Bikram Choudhury what have you done to me?!

Last night I went to my first session of Bikram yoga for a very long while. For those not in the know, yoga as designed by Bikram Choudhury is yoga with balls. Forget all that pansy incense flowing around the room, sounds of rainforests and relaxed breathing. Bikram yoga is praticed in a room heated to between 38-40 degrees C, with a humidity of almost 50%. You are in there for ninety minutes, and go through a series of yoga asanas (poses) that are designed to move every possible part of your body. Stretch every ligament, put pressure on every muscle and use every joint... and does it ever! After my first class at the Bikram College of India in Darlinghurst I discovered muscles that I never knew I had.

People say all sorts of things like yoga helps you move toxins and all that, I say that's bullshit. What it is doing is encouraging circulation, and with bloodflow comes the delivery of nutrients, heat and oxygen to parts of your body that might be starved of it. Such as the joints. Bikram is great (apparently) for people with arthritis because the heat makes it much easier to perform the poses and is very kind to your joints. I get annoyed with yoga because there are practicioners or yogis who are just full of crap. They say that it can help your mind unwind, reach higher states of being, clears toxins and can cure depression and all this kind of ethereal weirdness. Basically, Bikram encourages you to focus and concentrate on using your body in ways that you may not have ever done before. Toxins and emotional therapy aside - moving is good for you. Learning to control the focus and concentration of you mind is good for you. Bikram is good for you. I love it. Do it.

Here is a really interesting article from Yoga Journal about the man himself, Bikram Choudhury. Beware, he is a very eccentric man but wonderfully so. In his own words, "you can mess with the gods, but never mess with your knees."