This past week saw me try something I never thought I would. After adding regular yoga classes to my workout schedule in the last couple months, a friend suggested trying a hot yoga class.
Now, simply explained, I hate the heat. I am one of those (clearly insane!) people that do not look forward to summer. If we could remain in a perpetual state of spring, moving right over to fall, I would be thrilled.
Given the option, I would much rather walk through -30, than try to sleep in +30 temperatures. All of that on the table, I tried my very first hot yoga class, a
Hot Fusion class at the recently opened
Moksha Yoga.
I was more than a little resistant, after all, 75 minutes spent in nearly 40-degree temperatures sounded like voluntary punishment that I wasn’t sure I even deserved.
But my desire to make my body a little more pliable won out, and so I unrolled my mat down (on the heated floor!) and lied down for some pre-pose meditation.
Lying still in the heat was not an ultimately horrible way to start a class. I would even go as far as to say that I liked it. And then the class began.
All it took was 10 minutes for my body to be drenched in sweat as I twisted, turned and manipulated my body into poses that flowed from one to the next.
But the heat seemed to make it easier somehow, and I found myself sliding deeper into the poses than I ever had before, and with a primal resolve that I assume only comes with the knowledge that you look like a drowned rat, but so does everyone else, so why care?
(On a side note, ladies, the one unexpected bonus to hot yoga is the fact that men can, and do, take their shirts off fairly quickly. Sweaty, nimble men…ok, enough of a digression. But a welcome one nonetheless…)
So if the post-hot yoga glow, detoxed skin, thoroughly stretched out body, and zen-like state isn’t enough of a draw, know that I lost an extra two pounds this week.
That’s enough to sign me up for a standing (sweaty) date.