hot yoga? not!

here's the tale of bikram from this weekend:

i've been too tired to type this until now. thinking about my bikram yoga experience still exhausts me! how much more hellish could it have been? meghan (a girl i used to work with) kept telling me to try it, and swears by it. after using up every excuse and being as evasive as possible, i gave in to the pressure. i thought, "it can't be so bad, right? i'll just try it this one time and if i don't like it i won't go back." after all, i swim and run. i'm uber-flexible and as everyone knows, i can do splits and stuff. and i've done yoga no problem since '97--just not BIKRAM.

i'm not a heavy sweater. that sounds weird so let me re-phrase it: i don't usually sweat a lot, but i sweated rivers during this class. the room was, well, hot--like a sauna. i hoped someone would open a window but then it wouldn't be bikram. there was an aerobics class next door, moving along to the spice girls. i could see through the glass windows that there were two fans running in that class. i thought about bolting out and joining the aerobics class instead. but it was too late. i was trapped. i was dying.

add to that the fact that someone in the class had horrendous foot odor and another person had really bad gas. i really thought i was going to die. afterwards i was all dizzy, woozy and in a delirium. it wasn't pretty.

i'm not quite sure how i managed to drive home, but i did....and slept for about five hours straight. i'm *still* totally wiped out. i can't really describe how bad it was or how sick it made me feel. it's kind of like i had the flu. i didn't want to move a single muscle and even after waking up, i just lay there in my living room, flat on my back. a few phone calls came in and i screened them b/c i was too weak to reach over to the table and pick up my phone.

considering everything else going on with me, i think it was a big mistake to try hot yoga. i was already in a smoldering flare to begin with. now i'm feeling worse than ever.

meghan said that you have to go at least 10-15 times for full benefits and that each time you go, you start feeling better and better. the thing that surprised me is that meghan is stronger than i thought. she's been doing bikram for a while and really seemed to be thriving while i thought i was on the verge of heatstroke or something. the thing is, she's never been much of a runner or swimmer, and is also slightly heavyset. not that it should matter, though...

my sister recently mentioned that one of her acquaintances, heidi, loves bikram. heidi wants my sister and another one of her friends, inga, to try it. there's a yoga studio in fremont (?) that she mentioned. now i *know* that i can't in good conscience let her try it without warning her of the perils of hot yoga. maybe i should just say "don't do it!"

either bikram is extreme, or i am a wimp. a couple of people here told me bikram was bad, but i hope their experiences were nothing like mine--or at least not quite as bad. all i can say now is "hot yoga? NOT".

at least i've lived to regret it.