connie36

I can’t imagine there is anything detrimental to being in the hot room for several hours a day if you hydrate/eat properly. I mean, there are certainly places in the world that have those temperatures in summer naturally, and the human body wasn’t designed to require air conditioning. Certainly you need to get used to it and get used to drinking plenty of fluids and replacing electrolytes, but it’s not that abnormal.

I was stationed in Saudi Arabia one summer and it regularly got to over 120 degrees in the heat of the day, and it was HUMID too, being close to the water. It was like being in the hot room all day long, even in the shade. You just need to eat and drink enough and you adjust to it.

I’ve only seen one person pass out in class before and it was early on in half moon as well. And it’s a pose where I’ve gotten a little light headed once or twice myself.

My suspicion is that it’s due to the tendency to hold your breath in this position. I know I’ve caught myself holding my breath, as it seems “easier” to go farther into the pose when you are not inhaling. While it’s good for max flexibility, not so good for staying conscious!

If you’re really focused on maintaining consistent deep breaths then maybe it’s something else, but that seems like the most obvious possibility.

I may be an exception, or maybe it’s just my perception, but I don’t feel like I’m actually more flexible in the heated room. I’ve been doing other non-heated styles of yoga as well, and for example, I think my forward bend has often been deeper in the non-heated room, but it varies day to day.

So I don’t feel like I would be more susceptible to injury in the heat because I’m not pushing any further than I am in regular yoga.

I do, however, feel like my body has learned how to sweat. I’d never in my life sweat so much as I have doing Bikram yoga, and all of the sudden now I sweat easily out riding my bike, in regular non-heated yoga rooms, etc., and I feel like my body is therefore regulating its temperature better so I’m not feeling overheated like I used to.

So, to me personally, there are other benefits of the heat that don’t involve flexibility.

Connie, I think that earplugs would not be a really useful solution. Having a hearing problem myself, I can tell you that it’s the sensation of plugging the ears with anything physical that I find particularly uncomfortable and annoying. Hearing feels like SPACE. I am not sure if that makes sense. Plugging …. yikes!

It would be temporarily creating the problem to deal with the problem. It would certainly be a band aid solution if nothing else worked.

I kinda want to stay away from that ‘script’ comment except to say that the reason many go to yoga is to be present. To block out the script even if it is a recited script is already closing oneself off to the possibility of presence and newness… so if you can find something to avoid that scenario would be the best thing.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

I haven’t had any luck with the variety of headbands I have tried so far, as they either give me a headache within 20 minutes or so, or fall off quickly.

I think this must be a personal reaction to earplugs. Having a husband who is quite a snorer, I went through a phase of wearing earplugs to bed (it was less useful than I hoped because it turns out the more irritating part of the snoring is the vibration, not the noise…), but when I think of putting in earplugs, the first feeling that is evoked is one of presence in my body. It makes me so much more aware of how my body feels, my heartbeat, the sound of my breathing, and oddly, awareness of what is going on around me, like my body is making up for the reduced hearing. It definitely puts me in the right place. But it sounds like for you, earplugs cause a totally different (uncomfortable) reaction, which wouldn’t work at all.

That – and (depending on the earplug) I can still hear enough that I don’t think I would have any issue still hearing the instruction. (I’ve had work situations in the past where hearing protection is required, so you have earplugs in but still have to listen to instruction.) I don’t know if hot yoga instructors everywhere else use a microphone, but I can’t imagine it would be hard to still hear in my studio (with good hearing, obviously!). All I meant by knowing the script was that if it were actually muffled a bit, you could probably still recognize what was being said. We’ve actually had a (mostly) silent class before for a special occasion, and that seemed to work just fine.

I’m not saying this is anywhere near being the best solution – like I said, a q-tip after class is really all the remedy I need. And I haven’t tried earplugs. It’s just a thought.

I’m not sure how old you are either, but I do think that flexibility becomes more and more “use it or lose it” with age and injury. And it’s hard to tell what your body would feel like if you weren’t doing yoga at all, you know? If you weren’t practicing, you might not notice the “stiffening” on off days because you wouldn’t have any good/flexible days to compare it to… I guess what I’m saying is that your “improvement” could really be just managing to not lose ground in terms of flexibility.

