Those Bikram Boys

What's the guy to girl ratio at your studio like? Do you have a lot of men willing to tough it out in the heat where you practice?

Man, I love those strong, tall guys who practice alongside all the dainty girls in bikini tops and Shakti shorts. My favorite are the 40-somethings at Bikram Yoga Evanston that I think look like firemen. I mean, if they can handle the yoga (with their tight hips and broad shoulders), so can anyone. Not so sure I'm crazy about guys who wear super short shorts, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive the Torture Chamber, eh?


YogaDork recently discovered this awesome NYT article about guys layin' down their mats and kicking some ass. There was also an interesting entry about guys in the Army doing yoga in order to promote strength and stress relief. I love it!


Now if I could only drag the Hubs and my big brother to class... :)


Do you yoga with your guy? Know male friends or teachers at the studio?


I want to hear your story! I am going to feature a story on guys who Bikram in the near future and I'd love for you to be a part of it. I am looking for 3-4 paragraphs about who you know, what their practice is like, their favorite posture, and how Bikram yoga makes them feel like a real man. You can write about someone you know, or have your sexy guy write a little blurb. Feel free to be creative. Have fun. And if you know of anyone, please spread the word!


Comment below your contact info and I will get a hold of you about your story. Photographs highly encouraged, but not required. And if Bikram's not your style, no worries. I'd still love to hear from you.

REAL MEN DO (BIKRAM) YOGA. 

Coming soon to Alive in the Fire!



Check out this ridiculousness. We fist pump in our fancies after the wedding. Hey, if I can make a fool of myself, so can you!

A Little Inspiration for Your Saturday Morning

Photo via I Can Read. It's true: the only one who can determine you is, well, YOU.

Readers, yogis, people of the world: can you believe it's almost September?

The fall season is my favorite. A better time to cuddle, wear a scarf and leather coat, eat soup, drink hot coffee, and of course read by the fire. In my case, the fireplace filled with candles, but hey it works!

There's nothing quite like breaking out your couch cuddle blankets, either. Movies are just better when you can burrow under a warm fuzzy, I say.

It's also a beautiful time of year to reflect on where you are as the sunny days come to a close, and where you'd like to be as the skies change over to a stormier, darker, colder time.

What do you need to accomplish while you've still got nice weather out? A bike ride to the Botanic Gardens? Flying a kite on the beach with your little one? More yoga in the afternoons?

What about the friends and family you've neglected to visit with while there's time to sit on restaurant patios? I highly recommend a few appetizer plates or beers or both at an outside table before your chance ends! Take advantage of what's in season and the fact that this is the golden time of year to share tasty morsels and true conversation with the people you care most about.

Last night on the big Critical Mass tour of Chicago, I was so thankful to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and chance to wave hello and shout "Happy Friday!" to all the Chicagoans lounging outside of little cafes and bars all along the city streets. Especially the ones that waved and shouted back with big smiles. Seemed like such an intimate yet fleeting moment as I whizzed by on the bike. Incredible!

It got me thinking, too: how much of the time we live so fully inside ourselves, so disconnected from the world around us, holding back from even our close family and friends much less strangers in the place we live. Not that there's not a benefit to understanding our own selves -- goodness knows in the past few months I've been discovering more and more the beauty behind introspection, meditation, and strengthening your own soul with what you love.

But the bottom line is this: we weren't created to experience the world all on our own. We were made for relationship. In the past year, I've been developing, fostering and falling more and more in love with my Wonder Spouse, my husband, my best friend.

And what's more, planning our wedding and enjoying the Big Day brought me closer together with my parents, his parents, my siblings, and his siblings, too!

The more we have given all summer, the more we've received in terms of love, support, and guidance along the way. It all hinges on this idea that's so central to our faith, too:

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

(Matthew 22:36-40)

What a huge demand which includes an incredible blessing beneath it! God calls us to love Him fully, wholly, with all our identity and our life, but also to love others with the same pure, life-changing practice. What isn't stated explicitly in this passage, but what reigns true throughout the Gospels is that our reward for these efforts -- and however imperfectly we love our God and our people -- He will continue to love us, forgive us, hold us, and help us.

No matter our faults, we will not be forsaken or left alone by Him. We are never alone. Not on cold fall evenings when we sit alone on the porch. Not on nights when we're cuddling with our spouses, or tucking the babes in for bedtime. Not when we feel lost, confused, tired, or in pain. Not when we ride in the middle of the Chicago city streets, waving to strangers and locals who watch with a perplexed look as we pass by.

