Simon Says In Hell

I am a practitioner of Bikram Yoga. This is a practice that entails getting into and holding a series of yogic poses for 90 minutes in a room that's generally between 105-110 degrees farenheit. Yes, you read that correctly. It's bendy hour in a sweat lodge with a bunch of strangers. Only there's one other component ... the Bikram teacher. This is an animal I'd not previously encountered in other yoga practices. Sure I'd been pushed deeper into downward facing dog by the best of them in an Ashtanga class, gently encouraged to relax and breathe in Hatha, instructed with great precision for the sake of alignment in Iyengar but never before had I received the rapid fire verbal direction while sweat poured out of me that I receive in Bikram.

Last night I had class with Patrick. He's an ex-skater from New York and holds the record for most consecutive classes in one day. Motherf'er did 12 hours of bikram - that's 12 hours of yoga in a heated room sweating your nuts off in a 24 hour period. So let that serve as the basis for you to imagine what his teaching style might be like. Patrick is, as I told him one day, an ass-kicker. He assured me he does it with compassion, but didn't blink to deny my qualification of his instructional tenor.

Under Patrick's direction, or shall I say command, I doubled my flexibility in the half moon pose. Managed to make it down to the floor for toe stand and have learned just how cool my foot looks coming up over the top of my head in the standing splits via standing bow pose. In other words Patrick kicked my ass up into the next level.

During last night's sweat fest (the heat we incurred yesterday here in San Francisco only intensified the heat in the yoga studio) in between rattling off instructions for standing head to knee pose and issuing corrections for triangle he reminded us of what we were really doing proudly proclaiming his Bikram yoga class as 'Simon Says In Hell'. I'm not sure if Patrick called it Hell because of the intensity of the heat or if because twisting yourself up into knots while you sweat through your gym shorts while standing in little pools of your own bodily fluids is karmic payback for the vanity that drives so many of us to take exercise. Whatever the case I will never think of Bikram or Patrick the same.