little kid boss. These are things you do think of when you’re looking upside down at the frowning rolls in your sweating belly in a begginners hot yoga class. Tonight is not the cat eyed women but another fellow who I have had before, whose instruction method is encouraging but has a subtle antagonistic quality to it. I might just think this because our relationship is one of the slightly older but still young yogi master who teaches class in a black and orange speedo, showing off a flat stomach, clean skin, and brown nipples pulled tightly to his chest, to my slightly insecure, wobbly kneed self who can’t yet touch my fingers to my toes. Behind the front desk he seems slightly annoyed that a new person has forgotten her student number. She informs him that she never got one, and he says “What, you never got one?” in a slightly sarcastic tone holding out the inflection in the word what. I look at the women and notice that she is wearning a lot of foundation and face makeup and for whatever reason I am annoyed by this, not really understanding why she has put on so much makeup going into hot yoga, considering the chances that her whole exterior made up face is just going to melt off by the end of the session.

            The “lobby” is warm, maybe 80 degrees or so, but the severity of the situation doesn’t hit you until you enter the actual yoga room, which maintains an average temprature of 105 degrees, apparently made to replicate the conditions in which yogi masters practice yoga in India. The website informs you that although the temperate element may be shocking at first, inducing a state of heated panic, after a couple of sessions you get aclimated and almost enjoy it. I find this to be true, and on this sixth attempt at hot yoga I’m not fazed too much by the drastic change in temprature and atmosphere. The same cannot be said for my first attempt however. For the beginner, upon entering the heated dimly lit room you get the choking sensensation of being burnt very slowly over a long period of time. Maybe the room is like being wedged into the closed armpit of somebody who is running the mile. Instructors tell you, if you are feeling panicky at any moment in the session to just ligh down and relax, but they highly recommend staying in the room, so as to not disturb the experience for the rest of students, by getting up and leaving.