Fourth Form of Madness

When I was in Bali last May I did my first Bikram yoga class.  I have practised many beautiful hot yoga classes but these are slow vinyasa styled and though are about still practising to your edge,  all are about nurturing and becoming more attuned to how different mediums change that edge.  Just as you don’t go out and run around till you drop from heat exhaustion on a 40 degree day with little water, nor should you employ this mentality in a yoga practise.  Bikram for me was one of the most informative and yet terrifying and offensive experiences of my yoga journey.

Let me pre-face this piece by saying I am not a big believer in the new age yoga mantra that has infected her.  This attitude of not commenting on what you believe to be wrong under the guise of “non-judgment”. The problem with this ideology is that you have to be extra-ordinary at ensuring you just don’t slip into apathy.  You don’t think Gandhi didn’t exercised moral judgment when he took action against the British government’s decision to tax the Indian salt.  Or that Mother Teresa hadn’t judged for herself that it was wrong to let people starve to death in the streets alone.  Some of the most appalling atrocities in this world have happened and are still happening due to this apathetic attitude.  Sound judgement is  one of the best health responses you have in an unsound world.  But like all good characteristics, is something that has to be practised, daily.  You need to understand what you believe in and how you got there before you can even have the choice of just “letting it go” and if it should just be “let go of”.  Sometimes we have to act as part of our experience of life.

My experience of Bikram began with being surrounded by women in the change rooms in bikinis.  “How nice” I thought, “There must be a pool at the studio that I can swim in afterwards to restore balance”.  What a beautiful restorative idea.  I floated up the stairs to the studio on that idea.  Then I opened the big, chunky wooden doors that led into what appeared to be the studio but was the temperate of a desert, and saw wall to wall bikini clad peeps already sweating.  Oh and checking themselves out in the wall to wall mirrors.  I think of running screaming from the building but realised that would not be very open or courageous of me.  Life is in the experience after all.

So we begin with an aggressive pranayama practise that I am guessing would harm the necks of at least 50% of the people in the room.  Actually I’m not guessing, I have studied a lot of anatomy and physiology and most seated office workers who type away at a computer all day, would find that first opening breathing practise rather taxing on their necks and shoulders.  Muscles are wonderful living organs with a memory.  They remember getting held in fixed positions at desks for really long periods.  All of a sudden you ask them to stretch and relax in manners they are not accustomed to.  They are confused.   As was I at this stage.  You have to have many wonderful deep conversations with your muscles before they should be moved like that.

I try to not partake in this practise in the least obvious way which is hard when you are surrounded by mirrors.  Next thing I know the instructor is standing next to me speaking in a loud and harsh voice telling me lift my chin to the sky and generally employ a range of motion that I know from many years of practise is not within my range.   I say “no, I will find an alternative thanks”.  I feel like she labels me a trouble-maker and someone who’s ego is to be broken.  I don’t get this attitude which I have seen play out in other studios around the world.  No-body needs to be breaking anyone’s ego. Life will do that quite nicely by itself, and is a far more skilled practitioner at it.  Life has at it’s centre indifference, people don’t.  They are always usually clouded over by some belief or dogma which does not put them in the right place to be dealing with such meta-physical structures, such as ego.

The class continues.  The class moves at such a cracking pace I feel dizzy and feel like all the aspects of me that make me aggressive are being directly spoken to.  I adapt my practice to calm my body and my aspects of being so I am not heading in that direction.  The instructor is back at my side again urging me to push harder and to stare at myself in the mirror in front of me.  I had done most of the class with my eyes closed at this point.  I did it for survival and to listen.  I needed to turn her down, so I could listen to what was going on in all facets of my being and adapt my practise to that inner listening.  I think this might of annoyed her a bit as I didn’t get a moment’s peace from that point on.  If I dared to blink longer than she thought necessary I had her at my side yelling at me to stare at myself.  Any adaptation I tried to do that suited my anatomy better she advised me I was doing wrong.  We are all built differently.  An asana does not suit everyone’s anatomy.  I have two forearm bones that are exactly the same length.  This is rare.  But it means my elbow joints do not quite articulate like other people.  I have adapted to this in my practise.  I suggest here that others might need to adapt to other people’s adaptions when approaching their shape.  An asana is not about perfection, isn’t that why we call it yoga practise 🙂

At the end of the class, I return to my bungalow which thankfully was right next door and did have a really big pool.  My fellow travelling companions tried to talk to me by exclaiming “What the hell happened to you?”.  It was true I was quite the sight with my beetroot face and by this time, angst expression, I  kindly shut down any communication with “Don’t talk to me until I’ve sat in water for a bit”.  I needed to allow the fluidity of water and all her healing properties to restore and release me from the mental and physical rigidity of that class.

Later whilst I sat in a body of water, floating with the whims and the tides of the gentle pool ripples caused by other swimmers, I reflected on the class.  I am happy to say I do not like Bikram yoga and believe it is just a  form that has been emptied of all it’s meaning.   There are many examples of this commodification of life.  I had just hoped that yoga wasn’t going to be one of them.