10 things yogi’s won’t tell you about Bikram

1. When you are in an upside down pose with sweat dripping from your forehead, that sweat will inevitability drip into your nose and therefore remind you what it was like to breathe in water as a child.

2. Find some tight hot yoga shorts and just wear those. For the first few months of my practice, I wore underwear but it was disgusting. Just wear the shorts and you’ll be fine.

3. In between your spinal postures, you are asked to “put your chin to your towel and look to the left/right.” If you look the wrong way, you set yourself up for an awkward staring contest between yourself and the yogi next to you.

4. After a tough yoga class, it’s like you are drunk. Putting on sweat pants is difficult. You run into people (literally) in the dressing room. Your energy is drained… yet in a good way.

5. If you do a 60-day challenge or practice often, your priority will be washing your yoga clothes only. Your other clothes will take a back seat until you realize you have no clean clothes and you’ve worn the same work pants 5-days in a row.

6. Eventually, you will be able to predict what your Bikram teacher will say next. Each one has their own style and quotes about life. At first, this will be refreshing. After awhile, you will wish you could mute them. (However, there is nothing like the Bikram dialogue and it all has a purpose!).

7. There is a nasty White Elephant in the room when you are doing Triangle Pose (Trikanasana). The fact that your sweaty feet can barely stay put. They slip all over the place and this bugs the living daylights out of me.

8. Sometimes, you will have gas. This is annoying and highly correlated to what you ate that day. I can tell you this from experience.

9. Contrary to popular assumptions about Bikram yoga, the room does not smell. Well, it has it’s own kind of smell but it’s not bad. It’s not body odor and people who practice Bikram typically take really good care of themselves. I’ve never been turned off by a bad scent.

10. There will be days when you don’t want to practice. If you practice anyways, those may be the days you amaze yourself. I recall a class where I arrived sick-to-my-stomach. After the first Half-Moon series, I was feeling amazing and my stomach ache went away! This is the same with headaches and other pings of pain.

Just finished class number 57… 3 more classes… 1 day of a double… I’ll be a 60-day Bikram yoga completer on Thursday…

This makes me so proud of myself!