Hot Yoga, Hot Damn

I finally did it guys.

Hot yoga is something I’ve always wanted to do. And I finally tried it (with one of my best friends whose birthday is today! SO to Jessie for being the best sweat buddy).

Hot yoga, aka bikram yoga, is basically like most other yoga classes but is held in a 95-105?F (around 40.5?C) room with 60% humidity.

Before those number send you away running and screaming, lets talk about some of the benefits of this unique form of yoga:

+ improves muscle and joint flexibility
+ the sweating gets out some toxins and can be good for weight loss (even if you’re just sweating out water weight)
+ boost your immune system due to your high body temperature during the class
+ allllll the other benefits of yoga (de-stressing, improving balance, etc)

Despite all this praise, there are also a lot of risks that you have to be vigilant to avoid during a hot yoga session. Hot yoga gets a lot of hate for being mega-dangerous but as long as you’re well informed and prepared, you’ll be more than fine.

However I do agree with critics that say hot yoga is a supplemental workout and not one by itself. Yoga is definitely what you make it and it definitely can be a great work out but for really building muscle and tone, combining other sports with yoga is your best bet.

Overall, I LOVED the class I took. Albeit we were only in a 95?F room, our instructor was really great and there were amazing cold wet eucalyptus towels that got distributed near the end of the class. It makes me wonder if I could find a way to do hot yoga at home, having the comfort of my own space for it would be amazing. You also don’t feel as self conscious as you think you would sweating out every last drop when everyone else around you is doing it though. I could really feel my muscles loosening up (and could do I full split by the end!). Also a cold shower has never felt better.

Have you ever tried hot yoga? Would you ever try it?