On this lovely last Saturday in August, my challenge to you is to see what you can let go of about yourself. See what fear, shame, or regret you can give up. See whose opinion you can ignore, knowing that it does not in any way have to shape who you are -- but only if you decide not to let it to. Chances are you're like me and you're your own biggest critic. And guess what? You don't need to be!

Breathe, let go, move on. And get pumped for fall!

Photo also via I Can Read. Whose opinion do you fear? Can you let go and know that you are beautiful as you are?

Thirsty? Win Some Ultima Replenisher

Hey all, a quick update to my other post about Ultima Replenisher. Would you like to try some? The company's doing a little contest and all you've got to do to enter is post a comment on my blog and let me know your favorite color flavor.

Then, in a few days, Ultima will select five people to win some samples and will send them your way! Easy, tasty hydration. So get commenting!

There are a few other blogs participating: my lovely ladies over at Lock the Knee and Hannah Just Breathe. If you've got time, check out their blogs as well!

PS. Totally unrelated, but I just read something on YogaDork about Lindsay Lohan going to Bikram Teacher Training in the fall. Um, what?! Has she seriously been practicing for six months? I highly doubt that she'd do too well in front of Bikram. A friend and I got together last night to discuss TT and she told me these awesome stories about how Bikram breaks you down before he can build you back up, how the yoga is meant to challenge and piss you off, how he truly believes in holding the mirror up to your face in order to help you learn who you really are.

I feel really weird just posting this to the blog. Can you imagine Lindsay Lohan trying to survive Bikram's Torture Chamber and Bikram himself? Sheesh!

Hardly the environment for someone who's been in rehab and is obviously still in recovery. Definitely interesting as far as rumors go, though! Will let you know if I hear more. For now, as YogaDork suggested, it seems that it won't be true...but you never know! It would be the ultimate test of patience and focus for all the other yogis there, I suppose. And that's the yoga:

If you let someone else steal your peace, you lose!

Emotional Drama or Dreamy Thriller: What Kind of Teaching Does Your Studio Feature?

Which summer blockbuster are you more excited about: the recently-released, breathtaking dreamscape Inception starring Leo DiCaprio, or Julia Roberts' impending mom-friendly drama Eat.Pray.Love?

Just like your preference for Bikram teaching, this answer depends quite simply on your personal style.

Are you more of a punk rocker, or a bookworm? Do you rock the hot-pink shaktis in class, or prefer to cover up with long leggings and a loose T-shirt? Do you like one towel to cover your mat, or two?

It never ceases to amaze me what variety pops up in the Hot Box. Mat colors, hairstyles, facial expressions. Yogis, yoginis, and rockstar Bikram teachers. No doubt that we all deal with the heat a little differently, to say the least!

This month I'm preparing for a stress-free wedding by trying to incorporate more tolerance and patience into my routine.

The biggest factor in succeeding in this endeavor is, not surprisingly, just getting my butt to the studio to do some seriously-hot meditating, but there are a couple other steps I'm taking, too:

• reading & reflecting on the ancient wisdom of the Yoga Sutra
• spending more time with friends who I've been meaning to catch up with
• taking personal time to go for bike ride & tap into my creative side by prepping decorations for the wedding and writing poems and blog posts
• praying in quiet places, like the local Bahai Temple, along Lake Michigan, or with my eyes closed sitting on the comfy couches in local coffee shops
• talking to my family and trying to accept their quirks, power trips, and annoying habits before I'm swarmed by all of the guests in a couple weeks
• and, of course, hitting up the movie theater for some big-screen entertainment and central AC!
  

Next time you leave yoga feeling a little bothered by someone in the room -- whether it's your neighbor's loud breathing or your instructor's stern corrections -- consider this:

"There will come a time when differences no longer harass you."

Those Indian masters know what they're talking about! Seems you just have to give it time, be open-minded, and consider trying a few other relaxing, satisfying practices outside of the hot room.

Man, I can't wait for the cheesecake cupcakes we've got planned for the reception. Yum!
Photo via Our Labor of Love.

A 12-Step Program for the Beginning Bikram Yogi: How and Why to Quit the Fidget

Um, how exactly do you expect to hold this if you're twitching all over the place?

