Bikram Yoga on the Road

By Jessica Frent

Monday I flew to New York’s JFK airport, Tuesday I flew from New York to Chicago and Thursday back to Scottsdale. Each day I had the joy of practicing at a new studio, with instructors I hadn’t experienced before. Although it’s the same dialogue and postures, it’s never the same. I hear the dialogue differently each time, learn something new, and experience new challenges. If you’re like me and your work keeps you frequently away from home, you know how challenging it can be to maintain a regular practice. Travel time and meetings might leave little room in your schedule for a 90 minute class but I have found a little dedication and planning can help you keep up your practice when you're traveling.

Whether you are traveling for work or on holiday most major cities across the globe offer Bikram Yoga and I make it a habit to always take a class after long flights to minimize jet lag. When you schedule your next trip, go to the Bikram Yoga class finder to find a studio near where you are staying.

Visiting Phoenix or Scottsdale, Arizona? We'd love to have you in our studios for your Bikram Yoga class "on the road"! We offer great drop-in rates, as well as an Out-of-Towner package (includes 5 consecutive days of yoga AND a mat and towel on each visit for just $50!). Click here to see our locations and class times.

Perfection is a Direction, Not a Destination

By Jessica Frent

Before the holidays I had surgery and was forced to take a break from our beloved “hot room”. For almost two months I wasn’t able to practice and with every passing day I worried that my postures, which I had worked so hard to “perfect” wouldn’t look the same. I worried that my back bends wouldn’t be as deep, my balance would be lost, and my strength to hold triangle would be less than it once was. My first practice back, I was so concerned with how others may perceive my imperfections I went to the 5:30am, practiced in the back of the room, and hoped no one would notice me. I realized quickly I was the only one critiquing my postures with such precision and that perfection is a direction, not a destination. You can always go deeper, hold longer, or achieve a more graceful strength. It has been almost six weeks since that 1st day back while my practice isn’t the same it’s in some ways stronger than it was before. The “perfection” I was so worried about losing wasn’t lost it just shifted.

For those of you perfections out there like me, remember what the wise words we have all heard before "bikram yoga is a practice, not a perfect" and if you want to receive the full benefits it’s important to allow yourself to be vulnerable, learn something new each day, and not let your own ego make you afraid to step into the room after a break.

What Yoga Has Taught Me About Writing

By Chris Schmidt

For almost a year now, I’ve been an avid student of Bikram Yoga—a system of yoga that Bikram Choudhury developed from traditional hatha yoga techniques, including 26 postures and two breathing exercises in a room preset to 105 degrees and 40 percent humidity.  Four walls, a mat, a towel and my flawed reflection for 90 minutes of moving meditation.

Although Bikram’s studios are often referred to as torture chambers, the hot room has become my own restorative chamber of sorts.  Physically and mentally, it’s done more for me than any doctor I’ve seen or medication I’ve been prescribed to date. Both spiritually and emotionally, I’ve found a deeper level of peace.  And, practically, it’s taught me a few things about writing.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Show up.  This is the hardest part about writing.  If I do that, the rest is easy.
• Stay present in the room.  This is the second hardest part, in my opinion.  Every time I remain in the room when I’m uncomfortable—my humanness exposed—I’m training my mind to adapt to situations beyond my control.
• Focus on the breath.  When, not if, the fight-or-flight response kicks in, I try to remember to breathe in and breathe out.  Additionally, meditation—repeating a mantra or imagining my Someday beach home—helps me to avoid potentially missing out on that epiphany I’ve been waiting for.
• Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.  Although it’s nothing new, the grass is greener where I water it.  It’s called research.  As the famous doctor (Seuss) once said: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” —even if it’s simply on paper.
• No one can steal your peace.  Make your writing space conducive—to writing.
• Mind over the matter.  There’s no such thing as a true writer’s block.  Just saying.
• Remove expectations.  Each time I show up at my pad and paper or laptop, I’m a different person.  I may be surviving on little sleep, worried about a situation outside of my power or I’m in total rock-star, can’t-do-anything-wrong mode.  No matter who I am in the moment, I receive 100 percent benefit as long as I expend 100 percent effort.
• Eliminate excuses.  I’m responsible for my own writing.  I can’t blame other people or external circumstances for something completely within my control.
• Every day is a practice, not a perfect.  Realizing this simple truth eliminates the pressure to perform and allows me to push the edge, risk failing and try again.  And again.
• Eventually—Someday—I’ll achieve final expression.  For me, this means seeing my first novel in print.  And living the [writer’s] life I dream of.

