Back from Bikram–Organic Gluten Free Hot Yoga in NYC*

Which is SO NOT ME. I am much more suited to baking and eating cupcakes than yoga, but I got inspired by the heat in Mexico to try hot yoga so I could warm up more locally. Unfortunately, to warm up in a hot yoga room requires attending a 90 minute class. Which easily becomes two hours by the time you get there and back–which is much, much more free time than I have on hand.

I don’t know what shifted in me and made me start thinking “Well, what else am I doing every morning from 9:30 to 11:30?” I used to run around like crazy and would be busy doing errands and checking emails or dealing with this or that appointment or task and it was hard to fit in time to do anything for myself. Somehow magically I have managed to carve out 2 hours the last few days to enjoy a way too long yoga class.

Although “enjoy” isn’t really the right word for hot yoga. It’s pretty hellishly hard. You feel like you are going to pass out from the heat and your muscles are shaking from exhaustion. The thing is, I am really a social person. So if you stick me in a room full of people who are exercising for 90 minutes, I will stick it out. On my own–I would never be able to reach and stretch and “go back…fall back…reach back” for 90 minutes in a 100 degree room full of dripping, sweating mostly model type people. And one man who announced that he had just had a heart attack when the teacher asked if anyone had any health problems. Which put my aching, burning foot pain in perspective.

Actually, the yoga thing is not such a divergence from my blog. What got me interested in hot yoga was a friend, L., an adult who has celiac and has healed herself from this too toxic world. I always ask people how they got themselves better from this or that and what helped them the most. She told me that what really helped her to clear her mind was going to this sauna in Pennsylvania for three months. She told me to buy this book: “The Holistic Handbook of Sauna Therapy.” L. suggested I check out the Great Jones Spa which has a River Rock Sauna. I haven’t had a chance to get to the Great Jones Spa, and I am in too deep with my DH and DS and DD and dog and cat for a sauna retreat in Pennsylvania. So I ended up in Bikram Hot Yoga.

*It’s not really organic gluten free hot yoga. That is a joke. But they do have a new student special for $20 for 10 days of unlimited yoga special for anyone who is in NYC and wants to try Bikram Yoga NYC!

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Not really the place for this, but since I am rambling…S&J…I am not very good communicator these days with my kids and my blog and traveling and my cooking and my yoga–but I would love to take my DH (internet lingo for Dear Husband)/your DS to a yoga class some weekend if you ever feel like watching A. and Z!