I do notice that I’m more flexible when I go on consecutive days. And in terms of progress, there are some areas where I feel like I haven’t changed too much at all, but others that are quite noticeable. I will say that adding in some yin yoga type stretching does seem to help improve flexibility more than Bikram yoga poses, if that is your main concern. Yin yoga poses are very passive – letting gravity do the work, but you hold them for 3-5 minutes or more. If you have looked at the YogaBody Naturals supplement and his recommended stretches, he has a similar program.

That said, I think there are a lot of benefits to Bikram yoga other than just flexibility, so it’s very useful to me.

Coconut water works well, as do Emergen-C type packets that you add to water. And I know personally, I found I needed to drink a lot more than I thought I would (just make sure you are getting electrolytes with it an not just drinking a gallon of water or something…)

I’m like you and rarely get sick as well these days. But keep in mind that most people, even healthy people, get sick once or twice a year. And I think it’s great that you get sick less than that, but I think sometimes – your body and mind need it. Which sounds weird, but personally, my thought process on this is that you have a wonderful body and immune system that can fight off colds and flu pretty well. Unless you’re not getting all the things you need – and then your body finds a way to demand what it needs. Like a few days spent curled up on the couch with some chicken soup and a mental break from work. Personally – I went through a big change when I figured that out. I used to get sick 3 or 4 times a year. And then I realized that when I did get sick – that some sort of self-care was really what I needed, so instead of being subconciously jealous that my husband was home from work laying on the sofa with a book being sick and then thinking it was inevitible that I would get sick from being exposed to his germs… (which was always a self-fulfilling prophecy) I would schedule a few hours of guilt-free relaxation when my body and mind crave it. And voila – no more getting sick. Well, except about a year or so ago, I broke my streak of about 3.5 years of not being sick. Realized I hadn’t been eating well (had been rushed and busy and eating junk on the go), was stressed about a number of things, kept trying to exercise through it, and there you go. Sick – and it was a doozy. But it was a reminder that I can’t eat junk so much and need to pay attention to my needs, not just rely on the fact that “I never get sick anymore”. The true statement is more like “I never get sick anymore as long as I take care of myself”… but it’s still trial and error sometimes. 🙂

Hopefully that makes sense. I guess what I’m saying is that there are a lot of reasons we get sick, and it could be something as simple as being less hydrated than normal while getting used to hot yoga affected your immune system temporarily. Or you were jumping in to do too much too fast and you were a little worn out? There could be other factors going on in your life too, or you were just exposed to more germs than normal. But I would just look and see if you should change anything if you think you may have been dehydrated/overworked/jumping in too fast, and if not – realize that we do get sick sometimes, and don’t worry about it. It happens.

What is your normal routine for rehydrating and replacing electrolytes?

If you are not drinking anything but water, I would suspect that could be part of the problem? Coconut water is an easy solution, as it has a lot of potassium and electrolytes.

I haven’t had that issue, but after I started going to hot yoga more often, I got a curly girl haircut and quit using shampoo altogether. I use the DevaCare No-Poo (which is more like conditioner) after class and that works out great. My hair feels healthier than ever after a few months.

Really? When I googled the pictures I all saw were people with their feet on the mat. It is a bear to do this off the mat IMHO.

I should have been more specific – you have to google BIKRAM triangle pose, because regular triangle pose is a whole different thing.

I figure you’re going to sweat through anything you wear so why bother adding layers of underwear? I have a pair of Nike dri-fit capris in navy blue that don’t show sweat much, and some black shorts that aren’t too bad. But at this point I’ve really just given up worrying about it. I bought a pair of tan/sand colored shorts as well and yeah, you can see sweat more, but by halfway through class they are completely wet with sweat anyway.

The way I see it – I’ve never noticed sweat patterns on anyone else’s clothing because I’m focused on myself in class. So I’m just not going to worry about it. Likewise, I’ve also started wearing bra tops despite having a less than perfect midsection. Why? When I can see my abs, it reminds me to keep my core activated. And while I don’t normally subject people to looking at my belly, I figure that they are probably (like me) focused on their own practice and not worried about what I’m wearing. 🙂

Are you sore from the yoga or from your other workouts?

I think you can certainly lose weight through this – you burn a good amount of calories. Of course, the results will depend on your diet too – you could add enough calories to your diet to counteract any amount of exercise if you aren’t paying attention.

As far as I know, your core temperature shouldn’t really be up much at all. Your body is capable of regulating itself to stay at it’s normal temperature range despite the external conditions.