The practice of Bikram Yoga is the only [physical] activity that can be improved upon as we age.  According to Bikram, “You’re never too old, never too bad, never too late and never too sick to start from scratch once again.”  In my book, this goes for writing, too.

Bikram also says that in life you only have to travel six inches—the distance [or journey] from your mind to your heart.  My definition of writing is a marriage between the heart and mind.  And despite where I am in my writing journey, it is a lifelong commitment that continues to grow stronger every time I show up, stay in the room and give it my all.

CHRIS SCHMIDT

Chris Maday Schmidt is an undergraduate from ASU with a BA in Literature, Writing & Film. She is co-founder and member of Scribes @ ASU, a creative writing club promoting the social, cultural and academic interests of students enrolled at Arizona State University. Chris works as an assistant at a magazine publishing firm in Scottsdale, Ariz., and is a former intern with Superstition Review and beauty editor for In With Skin magazine. She has also contributed articles and blogs to online and print publications, including Kalliope, Superstition Review, In With Skin and Construction Superintendent, and is currently experimenting with both fiction and non-fiction pieces while continuing to dream of Someday.

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Yoga for Panic Attacks

By Lisa Jakub

I’ve heard several people say that they don’t like Bikram yoga because it’s not meditative or spiritual. I suppose on the surface it looks like boot camp, but it is not purely physical; it is an incredibly deep meditative practice.

I get panic attacks. I have been carried out of restaurants, bars, house parties and art galleries because I am a hyperventilating, sobbing mess. For a time they were so debilitating it was difficult to leave my house.

I thought Bikram might help me manage stress but I was very nervous about trying it. It involved going to a place I had never been and staying in a room for 90 minutes with people I didn’t know. This is a terrifying prospect for someone with panics like mine. I literally had an entire therapy session dedicated to discussing if I could survive my first Bikram yoga class.

I did survive. In fact, I thrived.

It is all well and good to meditate in a candle lit room with soothing music and people using gentle voices. It does feel great and I enjoy those types yoga classes, too. But they didn’t help me with my reality. I need to learn to relax when my brain throws some serious, hardcore panic at me.

Bikram has trained me to breathe and meditate when I am trapped in a room that is really bright, a million degrees, packed with people who smell and a teacher who is loud. That’s why I can now survive life in my head.

When I panic, it is bright and loud and I’m dizzy and nauseous. I can’t run away from that situation, either, but that’s fine because this yoga has taught me that there are options beyond fight or flight.

I rarely get panic attacks anymore. I have the same stress and the same triggers. The panics rise up and threaten me; they insist that I can’t breathe and I am going to die immediately. Then, I hear my teacher:

Meet resistance with breath. – Lizzie.

Don’t meet panic with frustration or defeat or anger. Just take a moment. Then, I hear another teacher:

This is going to hurt like hell. It’s O.K. Don’t be scared.  - Kirk.

I know I can do it, I can make it through this just like I make it through class four times a week. Then, I hear another teacher:

Deep breath in. Let it out slow. – Amy

And that’s exactly what I do.

The hot room is my training ground for the real world. Those instructions – seemingly about my physical practice – are the deepest, most spiritually profound lessons I could imagine.

Maybe it looks like boot camp to you, but to me, it’s church.

Lisa Jakub retired from acting so she could be a writer, yogi, wife, traveler and dog-mom. Read more from her at 

JustHereJustNow.com

 and 

LisaJakub.net