I hate to admit it, but the other day another girl really got to me during Bikram class.

We’ve never met, I don’t know her, and it’s probably wrong to form an opinion about this chick without even having spoken to her…but man, you should have been there. It was ugly:

She couldn’t get through three seconds of class – during postures and in between them – without fidgeting. She was wiping sweat. She was checking herself out in the reflection of the side-wall window. She was adjusting her hair. She was squeezing her belly paunch and making dissatisfied faces at her own reflection. She was making eye contact with her friend across the room.

In short, she was doing everything but the postures themselves.

And dudes, it was pissing me off. When it comes to dealing with difficult emotions, anger’s not my forte. I don’t enjoy building up a large dose of fury within myself. And when I do, I’m generally not sure how to handle it.

And goodness knows: the heat in the Bikram studio is enough to make my blood boil and turn my face red – I don’t know about you, but I don’t need another reason to swelter. Not to mention, the 90-minute meditation is supposed to be a soothing sort of practice.

Short and sweet: you should be still – frozen, motionless, absolutely static and silent – for a pretty big chunk of class. Whether you’re technically in savasana or simply resting in between sets of the standing series postures, you should be a living statue!

By literal definition, finding stillness is as important as utilizing integrity and depth in the postures themselves. Heck, it’s inherent to their very name – asana refers not just to the physical fulfillment of the position, but also finding calm within that configuration. You arrange the different components of the body in a specific way, but what’s more: you do so for the purpose of achieving balance, promoting physical health, and attaining mental relaxation. It’s like the name of “standing separate leg head to knee pose” – the phrase “head to knee” implies that you must make contact between the exactly forehead and the exactly knee in order to receive the medical benefit of the posture. Not the nose. Not the chin. The forehead. In this same way, every asana requires the reaching of stillness. It’s not an option!

Reasons to Quit the Fidget:

1. Find peace. Bottom line. Isn’t this a big reason you’re stepping foot into the Torture Chamber, anyway?

2. Stop annoying the hell out of the yogis around you.

3. Balance. What a concept, right? And you were wondering why you couldn’t hold standing bow…

4. Energy. You’ll actually have more to put toward the real Bikram, rather than your frenzied fiddles.

5. You won’t feel so sorry for yourself! One of my favorite moments in yoga is when, right in the middle of class, an instructor randomly blurts, “Great, now stop looking so sad! Next set…” They slide that quick little sentence in with the other instructions like it’s part of the dialogue, when in reality it should be. How many times have you looked around the hot room to see some pretty miserably contorted facial expressions? Or made them yourself?

6. When you feel sorry for yourself, you quit sooner. So when you stop feeling sorry for yourself because you’re so tired from wasting energy fidgeting and because you couldn’t balance if you life depended on it (see #3, #4 and #5) – then you’ll actually be able to stay in the pose until “change” rather than pooping out early.

7. Your body actually needs that sweat you keep wiping away. One of my favorite instructors brings this up often, calling people out when they stop to reach for their brows, or worse, down for their towels.

8. You’ll be able to breathe better.

9. You leave the drama at the door. You get a chance to get away from our insane, insanely fast-paced world instead of allowing the madness in the door.

10. You learn discipline. You learn. Discipline. You. Learn. Discipline!

11. You stick together as a class, and you benefit from the energy of those around you. Holy crap, I can’t stand when people move at their own pace. And granted, at first I found it difficult to stick with the instructor and the rest of the yogis around me, but once you learn what a blessing this can be, people who throw it off become extremely pesky!

12. Uh, it’s part of the DIALOGUE. And what’s rule #1 in Bikram? Obey the freaking DIALOGUE!

So what happened with Miss Drama, with her jitters and spasms, her ridiculous song and dance, her sad faces when she couldn’t hit any of the postures with Bengal tiger strength? As a matter of fact, turns out none of my fierce, defiant glaring in her direction helped a damn thing. She just kept on squirming around like a restless worm. And she reminded me of another reason it does you no good to get distracted from those around you in the yoga room:

It just takes away from your own practice.

But hey, there was one redeeming factor. Crazy girl inspired me to stay for a second class.

It just so happened that my first one sucked so bad and I was so all over the place that I just couldn’t resist sticking around for the 7:30pm. And that, my friends, was an adventure in and of itself. Stay tuned for the next post!