Thoughts on Bikram yoga, part 1

I have taken a couple of Bikram yoga classes recently, and feel compelled to try to make some sense of my extremely mixed reactions.

In Bikram classes, you do a fixed sequence of poses in a room that's heated to around a hundred degrees. It's so hot that you gush sweat -- everyone puts two towels down on their mats, and for the men at least, the towels are pretty soaked in sweat by the end. Men never wear shirts, and women tend to wear job bras or some such minimal clothing. All Bikram studios seems more or less the same, they're always carpeted for some reason, and the front of the room is mirrored. The carpeting, combined with the heat and the profuse sweating, results in pretty much every bikram studio smelling totally rank. You get used to it really quickly, but when you walk in the room, oh man.

I'm very non-dogmatic about yoga -- I believe that you have to find the positive aspects of all the many different approaches, the aspects that work for you, your body, and your personality. So I've taken lots of Bikram classes in my day. I used to take it in San Francisco when I would visit my friend Miles there, and I've taken a bunch of classes in LA, including one with Bikram Chowdhury himself. I'll leave my impressions of Bikram until later, but suffice to say that there are aspects of the bikram approach that I like enough to keep me returning to it periodically.

But seriously, there are aspects of the Bikram approach that are just exasperating. The teachers all prattle on and on, very much like Bikram himself. And basically what they're prattling on about is (a) how great Bikram yoga is, and (b) how you should be working harder, harder, harder, harder. They're very much like personal trainers at a gym, except way more verbose. It's all about effort, and how that effort is going to benefit you. It's kind of narcissistic in a way -- dedicate yourself to our type of yoga practice, and you'll be more attractive and healthy and successful and all that. Kind of icky.

But I can live with narcissism -- we're all a little narcissistic. What I really don't like about Bikram is its cultishness. There's a feeling of "our way or the highway," a kind of dismissiveness about pretty much everything that isn't Bikram yoga. There's a 'true believer' quality to the teachers and the regular practitioners. And there does seem to be a little idolatry of Bikram himself, a little slavish devotion. Bikram is given to making some ridiculous proclamations, and these are pretty closely echoed by most of the teachers, as if they're some kind of higher truth. It's creepy.

Now Bikram isn't unique in the yoga world in trying to position himself as a guru, someone whose word should be taken as gospel. But it is a matter of degree, and with Bikram it seems to be taken to a degree further than in, say, Iyengar or Anusara (both of which have cultish aspects) or whatever. But the combination of this kind of icky cultishness with the narcissim and 'results orientation' that they're constantly espousing is especially unappealing to me.

And I should say, it seems to be unappealing to most people with any significant background in any other sort of yoga. Bikram seems to attract newcomers, who might stick with it for quite some time. But it rarely attracts yoga practitioners from other traditions. And, make no mistake, a lot of the beginners who come to Bikram and stick with it for a while, they make some great progress, they really do transform their bodies. And to some extent their minds too -- it really does take some focus and determination to stick with the bikram practice, holding the poses with integrity in that heat. But I think the emphasis in Bikram on push/effort/strength/yang to the exclusion of yield/relaxation/flexibility/yin really turns off most yogis.

It certainly turns me off. But you have to try to find the good aspects of everything, and there are certainly good aspects to the Bikram practice. Plus, I bought a month-long pass at a fund-raiser and I still have two weeks left. So, a few more Bikram classes for me. I will write more about this.