When visiting my sister recently, she persuaded me to take a bikram yoga class with her. I had no idea it was as challenging as it turned out. They're all 90 mins. long, with a set sequence of yoga poses conducted in a heated room--min 105F. Needless to say, after about 30 mins. I was sweating profusely as well as others, dripping sweat all around. I didn't do the poses I simply could not do, I attempted my own modifications just to try them out. Afterward I felt really stretched and oddly relaxed. I din't feel any problems during the class, I saw some folks in there just sitting on their mats at own point, clearly overwhelmed but exhorted to "not leave" the room. This is such bullshit.
However, I decided to look into this when I got back home, and I tried a bikram class locally. The room had a low ceiling and it was quite crowded, about 30+ people were in the class. Unfortunately I didn't hydrate properly beforehand and towards the end of the class I was nauseous and had palpitations, which scared me. I got up to leave, and the instructor follows me out, "where are you going?" I murmured with as much decorum as I could muster before vomiting right there on the carpet, "I feel like I'm going to vomit". She then asks, into the microphone, with the best of the Seattle-granola-earth-mother intonation as you can imagine, "Are you going to vomit?" I ignored her and scurried out to the coolness of the locker room. I splashed cold water all over me, changed out of my shirt, had some dry heaves and then calmed down, and drank some cool water. After 10 mins. she comes into the bathroom to check on me, and exhorts me to come back to class. I say no no no. Forget it lady. I'm done for the day. She left me alone, mercy be to God. I was able to drink more water and checked my pulse, back down to around 80. When the class let out 10 mins. later, I crept into the stinky room and gathered my mat and towels and went home.
I started to recall that incident in the "sweat hut" in Arizona, I think, a few months ago, where some people died of heat stroke, and that led to me hightailing out of there. These instructors can't be following people around or insisting that they stay in the room. I should have said, lady you're not equipped to handle any kind of heat stroke here, do you want me to have a seizure? I was in no shape to think clearly. I followed my instinct to leave a dangerous room and stuck to it. I don't think I'll do this again. These devotees are sometimes cult-like to their own detriment, that's a huge turn-off to me.
